I was brought up in a Methodist church.
My husband is a Methodist as well.
For the past several years, though we have not attended church.
You see I don't like the church(the congregants) I went to as a child, and I really dislike the one my husband attended(again the congregants).
I will tell you that have been really disgusted with our local church's building obsessions, and their congregation was less than welcoming when we would attend church outreach events and fundraisers.
Well after reading this article, I can completely and totally wash my hands of any connection to the Methodist church and not feel one iota of guilt.
Had I know about their campaign against George W. Bush for the past eight years I would have been able to make the break eight years ago instead of now.
I want NOTHING to do with the Methodist church any more.
H/T-American Thinker
Suicide & Robin Williams
9 years ago
7 comments:
I understand that it is a hard choice on what religion to follow, but it seems a lot of faiths have turned more liberal just to keep certain member happy, it's outrages. Not sure why they call GW wicked and ignoring the War, I mean if you talk to anyone in defense they are making more money and happier since GW took office. I hope you find a church you love........
Have you read this article? I blogged about it on my Tulips blog. It was a breath of fresh air.
http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html
Found you via Coalminer's granddaughter.
HI Tina,
Thanks for stopping by. Yes I had read that WSJ article. It really makes me ill that people are so disrespectful of the President.
Heather
The Methodist Church has tiptoed along the line of religous mediocrity since the 1960's because a person has to go to liberal politically correct gay loving Emory University in Atlanta in order to be an ordained Methodist Minister.
My family for a while abandoned the "official" Methodist Church and their annoying "preacher rotation heiarchy/policy" in the late 1960's/early 1970's and helped start an "Independent Methodist" church.
My parents helped buy land, built a building, and co-signed the mortgage only to see it all taken over, bastardized, and stolen five or six years later by a "holly roller" carismatic crowd that didn't have the patience and resources to do what we did.
We walked away rather than fight because fighting defeated the original purpose.
I ended up half heartedly settling back into the "First" United Methodist Church in town until I graduated and moved to College in Atlanta.
On the rare occasion since then WHEN I go to church I attend the occasional Methodist or Baptist service, and I still go to my Mother's home town Methodist Church with her out of deferrence when we're home for Easter or Christmas, but generally today I find that I'd have no problem with churches and any given religion--IF the buildings weren't full of pompous artificially pius assholes in charge and the clingers-on/zealous followers trying to prove they're going to march through the Pearly Gates across my shoulders and head because...just because.
I believe that you don't have to go to church to be religous.
Try watching the sun rise while sitting on a boat in the middle of Blackwater sound in the Florida Keys and tell me you don't believe in God.
Try watching the sun set looking across the thousands of little uninhabitied islands in the Philippines from the deck of an Aircraft Carrier and tell me all this stuff is just accidental evolution.
Stand over six thousand feet above sea level on top of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina in the middle of the Summer in a snow storm and look at rainbows in the ice particles and talk to me about the hard physics of light refraction/diffraction.
Hand a plate of food to a hungry stranger in a homeless shelter or roll a freshly painted bicycle up on the porch of a house across town and see the look in the eyes of a needy parent...build a few dozen houses with Habitat for Humanity.
I've done all that and more, and I say what is impo+rtant is the maintenance of your own spiritual health and mental sanity by just giving a damn about something outside your own four walls and your own wallet...
and when you're doing what you're doing along those lines you don't let anyone else know about it while you're at it because...
God will know, and that's all that really matters in the end.
(And the really sad thing is that just like our wages, now the government is deciding that they also own what's left of our unpaid TIME and they're going to screw up the core of volunteerism by making it a government policy/program.)
The Methodist Church has tiptoed along the line of religous mediocrity since the 1960's because a person has to go to liberal politically correct gay loving Emory University in Atlanta in order to be an ordained Methodist Minister.
My family for a while abandoned the "official" Methodist Church and their annoying "preacher rotation heiarchy/policy" in the late 1960's/early 1970's and helped start an "Independent Methodist" church.
My parents helped buy land, built a building, and co-signed the mortgage only to see it all taken over, bastardized, and stolen five or six years later by a "holly roller" carismatic crowd that didn't have the patience and resources to do what we did.
We walked away rather than fight because fighting defeated the original purpose.
I ended up half heartedly settling back into the "First" United Methodist Church in town until I graduated and moved to College in Atlanta.
On the rare occasion since then WHEN I go to church I attend the occasional Methodist or Baptist service, and I still go to my Mother's home town Methodist Church with her out of deferrence when we're home for Easter or Christmas, but generally today I find that I'd have no problem with churches and any given religion--IF the buildings weren't full of pompous artificially pius assholes in charge and the clingers-on/zealous followers trying to prove they're going to march through the Pearly Gates across my shoulders and head because...just because.
I believe that you don't have to go to church to be religous.
Try watching the sun rise while sitting on a boat in the middle of Blackwater sound in the Florida Keys and tell me you don't believe in God.
Try watching the sun set looking across the thousands of little uninhabitied islands in the Philippines from the deck of an Aircraft Carrier and tell me all this stuff is just accidental evolution.
Stand over six thousand feet above sea level on top of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina in the middle of the Summer in a snow storm and look at rainbows in the ice particles and talk to me about the hard physics of light refraction/diffraction.
Hand a plate of food to a hungry stranger in a homeless shelter or roll a freshly painted bicycle up on the porch of a house across town and see the look in the eyes of a needy parent...build a few dozen houses with Habitat for Humanity.
I've done all that and more, and I say what is impo+rtant is the maintenance of your own spiritual health and mental sanity by just giving a damn about something outside your own four walls and your own wallet...
and when you're doing what you're doing along those lines you don't let anyone else know about it while you're at it because...
God will know, and that's all that really matters in the end.
(And the really sad thing is that just like our wages, now the government is deciding that they also own what's left of our unpaid TIME and they're going to screw up the core of volunteerism by making it a government policy/program.)
Virgil, my feelings towards church are pretty in line with yours and have been for the better part of my adult life. Living in a small town in the Bible Belt, where there are almost more churches than people to attend them, it is very difficult socially if you don't go to the "right church".
Also now that I have a kid of my own, wanting to bring him up with a knowledge of the Lord, it's difficult without a church or Sunday school.
you can delete that duplicate posting...I was long winded enough in the first copy...
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