Christian Universals?

Defining Christianity is challenging, despite what you will sometimes hear from conservative Christians as well as some atheists. Does one have to view Jesus as God? Accept the Trinity? Accept a particular view of the significance of Jesus’ death? The early Christians disagreed on all of these things and more, and it is unclear to what extent various “essentials” of Christianity can actually be traced back to Jesus himself, which is ironic, since many would say that Jesus and/or his teaching are in fact the one universal feature in Christianities – although the fact that Muslims can revere Jesus as a prophet, and Hindus can view him as divine, muddies things still further.

I thus got a kick out of the cartoon below by “Pliny the In-Between”– although I will immediately express my appreciation for Unitarians and thus problematize even this alleged Christian “essential.”