Pomeranian Evangelical Church Puns

“Ireland is no longer a Catholic country. We are now a pluralist country with Catholic laws that we are gradually dismantling. The most important next step is removing the anachronistic control that the Catholic Church has over the education of our children*,”* it said in a statement.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/schools-must-allow-children-leave-during-religion-class-says-atheist-ireland-1.4772979

I’m exvangelical (the label feels weird but whatever) and still Christian. I looked for other churches in my area but didn’t find any that really align well with where I’m at right now, so I’ve chosen to stay put. I have some good nontoxic friendships there that make it worthwhile to stay. I’d say my basic beliefs about God are pretty orthodox but evangelical culture makes me want to vomit a bit. For context, the church’s favorite media sources are TGC, Desiring God, and similar outlets that get under my skin.

I don’t always know how to handle moments where I’m confronted with things I outright disagree with. I find myself getting angry or clamming up. I don’t want to stay completely silent but also don’t want to stir the pot too much and make myself a target. I’ve already become the weird liberal one in my small group by saying that I think Catholic and Orthodox traditions are Christian & valid, that I think evolution is the best explanation we have right now for how God created the earth, and that there are compelling arguments for claiming Paul’s views on gender are culturally influenced. What really makes me angry is hearing people doubt that someone is “really a Christian” because they don’t believe exactly the same thing. I’ve settled for just saying that it’s not our job to determine who is saved.

Has anyone else chosen to stick around at an evangelical church? How do you handle these sticky situations?

Also, I feel a certain obligation to be intellectually honest about what I believe in a setting that is overly dogmatic and authoritarian, if only to show anyone else that is feeling suppressed that they are allowed to dissent. Is that a misplaced notion?

Sorry for the long post. I guess I just need to let out these thoughts somewhere.

I feel like I'm living in a Kurt Vonnegut novel where everything gets turned around and starts to make NO SENSE. How did this happen?? The bastions of 'family values' now see Trump as some kind of prophet or even saint while dismissing the current seemingly-devout president as being in league with Satan?

So, I have attended Episcopal churches before in the US, and currently attend an Anglican Church since I live in Korea. However, I’m not confirmed or officially a member. I intend to go through that process when I return to the US early in the year. Also, I am engaged, and plan to marry in the Episcopal Church as well. The issue is that I have very conservative evangelical parents. They are apart of a pretty radical evangelical church with some Pentecostal influence. They’re quite prone to disparage other faiths. Also, my mother has severe OCD that manifests as religious obsession and anger directed at family members. They have become more extreme and angry over the last 2 years, getting into conspiracy theories and this has sort of motivated their religious life as well. Adding to this, my dad has recently taken over as pastor of an extremely conservative church. I’ve watched some of his sermons online, and his preaching has become much more aggressive and politically themed than in the past. Converting to a denomination like this and having a marriage there will most likely anger them quite a lot. Especially since my dad is now a pastor and I guess they expect me to attend his church. I’m not very close with them, so I’m not seeking their approval. However, I can see this enraging them and causing lots of issues. Once upon a time, they would’ve just been glad I was in church. But with how political their faith is, that won’t be the case now. I’m just wondering if anyone else has had similar issues with family, and how you dealt with family backlash or resentment.

I read this blog post this week: https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/ministry-of-violence and it stirred up some shit for me.

I grew up surrounded by the culture of Dr. James Dobson. My parents knew people who loved the Pearls' books. We were told very explicitly that people who didn't hit their children were poorer parents than those who did. We were told that cultivating obedience to authority was the ultimate goal of parenting. We were told that people outside of our family always said that we were so well behaved, but "if only they could see how you act at home."

I think the thing that bothers me most is that my parents still think they did spanking "right." They think that because they hugged us afterwards and told us that they loved us and that's why they hit us then that made it all okay. But, here's the thing, I grew up to become a psychotherapist who works with adolescents. I learned a lot about attachment and how it works. Most importantly, I learned that when a person comes to expect pain and comforting from the same attachment figure, that person is more likely to develop a disorganized attachment style, which is the attachment style most highly correlated with significant emotional disruption and difficulty in funcitoning later in life.

They thought that they were doing God's will, but they were just perpetuating intergenerational transmission of trauma and disorganized attachment. It's just so fucking sad and it makes me so fucking angry.

Anybody else have similar experiences with this?

"I know of at least one large church in eastern Washington State, where I grew up, that has split over the refusal of some of its members to wear masks."

I wonder what church that was? Spokane or more rural?

The linked article is an interesting and sensitively-written piece. How is your evangelical church handling our great social+political Divide these days?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469/

Compared with other ardently evangelical, major Abrahamic sects I've studied over the last half century both directly and indirectly, modern day Adventism is clearly among those that seem to have achieved the most "respectability" among those looking on from outside.

Which would be remarkable to me considering the early days with EGW being little different from what is regularly seen in, for example, the Pentecostal and Southern Baptist... IF I didn't know a bit (but only a bit) about the efforts of several early and mid-20th-century SDA leaders' efforts to clean up the church's (public) act.

BUT... a Cultic Pyramid is still what it is, and one need only understand the dynamics of such things from conceptually informed, direct observation of what goes on at the middle and upper levels to see how the "good looking" cults get away with what they do and continue to grow. (Which is something I have been able to do in investigating several other Abrahamic sects.)

In my experience around the Adventist Church since 2003, it's as plain as the nose on my face that Groupthink, Social Proof, Implicit Social Contract & Unquestioning Acceptance of Authority are no less conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, programmed and normalized into a neural network of cognition in the Adventist's brain than is the case with any Hasidic Jew, "holy roller" charismatic Pentecostal, theocratic Southern Baptist, militant Jesuit Catholic, Smithian/Youngian Mormon, Watchtower Society Jehovah's Witness, Shi-ite Islamic, or Russian Orthodox Christian.

But compared to a

I acknowledge God and that will not change. I went to a cult called the International Churches of Christ or ICOC for short. In there I was mentally and emotionally ruined and I did manipulation tactics to them. For a while I was angry at myself and God that I stayed there for so long. I did some praying and he answered so I can have the tools and knowledge to recognize places like that and be one guard if one becomes like that and to help others deal with their trauma in a Christ centered way. I have found so many leave cults and never deal with the fallout and just leave God when it is the cult that did the damage.

These cults twist Gods word and at their core are about gaining political power through social change in their direction, essentially it is about ego. To them it is about gaining as much influence as possible and that is why many are becoming what I call Evangelical Lite. This is where they appeal to younger audiences by having modern Jesus music, lights and hype messages to make it fun and interesting. Now there are normal churches that do this but just to keep with the times so they get a pass. The evangelical cults however do it merely to gain more members thus increasing their power and influence in society. They will love bomb you and say you are amazing and then when you are hooked they will do a 180 and you learn to go along with it. They will guilt you, shame you and see you as inferior if you question them or disagree even slightly.

Since leaving I have become closer with God. Not only that but I see him as far more multidimensional and having complex simplicity than I ever have before. It would be the equivalent of looking at an orange with my eyes and at the same time smelling and tasting it and experiencing its flavor without actually eating it. I have had more compassion, tolerance and understanding for others. I am seeing people how Jesus sees them and I have developed an exceedingly incredible amount of hope and love towards them. I am starting to see people for who they are within. Even where I am I acknowledge evolution and am more liberal than half of the church but not seen as a stranger. I am there for the other liberals, the science minds and the critical thinkers who may feel out of place and do not know how to share it with others too.

Very interesting article and I'm seeing it widely retweeted today: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469

There are many quotable lines in this article; here is one.

>" The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith."

Worth a read!

Because it's pretty obvious to anyone who can see though VDH's Swiss cheesy history and (il)logic how similar it is to Armstrong's clever but pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Millions (my mother included) were taken in by Armstrong before what the WWCoG was up to was revealed. And millions are being taken in -- and fleeced -- by Hanson because the world is full of people who think they understand what they really don't.

See a pair of grabs of the "plausible gobbledygook" right here and right here.

he election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event. But this summer, at an influential megachurch in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong. A trio of elders didn’t receive 75 percent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed.

“A small group of people, inside and outside this church, coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church,” David Platt, a 43-year-old minister at McLean Bible Church and a best-selling author, charged in a July 4 sermon.

Platt said church members had been misled, having been told, among other things, that the three individuals nominated to be elders would advocate selling the church building to Muslims, who would convert it into a mosque. In a second vote on July 18, all three nominees cleared the threshold. But that hardly resolved the conflict. Members of the church filed a lawsuit, claiming that the conduct of the election violated the church’s constitution.

Platt, who is theologically conservative, had been accused in the months before the vote by a small but zealous group within his church of “wokeness” and being “left of center,” of pushing a “social justice” agenda and promoting critical race theory, and of attempting to “purge conservative members.” A Facebook page and a right-wing website have targeted Platt and his leadership. For his part, Platt, speaking to his congregation, described an email that was circulated claiming, “MBC is no longer McLean Bible Church, that it’s now Melanin Bible Church.”

*What happened at McLean Bible Church is happening all over the evangelical world. Influential figures s