5 ms·

> Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen

> Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen. > Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? The Bible offends people. And it's very strange to discuss church participation without discussing God and the Bible. For example, I believe creating a godless (or even God agnostic) church will be ultimately a dead end (at least in the long term). I'd be interested to read any research about these things, but I'm skeptical that it's even possible to study these things scientifically. Church dynamics play out over generations. You really need to watch organizations over many changes of leadership to see if they're really successful. I realize that some people reading this reach for an empirical, practical approach to discovering whether it's possible to recreate the benefits of church without the theism. I'd be interested to hear what happens, but I suspect we'll all be dead before all the implications of the experiment are known. I'm not sure waiting around for a series of definitive studies is a good plan.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
What's your opinion on Unitarians? They seem to fit your description and have been around for a wile.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are. And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs. Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false. Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I think GP was maybe more curious about how you would evaluate their agnostic church than about how you would evaluate their beliefs.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      I find the forms of church to be fairly meaningless on their own. It might as well be a weekly TED Talk and Sing-A-Long series by another name. Maybe it's enjoyable, but I can't really see it being transformative. To me, the worship services have become the least meaningful part of church life. Higher quality music (even worship music) and sermons can easily be found elsewhere. The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.
unprepare 10y ago
>I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen. because youve never seen a gay person be escorted out of a church doesnt mean the church is welcoming to homosexuals.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

What's your opinion on Unitarians? They seem to fit your description and have been around for a wile.

humanrebar 10y ago
In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are. And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs. Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false. Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I think GP was maybe more curious about how you would evaluate their agnostic church than about how you would evaluate their beliefs.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    I find the forms of church to be fairly meaningless on their own. It might as well be a weekly TED Talk and Sing-A-Long series by another name. Maybe it's enjoyable, but I can't really see it being transformative. To me, the worship services have become the least meaningful part of church life. Higher quality music (even worship music) and sermons can easily be found elsewhere. The accountability and shared search for applied Truth is where the meaning is. I don't see how UU churches provide either well. In other words, a church needs to be able to fire a pastor for heresy without being hypocritical. Otherwise, the word 'church' has started to become a synonym for the word 'nonprofit' or 'club' or 'fraternity'.

unprepare 10y ago

>I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen. because youve never seen a gay person be escorted out of a church doesnt mean the church is welcoming to homosexuals.