An ex-boyfriend of mine was raised ELCA, and he spent a lot of time explaining things like, “No, no, it’s not THAT kind of church! There’s a gay couple the pastor teases about ‘living in sin’ because they haven’t come in for a committment ceremony yet!”
And yes, the WELS people are the very conservative Lutherans. I try to avoid learning more about them.
Personally, I’m a Unitarian - raised Unitarian, even. So assume I’m embarassed by the same people matt_mcl is, and for the same reasons.
Yeah, I think ever since Martin Luther nailed that piece of paper to the church door in Wittenberg (he probably never really did that, but he did send his 95 theses to some friends and colleagues) and he was accused of heresy, the relationship has been a little strained. 
Thirty years of war didn’t exactly help mend things either.
Hmm, these Lutherans sound interesting.
Raised Christian, and some of the nuttier fundamental evangelists down south… hoo boy.
Of course. Every segment of society is entitled to it’s share of jerks - Jews included.
Zev Steinhardt
That and the fact that the president is a Methodist too. I’m constantly telling people “My church isn’t like that!” (if indeed I actually admit to going to church, which is rare these days).
Would you like to subscribe to our newsletter?
Ooo—Ooooo . . . you can have my subscription. Er, subscriptions, that is. I’ve written to my childhood chuch twice politely asking them to stop sending me the church bulletin. (I don’t know how they got my current address. I sure as heck didn’t give it to them. I suspect my Aunt Maurene.)
Instead of taking me off their mailing list, they apparently contacted the ELCA nearest where I live and gave them my address, too.
So now I am an atheist who gets two church bulletins every week.
Hi. I’m DeVena and I’m a southern baptist. Believe me. Most of my denomination are freaks. I just like to piss them off.
Ditto this. I feel somewhat closeted as an atheist, so it’s nice when I actually meet other members of our hidden minority. And then it’s particularly galling when one of them turns out to be an asshole.
It’s true that no group has a monopoly on jerkdom, and no group is immune to jerk infiltration; but then this gives rise to an interesting question: Why do these social clusters typically prioritize inclusion of similar-minded believers over exclusion of buttheads? Is the Us v. Them thing so powerful that we’d rather tolerate the jackasses than risk being outnumbered by people who don’t share our characteristics even if there’s nothing else wrong with them?
(It’s not just religions, either; cf. the “blue wall of silence” among law enforcement officials.)
I can hardly begin to describe it. I know that there are people you can’t talk to in every group, but it drives me especially crazy when Christians do it, because they end up putting words in God’s mouth that make me want to just jump up and down. I have, literally, before.
There’s the “God is a Republican, duh” attitude, the know-it-all responses to evolution, and the “hate the sin, and well, yeah, the sinner too” posture.
Mind you, compared to the rest of the world, I’m pretty darn churchified. I agree with my church on all explicitly religious issues, and most of the rest of the churches, too, but these outside ones drive me batty.
I can like my church because evolution is never brought up, they make a point of not endorsing political candidates, and they do a very good job of working with people instead of yelling at them. I don’t know where I’d go otherwise.
Us bead-jigglers have a habit of seeing our Holiest People on Mundane Objects. Pizza. Toast. Stains on windows. Stains on highway overpasses. Croissants. Mushrooms. Trees. Anything with a round shape on top and something beneath that looks like flowing robes if you squint really hard, and there’s a Catholic lighting candles underneath it. Sheesh.
Plus, we jiggle beads. (So do Muslims, though).
I’m a Reform Jew and it irritates me when people say stuff like “Oh, I grew up VERY Reform”. Which means “VERY unobservant”. If you’re so Reform, why aren’t you studying for the rabbinate?
Another big ditto. My best friend is a semi-militant atheist with a bug up her butt about people who are members of organized religion. She’s way less inclined to attribute intelligence and rationality to religious people than to atheists and agnostics, and it drives me up a wall, because it’s just plain wrong.
matt and WhyNot: Better fluffy than fundie, I always say. The worst a fluffy can do to you is make you gag. Beats hellfire and brimstone any day.
Blessed be!
Merry meet Pippin, smoke pipe-weed. LOL. (Og Smash too.) WhyNot, now I want to have your babies. Um… metaphorically speaking.
I’m a nice, liberal Episcopalian. Of course I’m embarrassed, usually about once a week if you count all Christians as my co-religionists. Sometimes it’s enough to make me consider joining the Wiccans!
CJ
Hmmm. . . I sense a marketing theme here.
*"Lutherans: the Fun * Christians"
Hmm. Will y’all let me drink? I’m getting tired of my southern Baptist relatives freaking out when I get a margarita with dinner. Then later you find them sitting at nickel machines in the casino with over-strong daiquiris. 
Hypocrisy, I’m not for it.
Let me lay it out for ya:
Lutherans → Martin Luther → German → Beer!
I hold a sometimes-annual back yard beer party (everybody brings their favorite foreign, micro or obscure beer to share), and all my Pastors have attended and participated through the years.
All right!
Seriously, I am thinking of trying a different denomination. I really would like to start going to church again.