Quotes of the week [LWN.net]

Quotes of the week

Posted Mar 17, 2007 16:25 UTC (Sat) by hingo (guest, #14792)
In reply to: Quotes of the week by tjc
Parent article: Quotes of the week

Uh, I'm a European, can I say something?

All European countries are Christian. Northern Europe is Protestant (Lutheran, Anglican), Southern is Catholic and Eastern is (Greek) Orthodox. That being said, most countries today are secular, meaning people are not religious although they do belong to a church and may or may not visit it at Christmas time.

Same goes for my understanding of the word profane. The phrase "Jesus Christ" in the above context is certainly profane purely by definition. Whether a particular reader is aggravated by such profanity is another matter entirely, I certainly am not. As for Europe, at least in Northern Europe a grand mother would likely use that phrase for exclamation. Unless she is religious, in which case she would not dare speak such profanities. See?

Now there... With this post I'm not only off-topic, I'm also teaching Americans English. Where is LWN going...

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Quotes of the week

Posted Mar 17, 2007 18:45 UTC (Sat) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

All European countries are Christian. Northern Europe is Protestant (Lutheran, Anglican), Southern is Catholic and Eastern is (Greek) Orthodox. That being said, most countries today are secular, meaning people are not religious although they do belong to a church and may or may not visit it at Christmas time.

May or may not visit church at Christmas time? That's an exceedingly broad definition of being a Christian!

That's sort of like saying "I'm a programmer, but I may or may not write a program once a year." :-)

Quotes of the week

Posted Mar 18, 2007 15:44 UTC (Sun) by filipjoelsson (subscriber, #2622) [Link]

This is so far off topic - that I'm not ashamed of chipping in. ;)

> May or may not visit church at Christmas time? That's an exceedingly broad
> definition of being a Christian!

The keyword was secular. A lot of Europeans belong to churches because it was mandatory to belong to a church up until some 50 years ago in some countries here. Sweden, where I live, is among them. Guess what? We're the most secular country in the world now (or in the top 3 at least) - but still most people belong to a congregation, since their folks did. Up until 7 years ago the church was a part of the state here, the priests where government officials.

Anyway, what does being Christian have to do with the worlds biggest commercial holiday?