In the middle of the sermon, to be precise… usually I find it fascinating and applicable, rarely boring and irrelevant.
But today it was pretty much a study in non-sequitur, logical fallacy and general crooked thinking.
The bit where I nearly demanded a cite was “This is true; I heard about a school where they have banned hot cross buns because they are overtly Christian”, but there was quite an assortment of other gems, such as:
“I’ve decided to utterly believe the whole of this [waving a Bible] until such time as someone can prove it wrong in any way, people have tried to prove it wrong to me and I’ll admit I didn’t always have the answers; there are a million things I don’t understand and in any case, these critics are mostly not worth listening to… anyway, it can only either be entirely true or entirely false.”
Ahh, Christian rumors . . . gotta love them. My grandma, an avid church-goer always shares the latest with me.
My favorites were the story about the little girl who was expelled from school for praying before lunch, and the Clinton administration’s attempts to “take over” by bringing a million Red Chinese over here and hiding them in box cars.
“But, my preacher wouldn’t lie to us! He’s a man of God!”
Fair enough, but it would only really be a story if they banned hot cross buns but still served up (at some time or other) some sort of food that carries specific symbolism for some other faith, which I really doubt would happen - the story was presented as being specifically oppressive toward Christianity; “Look!, they want to ban Christianity and only Christianity” is the message and even the Telegraph seems to succumb to this in a small way:
But of course these are national, not religious festivals - banning hot cross buns, however sensible or silly, is someone’s idea of separating religious bias from education, not picking on a specific religion.
Heh… I ought to start a thread called “Ask the Brit”. The Daily Telegraph is right of centre, but it’s by no means “trash press” - it likes to consider itself a quality paper. I’ve heard a little treatise about the target readership of the various English national dailies, in terms of who runs the country and how:
"… the Daily Express is read by the men who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run;
"The Daily Telegraph is read by the men who think it still is.*
Slightly old-fogey-ish, retired-colonel, Disgusted-of-Tonbridge-Wells kind of thing.
There was another story lately about a school banning the “Three Little Pigs” story in case it upset the Moslems - which even the Moslems thought was extremely silly.
But all too many of them seem to check their skepticism at the door when it comes to what they hear through the Christian grapevine, so last week’s pseudo-Christian glurge frequently winds up being part of this Sunday’s sermon.
There seems to be an inherent tendency for Christians (maybe just people generally) to believe glurge; one time I was asked to lead a discussion and I decided to put the cat among the pigeons and talk about ‘truth vs fact’ - selecting this bit of glurge to demonstrate that a story does not need to be factually correct to serve the purposes of delivering a moral message and initiating thoughtful behaviour.
The whole thing got off to a very shaky start and almost backfired because even though I was the one bringing the glurge to them, I was unable to convince them that it was not a true story - honestly, they came up with every possible explanation as to why I could very eaisly be wrong and that there probably was a guy out there called Kyle to whom all these things had happened.
In my opinion from reading the Telegraph, it seems to be aligned about the same as the Chicago Tribune. Then again, in my experience, the London Times can be pretty conservative at times as well.
I only read the NY Post for their terrific headlines and the Sun for the boobies (hey, doesn’t everybody?)
You could always go up to the minister afterwards, all wide-eyed, and ask what school banned the hot cross buns, because you are shocked and indignant and want to write in protest.
Good luck.
It’s always amazing how many people will advance various improbable and outright crack-brained scenarios, and when challenged for evidence (of miracles, alien abductions, The Jewish Conspiracy™) will say “Prove me wrong!!!”.
I once went to church a few times with a friend. The pastor gave a long sermon based on a particular scripture.
After the service, my friend asked me how I had liked it.
“Well,” I said, “I might have liked it more if he based his sermons on scriptures which are actually in the Bible.”
My friend was outraged and insisted that it was. I reminded her that I had gone to Christian school, and knew the Bible pretty much inside-and-out. She fumbled through the book looking for it, but after several tense minutes, admitted defeat, but insisted I ask the pastor where it was.
We went up to him, and she told him in amused tones what I had said. He looked at me strangely, and I asked him politely if he could please tell me where to find the passage as I would like to study it more deeply at home. Instead of answering the question, he basically rephrased the sermon, going into great detail of what each phrase meant. Every time I would ask him where to find it, he smoothly slipped into another explanation. He never did give me a straight answer, finally saying that he had to leave, but he’d love to see me come back next Sunday. Bloody unlikely, I thought.
Later, in the car, my friend asked me if all of my “doubts” had been cleared up. I stared at her dumbfounded. Had she heard the same conversation? I again insisted that it was not in the Bible. When we arrived at her house, she spent what seemed like hours going through concordances, Bible study manuals, and even using an electronic Bible Word Search. “It’s here,” she insisted, “I just can’t find it.”
I told her I was going home, and to give me a call when she did. I never heard from her, and the next time I saw her, all she did was give me a hostile look and turn her back so she wouldn’t have to speak to me. Last I heard, she’s still a member of that church.
“Why, just last month, over in Springfield, three little girls were hit by a car and killed, all because the atheists in the school board decided to remove all the cross walks from the grounds!”
One hesitates to ask, as a non-believer, Mangetout, but still…
Do you plan to keep going after this experience? Do you find that the pastor’s opinions are generally worth paying attention to, even if the sources behind them aren’t so trustworthy (or misconstrued as they seem to have been here)?
RE: the article behind the statement. In my town, which used to be mainly Catholic, Santa used to come into the public schools. Would your pastor be offended by the decision to stop this? I’m agnostic (ouch) on the question of whether hot cross buns would bug me, but Santa is way over the line.
The guy was a visiting speaker; we have one minister serving a circuit of seven churches, so about six weeks out of seven, then preaching is provided by local preachers, members of the lay leadership, etc… Usually it is pretty sound.