Ironically, my dad taught at ORU for 30 years. My brother graduated from there. I had the option to go there for free but declined.
Brother Oral may have been ordained as a Methodist but he certainly didn’t act like one. I don’t think I ever heard him mention John Wesley or sanctifying grace.
Indeed. Our hypothetical Methodist wouldn’t even have to leave the Wesleyan tradition, if that was important to them - plenty of Holiness, independent Methodist, and Wesleyan churches around. At least, here in the South.
But the wishes of the local society may not be good. Take the church in the era of Nazi Germany, for instance - a number of Christian churches, went fascist because local society went fascist.Catering to the whims of local society and popular opinion was wrong in that situation.
In addition - and I think this is the part where we don’t see eye to eye - the church shouldn’t be like a toy manufacturer, or movie studio, in the sense that “We have to cater to what customers want to consume, otherwise we’ll go out of business.” The church should be like a classroom of math or physics - teaching things that are immutably true regardless of era. No physics or math professor in his right mind would say, “Popular opinion dislikes the statements that F=ma and e=mc^2, so from now on, we’re ditching those formulas in light of more popular ones” - and if he did say such things, the appropriate response of students would be to flee that class and sign up at other, more orthodox, classes.
This isn’t to say that the Church can’t get doctrine wrong or teach wrong things - sure they can, and they should improve and correct it when they find they’ve erred - but popular opinion ought to have absolutely zilch to do with it. Just like if a chemist or physicist finds out via scientific method that he’s made an error, he should correct it, but never merely because his students say, “I don’t ***like ***that formula, it’s not (aesthetic/pretty/short/simple/nice-looking).”
People that don’t follow the sect you happen to believe in hate religion?
The problem is that churches have LONG done just that in one way or another; look at how many condoned, justified or even encouraged slavery, capital punishment, torture, religious intolerance, anti-semitism, racism, animal cruetly, wars of conquest, etc… through history. I suspect anti-LGBTQ issues are just one more thing in a series of wrong-headed things that Christian churches have pushed over the last 2000 years.
The basic truths are immutable, but the organizations themselves are the products of imperfect humans, and the people running them, interpreting scripture and tradition, etc… are most assuredly human, and what they emphasize/minimize as well as some basic belief is very shaped by the society as a whole.
Ultimately, as far as I can tell, most churches who are pushing an anti-LGBTQ agenda are doing so because their congregants don’t like LGBTQ stuff, not because they have a particularly solid theological foundation. After all, if Christians are to take Jesus at his word in the Great Commandment* , then fishing up some stuff from the Old Testament or cryptic-ass comments in the Epistles is entirely missing the point. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves- that doesn’t leave any wiggle room for excluding people you don’t like, or who you don’t agree with.
I didn’t say or mean to imply churches should do what’s popular, only that the opinions of humans (be they good or bad) ought to have more relevance to people than the supposed opinions of god, which for some reason certain people are primed to believe is inherently good and beyond question, as if 1) it must actually be the opinion of god, and 2) god is necessarily good.
You can use scripture to support any position. You can even use scripture to support a virulently anti-semitic position, as many Christians have.
What matters, and what we should make up our minds on, is how what we say and do will affect our interactions with other PEOPLE, not with how it might affect our relationship with some supposed god or gods. Until such time as that god(s) can be demonstrated to exist and to matter. I mean, you might convince me that god exists some day, but it will be another thing entirely to convince me that I should live my life around what that god deems right or wrong.
And that’s irrespective of whether it’s “good” for a church, or “bad” for a church. I don’t give a fart about churches: it’s people that matter.
I don’t know, I’d bet most Christians are happy their religion changed and no longer includes slavery, women as property, blood sacrifice etc., or did you mean steady now that it has changed?
I think of Methodist as the ‘normal, suburban, inoffensive’ version of Christianity, maybe because that’s how I grew up. So it makes me a little sad that what I thought were good, everyday people with an interest in God and faith and community should be pulling themselves apart over mundane, earthly fear and hate.
There’s always a church leading the charge against any change. That appears to the whole point of most religious groups: Stay i power, keep 'em in their place, keep things like the ‘good old days.’ I just thought the Methodists were better people.
No but people like ASL and Really not all that bright seem to.
The Christian church’s purpose is to spread the love of God in the world. It is not loving to try to teach people to be comfortable in their sin. It is the opposite.
Define ‘sin’. I will say that liberal churches are indeed of the belief that they are spreading the love of God in the world and that religious hatred of LGBTQ people is allowing hateful people to be comfortable in their sin.
As a liberal Christian myself I get flabbergasted when anti-LGBTQ folks try to say they are spreading God’s love in the world. It does not seem like it in the slightest.
One thing I don’t understand is how Christians can go against things that are explicitly stated as sins or abominations in the Bible. If the Bible is the word of God and the Bible says X is a sin, then shouldn’t X be considered a sin in an absolute sense?
I don’t think that means churches should kick out people who sin. I’m sure lots of sinners go to church all the time. But it seems sacriligous for a church based on the Bible to say that something is not a sin even though it is explicitly stated as so in the Bible.
I don’t hate religion, I just think it’s built on a range of things that I don’t believe should be lauded or supported. Hate, for instance. Hate of others, hate of difference.
You can try and cloak your hateful beliefs in the word of god all you want, but at the end of the day it’s people who wrote those words down, whatever the source, and it’s people who choose which oft-times contradictory statements to get behind and which to ignore.
For my part, I don’t care what god said, and that’s even if I grant there is a god (I don’t, but if I did), because the god you seem to have gotten behind strikes me as a homophobic prick. And again, that’s an accusation leveled at your supposed god, not at you.
Warning - may be offensive to inoffensive Methodists just trying to live a decent life ;): Baby, Let’s Be Methodists Tonight.
Liberal Christians aren’t biblical literalists. They do not, as a rule, tend to believe that the Bible was personally authored by God, or that God would go to any particular lengths to make sure what was written in the Bible was accurate. The Bible, in this view, is the work of people over many centuries describing their experience with God, and trying to interpret what those experiences meant in terms of God’s will. Christians who adhere to this interpretation would, generally, view the writers of the Bible as very wise, but not infallible, and subject to many of the cultural assumptions inherent to the times and places where they were born. They’re also generally aware that modern translations of the Bible are basically a game of Telephone played across thousands of years between people who didn’t necessarily all speak the same language, and are mindful that what it says in King James may not have much resemblance to what was intended in the original document.
Paul listed gay sex along with adultery, drunkenness, and fornication. Now even Ministers sometimes fall into one of those sins. That’s no reason to exclude them from the Church.
And that’s **Paul. **
Jesus said "let those without sin cast the first stone’ and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Luke 6:31-38 English Standard Version (ESV)
31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
John 13:34 English Standard Version (ESV)
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
Matthew 5 English Standard Version (ESV)
The Sermon on the Mount
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The Beatitudes
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*10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.*
It’s not.
You have compared religion to a virus and said God is a homophobic prick. If you don’t hate religion than you are doing a good impression of someone who does.
No one (or almost no one) says that adulterers, drunks, and fornicators (gay or straight) should be banned forever from the church, just that when at church they should be called to repentance. Most churches don’t hold keggers or key parties because to do so would mean the celebration of sin.
In the story of Jonah, he is a prophet who hates Nineveh. When God tells him to go to Nineveh and tell the people to repent, he refuses and runs away because he hates the Ninevehites and wants them to die in their sin. Calling what is sin righteousness is what you would do to someone you hate.
Did the Wisconsin Synod eventually merge with the Missouri Synod? I grew up in a Missouri Synod church. But my mother’s folks belonged to a Wisconsin Synod congregation. I noted very little difference in the Sunday services at the two churches. As I recall the Wisconsin Synod broke off from Missouri because the Wisconsin folks didn’t approve of dancing. That has to be about as silly as it gets.
How does each congregation decide which Methodist group to go with? Do they vote? Form new congregations? What happens?