This is:
“Now I know some of you haven’t yet accepted Jesus into your life and heart; I know some of you haven’t accepted him as your personal savior. Yes, Matt, I’m talking to you! [Pointing] And I also know y’all don’t want to go to hell, burn FOREVER in the lake of FIRE, to be BODILY cast into the FLAMES and EATEN BY WORMS FOREVER. So y’all need to come up to the altar RIGHT NOW so that you can escape the pit! Yes, Matt, I mean YOU!”
Problem is, someone else hired the guy. You really can’t give him the smack-down if he’s 1) doing someone else’s bidding or 2) on someone else’s payroll. They chose the guy for a reason and its entirely up to them to ream him if he’s a jerk, or stop him if he’s off-topic or insulting to their sensibilities.
One of the many reasons I’ll be quietly cremated. I’m sure my friends and family will have many long discussions regarding my qualities…both good and bad. I don’t need someone who doesn’t know me (or like me) dissing me at my own party.
The Presbyterians are Calvinist.
You are Freaking. Me. Out.
Why? Is your name Matt? If not, I think you’re in the clear.
Wow. My early childhood was spent in a Presbyterian (PCUSA) congregation*, right up through confirmation. And I remember how the services were all very old school, with the appropriate pomp and circumstance. I honestly don’t think I could imagine *any * of the ministers from my old congregation preaching hellfire at a funeral. Let alone in a regular sermon. :eek: The closest we ever got to an altar call was the children’s part of the service where one of the ministers would call any willing small children up to the front to tell them a little story. (no hellfire there either)
My grandmother’s funeral was Catholic, and happened pretty quickly right before the weekend – I was informed 5 days is traditional – so I couldn’t really wangle the arrangements to get my ass out to Indonesia in time to take part in the service firsthand. That said, this here concept of hellfire and come-to-Jesus at a funeral is rather scary – wouldn’t have thought it’d come out of the pages of a book or **Sampiro’s ** storytellin’. My family tends to attend nondenominational services these days, and I can’t see them tolerating any of that. More with the “Jesus loved the deceased, and Jesus loves you too. Let us pray.” type of thing, I think.
This thread is making me want to put together a will declaring that I want to be broken up for usable parts, and then the rest cremated. Service is OK, as long as people acknowledge that I’m not churchy like the rest of my family.
Well, I’ll grant you it may be personally icky, but it’s not empirically icky, if you get what I mean. Like Justin_Bailey, I can’t imagine not touching or kissing my loved ones goodbye a final time. (My husband was hugely wigged out when I leaned into my grandfather’s coffin to kiss his forehead at the final viewing. I kissed him all the time when he was alive, why on earth wouldn’t I kiss him for the last time I was going to see him, well, on earth?) Of course, I’m a New Orleans native, and we have weird death traditions down there. Or rather, we did. Don’t know how traditions may eventually morph now that the city has irreparably been changed.
Of course, I respect that my background is unique and that everyone has a right to whatever feelings and space they need to process their grief. The world would be a much nicer place if everyone stopped trying to impose one correct means of grieving on people.
But, I will agree with you and emphasize that I emphatically did NOT like viewing the deceased as a child. I was lucky enough not to lose any close family members as a child, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference. I don’t know that I could stand by and watch while someone tried to force a child to touch a body in a coffin at a funeral. I think I’d have to intervene and probably cause a big scene. That’s just abusive.
heh, I’m Presbyterian, and we’re not Calvinist. I think it depends on the church.
The Presbyterian church arose out of the teachings of Calvin.
http://www.lakegrovepres.org/about/presbyterian_history.html
I’m happy to hear that some Presbyterian churches have broken with Calvin. But the ones in my area have not. And certainly the Orthodox Presbyterians remain strongly attached to Calvin’s principles.
I think the other thing that struck me as strange was that there were no eulogies. I did hear from other sources that her parent’s friends had no idea of her “alternative” living situation. I guess that they thought someone might let something drop if they let anyone talk. The whole thing deeply saddens me, and sort of scares me for the kids.
I heard one priest at a funeral begin spouting about the “end times” and “the Rapture”. My Mother opined that she didn’t want that priest at her funeral.
Heh. Until I was about four, my family lived in an apartment above the funeral home where my father worked. My mother used to help with the cleaning and such downstairs, and we’d often come down and talk with my dad and some of the other employees if they weren’t busy. I’m told that I used to sit on the kneelers in front of the caskets and chat with the deceased. (I really don’t have any memory of this, although I DO remember thinking that the people were just large dolls, or whatever).
Now tell me THAT doesn’t sound like something out of one of Sampiro’s stories?
I got an answer to a question about whether people had ever told off an obnoxious minister, although this concerned a wedding, not a funeral.
My fag hag related to me over dinner tonight that a friend of hers had her Catholic wedding disrupted by the priest’s giving a prolonged rant about how evil same-sex marriage was. Although she was marrying a guy, this woman is bisexual and half the guests were also queer.
She grit her teeth, and grit some more, and when he reached the five minute mark she lost it and loudly informed him that the church would not be getting any donations from them if he didn’t shut up now and get on with marrying them.
So, yeah. Go bride!
Miller, you’re tiresome. Give it a rest, huh?
IME, inappropriate funeral services can result when a certain family member offers to “handle the details,” and then proceeds to imprint his/her personal religious choices on the proceedings, instead of respecting the deceased.
When my best buddy died about 10 years ago, his brother offered to coordinate things. My buddy’s wife was glad to accept the offer.
The result was some kind of Ukranian Orthodox high service apparently aimed praying my tremendously profane friend into heaven. The capper was when the priest went on a tear about how the husband is the head of the family, and like the body, the family cannot survive without the head.
What a horrible thing to say to a grieving widow and child!
Apeared to be intrended more for the few bubushka-clad crones in the back pews than for anyone who actually know or cared for the guy.
We couldn’t wait to get to the post-funeral luncheon, and start swapping stories and standing each other round after round of shots.
My p’s were both RC, but we had short and inoffensive church services for both of them, with this nontheist delivering the eulogies.
So it CAN be done.
aside:
Dinsdale?!?!?!?!?!? hi buddy! I just mentioned you in the ‘dopers gone’ thread. seems I was a bit premature, eh? good to see ya!
He was making a joke.
(emphasis mine)
Chill.
Actually, I was making the joke. He was making the snide.
No, he was making a joke too. Unclench.
Let’s face it, many funerals, from the perspective of religious leaders, are basically about promoting the brand at an especially opportune time when people are most vulernable to it. To be fair, in a lot of cases, they are asked to speak despite the fact that they don’t relaly know the deceased all that well. But still, I just don’t get it sometimes. I hear a lot of people complain about atheists that show disdain for religion. That’s too bad and all, and I generally don’t like that either: I feel the same way about religion that I do about homosexuality. Not interested, but I’ll defend your right to make out with a hairy a guy as you want.
And yet, despite all this whining about some rather minor ribbing from atheists, religious people seem perfectly happy to say the most vile, deeply horrific things, and simply not get called on it or challenged. Ever. Because, you know, objecting to someone denigrating someone else’s life, or advocating the most vile tortures known to the human imagination: that’s just… impolite!