Definitions and confusion

• "Christian" of course meant -- originally -- a follower of Christ. That of course is what all Christadelphians aspire to be... but the world is filled with people who use the same term, and the question for us is: do we want to be -- more or less -- associated with all of them? When the news reporters talk about "Christian gunmen" in Northern Ireland, do we still want to call ourselves "Christian"? Hence the dilemma: are we "Christian", or aren't we? It all depends on what you mean by what you say.
• "Orthodox" means, literally, "conforming to an established or agreed-upon pattern". Now the question becomes: who has established and agreed upon the particular pattern (of beliefs, presumably -- but perhaps also of practice) the conformity to which makes you or me "orthodox"? In what context is the term used? This makes a world of difference. But when certain churches call themselves, more or less officially, "orthodox" -- as in Greek Orthodox -- then, of course, we are put in a position where we are NOT "orthodox" by their assumptions -- although we could argue, persuasively, that we conform to the established pattern of the first-century church much better than they.
• "Evangelical" was originally a wonderful word: taken directly from the New Testament, it transliterated the Greek word for "gospel" or "good news". Who could ever find fault with such a word? If anyone knows the gospel, it ought to be Christadelphians, right? But then other churches make that a part of their name: there's Evangelical Lutheran, and Free Evangelical, and African Methodist Evangelical... and who knows what others! And "evangelical" has come to describe the whole broad, inclusive group of "believers" who have been "born again" (another good Bible term all by itself, but what does IT mean?!) by some "spiritual" (ditto!) experience -- with little or no regard to particular beliefs. In this situation, we have to think twice before we want to call ourselves "evangelical" either, although if anybody is "evangelical", it ought to be us.
• "Pentecostal" alludes to the day of Pentecost, referred to in Acts 2 -- when the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon believers at Jerusalem. Given this, "Pentecostal" pretty plainly means those who believe in, and practice, the present-day manifestation of a so-called "Holy Spirit" power to speak in strange tongues -- and also to perform miracles of healing and raising the dead. Of course, this loses us pretty fast: we don't want to be "Pentecostal", even for a moment! On the other hand, we DO believe in what happened in Acts 2, don't we? We just don't believe that the same gifts and the same experiences can be manufactured at will today. And if we believe in Acts 2, along with all the rest of Scripture, does that make us, in some sense, "Pentecostal"?
• "Catholic": now there's a good one. The English word itself means (or maybe we should say, "originally" meant!) that which is universal, or widespread... as in the "worldwide Church of God". By this strictly-literal definition we should be able to say, "Yes, I belong to the worldwide body of believers called Christadelphians"... or "Yes, I am a member of the catholic church, or ecclesia, of Christadelphians". But of course, we would never want to say such a thing, because of what has happened to the word "catholic" today -- particularly its almost universal application to the Roman "church".