What about non denominational questions?

Question

Having been a casual user of this site for some time, I have noticed some patterns. Purely off of my own experience I will say that the preferred form of question seems to be scoping to a particular denomination.

From the outside looking in, this is particularly convenient for Catholicism, because they have a clearly defined authority structure, and a plethora of citable sources. Many an obscure and strange question scoped to Catholicism are deemed appropriate, while less obscure and more relevant (my opinion) questions from a non denominational perspective are tossed into the nether, and have a hard time ever coming back from being put on hold.

Not to rail against the Catholics, I don't believe this is being done intentionally, it's just the natural playing out of the rules.

My question is, what if anything can be done for questions which are asked from a non-denominational perspective?

---------- fun fact --------------- according to http://hirr.hartsem.edu/cong/nondenominational-churches-national-profile-2010.html If non denominational were a proper denomination, it would be the third largest in the US, behind Catholic, and Baptist.

Answer 1

People like to use the term "non-denominational" as though it is a completely amorphous, shapeless mass that cannot be measured or categorized. But in fact, even though such churches don't associate with a denomination, their teachings can still be categorized with a bit of precision:

• Protestant
  • Therefore trinitarian, sola scriptura, and sola fide
• Either Calvinist, Arminian, or a blend (such as Amyraldism)
• Often Dispensational, sometimes strictly so
• Baptistic (i.e., credobaptism; no infant baptism)
• Often holding a Zwinglian (memorial) view of the Lord's Supper
• Primarily congregational polity
• Often literal, six-day creationists
• Sometimes charismatic

So it's quite possible to ask about the views of "non-denominational" churches here. Just pay attention to what doctrines these churches include in their statements of faith and in their teachings, and identify which historical tradition that particular view falls into.

Often that means that if it's a question about eschatology, ask for the dispensational view(s). If it's about the trinity, as for the trinitarian view. If it's about baptism, ask for the Baptistic (credo-baptism) view.

As much as non-denominationalists may want to avoid such labels, at the end of the day, their major teachings almost always fit at least fairly well into the major historical categories of Christian thought.

Answer 2

This is entirely the fault of non-denominationalists¹ for using confusing terminology and trying to pretend the elephant in the room doesn't exist. As much as many people inside the tradition would like to believe otherwise, non-denominational is itself a fairly specific theological tradition with a heritage, boundaries (albeit fuzzy ones), and norms that define it. As such "non-denominational" is actually a pretty defining label in itself and for many questions would be sufficient scope to ask about on this site. Nathaniel's answer gives some more specific ways of asking, but I would also suggest that some questions might be best addressed at just "non-demominational" churches. Specifying a region might help though because their theological trends does tend to follow different tracks by region. Non-denominational in the Pacific Northwest suggests something different than non-denominational in the deep south, and quite another thing in central Asia.

One other point to note is that on this site we try to avoid making stuff up or expressing personal opinions, but sticking to things that can be documented. It's really hard to ask good questions about stuff for which there there are few extant written sources to turn to as authorities. This is one thing that makes questions about Catholicism easier to work with than Protestantism: they document everything ad nauseam and they care about minutia most other Christians just don't care about, much less have documentation for. That doesn't make other traditions any less topical here, it just explains a little bit why RCC scoped questions tend to have much less friction.

_{¹ I have some leeway to say this having grown up in such an environment.}

Answer 3

One reason for there being more denominationally scoped questions is because we goad users into making their Truth questions on-topic and the easiest shortcut to that is to add a denomination.

But we've always allowed questions about the Bible, about a Biblical Basis for a belief or practice, about historical events, about the Church Fathers and we allow questions about modern (and not-so-modern) works, applications and figures in Christianity.

Unless there was a non-denominational teaching authority, a non-denominational pope or a Catechism for non-denominationalists, we can't answer non-denominational questions objectively because my non-denomination indubitably answers questions differently than your non-denomination.