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I attributed it to Mencken in post #347. You quoted from post #348! I thought people could follow along for one post. Silly me.
Whatever you think of Mencken, and I don't know that much about him, he's right on that; simple, clear and wrong.
Might help if you kept your comments from going on and on all over the place, making them a little harder to track and get through than average. I do my best to follow with the time I have available in the morning in any case...
Every time a quote is used, the credit for the words should be provided, because not every one of your comments is going to be read with the focus or interest you seem to be assuming, silly you.
You might be surprised what the E-Free church is actually doing. Here's what they're doing in my community: https://calvarybible.com/outreach/ Outreach – Boulder (Boulder, CO)
Lunches for homeless, poor, and needy men and women; Safehouse (for battered women); Emergency Family Food Assistance (my church also participates in that, a secular non-profit that gets a lot of donations from churches); International Student hospitality at the U of CO; The Lost Boys of Sudan, supporting Sudanese refugees in Denver and Boulder; Men of Action
Men of Calvary Bible Church coming together to help the single mothers and widows of the community; Operation Christmas Child-Filling shoe boxes with toys, candy, and hygiene products for kids in need all over the world (something DH and I also have done); and now some you probably wouldn't like: Compassion Child Sponsorship-Opportunities for families to personally sponsor children who live in extreme poverty, and help them find new life in Jesus (though I think this involves more than just taking them to church); Marisol Health-Offering support before, during, and after unexpected pregnancies as well as office help and mentoring; and Wynwood Senior Living-Bringing the Gospel and love of Jesus Christ to those who are in assisted living. Help lead a Sunday worship service at the Wynwood for our elderly neighbors that are unable to attend a local church service. This latter may "just" be for the residents, but it's helping!
Plus, at their other "campus" Outreach – Erie
Some of the same plus tutoring at a local middle school; connecting families in Erie, CO with resources to fill basic needs; a youth ranch, and "Safe Families for Children is an organization that mobilizes the church to come alongside families going through a crisis by caring for children while the parents find themselves temporarily unable do so for reasons such as homelessness, incarceration, hospital stays, or treatment programs. We're seeking host families who are willing to open their homes to children to provide supplemental care and coaches who are willing to offer support while the parents get back on their feet. "
Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean it's not.
Oh trust me, unless you live in a small village, you don't understand how quickly things get around. We know everyone, and everyone knows us. Heck, my neighbors sometimes know the pattern of the toilet paper I bought before I do.
So yes, the community, including me, would be very, very aware what other programs that help the community do. We all know the United church is involved, and the Evangelical one is not. My comments stand, one I can see exempting from property tax, the other not.
Not sure your point, but boy if I supported only candidates who think and do only as I do, I wouldn't bother to follow politics, or vote. None is perfect far as I'm concerned and far as most people are concerned I think...
Imagine how many of the nations financial problems would be solved by taxing churches.
and think of how much all the illegals are costing our country or those on welfare because they have no skills or are too lazy to bother to get a decent job,if any job or they think their call to the world is to keep on having babies out of wedlock?
Thanks. No doubt your church and the Episcopalians are a good deal different than most religions that are not accepting of gays (and/or pro-choice, the woman's right to choose). Sometimes we can't be entirely okay with whatever company or organization we associate with, but for me there are too many aspects about religion that prevent me from being okay enough to be a part. Closest religious "thinking" I can get close to is Buddhism, but that's another story and another thread...
I get that. I don't live in a vacuum. My siblings are all atheists, as are a number of my friends. My S.O. follows NA animist traditions. My daughter was sorta-Buddhist for a while but with a picture of the Hindu God Ganesh on her wall, and now she has an altar in her house and does moon ceremonies. I work for Muslims. I don't believe that there is a need to belong a religion or that there is a "right" one. I have had periods of my life where I really tried to be atheist but found I couldn't be, and many of the beliefs and practices I adhere to fall under the "pagan" umbrella. Frankly, I first sought out the place where I am because I had moved to an area where I didn't know anyone and chose the idea of a church as a means of meeting people. I had once attended a similar liberal Episcopal church for a period of time back in the 90s, so I was familiar with it and know that they are accepting, and encouraging, of a wide range of thought, as am I.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
Sadly, I note what you wrote in bold italics above. You and yours don't feel obligated to support and promote social justice simply because it is the right thing to do?
No, that's an illogical leap you made there. It's more like people who do feel obligated to support and promote social just because it is the right thing to do seek out a spiritual path that supports that and provides a vehicle to do so. Again, I see your thinking colored by cynicism, and that's likely because I tend to be rather cynical myself.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
I'm very curious about your version of "no effort to recruit," but if so, the question becomes whether any church is naive enough to think it can "keep the lights on" without such efforts. Might be that's why your church will be forced to close if made to pay property tax.
Well we have managed to keep the lights on without such efforts thus far, right? The "version" of no "effort to recruit" is that like me, people just seem to have found the place and wandered in, as I did eight years ago. Some who were there when I arrived have since died, and others have come after me, each for various reasons specific to them.
As with most Episcopal Churches, the majority of the parishioners came from other, more conservative Christian traditions. I was raised in the Reformed Church of America, a very sin/hell/death-oriented denomination that did me a great deal of harm. I ditched it as soon as I became an adult and had no religious affiliation until my ex-Catholic then-husband wanted to get our baby baptized and was doing work on an Episcopal priest's rectory and suggested we go to his church. Even our recently-retired priest was once a Catholic priest who left the church at 30, married and had a career in marketing, and then became our priest for five years upon his retirement from the corporate world. (We only ever have a part-time priest who receives a small salary and housing allowance--no retirement or health benefits, etc., that would be required for a full-time priest in a large parish.)
As I've said a couple of time already, if property tax on churches is enacted and we have to close down, so be it. Hell, the Diocese of New Jersey, our governing body, is looking to close the small churches and sell property. The only reason they haven't done that to us is that they realize we are have a positive impact on the community in several ways. If the time comes that we don't have a positive impact, then we SHOULD close, and you all can rip down the little historical stone church and put up condos and collect taxes and deal with the extra traffic. You will be able to find me in the REAL church--a lake in the woods where I am right now.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
Up to you and yours of course. Such is the way of religion in general, regardless what necessarily makes sense from a practical, rational or empirical stand point. Free country and all that sort of thing...
Might help if you kept your comments from going on and on all over the place, making them a little harder to track and get through than average. I do my best to follow with the time I have available in the morning in any case...
Every time a quote is used, the credit for the words should be provided, because not every one of your comments is going to be read with the focus or interest you seem to be assuming, silly you.
All over the place. One was right after the other, followed by a whole 18 minutes.
You are not the moderator, I might remind you. S/he found no problem with my quote.
No doubt I can be cynical about such things, but a healthy cynicism I think AKA objective thinking, avoiding confirmation bias, and not "missing the forest for the trees." -- (not sure who first said those words, and I'm not going to look it up now)...
Again, I'm not necessarily referring to your 30 people in your one church. I'm talking about how the major religions have done what they have done going back thousands of years. That history. Okay? You and your church may or may not be involved in all that history involved, but that doesn't change what happens more prevalently in general. Right?
Right. And being aware and cognizant of that history and the damage done by religion is exactly part of the reason the non-fundamentalist Christian churches like mine make such an effort to do something different. And do it knowing our way of thinking is accepted by neither the non-religious community and the conservative religious community. I am a mod on the R&S forum, and I find it interesting that some of the biggest critics of liberal Christianity are the atheists who were formerly fundamentalist, conservative Christians.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
I also detect a bit of confirmation bias when you explain "that's not how it works with 12-step groups."
You think what those 12 steps actually require has nothing to do with religion regardless how your church or religion provides for that meeting space? Have you read the 12 steps?
Hell yes, I have. I've got a brother and a best friend in the cemetery, both dead at 51 from cirrhosis, an ex-husband whose brush with AA after a DWI meant that he paid $10 a pop for a piece of paper to give the courts "proving" he attended his required meetings, and most recently, a daughter who turned out to be Daddy's Girl in more ways than one. Fortunately, she is clean and sober and doing well at the moment. I attended a few meetings with some of them over the years. Even went to Al-Anon for a bit when the marriage was disintegrating.
They do have the "higher power" thing going on. As my late bestie once said, "The refrigerator can be your higher power if that's what works for you."
What I was referring to specifically when I said what you quoted is that the anonymity has to be protected. We are not allowed to ask the people in the groups to attend our church or interact with them in any way beyond the necessary contact regarding the meeting space, because that could blow the anonymity. I think that's THEIR rule, but that's how our priest explained it when someone said, "Hey, why don't we invite the 12-step groups to our event" or something a few years ago.
That's what Christian means in the Trump era. Christian = angry bully who wishes that we lived in a theocracy where everyone is forced to play their part and where everyone knows their place in the patriarchal order and gleefully submits to Christian authority. A society where gays are in the closet (if they come out they are imprisoned or executed), women are forced to stay in the kitchen and submit to their husbands, everyone goes to church on Sunday and if they don't they are ostracized from society, and dark-skinned people are forced to stay on their side of the tracks, out of site and out of mind. That's the society conservatives want.
Evangelical Christians OWN Trump. He's their President. He's President because of them. He's President because of their anger and rage about the fact that people in America don't have to obey their every whim by law yet. They consider that freedom; freedom to submit to the authority of the church. I consider that tyranny.
You are conflating "Christian" with "conservative".
Oh trust me, unless you live in a small village, you don't understand how quickly things get around. We know everyone, and everyone knows us. Heck, my neighbors sometimes know the pattern of the toilet paper I bought before I do.
So yes, the community, including me, would be very, very aware what other programs that help the community do. We all know the United church is involved, and the Evangelical one is not. My comments stand, one I can see exempting from property tax, the other not.
I don't know how "small" you're talking about, but I have lived in some small places. Heck, even now, I live in what is considered a small city (~20,000 people). Just this morning I saw some people I know at the grocery store, as I almost always do. In fact, I've seen people from my church at the store, including one woman who had given a homebound person a ride to the store.
Your neighbors must be very odd if they care about your toilet paper. If your town is big enough to support that church, I can assure you you don't know everything that's going on there.
As far as the bold, what exactly do you propose? A federal agent in every church, to see what outreach work they're doing?
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