Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but

[enlightenment]

what the heck is an "authentic faith?"

How does one go about proving the authenticity of faith?? It is rather like saying one has "authentic dreams."

Are they using faith and religion interchangeably? If they mean religion, how do you decide which are authentic and which are not? Longevity? Membership? How many pages they have in whatever text they use? Ratio of deaths and dismemberments to conversions?

I am confused, confuddled, and frankly flabbergasted at the number of posts that popped up using the term when I googled it on DU.

May I beg a bit of enlightenment, please?

It makes not one whit of sense to me.

[pauliedangerously]

1. Misnomer, perhaps?

I think they mean "authentic FAKE."

[enlightenment]

7. Makes more sense to say THAT than the other!

;-)

[varkam]

2. Can you give us some context in which it is typically used? eom

[enlightenment]

3. Probably, varkam, but I'll need to dig it back out again.

It was a post on DU that included the term, which got me browsing the 'Net for the term . . . but I have a brain like a sieve and a short attention span to boot (particularly in regard to magical thinking), so I need to force the old neurons to backtrack on what prompted my original post!

[enlightenment]

5. Found it!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3391623

It was the conversation about the squabble between the christian mother and satanist father over child custody.

Does that help?

[varkam]

9. I think that, in that context, authentic faith is meant to dennote whether or not...

something is a "real" religion. Looks like Ian already posted some helpful info for you, but to add, the Church of the FSM would not be defined as an "authentic faith" whereas Christianity would be.

[goddess40]

4. We recently joined the Universalist Unitarian church in town

and when we tell certain members (the religious nutters) of our family we get the eye-roll and the look. Some are even assholish enough to say that it isn't a real church. Granted many of us are atheists but the church does great social works and my son is really enjoying the classes.

[enlightenment]

6. My granny belonged to the "Unity" church

which is something a little different the the Universalist Unitarian church, but also very free-wheeling. Granny had a bible (every time I write that I think of Eddie Izzard's bit about the "bib-lee" - cracks me up) . . . anyway, she had a bible that she read cover to cover, apparently for the express purpose of writing critical commentary in the margins. She believed in reincarnation and had an incredibly complex scenario about the afterlife, wherein one went to a planet where "elders" hung out and discussed how one's last life went and what one would like (or should) do in the next one. Also many other totally bizarre connections.

I loved it when I was a kid. It made perfect sense to me to take all the bits you like from all the different forms of magical thinking and combine them into something that satisfies whatever it is that needs satisfying. I suppose that if I had grown up and discovered I needed that sort of support, I'd have done something similar!

I suspect that she probably wasn't really following the tenets of the Unity church . . .

[goddess40]

8. the woman in charge of "religious" education is also an atheist

Which comforts me that my son isn't being given a bunch of bull. Sometimes they study other religions, with a critical yet tolerant eye. Usually they, the teen group, discuss other social issues such as children growing up in brothels in India, the program some Amish use that lets their teens live for a year among the "English" at the end of which they have to decide family and religion or the real world.