Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Can someone check if I said "mortal world" I don't remember if I also said "mortal world" or not ...

 

This has been true among some of the millennial members of our church. There's a live stream, that works for them, and church had become a place where listening to the sermon and participating alongside good music was most of what they did anyway. When we come all the way back, some won't return, typically young couples. (Once they have kids, they usually poke around again, wanting a place to baptize their kids.)

But giving is up. I expect it to dip quite a bit at some point - the economic hurt is coming - but for now, it's up.

In general, churches will grapple with the millennials for a long, long time. They grew up in the "90s evangelical church," which was hyperpolitical, often hyperpartisan and, here's the key, hyperemotional because of the seeker-sensitive roots. Church used to be a 90-minute emotional roller coaster, manipulative in that way, instead of a spiritual centering, and not only did that turn off millennials who grew tired of being tweaked, but it left a nasty imprint (the seeker-sensitive stuff) of "well, if it's not how I want it, I'm gonna walk, because it's bullshit." Fewer people want to hear what they don't want to hear.

And I don't care what faith you are; sooner or later, you're going to hear one, two, three things that are convicting and kind of stink to hear, because they point to your own faults/weaknesses/sins. And people just bail from that. Nope, not doing that on my one day off. And I almost understand it at times. Churches have become so oriented toward the professional pastors and staff, and so much less so around the congregations as a whole, that the upside of community is lost.

 

Join us next week for another episode of "'Yab SLAYS the Believers!"

 

Welp. You got me. All of those years explaining the big bang, epochs and eons and ages and glaciations to young people? I was subliminally telling them that Fred and Wilma rode Dino on to the ark arky.

 

Jesus had a pet triceratops.

 

day-age concept. Look it up.

 

Oddly enough, I've noticed increased attendance at Daily Mass - higher than it was pre-Covid. I think being around people (even if socially distanced and behind masks) is comforting.

 

Ahdunno. Most of the prehistoric stuff I've excavated has been ten to twenty-ish K years old. Have to admit to being excited about that mammoth, but then I love megafauna.

I attended a church for a brief time where they kept sticking me in the singles class "because we aren't met to be alone" or something. One of the married people who for some reason felt God put him there to help all those pathetic unmarried people be hap-hap-happy like him found out we shared an alma mater. He didn't ask me what I majored in and proceeded to talk about how incensed he was there was an anthropology program. I asked him if he ever took a class over there.

"Ah was in one for a WEEK! Ah knew before Ah walked in there, all those people want to do is debunk everthang! I listened to as much as Ah could stand an' then Ah told the teacher off an' then I went down the hall an' told the director of the department OFF!"

"Really?" I said.

He asked me about peaople I'd never heard of. I told him I spent most of my time in Rock House Lab, the cultural studies side of FAC and the basement of the Behavioral Sciences Building. He got very quiet.

"Yeah," I said, "You probably remember Dr. S. from there. He was one of the faculty sponsors of CCforC and Dr P. and I used to walk over for Eucharist at Christ Episcopal on Wednesdays.

Much later on, long after I'd quit going there, he would see me out and try to corner me to talk about some Young Earth books he wanted to sell. The sad part about this is the church I met him at was United Methodist. They're supposed to be less hidebound on matters like science? I guess he was one of the stupid ones.

 

https://pagesix.com/2020/12/04/carl...campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=pasteboard_app

 

Free Will?

 

The whine thing is a fucking embarrassment for Christianity. One hopes someone read Lentz Luke 17 a few times in the last month.