Chosen people: Encyclopedia - Chosen people

Chosen people

Throughout history, various groups have considered themselves chosen by God for some purpose. This status may be viewed as a mark of superiority or a rank of special purpose and responsibility.

Chosen people - Types of purposes

The sense of being a chosen people occurs in both religious and nonreligious contexts. The Abolitionists, who were largely Christian, considered themselves chosen by God to bring freedom and equal rights to the slaves. Many slaveholders, another largely Christian group, saw themselves as chosen to keep and sell slaves.

The Nazis considered the Aryan race to be superior, and believed it was their mission to dominate over all races they considered "inferior." Many religious and charitable organizations consider themselves to be chosen by God to care for the sick and the suffering. Manifest Destiny drove Americans across the continent.

The sense of being a "chosen people" is therefore often associated with a particular ideological movement —it is a sense of importance which drives people to further the ends of their ideology.

Chosen people - Chosen to receive a message

In many religions it is believed that the God has revealed a message to a prophet or messenger.

Some of these religions, such as some forms of Christianity and Islam, teach that their path is the only path to salvation. In other religions, like other forms of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Wicca, and Transcendentalism, it is believed that the followers of one's faith do not have an exclusive path to God. They hold that people of other faiths may also reach God in their own way.

Chosen people - Superiority?

Views of being a chosen people are sometimes connected with ethnocentrism. The idea of a chosen people can be used to justify or create cultural imperialism, racism, and xenophobia. However, the "chosen status," by definition is a humbling one, as it claims to carry greater responsibility and sacrifices than others.

An example of this type of thought is exhibited in the Christian writing, Phillipians 2:5-8: "Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross."

Chosen people - Judaism

In Judaism, chosenness is the belief that the Jews are a people chosen to be in a covenant with God. The idea is not connected with tribal groupings as they are traditionally understood, as non-Jews are free to convert to Judaism.

The Jewish idea of being chosen is first found in the Torah (five books of Moses) and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible. This status carries both responsibilities and blessings as described in the Biblical covenants with God. Much is written about this topic in rabbinic literature.

Judaism's teachings on being a chosen people are described in depth in Jews as a chosen people.

Chosen people - Christianity

Supersessionism is the belief of many Christians that Christians have replaced Israel as God's Chosen people. In this view, the Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the message of Jesus; Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the Messiah and son of God. Christians who ascribe to supersessionsism, cite the Bible verse John 14:6, attributed to Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life, No one comes to the Father except through Me" as evidence that only Christians can attain heaven.

Other Christians reject supersessionism and believe that members of other religions can also reach heaven. They cite verses such as Romans 2:6-11, "For God .. will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God."

Chosen people - Roman Catholicism

Roman Catholicism had traditionally taught that all non-Christians would not be saved. Today many within the Roman Catholic Church teach that salvation is not ruled out for those who have not had the Gospel proclaimed to them, nor the possibility of asking to be baptized.

Chosen people - Latter Day Saints

In Mormonism, the Latter Day Saints see themselves as a chosen people. In contrast to supersessionism, Latter Day Saints do not dispute the "chosen" status of the Jewish people. Mormon doctrine teaches the Mormons are "The kin blood of the Jews." Indeed, Latter Day Saints view themselves as chosen because they are Israelites, in one of two ways: (1) some American, European, Asian and African Latter Day Saints claim(a) literally to have Israelite blood, usually from the lost tribe of Ephraim; (2) others claim that when they accept Mormonism, they become an adopted Israelite.

(a) DNA test results recently discovered groups of Israelite decendants located in both Asia and Africa. These groups have been granted the legal right to immigrate to Israel.

See Mormonism and Judaism.

Chosen people - Christian Identity groups

Christian Identity groups, based on a fusion of Nazi ideology, white supremacy, and fundamentalist Christianity, have developed a theology which holds that God hates the Jews, and that only white Christians are God's chosen people. These groups are rejected as non-Christian by the great majority of mainstream Christian churches.

As an example, The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord is a Christian Identity movment which preaches that "Jews of today are not God's chosen people, but are in fact an anti-Christ race, whose purpose is to destroy God's people and Christianity through its Talmudic teaching, forced inter-racial mixings, and perversions."

Chosen people - The Unification Church Moonies

Reverend Moon teaches that Korea is the chosen nation, selected to serve a divine mission. Korea, Moon says, was "chosen by God to be the birthplace of the leading figure of the age",[1] and to be the birthplace of "Heavenly Tradition", ushering in God's kingdom. However, Moonie teaching seems to assert that Korea was meant to be the "servant of the world", rather than a superior country, in a similar manner to the attitude of most religious Jews.

Chosen people - Islam

Some Muslims believe Islam is Exclusive, and some do not.

Muslims who believe that Muslims, Christians and Jews all serve the same God cite Qur'anic verses such as:

Muslims who believe Islam is in an adversarial relationship with Christianity and Judaism, cite other verses such as:

Islamic supersessionism presents Muslims as the only people chosen to carry th true word of God.. According to these individuals, Islam the leaders of both Judaism and Christianity deliberately altered the true word of God, and thus led all of their believers down a false path. In the Qur'an, The Jewish people are charged with "falsehood" (Sura 3:71), distortion (4:46), and of being "corrupters of Scripture."

Some parts of the Qur'an attribute differences between Muslims and non-Muslims to tahri fi-manawi, a "corruption of the meaning" of the words. In this view, the Jewish Bible and Christian New Testament are true, but the Jews and Christians misunderstood the meaning of their own Scriptures, and thus need the Qur'an to clearly understand the will of God. Other parts of the Qur'an teach that many Jews and Christians deliberately altered their scripture, and thus altered the word of God in order to deceive their co-religionists. This belief was developed further in medieval Islamic polemics, and is a mainstream belief in much of Islam today. This is known as the doctrine of tahrifi-lafzi, "the corruption of the text.

Chosen people - Hinduism

Whilst the caste system of India confers a degree of birth-right to the " chosen " Brahmins, there exist a few cults or New Religious Movements that consider themselves to be the Chosen people, e.g. the Brahma Kumari World Spiritual Organisation [B.K.]. The B.K.s consider that the world is at its end and will soon be destroyed, that they and they alone will inherit a Golden Aged paradise on the basis on the efforts they make following their leader Brahma Baba at this time. Further that Brahma Baba is the sole medium of the Supreme Soul, God.

Uniquely, the B.K.s belief in a repeating cyclic history of time which means that they believe and teach that all other avatars and prophets must come to their God to receive their knowledge of which they will then take into the future to re-establish their own religion once again on the basis of a partial grasp of it. Only they have a full graps of it and become complete pure. The B.K.s believe in a strict hierarchy of human souls in which they occupy the top 8, 108, 16,108 and 900,000 positions according to their status. All other religions are seen as faulted and partial understanding of God's wisdom.

See also

• Ethnocentrism
• Chosen one

Categories: Religious philosophy and doctrine | Religious people | Ethnocentrism

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Chosen people", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki