I could not help notice that many Universal Salvation believers completely disidentify with the whole organized Church, believing that the church systems have been corrupted beyond repair and needs to be started over again. The major restorationist groups I can think of offhand are the Jehovahs Witnesses, mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Christaphidelians. Most identified Restorationist groups typically reject the popular doctrine of Hell in favor of annihilationism or post mortem repentance(mormonism), and some reject the doctrine of the trinity. Typically, I have noticed that there is a belief that after the Apostolic times, the Churches became too influenced by the surrounding cultures, worldly politics and Greek Philosophy. I have found that there are Universalists on both sides who believe that the whole church systems are beyond repair, and others who believe that the Churches have done well in upholding orthodoxy. Then I have seen different perspectives where some believe that UR is a necessary doctrine and ET is a serious heresy. Others have treated UR as a personal belief but dont condemn ET as a heresy.

Myself personally, I dont see the Church systems as necessarily evil, though I am a bit more cautious with Evangelical Christianity, since they are a major headquarter today for Fundamentalist movements. Though I know that Fundamentalism is in every denomination. I know there is often some interchangeable usage of the term Fundamentalism and legalism, where some see Fundamentalist as an incorrect term.

I **fully **believe in fundamentalism I believe everyone should have fun - **da **(as in Homer Simpson). It’s all mental.

If you had to buy a ticket - would it be for the door on the left or right

I am a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I am a universalist.

I think the western churches (whether Catholic or Protestant) got siderailed into belief in Hell by their obsession with the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

I have heard that Universalism is considered a completely valid belief in most Western Churches, but just wont dogmatically affirm it or make it a statement of belief(Yet at the same time, they have no beliefs about the population of Hell, or if anyone is even there). I find its more the ultra-conservative legalists who believe that most people are in hell.

Now I have been told that the Orthodox reject the notion of Hell as any place of punishment and torture, but experiencing God with a revulsion. I dont even know how the true God would be a revulsive experience. Maybe false gods. But many in the West hold to this view, I think that both Lewis and Tolkien held to those views. I know of some modern Catholics who hold to this view, being Bishop Robert Barron, Peter Kreeft and the Linns. In fact, the book “Good Goats: Healing our image of God” blatantly rejects any notion of God sending people to Hell. They seem pretty universalist to me.

It’s very popular among non-universalists nowadays to reject the idea that God actively inconveniences anyone, at least after death, in any way; for which C. S. Lewis, and his popularity among most Church branches, has a lot of the responsibility in successfully promoting.

That doesn’t mean they believe God will save all people from their sins, or even that God will always be acting toward doing so, or even that God ever acted toward doing so in regard to some sinners. They can still be hardcore Arminians (of various types), Calvinists, or Western or Eastern Catholics of various sorts (e.g. Augustinian Catholics).

Also, in my experience most Western churches do not regard universalism as a completely valid belief. Some are more tolerant of members being universalists than others, but few acknowledge it to be just as viable a possibility as some kind of ECT or anni (of Calv or Arm varieties either way). And that’s reasonable: if they regard X as a completely valid belief, that’s going to necessarily exclude mutually exclusive alternatives as being equally valid as beliefs.

A guy preaching in my church the other week claimed multiple times that God “doesn’t chase us”.

Sigh

Sounds like the pantheistic idea of a God who is some comfortable blob who is only around when we want. I think CS Lewis said something like that about new age thought