Evangelical Christians

[Anastasis 23469]

1 hour ago, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

FAFO. 

[UpperWestside 6166]

6 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

disagree.  when a member of the body of Christ offends you you're supposed to go to them.  when they err in doctrine you're supposed to go to them.  lovingly of course.  when you offend someone you're supposed to do the same.  

I think it becomes a question of what do you feel is the appropriate way to intervene? Is the best method to pray for someone because speaking with them could lead to a confrontation that benefits no one? If you do speak to someone that calls themselves a Christian yet has shown actions and espoused beliefs that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ how exactly do you have that conversation?

I personally find that I think to get through to those who are wandering in the wilderness of hatred, racism, misogyny, bigotry and all manner of behaviors that are antithetical just to how you should treat people whether you are religious or not, you have to pray and then meet those people where they are. It doesn’t mean go to a klan rally with them. You just have to find a way where you can reach someone and pull their mind back out of the vast morass of conspiratorial thinking and help them rejoin the part of society not engaging in behavior that is completely self-destructive for the people they are against as well as themselves. They are no quick solutions or answers to any of this, but praying is a good starting place. 

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

5 hours ago, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

3 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

From reading around the last few days after the AF manifesto surfaced and just from general stuff over the years, the core of that group that is religious (Q notwithstanding) appears to be falling primarily into those of an evangelical grouping or those of a subset of a Catholic grouping. That doesn't mean there aren't others, but in terms of fervor, that seems to be where some real authoritarian religion as state or whatever theocracy/autocracy they imagine gets their support. That doesn't bode well, not just for people who are of a different democratic with a little 'd' mindset (or different mainstream religion) but for the groups themselves because they would be on a collision course with each other if they rose to power. I guess it would be whichever religion the autocrat espoused would be the 'winner,' but the integralists (Catholic) and the evangelicals would eventually have a falling out precisely because of that. They don't see eye to eye once the rest of us are subdued.

Someone else should chime in though, because I'm not super informed on that topic, just an ill formed opinion.

[Cacti 191]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. 

More than likely, not ever. This Pew Research Center article explains why.

An excerpt from the article:

Quote

… the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In 2010, censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. By 2050, the unaffiliated population is expected to exceed 1.2 billion. But, as a share of all the people in the world, those with no religious affiliation are projected to decline from 16% in 2010 to 13% by the middle of this century.

 

[workswithseed 2109]

2 hours ago, Cacti said:

More than likely, not ever. This Pew Research Center article explains why.

An excerpt from the article:

 

Catholics hate condoms, and abortions. 

[Burt 4080]

12 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

 

I don't even know which thread to post this in, other than ALL OF THEM!!!

 

 

Hold on a minute. I thought she said she was not gonna have it. They must not have heard her.

[Burt 4080]

36 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Catholics hate condoms, and abortions. 

But behind closed doors, they use them and they have them. They're like Baptists, but with birth control rather than liquor. 

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

3 hours ago, Cacti said:

More than likely, not ever. This Pew Research Center article explains why.

An excerpt from the article:

I don’t need anyone to tell me why. I know people. 

[workswithseed 2109]

1 hour ago, Burt said:

But behind closed doors, they use them and they have them. They're like Baptists, but with birth control rather than liquor. 

Probably, sinner gonna sin.

[F250 28777]

11 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

From reading around the last few days after the AF manifesto surfaced and just from general stuff over the years, the core of that group that is religious (Q notwithstanding) appears to be falling primarily into those of an evangelical grouping or those of a subset of a Catholic grouping. That doesn't mean there aren't others, but in terms of fervor, that seems to be where some real authoritarian religion as state or whatever theocracy/autocracy they imagine gets their support. That doesn't bode well, not just for people who are of a different democratic with a little 'd' mindset (or different mainstream religion) but for the groups themselves because they would be on a collision course with each other if they rose to power. I guess it would be whichever religion the autocrat espoused would be the 'winner,' but the integralists (Catholic) and the evangelicals would eventually have a falling out precisely because of that. They don't see eye to eye once the rest of us are subdued.

Someone else should chime in though, because I'm not super informed on that topic, just an ill formed opinion.

This is a good point regarding the Catholics and Evangelicals, they would be on opposing sides. This is the scenario that was played out in The Handmaid's Tale. Although I don't see Catholicism ever joining forces with an American authoritarian government. Evangelicalism is perfectly suited for this than the Catholic church which has a hierarchy that reports to Rome. The Evangelicals are very malleable in their beliefs and are already inundated with the idea of America being a nation chosen by God.

We have a pretty good record of bigotry against Catholics in this country. The Papists being rounded up would mesh well with our history. 

Edited April 20, 2021 by F250

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

1 hour ago, F250 said:

This is a good point regarding the Catholics and Evangelicals, they would be on opposing sides. This is the scenario that was played out in The Handmaid's Tale. Although I don't see Catholicism ever joining forces with an American authoritarian government. Evangelicalism is perfectly suited for this than the Catholic church which has a hierarchy that reports to Rome. The Evangelicals are very malleable in their beliefs and are already inundated with the idea of America being a nation chosen by God.

We have a pretty good record of bigotry against Catholics in this country. The Papists being rounded up would mesh well with our history. 

That is why I used the term subset of Catholics. I'd never heard of this movement because a)not Catholic and b)Catholics whom I know are not a part of it.

Here is an article from wiki to cover the basics, but as I went through social media and some of their academic material, they are attempting to step into the vacuum created by the division in America. The wiki article doesn't focus on the US and I would maintain that it could use an update.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

 

I should add, that some of their theocratic goals may also be dependent upon whether they see the Hispanic population as 'white' or not. Some of the people I saw affiliated with this movement appeared to see Hispanics as the means to an end (if the Hispanics were Catholic) in order to have enough of the population to enact a theocracy.

I don't believe that we should have some sort of religious scrutiny test for public office, that has been abused in the past, against groups like Catholics, but I am of the mind it is something of which people should be aware.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Mrs Whiggins

[Brisketexan 105144]

1 minute ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

That is why I used the term subset of Catholics. I'd never heard of this movement because a)not Catholic and b)Catholics whom I know are not a part of it.

Here is an article from wiki to cover the basics, but as I went through social media and some of their academic material, they are attempting to step into the vacuum created by the division in America. The wiki article doesn't focus on the US and I would maintain that it could use an update.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

When it comes to Catholics, the single issue that has allowed for broken brains is abortion.  Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.).  The funny thing is, being anti-abortion is actually a long-held position of the church, and is at least consistent with a general "all life is sacred" stance.  Evangelicals, on the other hand, didn't hop on the anti-abortion bandwagon until really late in the game.....after they Civil Rights movement had largely won, and the Evangelicals didn't have any other issues they could hang their hats on to have a theological argument against voting for a democrat.  So, they did a 180  on abortion, and use that single issue to justify their opposition to every progressive thought.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When it comes to Catholics, the single issue that has allowed for broken brains is abortion.  Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.).  The funny thing is, being anti-abortion is actually a long-held position of the church, and is at least consistent with a general "all life is sacred" stance.  Evangelicals, on the other hand, didn't hop on the anti-abortion bandwagon until really late in the game.....after they Civil Rights movement had largely won, and the Evangelicals didn't have any other issues they could hang their hats on to have a theological argument against voting for a democrat.  So, they did a 180  on abortion, and use that single issue to justify their opposition to every progressive thought.

 

The Catholics that we know are the way you describe, I've never met anyone who follows the other movement so I don't know how prevalent it is really without doing some digging. It was something that came up when the poster used several names (in another thread I think--the AF one) and I looked those names up and was reading, especially since one was in the Trump administration.

But people can get very heated over their belief being the ONLY belief and the RIGHT way and then kill each other over it, so I'm putting it in my mental file cabinet in case I run across more events in the months to come.

But to @F250's point, Margaret Atwood is a very observant writer.

[Willfully Horn 8017]

On 4/20/2021 at 9:30 AM, Brisketexan said:

Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.). 

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

[atomheartbevo 89674]

@Willfully Horn when I said "show me a picture of a man who has recently hate-fucked an animal", I didn't think you'd show me a picture of an archbishop. 

[ChiTownDoc 21154]

1 hour ago, Willfully Horn said:

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

The countdown to the Archbishop being exposed for diddling little boys begins...

[atomheartbevo 89674]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:05 PM, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Granted, things are far different here in the People's Republic of Travis County vs a place like God-fearing Oklahoma, but I've been seeing more and more churches popping up that are very much non-traditional.  They are chasing the younger crowd that some of the older/bigger/stricter churches have driven off. They welcome LBTQ/etc. members, they aren't pushing this "IF YOU DO OR DON'T DO THIS YOU ARE GOING TO HELL" spiel, but more of a "Let's all be cool to one another, and take care of each other", etc.

These kinds of options weren't around when I was younger, or if they were, they were one-off hippy-dippy types of places, but what I see now is some serious attempts at presenting alternative Christian services to the old-school Baptist/Catholic/etc. services.  And these are very polished attempts - not some back room of a community meeting place, or some crappy strip mall, but prime real estate, and in some cases, they are replacing more traditional churches that used to stand where they are now.

And we've seen the Methodists going through their thing, and Lutherans are wrestling with their own issues.

It's a microcosm and very much anecdotal, but I've watched my wife's (Baptist) Sunday school over the past year when it went to online, and there's been some major blow-ups over the whole "covid is/isn't a hoax", "we don't need masks/no, fuck you, Christians should wear masks to protect their fellow Christians" and lately a family left because they disagreed with everybody getting vaccines ("they are made with aborted fetuses!"), and some others have been arguing about homeless legislation.

I've seen some of the more conservative members (the one pushing the hoax bullshit) swing even farther out there, to the point where they feel this large Southern Baptist church has lost its way, and they need to find a small church that doesn't tolerate a wide range of viewpoints. 

At the same time, I've seen other members pushed way to the left on some issues, people who were shocked that their fellow Christians would act like such assholes over something as simple as an actual pandemic or act that way towards the very homeless that they collect shoes, socks, underwear, toiletries, food, etc. for.

I just don't see how the larger really strict/conservative churches can appeal to younger crowds when they have members who act likes assholes over simple things like this - the pandemic (and here in Austin, the homeless), not to mention recent elections, has really exposed a lot of folks for what they really are, and it's driving wedges into a lot of congregations.

Edited April 23, 2021 by atomheartbevo

[workswithseed 2109]

2 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

It says best, not beast.

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

47 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

@Willfully Horn when I said "show me a picture of a man who has recently hate-fucked an animal", I didn't think you'd show me a picture of an archbishop. 

Really? That doesn’t surprise me at all. 

[Satchel 6938]

It has always fascinated me that the RCC can lay claim to a robust intellectual tradition while it produces people such as Archbishop Aquila.

[Willfully Horn 8017]

8 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

It says best, not beast.

Pull up your britches, big boy.

[Guest Lobo]

5 minutes ago, Satchel said:

It has always fascinated me that the RCC can lay claim to a robust intellectual tradition while it produces people such as Archbishop Aquila.

They might lay claim to it, but it's not robust and it's not tradition.  They allowed the Jesuits to have a few guys in a back office somewhere preserve centuries of scientific discovery just in case there might be either a public relations and/or fundraising score to be made from the knowledge preservation.  Kinda like how I keep old fishing lures in case they can be used to dupe a school of fish 25 years from now that's never seen it before, or I can sell them 25 years from now to nostalgic fishermen.  

[Satchel 6938]

8 minutes ago, Lobo said:

They might lay claim to it, but it's not robust and it's not tradition.  They allowed the Jesuits to have a few guys in a back office somewhere preserve centuries of scientific discovery just in case there might be either a public relations and/or fundraising score to be made from the knowledge preservation.  Kinda like how I keep old fishing lures in case they can be used to dupe a school of fish 25 years from now that's never seen it before, or I can sell them 25 years from now to nostalgic fishermen.  

Your view gives short shrift to the Catholic intellectual tradition:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/jesuits-science-and-a-pope-with-a-chemistry-degree-a-productive-pairing/

 

[SaucyJack 3488]

On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

[Satchel 6938]

Believing in something is part of our evolutionary need to feel connected to the world around us.

[Anastasis 23469]

On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

LOL. 

[Satchel 6938]

To know and to believe are quite different animals. Believing can be invulnerable to disproof. That’s probably why religions are belief based.

[workswithseed 2109]

1 hour ago, Willfully Horn said:

Pull up your britches, big boy.

I ain't Catholic.

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

1 hour ago, Satchel said:

Believing in something is part of our evolutionary need to feel connected to the world around us.

Believing in “Us” vs. “Them” is a successful strategy bred into us from a long history of evolution beginning with our allegiance to people who look like us and are related to us starting with family and moving on to clan, tribe, and nation. Those of us who have a more expansive and inclusive definition of “Us” are branded as liberals. The so-called conservatives these days are more based around an ideology of fear of “Them” and that’s been a standard of fascist ideology as long as fascism has been a thing. It’s easy to get people riled up by telling them that “They” are coming to take your stuff. (Hello Fox News!)

As an involuntary subject of Christian indoctrination, I was taught that we all came from the same two parents: Adam and Eve. Never mind how absurd that myth is nor why the whole human race would have to be based on incest if that was true. (Let’s not even bother with the myth of Noah and the flood which just doubles down on the concept that we’re all descended from the same family.)

Maybe I learned the wrong lessons from my Christian upbringing. I was taught a song that said, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red, brown, yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight.” I took that to mean He (i.e. God, our perfect, infinite, and all-knowing Creator, never mind that our scripture declares that He has a favored people and we Christians aren’t them,) loves us all equally.

I think Abraham Lincoln was our greatest President and I agree with the assertion in his Gettysburg Address that we’re a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Charles Darwin had only recently published On the Origin of Species so I can forgive Lincoln for not knowing that we really are all related, literally, and our differences are merely superficial. The study of genetics tells us that we’re mostly identical except for a tiny variance in our individual genomes. (Not sure if that’s the right word to use here but I’m on a roll so I’m going with it. Also, and I can’t repeat this often enough, no one ever waved the Confederate flag for the party of Lincoln.)

In my personal experience, anecdotal as it may be, I’ve observed that people are people and there’s no difference between them regardless of race, color, or creed. And most of us are assholes, or at least we are some of the time. But all too often religion just gives people a reason to draw a line between “Us” and “Them” and since they don’t believe the same thing that we do then that makes them bad. Or evil. That doesn’t help anything or anyone.

I don’t think religion is a good thing but I also don’t think it’s going away. We don’t need it in order to be loving and caring and kind to our neighbors and to treat them the way we want to be treated. Maybe some people do. But if we could just get the believers to not take it so seriously and realize that maybe, just maybe, they might be wrong, then we might all be able to get along a little bit better.

[Burt 4080]

2 hours ago, workswithseed said:

I ain't Catholic.

He never said you were. Oh wait, you thought he said pull DOWN your britches?

[NameAlreadyInUse 5112]

8 minutes ago, Burt said:

He never said you were. Oh wait, you thought he said pull DOWN your britches?

Pretty sure he's already aged out of the pull down your britches catholic demographic.

[DigglerontheHoof 21200]

Evangelicals=dumber than mountains of bags of hammers.  Morons.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

7 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

It’s easy to get people riled up by telling them that “They” are coming to take your stuff. (Hello Fox News!)

 

It makes sense that it's easy because not only was that essential for survival (having 'stuff' i.e. food) so you could eat, but also because those are the things that the historians have talked about for years and years and years. It is 'bred' into us, but it is reinforced over and over again so that calling up that fear is not difficult. (I am specifically referring to the specific demographic of historians that have had the most sway for the last several centuries). War, war, war, war, war. Oh! A discovery! War, war, war, war. Oh! An invention.

Not to make light of events, but if one had the same amount of time (centuries) in a parallel universe and women (of all colors) wrote, recorded, and documented history and then combined the two what that would've looked like.

I know there are documents throughout history by marginalized people, but it's  sad how little there is. At least there has been some growth in that aspect, but I notice once marginalized groups speak up, they are seen as complaining. Their opinions and thoughts were never asked throughout history and thus speaking up now is somehow an affront to the idea held by those in power that they were ever worth considering in the first place I guess. And somehow from that we get "AAAHHH, Christians being persecuted! Stop cancelling me because I'm Christian, you're being intolerant!"

 

 

[crash_davis 23113]

didn't know where else to put this.

saw this, found it funny and maybe thought inducing. funny thing about religion, it's all a matter of opinion and perspective. maybe there are no universal truths besides the ones that you create.

 

[crash_davis 23113]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/02/indonesia-set-to-make-sex-outside-marriage-punishable-by-jail

 

Indonesia set to make sex outside marriage punishable by jail

Indonesia’s parliament is expected to pass a new criminal code this month that would criminalise sex outside marriage and outlaw insults against the president or state institutions, prompting alarm from human rights campaigners.

The deputy justice minister, Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej, said in an interview with Reuters that the new criminal code was expected to be passed on 15 December. “We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” he said.

Bambang Wuryanto, a lawmaker involved in the draft, said the code could be passed by as early as next week.

If passed, the code would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreign visitors, and introduce sweeping changes affecting a wide range of civil liberties.

Sex outside marriage, which under the code could be reported only by limited parties such as close relatives, could lead to up to a year in prison, while unmarried couples would be banned from living together.

 

 

Christian Taliban:

 

GOP: 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

Indonesia is a majority Muslim country. Not that one religious conservative is that much different from the next.

[Satchel 6938]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:05 PM, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

Most observers of religion would rather see a sermon than hear one any day of the week. Too often, contemporary Christianity is characterized by noisy cultural warriors, who practice a form of the faith that it untethered to the Gospel. As one who does not take a casual approach to practicing the faith, I find the prodigious use of Jesus language by public practitioners, the obsessive focus of doctrinally based prohibitions over the invitations, law over love, to be the most damning indictments against Christian praxis.

 

[crash_davis 23113]

Hmmmmm......in Southlake, Tx.

[troph 24805]

I have zero expectation this will happen but the best way out of this mess is for a Christian / Evangelical revival focused on doing good deeds and loving your neighbor - basically a cultural repentance and about face to walk all this shit back and follow their own teachings. Is that gonna happen?

 

[SimonBolivar 10958]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/us/southern-baptist-meeting-women.html

 

 

Southern Baptists are poised to vote at their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday on whether to crack down on women in pastoral leadership and whether to condemn the use of in vitro fertilization, setting up a referendum on the role of women in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and in American society.

With almost 13 million church members across the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention has long been a bellwether for American evangelicalism. Its reliably conservative membership makes it a powerful political force, and its debates have attracted widespread interest from outside pundits and politicians this year. The denomination has experienced the same turmoil over politics and priorities that has divided the conservative movement more broadly in the wake of the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump as president.

“I hope every single person in this room is voting not only in November but is voting tomorrow because of what is at stake in the Southern Baptist Convention,” Ryan Helfenbein, the executive director of a think tank at Liberty University, told attendees at a lunch on Monday in Indianapolis near where the annual meeting will take place.

Mr. Trump recorded a brief message for the “very respected people” gathered at the lunch, which was hosted by the Danbury Institute, a new conservative Christian advocacy group with Southern Baptist ties.

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“You just can’t vote Democrat,” Mr. Trump said in the video message, which some attendees had waited two hours to hear. “They’re against religion, they’re against your religion in particular.” He assured them that under a second Trump presidency, “you’re going to make a comeback like just about no other group.”

Delegates, known as “messengers,” include male pastors from the more than 45,000 Southern Baptist churches across the country as well as many church and staff members, including women.

The group is expected to vote on Wednesday on whether to amend its constitution to mandate that Southern Baptist churches must have “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.” The group’s statement of faith already forbids female pastors, and in recent years messengers have ousted several churches over the issue, including Saddleback Church in California, which had been one of its largest and most prominent congregations. The amendment would strengthen enforcement and remove the ability of individual Baptist churches to make their own leadership decisions, a defining feature of Baptist life.

“We understand this to be a major cultural battle line,” said William Wolfe, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, a new advocacy group founded out of concern that the denomination was drifting leftward. “If we can’t hold the line here, we won’t hold the line five years from now, and you and I will be talking about whether to affirm homosexuality in our churches.”

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Mr. Wolfe, 35, said he considered passage of the Law Amendment, as it is known, to be his organization’s top priority. The group is co-hosting a lunch for some 800 attendees on Tuesday with the theme “S.B.C. at a Crossroads.”

Messengers are also poised to vote on whether to oppose in vitro fertilization, as anti-abortion activists seek to build on their gains after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The resolution, put forth by an ethicist and the president of a Southern Baptist seminary, calls for Baptists to “reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation.”

It will be the first time the denomination has asked its members to confront the issue in this form. A vast majority of delegates oppose abortion, but fertility treatments are widely used by evangelicals. Although in vitro fertilization often results in the destruction of unused embryos, many Southern Baptists see fertility treatments as fundamentally different from abortion because the goal is to create new life. Some pastors expressed concerns about the prospect of returning to their home churches and reporting that they voted to condemn a process that created their congregants’ children and grandchildren.

Former Vice President Mike Pence will speak on Tuesday at an event hosted by the denomination’s policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Other items on the Baptists’ agenda include the election of a new president and resolutions, including one discouraging the use of many nondisclosure agreements and another affirming support for Israel and condemning “anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activities” on college campuses and beyond. A task force that is addressing sexual abuse in Southern Baptist settings will also present its final report on Tuesday afternoon.

 

[Gatorubet 30239]

On 5/11/2018 at 1:34 AM, DalTxHornFan said:

As to any individual politician's personal morality and spiritual life -- that's totally on them and between them and their creator.

That is just an excuse for people to vote for Trump and other GOP political candidates.  When the black man was president 80% of evangelicals said that personal morality was important. Once Trump got elected only 20% of evangelicals thought that same quality was important.   Which means that at minimum 60% of those evangelicals changing their position are hypocritical pieces of crap who are more than likely racist.  

That is a broad brush only because 60% shitty people is a rather big number. You are entirely correct that just being an evangelical as a standalone belief does not make YOU a shitty person.  Some of the more fundamentalist believers at my church are very much ‘what Jesus actually said’ Christians working for the poor and promoting social justice in all its forms, and are the farthest thing from Trump supporters.

But evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump and the current GOP.  That is the only fact anyone needs to know about their character and morality as a stereotype.   After all, if 20% of the natives on the island do not eat humans, but the rest do, saying it is an island of cannibals is not exactly wrong.

[wildcat09 29354]

Aggy church refusing service to blind people:

Quote

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Many people depend on service animals to lead a safer and more independent life, but what one local woman didn’t expect was to be turned away from worshiping.

Mari Ramos is blind and uses her companion and service dog, Betty.

Betty’s guiding abilities aren’t something Mari says she uses for fun, but to navigate life. The Americans with Disabilities Act protects Mari and Betty to ensure they can go places together and Mari can access life just like anyone else.

However, when Mari attended Church on Sunday, leaders there exercised their right not to comply with ADA rules.

“I had somebody say to me on Sunday, well I’m not denying you. I’m denying your service animal. Well by extension. you are denying me because Betty and I are a cohesive unit,” Mari said.

We’re not naming the Church in this story because the organization did not break any laws.

What Mari found out, and what she now wants others to know is religious institutions are specifically exempt from ADA compliance. She’s sharing her story because she wants to ensure no one is left feeling the way she was feeling on Sunday.

“There was just this feeling of being turned away, this feeling of embarrassment, this feeling of being excluded from something,” Mari said.

She says education is key when handling service animals.

This is exactly what River’s Edge Dog Academy in College Station works to do each time they train a service animal.

Owner, Terry Cadle, says many people don’t know the rules or trust that a service animal is real.

“You don’t want to feel discriminated against, you don’t want to feel different, you already feel different having the dog with you, and so on. Now they’re making a big deal out of it making a show it can be very belittling and very hard on people,” he said, but there needs to be understanding that these service animals are vital in a person’s life. “They become their right-hand man, take them everywhere do everything with them.”

According to ADA compliance, state and local governments, businesses, and non-profits generally must allow service animals. When a location is approached by a service animal, laws prevent asking for certification or proof of task. Service dog certification does not exist. Specific exclusions on allowing service dog entry include some religious entities, some private clubs and certain areas of hospitals.

Mari said leaders of the church wouldn’t allow Betty due to a band and flashing lights not being “appropriate” for a service animal.

Mari feels the handler decides what’s appropriate for her pup.

 

[SubliminalHorn 6791]

Religion is a scourge 

[WhatTheBuck 28783]

23 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

We’re not naming the Church in this story because the organization did not break any laws.

Fuck that. Name them. They broke a pretty big unwritten law of simple human decency. They broke the law of “What would Jesus do?” Don’t protect those assholes. 

[troph 24805]

like I said, they aren't having their road to Damascus moment any time soon. fml.

[DigglerontheHoof 21200]

Well, it sounds exactly like what their Orange Savior would do.  No surprise here.

[tx 3 putt 76958]

[troph 24805]

2 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

not sure his dad would have taken the same position. fuck him, fuck all of them straight to the same hell the Pharisees (according to their scriptures) went to.

[troph 24805]

btw this is cross posted from the nationalist post in case some have given up on that thread...

 

One organization, the New Apostolic Reformation with deep roots in Texas and multiple self-described "prophets" is on the move and has been. The rhetoric is dangerous, the goal is no different than the Tailban, but in Christian clothing.

I give you the recent Texas Observer article written by David R. Brockman, Ph.D., is an author, Christian theologian, and nonresident scholar in the Religion and Public Policy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute and teaches at Texas Christian University.

The New Apostolic Reformation Wants God's Government Back...

https://www.texasobserver.org/new-apostolic-reformation-texas-leaders/?goal=0_975e2d1fa1-2d2aea1094-34967269&mc_cid=2d2aea1094&mc_eid=e08f36e5f9

*btw, if you don't support the Texas Observer it's an easy give and an organization you should support. their magazine is one of the best in Texas for investigative longer form journalism with a Texas focus.