Typology of Christian Rules

It seems to me that all of the rules/commandments of Christianity can be broken down into a small set of categories.

1) Self-preservation

Obviously there will be some ground rules establishing the self-preservation of Christianity. Stuff like not having other gods or not treating other religious writings as authoritative.

2) Universals

Then you have the whole set of morals that come from human universals. These tend to be echoed in virtually every culture and religion, and can even be easily derived without appealing to religion at all: for example, secular ethics (like Kai Nelson’s) derives a thorough framework from Kant’s categorical imperative. There also tend to be very good evolutionary reasons for why humans might be ingrained with the kinds of ethics in this category.

3) Signaling

Church members tend to be very charitable to other members. There is a solidarity to practicing religion. The problem with this is that kindness is easily exploited by free-loaders—-people who take from the community with no intention of giving back. To deal with this, many churches create rules that cause the adherents to bear some social cost as a way of signaling their dedication to the church community.

It could be dressing in a certain way, acting or talking in a certain way, places that are forbidden to go to, giving up something pleasurable, etc. This is where the no drinking, no swearing, no going to the movie theater, no having long hair, no kissing before marriage, no tattoos, … types of rules come in. They are usually justified with half-hearted attempts at tying them to some theological principal, but since the purpose of these rules is secondary to morality, they tend to change from generation to generation. The also vary across different denominations. Smaller, tight-knit communities usually have more signaling than large megachurches.

Sometimes the church is blunt about their purpose: they are to show that you are different from “the world.”

4) Control

There is a certain power in Christianity: at the very least, the threat of an eternity of hellfire can usually buy something. So people can use Christianity as a means to their own ends. Most parents don’t want their teens knocking someone up or getting pregnant, and so premarital sex makes for a good sin. Some men want to preserve their status, and so women can be forbidden from fulfilling certain roles. Others want political power, so real Christians vote a certain way.

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That’s a basic sketch. What am I missing?