Interpretation
Cafeteria-style means picking and choosing, as if "sliding our food tray along a cafeteria's counter", referring to some Christians' making a personal selection of Christian teaching, "picking and choosing the stuff you want and discarding the rest". The term implies that an individual's professed religious belief is actually a proxy for their personal opinions rather than an acceptance of Christian doctrine. The selectivity implied may relate to the acceptance of Christian doctrines (such as the resurrection or the virgin birth of Jesus), or attitudes to moral and ethical issues (for example abortion, homosexuality, or idolatry) and is sometimes associated with discussions concerning the applicability of Old Testament laws to Christians and interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. "The idea is the moderates pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to follow."
Cafeteria Christianity is somewhat related to latitudinarianism, the position that differences of opinion on church organization and doctrine are acceptable within a church.
As the Christian version of "cherry-picking theology", it is seen as a result of postmodern reading of texts, where the reader goes beyond analysis of what requires interpretation, adopting an approach where "anything goes".
In The Marketplace of Christianity, economists Robert Ekelund, Robert Hébert and Robert Tollison equate Cafeteria Christianity with self-generated Christianity, i.e. the religion of many Christians which "matches their demand profile" and "may be Christian or based in other areas of thought." They conclude that "Christian religious individualists have existed in all times."
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