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Notes -
A godless liberal goes to church
I knew in advance that my frustration with the godless progressive milieu that did everything but (ok, not but) cheer a horrifying political assassination, would be unlikely to be assuaged by attending my local Unitarian church's sunday service, but since I had read it described as the most intellectual church, and because of its sensibility towards Christ's (obvious lack of) resurrection, I felt like it would be the most likely out of the various sects to be a spiritual home for me.
I had no idea how bad it is in there.
The introductory speaker began the service reading very slowly and deliberately through various housekeeping items in a kind of "this is why boys in school have ADD" teacher voice. It was revealed that this was a special "all ages" day that they do every month. Could this be why she was reading to us in a voice like we were all babies, or is she always like this, I wondered. The last thing she did before passing the mic was asking us all to stand up and get the wiggles out.
The choir then got up and sang "Liberty and Justice for all" by Brandon Williams. Could this be an old Whiggish protestant church song, I wondered. But as it started "We are frightened... we are angry... we are rising..." which came across as a bit modern to me.
Then they sit down and they are followed by some ceremony to induct new people to serve as some kind of counselor role, which involves some vow reading that takes a while. Then they sit down and the choir gets up again, to sing "One Foot/Lead With Love" by Melanie DeMore which again contains words about being "scared," but it's a bit catchier than the first song.
Then they go sit down and now the two apparent church leaders say they are going to tell us a "story." Very slowly and deliberately they read out a baby story about two brothers trying to find God. They go up to the mountains, but they don't see God there...
I have to leave. The whole experience has felt like being Dracula confronted with a crucifix. Every cell in my brain screaming to get out of this holy place. Exiting the door I'm confronted with pouring down rain on a street with cars going by and I'm struck by the beauty and calm. THIS is where God is, is the thought that occurs to me.
So now my thought is, culturally, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? How is THAT what church is? Jesus Christ! How fucking horrible was all that? I could not believe only 30 minutes had passed.
I looked up the two choir songs and they are both basically anti-Trump protest songs written in 2016/17. Why are we singing about how scared we are? Why don't we fucking man up?
Why in every aspect is this a church for babies? Where even the children are bored by their pandering to them?
I was raised as a godless liberal but I had an idea that if things felt really dire and miserable, or if I felt like I needed God for whatever reason, any one of these places would at least do a serviceable job of keeping me connected. Holy hell was I wrong, there are some fucking bad, miserable churches.
Can I be annoying Catholic for a second? Here's the general timeline of Christianity.
Christ upon death, entrusts Saint Peter with the formation of a church.
This church exists for about 400 years, doing philosophical work, being murdered by romans, and assembling the gospels
400 years into it, they start calling some councils so that they can assemble a book which encompasses and explains their theology.
They assemble the bible
One thousand years later, and one thousand and five hundred years after Christ establishes a Church on Earth, a retarded autist named Martin Luther decides that he doesn't like the Church that Christ founded, and wants to start his own, with his own [stupid] philosophical beliefs at the center. Marty creates a lie about bible translations so that he can insert his own idea by "translating" the bible into German.
This effects of this are...negative. 500 years after this, we have the things you experienced.
tl;dr - you didn't go to a Church. You went to a weird narcissism cult that is wearing Church as a costume.
If you want to go to a Church, then go to a Church.
My goodness even on the Motte Catholics are insufferable. I don't mean that mainly as a personal attack, that's my observation of every Catholic I encounter - an absolute arrogance and a tendency to twist things to support the required dogmas of the Roman church. I don't entirely blame you, since the church requires you to believe these things it's only natural to reason backwards from the dogmas to the evidence, but it's so frustrating to see here. Anyway:
Of the three main Christian branches, in my opinion Roman Catholicism is by far the least convincing, and its apologists by far the most annoying. Still love you guys though! I earnestly hope you will find comfort knowing that Christ's sacrifice has already justified you, and you don't need to do anything to earn his grace.
Interesting to note that miracles which can withstand scientific scrutiny are exclusively associated with Roman Catholicism.
This is backwards reasoning though. The only miracles that are investigated with scientific scrutiny are ones associated with the Catholic church, because a full investigation is required if a miracle is to be used as grounds for beatification. This is because Catholicism has a deep history of scholasticism and the supremacy of reason, where the other traditions tend to lean more towards mysticism. Not exclusively, but that's my understanding of the general trend.
Protestants don't scientifically investigate miracles to that level, period, although there are plenty reported. I would instinctively consider it almost sacrilegious to do so. Likewise with the Orthodox, and some of theirs have a similar level of attestation (look up e.g. Our Lady of Zeitoun). Could it be that... all Christians who pray to God can receive miracles?
It may be that poor orthodox organization leads to their miracles going uninvestigated, but there are also some high profile orthodox miracles which are confirmed fakes(eg thé Easter fire. Now thé odd pious fraud is not proof against, but there is AFAIK no counterbalancing from well-investigated phenomena.
Protestant miracles seem like a general mish mash, and in fact using the term ‘Protestant’ in such a way seems like a sin against proper argumentation. Y’all are a varied bunch- is there a branch/denomination/movement within Protestantism that has repeated verifiable miracles? Any equivalent to the blood of st Januarius or thé spring at Lourdes or the series of Eucharistic miracles?
Mormonism’s supernatural claims have been investigated and falsified. The golden tablets are, per their own internal investigation, gobbledygook.
I can only speak to my experience. I grew up Catholic and was part of the RCC until I was about 33, at which point I left for essentially non-denominational Protestantism. Not for a specific doctrinal reason, but because it's where God was drawing me. That's where I met my wife. Now we attend a Calvary Chapel, which is nominally non-denom but with its own specific distinctives.
In my entire time in the RCC, I never encountered anyone who had experienced a miracle (as far as I know, they may have just kept quiet about it). In contrast, in the evangelical world I hear quite often about miracles taking place in people's lives, healings, financial provision, frankly I consider my marriage a miracle but I won't go into the details that convince me of this. But if I were to suggest to someone at my church that we should bring in some scientists to prove these were miracles, they would (I think rightly) consider that ridiculous and sacrilegious. In the same way that doing a double-blind study to determine if prayer works at improving health outcomes is both ridiculous and sacrilegious. To quote Jesus quoting the OT: you shall not test the Lord your God.
Catholics just have a different mindset about these things. They want to understand everything. That's what leads to thinks like trans-substantiation (we have to know exactly how the Eucharist works, it can't be a mystery).
What you're referring to is what Catholics would probably call 'guardian angel stories', which nobody's going to investigate. 'My guardian angel got me this job interview or stopped a car accident or whatever'. Do evangelicals point out miracles that didn't happen to them, more than on the level of FOAF tales, like Catholics or Orthodox do?
That 'didn't happen to them'? Of course. I'm not sure what level of attestation you're looking for specifically.
Here's an interesting question. Do you consider gifts of the spirit to be miracles? Most Evangelicals believe that gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues are still extant among the church, and I've heard pretty credible anecdotes of these gifts - for instance, a pastor at a conference spoke in tongues, but there was no interpreter so they all moved on, only for the Iranian bartender to come up afterwards and reveal the man had been praising God in Farsi (he ended up converting). That's the kind of miracles I hear about, multiply attested but still personal, and oriented towards people's salvation and faith. Maybe Catholic miracles are the same? I'm not entirely sure. Seeing a ghost, to me, wouldn't be something that reinforced my faith or built my relationship with God. I wonder if Hispanic populations are more likely to be moved by things like apparitions which is why they all seem to happen in Hispanic countries?
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