The people there... they were so docile. They were like wild rabbits. Too suspicious to let anyone really get close, but completely harmless, and ready to bolt at the first sign of sudden movement. Personally, I feel that we should just leave them be.
Grew up in the Lutheran church... I don't know if docile is the word I would use, but they are not in your face. The branch I was a part of had just recently decided to allow gay marriage in their church, and that was like... 4 years ago. Most of the people I knew in the church were liberal and actually donated to charities and did "god's work" (not preaching, but actually helping the needy).
It is also a branch that took the German ideal of, "You work for what you get" instead of, "Lol just pray and you are a good person!". Out of all the branches of Christianity it is my favourite, biased as that may be.
My favorite Christian religions are the Universalists and Quakers that even accept atheists. =D> Solitary
Quote from: "Shiranu"Grew up in the Lutheran church... I don't know if docile is the word I would use, but they are not in your face.
I was confirmed in the Wartburg Synod. The people where I went were not in your face. Docile? Yeah, maybe, depending on the definition intended. The pastor would read a line of verse, the congregation would dutifully read the next line, and back and forth. Much of the service was scripted so to speak with a format that repeated over and over week to week. Maybe that could be docile in the way they just did it as a tradition. But no one in church would holler out, "Amen," or go into paroxysms of ecstasy. Then we would go home, and carry on as life required, not thinking much about church until the next Sunday. I don't know what happened in other Lutheran families.
My grandmother, who lived upstairs was a Baptist, however. Holy Christ Jesus! Things were a lot different upstairs. I loved my grandmother, but Lord, she scared the shit out of me when I was three or four with highly graphic tales of never ending torment in Hell. My mother may have had to talk to her about that and get her to cool it somewhat. The stories were not in the Bible exactly, so I'm not sure how she came up with them. The Devil would force you to work in flames with a coal shovel, feeding the fires of Hell, which were apparently controlled in furnaces. He would whip you while you worked. I suppose this was because most of the people in our neighborhood heated with coal, and we all fed the fire a couple times a day with a coal shovel. It was dirty work. And the inside of the furnace was a blaze of horrible flame. LOL.
My mother was a Southern Baptist that would take me down in the basement and put my face close the burning coal and tell me that's where (hell) bad boys go when they die if I don't behave. :shock: :roll: Some religious people have a strange way to show their love, like using a switch on your ankles to control you. :evil: Solitary
I grew up in the Lutheran church as well. Pretty harmless for the most part.
I once fucked a lutheran girl and she most surely was NOT docile....
I went to church today. A Free Will Baptist, just to see if anyone said anything about DOMA. Not a peep. A few welcoming handshakes and a lame lesson about getting to know Jesus better. And lots of vacant smiles. Nothing has changed.
Quote from: "stromboli"I went to church today. A Free Will Baptist, just to see if anyone said anything about DOMA. Not a peep. A few welcoming handshakes and a lame lesson about getting to know Jesus better. And lots of vacant smiles. Nothing has changed.
That kind of surprises me. Maybe they're seeing the future and coming to terms with it. Although, I've read a couple of articles where both sides claim the fight it still on as they move from the feds to the states.
I think its a case of denial. God is in control, yada yada.
I grew up in the Missouri synod of the Lutheran church and they too were docile. So much so that the pastor had gotten somewhat out of control over a period of several years and started ex-communicating members for such silly things as not titheing, living together while not married and the one they got me on (you can read 'bout it in my intro thread) - having sex in the church/school (when I was a teenager).
The Synod, being as docile as they were, actually ex-communicated the church while that pastor was still installed there and the church started it's own Synod.
Believe it or not, he died of brain cancer less than three years later, the church found a new pastor was accepted back into the Missouri synod!
See, proof right there that God is in control!
Quote from: "bericks999"I grew up in the Missouri synod of the Lutheran church and they too were docile. So much so that the pastor had gotten somewhat out of control over a period of several years and started ex-communicating members for such silly things as not titheing, living together while not married and the one they got me on (you can read 'bout it in my intro thread) - having sex in the church/school (when I was a teenager).
The Synod, being as docile as they were, actually ex-communicated the church while that pastor was still installed there and the church started it's own Synod.
Believe it or not, he died of brain cancer less than three years later, the church found a new pastor was accepted back into the Missouri synod!
See, proof right there that God is in control!
:rollin:
Quote from: "SGOS"My grandmother, who lived upstairs was a Baptist, however. Holy Christ Jesus! Things were a lot different upstairs. I loved my grandmother, but Lord, she scared the shit out of me when I was three or four with highly graphic tales of never ending torment in Hell. My mother may have had to talk to her about that and get her to cool it somewhat. The stories were not in the Bible exactly, so I'm not sure how she came up with them.
She probably got them from the same place the rest of Christianity does - Gehenna (literally Valley of the Son of Hinnom) and the KJV translating both Gehenna and Sheol as 'hell'. Sheol is the place of the dead. Gehenna is the place where the worshipers of Moloch sacrificed their children by tossing them into the flames )and also the destination of evil people).
IOW, typical myth-making. One from column A, one from column B and you have a myth.
There are three branches of the Lutheran church in the US. From largest to smallest they are ELCA, Missouri, and Wisconsin. That is also the same order if you were to define them as basically relaxed to most radical (as radical as Lutherans can get, that is.) So the Wisconsin Synod is both the smallest and the most rigid.
These three branches each belong to one of three world-wide branches. The ELCA is a member of the Lutheran World Federation. The Missouri Synod is part of the International Lutheran Council. The Wisconsin Synod is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. Again, that is listed by by size (from largest to smallest) and by strictness (from least to most).
Odds are, if you meet a Lutheran, he's probably ELCA. If overseas and you meet a Lutheran, he's probably in an LWF affiliated church.
And in terms of them going crazy, they are one of the more harmless denominations, and concentrate much more on actually studying the theology. But, on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran until she found they weren't crazy enough and switched to Evangelical.
Quote from: "Jason_Harvestdancer"There are three branches of the Lutheran church in the US. From largest to smallest they are ELCA, Missouri, and Wisconsin. That is also the same order if you were to define them as basically relaxed to most radical (as radical as Lutherans can get, that is.) So the Wisconsin Synod is both the smallest and the most rigid.
These three branches each belong to one of three world-wide branches. The ELCA is a member of the Lutheran World Federation. The Missouri Synod is part of the International Lutheran Council. The Wisconsin Synod is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. Again, that is listed by by size (from largest to smallest) and by strictness (from least to most).
Odds are, if you meet a Lutheran, he's probably ELCA. If overseas and you meet a Lutheran, he's probably in an LWF affiliated church.
And in terms of them going crazy, they are one of the more harmless denominations, and concentrate much more on actually studying the theology. But, on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran until she found they weren't crazy enough and switched to Evangelical.
There is also the Wartburg Synod in the US, or maybe it's under the umbrella of one of the three you named. I think I remember my mother saying it was a small synod of German and Scandinavian origin.
IIRC, the ELCA has a group that has branched off now since gay marriage was allowed in the ELCA.
They kicked about 2/5ths of our church out (big church... fit about 800, had a huge gym, about 10 classrooms, two dining halls), owed about $1.5 million to the new mission the ELCA set up (that they hadn't paid the last time I was in town about two years ago) and fired the preacher they had for being too liberal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutheran_C ... for_Christ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutheran_Congregations_in_Mission_for_Christ)
That is the "denomination" the new church is. They consider themselves the response to the liberalization of the ELCA (which has always been liberal as long as I grew up in it). I know they had people get up infront and talk about how evil gays were, even though several families that went to that church were openly gay, and that they would not stand to see their wonderful church pulled down with the idiots up in Minnesota.
Quote from: "SGOS"Quote from: "Jason_Harvestdancer"There are three branches of the Lutheran church in the US. From largest to smallest they are ELCA, Missouri, and Wisconsin. That is also the same order if you were to define them as basically relaxed to most radical (as radical as Lutherans can get, that is.) So the Wisconsin Synod is both the smallest and the most rigid.
These three branches each belong to one of three world-wide branches. The ELCA is a member of the Lutheran World Federation. The Missouri Synod is part of the International Lutheran Council. The Wisconsin Synod is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. Again, that is listed by by size (from largest to smallest) and by strictness (from least to most).
Odds are, if you meet a Lutheran, he's probably ELCA. If overseas and you meet a Lutheran, he's probably in an LWF affiliated church.
And in terms of them going crazy, they are one of the more harmless denominations, and concentrate much more on actually studying the theology. But, on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran until she found they weren't crazy enough and switched to Evangelical.
There is also the Wartburg Synod in the US, or maybe it's under the umbrella of one of the three you named. I think I remember my mother saying it was a small synod of German and Scandinavian origin.
No, that's actually old news about an old synod. It has long since merged into other synods.
There are other, smaller groups than what I named, statistically insignificant.
Lutheran church bodies in North America (//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutheran_church_bodies_in_North_America)
Quote from: "bericks999"the one they got me on (you can read 'bout it in my intro thread) - having sex in the church/school (when I was a teenager).
LMAO, that
definitely does not fit into the realm of acceptable behavior!
I've been to both Lutheran and Methodist churches when I was younger, and I didn't really and still don't really have a problem with either, they seem mild and harmless for the most part. My father on more than one occasion has had a beer with the Lutheran pastor when we use to go. Now the Baptist church, on the other hand, made my dad walk out in the middle of a sermon in disgust.
I have "visited" the Bible. Twice (skimmed the "begats" and what not). It sucks. As far as holy books goes it is one of the most boring, contradictory and just plain silly in the list... shit, the Qur'an is a much better read.
I think it is YOU who might need to visit it.
Quote from: "Solitary"My favorite Christian religions are the Universalists and Quakers that even accept atheists. =D> Solitary
+1
I dated a woman who took me to a Quaker service. This is something I would recommend for everyone, regardless of faith, or lack thereof. I will not spoil it for those who don't know, but low key doesn't even begin to describe it.
That relationship ended when she reconnected with her Anglican roots, and became dissatisfied with my doomed soul.
Quote from: "treeman"There was a ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, very religious.
Yet Jesus came to him saying, Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God-John 3:3. Few churches today even know what this means, yet it
is absolutely necessary to see the kingdom of God!
Rather than visiting a lutheran church, you may want to consider visiting THE BIBLE.
Why? There are much better fables if you're into that thing. (There's more objective evidence that Mickey Mouse was a real person than there is that Jesus was.) And much of the Bible has been proven, by actual objective evidence, to be nonsense. You should take your story into a time machine and take it back to a time when people believed that stuff. (There's more objective evidence of time travel than there is of Jesus, too.)
I don't remember the Lutheran Church of my youth wanting to insert itself into the political life of everyone else. My parents talked about politics and religion, but they didn't mix them up. I left home when I was 17 and moved to a small town. That's where I was first exposed to churches where preachers were totally obsessed with the sinning of everyone else around them. They viewed the world about them as Sodom and Gomorrah, while they themselves and their flock were an elite minority that remained pure of heart.
Of course they weren't elite, or even a minority, because every other fucking church in town thought they were the only ones that remained pure of heart while the rest of the world was falling into decay. Being saved, and saving others was the main order of business. Satan was suddenly lurking behind every bush, whispering into people's ears and encouraging them sin. He seemed to be quite influential, too, as there were lots of church men and women sneaking off to have sex with the husbands and wives of others. They would stand up and publicly confess their infidelities in church, sometimes naming names and destroying the marriages of their other partners, while they themselves gained entrance into the kingdom of God.
This was a small town, and everyone knew what everyone else was doing. It lent an air of chaos to the place. It was the first time I saw full blown gossip sessions, where women would confidentially expose the sinful behaviors of others, while the group would exclaim, "Oh my," or "Dear Me," with that breathless tone that denotes shock, horror, and delight at the same time. These were the Bible fundies from one of the twenty or thirty whacked out churches that provided the town's guidance and salvation. It was nuts.
Quote from: "SGOS"These were the Bible fundies from one of the twenty or thirty whacked out churches that provided the town's guidance and salvation. It was nuts.
It's small town. During the night, you sneeze. When you go to the general store/post office, they say "bless you". The only thing completely private is a thought you didn't think. (And some of the ones in the north are almost as inbred as the jokes about the south. There hasn't been new blood in the town for generations.)