I have a passing interest in the Church of England and its American variation, the Episcopal Church. An old friend is in the church so I get some first hand descriptions of what it is like to be in a dying institution. That’s the only way to describe the Episcopal Church. Attendance declines every year as old members die off and new members never materialize. Go into an Episcopal service and you can’t help but notice that most everyone is a senior. The actuarial tables are the church’s greatest enemy.
Of course, church attendance has always skewed a little older. Young people tend not to be attracted to the faith, even if their parents regularly attend services. As people get older, have families and begin to sink roots, they get more involved in their faith and attend services regularly. That’s the trouble with the mainline Protestant religions. The young are not coming back once they start having families. That means their children are not raised in the faith. As a result, these churches are now in a death spiral.
The story is familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. These churches made the decision to chase the latest social fads in the 70’s and 80’s, hoping to make themselves more appealing to the young. The only thing they did was make themselves less attractive to people interested in being part of a traditional Christian sect. It was not just in the pews, but in the clergy as well. Those feeling the call found that the church in which they were raised was not interested in defending and maintaining the faith.
The result is the clergy slowly radicalized. First came the women and then the feminist women. Soon they invited in the homosexuals and the clergy started looking like the faculty of a liberal arts college. That’s when the pews started to empty out. Why bother going to church, when you can get the same liberal lecture from television? That’s what started the decline in church attendance. Instead of offering a shelter from the storm, they decided to chase an over-served market – radical Progressives.
Talking to my friend, he tells me that there are elements within the Episcopal Church that know what must be done to save the church. The trouble is they are outgunned and out maneuvered by the radicals. That’s the thing. The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda. The conservatives are constantly outmaneuvered because they are not playing the political games. They end up getting marginalized, despite having numbers.
Of course, young people seeking to join the clergy are confronted by a politicized bureaucracy full of homosexuals and social justice warriors, who are mainly interested in advancing their own agenda within the church. Like the old commie radicals of yesteryear, the current radicals use struggle sessions and purity tests to boil off those who would challenge their agenda. Imagine you’re a young priest and you are told you now have to celebrate a special mass for the transgendered.
The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to ‘welcome transgender people’ by considering preparing a church service as a way to “mark a person’s gender transition”.
The official church of the United Kingdom voted four to one in favour amongst the Clergy and more than two to one amongst the Laity (members who are not Clergy) at the four-day Synod, the motion reading:“That this Synod, recognising the need for transgender people to be welcomed and affirmed in their parish church, call on the House of Bishops to consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition.”
Vicar of Lancaster Priory Church, Chris Newlands, posed the motion to the Synod, saying he would speak on behalf of transgender people as the church’s Synod has none.
He said: “We need to be aware of the impact that our actions – be them welcome or rejection – have on the members of the trans community.
“I hope that we can make a powerful statement that we believe trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them.”
The BBC reports that, “Such a service would not be a second baptism, however, as the Church’s teaching is that humans are made in the image of God – transcending gender – and baptism takes place only once.”
Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu said there was a need for vicars “to welcome and affirm, in their parish, transgender people”, adding that the “theology has to be done” by the House of Bishops and “can be done very quickly”.
Notice the feminine language. They want to “welcome and affirm” trannies into their churches. I’d like these guys to point to the passage in the Bible that covers men who like to play dress up or people so mentally unbalanced they believe their sex organs are imaginary. Ministering to the mentally ill has a place in a church, but that’s not what they are saying. They want to make mutilating people a sacrament. Imagine being forced to embrace this sort of madness. It is no wonder the sane clergy are leaving.
Of course, it’s also why the pews are empty. It’s another reminder that Progressives must be treated like rage zombies or highly contagious disease carriers. Once you let one into your organization, it will set about bringing in more of its kind. In this case, it was women in the clergy, then feminists, then homosexuals. They have reached the point where few inside the church care at all about the faith. It’s all about the latest Progressive fads and how they can outrage the remaining members of their congregations.
My daughter is a militant lesbian social justice warrior. I know these people like the back of my hand. If there was anything good about them, even one redeeming quality – I would have found it. Trust me when I say this: queers and their mentally ill variants do not want to join the church to get closer to God. They hate God with the heat of 1000 suns. Those people want to get into the churches to replace God, and force you to bow down to them rather than your Maker. At best I personally am an outhouse Christian… Read more »
between your “mother” and your “daughter” you have quite a “family” waiting to hear about your “sister”, next
No sister. Family is pretty much kaput. The women pretty much all went off the deep end. This is why I advocate traditional solutions to new problems. Traditions arose because they worked. Feminism clearly isn’t working for anyone – unless you care to disagree?
I was going the path of Karl, tbh. I am curious, do you have regular contact with these family members? If so, do you mind saying why? I’m a mother, but I wouldn’t have contact with my child if they were some odious feminist lesbian. I do not believe in torturing oneself, for the sake of another.
How did this occur, with your family members?
Canada is a very liberal nation ZT. My daughter is at the leading edge of the Generation Snowflake/SJW phenomenon. When she first came out of the closet, the ‘social justice warrior’ term had not even been coined yet. She was part of a new breed of cry-bullies nobody had ever seen before. We parted ways for good about 7 years ago. I am still very bitter about it. Aw hell – we were on the skids before that too. One day she came home and told me that she was dumping the sciences at University and taking Fine Arts. I… Read more »
Don’t beat yourself up over it. People turn out how they do partly out of how they are hardwired, and partly their environment. Their family life is only a piece of it. Could be that the rest of it, in this case, just overwhelmed her development. I can tell you that one of my kids did the STEM thing in college and came out great. The other one did the lib arts thing and is busy blowing up family relationships because the other family members don’t adhere to his ideas and prejudices. He didn’t go into college with that kind… Read more »
Wow. The Prodigal Son comes to mind. As hard as it may be I’m confident I’ve done my part during the formative years. It’s now up to them. Their choices aren’t my choices at that point. If they choose to go certain routes I may disagree with, so be it. It will hurt me inside I’m sure, but I’ll always be here if/when they decide they’ve exhausted all their “feelings” of what makes them “happy” versus what is right or “truth” worthy. After my liberal nonsense of my youth (latchkey kid raised by single mom) exposed to all sorts of… Read more »
“Dime a dozen” sounds harsh. How about, “more plentiful”?
Yeah it does sound harsh, my apologies – poor choice of words.
This pretty well sums it all up… 2 Timothy, Chapter 3: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down… Read more »
Great comment. At the same time I’m curious. How many blogs based in Germany could you make such a comment on without being moderated or swarmed?
@ teapartydoc – We are still free to discuss our religious beliefs, but we tend not to be quite so open about it. Not because we are afraid or embarrassed, but it’s more personal and Germans typically are more subdued about such things. No one would ask “…and what church do you go to?” as many Americans might do. It’s clear to everyone that attendance numbers are becoming less and less especially for our youth. As noted in thezman’s commentary, many of the Church’s problems are self inflicted and people are smart enough to see through the hypocrisy. And unlike… Read more »
Karl, I’d TRIPLE vote that one up, if I could.
Amein, mein Bruder.
Religion, especially the Catholic Church, has been the glue that has held the world together for two millennia. Without a faith foundation, society will come apart, which is what the sickos mentioned want. Europe is gone, the U.S. is not far behind.
The western world was doing just fine before Christianity. The Greeks and the Romans laid the foundation for the west before Christianity came around. Christianity perhaps rounded out the foundation of Greek philosophy and Roman legal traditions with a moral code and social control.
If you read much in the history of ideas you find that the same processes affecting our churches today affected the religions of both Greece and Rome, and that Western Civilization, so defined, went into decline in both of them. No. Things were not fine before the Christians. If they were Julian would have been successful. As it was he barely knew enough of the old religion to practice it. Much of what he went back to was the degraded paganism of his immediate forebears.
The Greeks and Romans has slaves .. and indenture system and men had power over their families …sort of how muslims do nowadays.
But them Rome went progressive and gave away the whole store by supporting the losers with the money taken from the winners … everything became free as Rome neared it’s demise.
Like the USA and the west is doing today … paying People to hate the people whose money they live on.
That’s a bit like saying if you skipped the flour, you’d still get bread.
No, you can replace Western people with foreigners and still have Western culture would be like saying you can have bread without flour.
Well, not sure what you mean, but I took your original post to mean that the West was on a particular trajectory regardless of Christianity. I would argue that the Christianity is to the West as flour is to bread.
Mass immigration into the West is like adding lots and lots of salt to the mix. A little bit of salt improves the flavor and strengthens the bread. Too much, and you get a mess.
Yes, they were doing just fine. Killing their female children, enslaving whole populations, taking over the world by force. Yup. Doing just fine.
Boy, good thing Christianity came in and ended slavery and conquest in the west.
Evangelicals did end slavery in the west, Thank one, the next time you see one, not that they will know what you are talking about. Conquest? Well, no. We did manage to mitigate and channel violence during the middle ages to mostly prevent the warrior class from trampling all over the peasantry in there incessant wars. There were certain days when you weren’t supposed to fight. But no, reigning in the human tendency to make war has only been partly successful, if at all.
Canada is on fast-track with the idiot Trudeau as PM.
it’s not glue that makes the catholic church sticky…
this post begs the larger question “why are so many people in the West demonstrably mentally ill?
It goes back to their core belief: liberation. Liberation puts one in a constantly transitive state. You are liberated from something, whereas you can be free without having to be free from something. The left didn’t realize this put them on a quest that ends in the self annihilating the self (liberating one from one’s own gender/sexual organs, is pretty much suicide, the liberation of the self from the self). Christianity (and conservatism for that matter) is about preservation, not liberation, although if something that is sacred and is meant to be preserved is threatened, you liberate it, whether it… Read more »
Because ALL DA CHEMICALS IN DA WATER ARE TURNIN DA FREAKIN FROGS GAY!
Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, right? People with too much stuff, and lots of free time, start believing that this is how the world “is”, and they set about looking for the new thing to chase. They also tend to forget where they came from, and the people, traditions, laws, and norms which were the source of their bountiful harvest.
Short answer: Idiocracy.
Because we live in a time of No Consequences. There is no consequence for any action (people are let off crimes for trivial reasons, excuses are made for people who behave badly, no one is allowed to castigate wrongdoers lest their feelings be ‘hurt’) and anyway, no matter what a lunatic does do it can be given a positive label like “exercising choice” or “kicking back against the system.” And for every step towards madness, someone is more than ready to go that step further.
I think the answer is as simple as this: we have made it too easy to stay alive. In the fairly recent past, a great deal of one’s time was spent getting food, shelter, and clothing. As we became more “advanced” the necessities became easy to get – so easy today that one need not even work for them if one chooses a life of poverty and dependency over a life of effort and achievement. Now that we have to spend so little time staying alive, we have oceans of time to spend on foolishness – and the result is… Read more »
They skipped right over the everybody gets a trophy phase to exalting only the degenerates. Now what?
They did have the trophy phase. When was the last time you heard a fire and brimstone you will go to Hell if you don’t obey the word of God sermon? Everybody goes to Heaven. Even their dogs.
You’re right but the whole concept of heaven first bored, then embarrassed them. They’re not churches, they’re SJW social clubs.
Yeah, but at least it’s fair and inclusive. Anybody who ever read the Bible knows that God is all about fairness and inclusivity.
There is some weird form of feminine/beta male white knighting for the “oppressed” gays and Muslims going on. Save the gays and swarthy guys (not the women), save the world. It is a form of madness, replacing Daddy or traditional marriage or something. The femis and betas get some sort of empowerment out of it all. Taking down the churches is a bonus, an extra happy thing. There is a thrill in dancing on the altar of a seized and broken institution, breaking the will of an “oppressive” place of faith. Take that, you so called God. The Prog Mainlines… Read more »
Great comment, Dutch. I agree with you except for the last line. The crazies can get into ANY door. Only people who really know their faith, have an actual relationship with the actual person Jesus Christ, and offer the Truth with love, can deal with the crazies. If you’re weak or lukewarm in your faith, and don’t deep-down BELIEVE it is true — and are ready both to explain it and to live it out sacrificially — the crazies will walk all over you.
Belief in my case, is involuntary. Something either rings true and worthy, logical and reasonable or it does NOT. I cannot see logic or reason in the belief in an all wise, all powerful diety who created the entire universe and everything in it. And he did it using the modern-day week-days, with Sunday off for dinner with the Angels or something. How percent of him or her or it. What use would genitals be to a god? So it must be an ‘it’ if anything at all. I see religion as a fable told to children to console them… Read more »
Pretty good argument for agnosticism, but I think there is still room for spirituality.
“The laws of physics and mathematics are like a coordinate system that runs in only one dimension. Perhaps there is another dimension perpendicular to it, invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules.
These rules are written in our hearts, in a deep place where we cannot go and read them except in our dreams.”
excerpt from “The Diamond Age” Neil Stevenson
This book is for people like you. I’m not religious,either. But this book will blow your preconceptions out of the water… https://www.amazon.com/What-Religion-Words-Swami-Vivekananda/dp/B002SCHISA/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500063741&sr=1-6
To believe in something not seen nor fully understood is an ancient practice. My ancestors, the Celts, were so inclined. That you cannot see the transcendent does not make it imaginary. That dimension can be real without being apparent to the ordinary senses.
So, you have rejected American Protestant fundamentalism. That’s a pretty small part of Christianity you have rejected. The rest might surprise you.
let me introduce you to islam, where only crazies get in the door.
Yup. But crazy Islam wants to tear down everybody else. Crazy Mainline Protestant wants to tear itself down.
Also, radical (or should I say “mainline”) Islam and the mainline Protestants share a fascination with the sexual organs of their constituents, and the mutilation of them.
Agreed. It’s like the man said: “Women ruin everything.” Protestant churches in the North had this same gripe on the eve of the Civil War — women had taken over the congregations, turning them into social clubs that occasionally mentioned Jesus.
There’s a real opportunity here for someone with the gift of preaching — bring back Muscular Christianity. Do it 4GW style — make sure you have no physical base that can be sued, rent accommodations (and when you’re refused that, meet in an open field). Then infiltrate your people back into the denominations to chase out the deviants. 19th century missionaries used to talk about “Darkest London” like “Darkest Africa;” we need to preach to “Darkest Suburbia.”
you sound like the people who go on about how communism hasn’t been done “right” yet, that’s why all communist countries are shit holes. Christianity had a good run, but it is fading like an old newspaper now. Doing things just to goose attendance misses the point by a mile.
I guess you missed that part about “infiltrate your people back into the denominations to chase out the deviants.” Like the man said, this shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers.
In my experience, they are stripping the denominations and the buildings of their most faithful members. The old denominations will just fade away as empty shells. No need to infiltrate, just let them blow away. One beauty of a faith community that holds up and empowers the individual, is that those same individuals can renew and reinvigorate the faith in unorthodox ways.
What you-all urge has been happening for the last 30 years or so in my part of the country. Non-denominational, fundamentalist protestant churches are doing just fine. They grow by doing what you said, striping faithful Christians from the SJW converged mainline denominations and also by bringing in new folks. Sometimes they take over empty denominational buildings and sometimes they build new ones of their own. In any event, they own outright or rent from venues not used on Sunday. There are many such venues in any community so a SJW tweet-storm against one of them is of little effect.… Read more »
I know for a fact that the first half of your comment is definitely going on. It is out there, with meetings and services in people’s homes and in nondescript rented commercial space. The second half, the infiltration of the existing denominations, not so much. But they are picking off disaffected mainline congregants (and a few from the big evangelicals), one by one, as the word of mouth goes around. It is a form of personal salvation accomplished from the bottom up, not the top down. As it is done by Christians in Africa, the Middle East, and China, all… Read more »
Teenagers know when they’re being condescended to or patronized. When Reverend Lovejoy tries to tailor his proverbs to what happened last week on a TV show, or starts “Jamming with God,” a Christian rock band, the kids tend to roll their eyes and figure church is just something you have to sit through, like class. Not surprisingly, a lot of these disaffected kids much prefer high church/Orthodox Christianity, with its pride in the past (rather than shame), its strength, and conviction. Meaning and mystery are important. The left doesn’t do mystery, since their whole “freaking out the squares” bit is… Read more »
Regarding music and church and heaven ….. for musicians. These two old sax jazz players are in the hospital. One is dying of an incurable disease, and his friend is seeing him through to the very end. As the dying man takes his last breaths, he whispers into his dear friend’s ear, “Watch for me, ’cause I’m coming back to tell you what the afterlife is like.” “Cool.” His friend replies. Later that night the man passes on. About a week later the sax player is walking in the park, and feels a cold rush of air creep down his… Read more »
Nail head, meet hammer.
As a sensible human being, I realise from the start that this invitation to transgenderism will turn away more than it attracts. Why would an organisation commit such a deliberate blunder? Is it the purpose of those organising such craziness to destroy the church? Jim Jones did that effectively one afternoon with cyanide and 22s. I don’t think it is deliberate. I think it is really poor leadership and men within the church assuming that the women of the church know what they are doing. Or too weak to wear the consequences of opposing this nonsense. Just as with the… Read more »
“…the homophobic Nazi boogeymen who spend night after night stalking the innocent gay people, beating them [to] death without mercy.”
Is it possible to join such a group? Where might one inquire for further information? Do we have to furnish our own uniforms?
Ask the nearest SJW. They claim that every (white) industry, (white) institution and (white) neighbourhood swarm with such groups.
The Episcopal church has sued its own congregations that sought a divorce, and won, now owning multiple empty buildings.
The good new, if there is any, is that this nonsense acts like a type of “Darwin Awards” for churches. As the loonies drive out the normies they will dwindle away until they barely have enough members to carry the rainbow banner in the local gay pride parade.
Sounds like a spiritual application of Gresham’s Law.
The muslims are waiting for those christian churches to be vacant so they can turn them into mosques.
Sadly true. Happened in my old home town.
Well articulated.
What is the population of the trannie world? .0014% or some such? … yet they are treated like the rulers of the Galaxy. What’s with that shit anyway?
The left uses trannies and other mental defectives to beat us over the head. Weaponized crazy. The existence of even one tranny is sufficient for the left to seize the purported high ground. If mental defectives did not exist, the left would create them.
African Anglican churches are providing “reverse missionaries” as priests to congregations in U.S.A. and U.K. that cannot abide the limp-wristed agnostics appointed for them by the Archbishops. I am sure one purpose of this effort by the Africans is to send a rather humiliating message to the Anglican high-and-mighty, who never dreamed that their flocks would prefer the ministrations of a blackamoor.
Much of what you are describing is part of an effort to keep church property. When a congregation decided that the church hierarchy is so crazy they need out they will try and get switched to a more conservative diocese, rather than leave the church and loose the building and grounds they’ve been using for generations. The African dioceses recognize the problem and have tried to help.
The local Episcopal diocese in my town built a very nice suburban church campus, only to find the members walked out en masse as the powers in charge went more and more liberal. I forget the tipping point but it might have been the installation of a gay bishop. In any case, this entire parish found a small Anglican congregation and joined leaving the Episcopal church to pay the $10 million note on the new campus they vacated. The nearby Catholic parish was beyond overflow, and rented out the sanctuary for Saturday afternoon mass for several years.
@SorenK…..
Pardon me for the personal question within the thread here. Sorry everyone…but my brother John had a friend named Soren K. whom lived in WI many years back. I know it’s a terrible long shot but…..?
Sorry.
Okay thanks.
I’ve thought about this a bit more. What Christianity needs is men that are leaders. Women don’t lead well. We are hard coded in our DNA to be followers. And we have seen Christianity in a slide since we’ve allowed women to be leaders in the churches. What society needs more than ever are people willing to stand up and do the unpopular thing. Young men need to learn how to be men, how to lead and be responsible. Young women need to be told that it’s fine to have children and raise a family. These things should be common… Read more »
@ notsothoreau – You just nailed the leadership problem in Europe; mostly women, all without children, none of whom are Christians all pushing a liberal-progressive agenda.
It’s the perfect combination for failure. Especially when the incoming hoards have lots of children, and are hard wired religious zealots who are not afraid to defend and spread their religious beliefs.
It’s a sad commentary that Christians could learn a lot about strength and conviction of faith from these people.
I have noticed that women in positions of power over people have what I call a certain frission about them, perhaps better described as a sort of frenzied unfocused intensity, when they are in public. I see this particularly often in women politicians and church leaders. It is some kind of “here I am, how about that?” along with “I am in charge now, screw you”. I don’t see it so much in male leaders. Strangely, Angela Merkel has none of it. Women with public personas do not necessarily have this, think news readers and actresses. They aren’t taking the… Read more »
Women make terrible leaders, on the whole. It drives other women crazy when I tell them that I will never vote for a woman president, but I really can’t see a time I would. We do not handle power well, & wearing the mantle uneasily from day 1 to end, is the best case scenario.
I know that none of you’d ever like to see me as a major world leader. I’m irrational, I’m implacable, and I would do things that would make both Hitler & Mao blush, if given opportunity.
Don’t put women in powerful positions, guys, please.
My secret take on Hillary, Pelosi, Warren, DWS, B Obama and J Kerry is that none of them have any patience to deal with real people in a normal manner, and simply want to invoke their idea of how things should be, wave their hand about, and make it so. The freaky unfocused intensity is their stifling of their inner red queen from Alice in Wonderland, just aching to bust out with a cry of “off with their heads!” Angela Merkel and Theresa May, to their credit, along with a number of woman US Senators and Congresspeople, seem to have… Read more »
Look at the barren cat women in the UK and Germany.
Since it’s all about sex, a trans welcoming service should be followed by the announcement, “Hey, Bob and his wife Priscilla are happy to announce they had good heterosexual activity last night. Twice.”
The Episcopal Church in my small town where I still live and attended as a child is still holding services. I should probably go back there. When I was eight years old in Sunday School, I remember our nice teacher saying something to the effect that Jesus was a Jew, we are his disciples and we’re Christians. I raised my hand and she called on me. I said “If Jesus was a Jew and we’re his disciples, then we’re Jews.” She thought this was very funny and gently corrected me. A chivalrous little boy came to my rescue as well.
The Protestant mega church down the street had its founder/pastor embark on a gay sex + meth spree. They used to have to have people park in the field across the street, and had off duty police directing traffic. Now we drive by it on our way to mass on Sunday, and the main parking lot is 2/3 full, and no police. Lunacy indeed. I find it hard these days as a Catholic, though. We have a Pope who is heavily invested in neo-Peronist economics, and very earthly matters, such as transnational taxes to “combat” “climate change”. The Church is… Read more »
The Progs now have the Catholic Church in their sights, as they have successfully broken the mainline Protestants. The evangelicals and black churches are tougher nuts to crack. The Catholics look like the weakest animal in the herd, so they will be hunted down. The Progs turned the 30% of Americans in the mainline Protestant denominations to 11% in 50 years or so. The 20% of the country that claims Catholicism as their faith looks like a fat hog to them. That 20% has been roughly steady for decades, despite the pervy priest thing. Under the Prog way of thinking,… Read more »
The Church should be run as a business, nothing immoral about that.
Any business that rejects 98% of the available customer base to cater to the 2% is destined to fail.
The Church has turned away Christians in droves in the name of political correctness.
The mainline hierarchies like to compare the gay thing with the slavery and civil rights movements. Emancipation and anti-racism were quite unpopular in quite a few places, yet church support for those movements turned out to be the right thing to do.
The difference, never talked about, is that emancipation and anti-racism have some strong scriptural support. The gay thing, er, “the bible was written a long time ago by old white guys that don’t have a clue”. Yeah, that’s it.
[On the road, so no access to the Discus account.] As a grad student many years ago, I took a course in Coptic at the Harvard Divinity School. I thought it hilarious when someone informed me that among the div students, those who had a traditional belief in God were so remarkable that there was a special term for them: the “God squad”. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why anybody who didn’t really believe in God would want to go to divinity school in the first place, much less how and why they should become the dominant… Read more »
Oh, turns out the computer does know the Discus account…
I had a buddy back when at Yale Div who said it was the same there. Jesus? Never heard of him. Now let me tell you about my dissertation on lesbian intersectional performativity in Navajo rain dances at the Council of Trent.
The Novus Ordo (post Vatican II Catholic Church) is not much better.
“The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda.”
True. And they will continue to fail until they come to understand that in order to serve God and His church, they must fight the radical agenda, and declare anathema on those who attempt to introduce it in place of faith.
Perfectly timed for me, Z-Man. Our church’s pastor just announced her desire to officiate a gay wedding, a first for us, though she is hosting a congregational meeting to secure our approval. Her argument boils down to, “God made them the way they are, and he loves them, how can we not?” As for scripture holding homosexuality as sinful, why it was written by white men of privilege–God’s arm didn’t descend from Heaven, pen in hand.
So I guess the Ten Commandments are bunk too–after all, who’s seen the Moses-Cam footage proving Divine creation of the tablets?
The problem is, your church’s pastor is a “her.” You are in the wrong church, and if you are sane, should never return. Women should never be pastors, period.
Get the hell out of that church and tell the bitch why you are going.
There are several new denominations of traditional Christians that have recently left the traditional mainstream Protestant churches. There are groups of Presbyterians that have left the Presbyterian Church (USA), and a couple of Lutheran breakaways from the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I myself am a member of an Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) parish. The ACNA was formed a few years ago by several groups of former conservative Episcopalians that had left that church at various times. Before ACNA was formed, my parish, when we left the Episcopal Church in 2005, placed itself jurisdictionally under the… Read more »
I attend an Anglican Church which is part of ‘the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion), using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s small, but not tiny, and growing. I’m in my 50s, from California. Attending church was never a part of my childhood as my parents were atheists and my neighborhoods were devoid of church-going people. As a curious “seeker” in my twenties, I attended an Episcopal church, which I later joined, and after a years of listless boredom and putting up with increasing weirdnesses, I found this Anglican church. Legions of… Read more »
Great comment krbu, very insightful. I think many people are like your father in their atheism; I know I was at a younger age. He may have looked at the world and saw a great machine in perpetual motion (the beauty of the physical laws of kinematics) and chose to believe in that instead of the faith of his fathers. We are all believers in something. In his love our creator has given us a choice of what we are to believe. He knocks at the door that only we can open. Some never do. Some do and then reject… Read more »
Princeton was the first seminary founded in the Americas, I think. Jonathan Edwards was the first president. Lions of the Presbyterian faith such as the Hodges, BB Warfield and Geerhardus Vos. After Warfield died, the seminary followed the denomination off the deep-end. All of these mainline denominations have conservative offshoots but most are much, much smaller. The Presbyterian CHurch was the largest mainline denomination 100 years ago with millions of members. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has 50,000 and the PCA has 300,000. The Missouri Synod Lutheran church is small. So is the Reformed Episcopal church which started in the late… Read more »
PRCD, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod dates back to the mid-19th century and is the 2nd largest Lutheran denomination in the USA. The Reformed Episcopal Church , interestingly enough, was one of the groups I referred to in my post above that joined in starting the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) a few years ago.
I’m getting fairly fed up with our local Presbyterian Church since our old traditional Pastor retired. The feel-good, pop-culture nonsense isn’t what I go there for.
Since I’m also fed up with the state of New Jersey, I can’t be bothered to go looking for a real church since I plan to leave this place within a couple of year.s
Dear Presbyterians,
You’re next. Idiots.
That train left the station years ago. They just don’t know it yet.
I have never been associated with any Protestant Church but was raised a Catholic by father who I remember attended daily mass from when I was a child to his first stroke in his late 80s and a mother who always said a daily rosary if not always attending daily mass. Personally I am a lapsed Catholic but not anti-Catholic. Yes I was a Torch boy, a Choir boy and an Altar boy. And, I had no experience with any homosexual priests as a child or adolescent. I was educated in primary school by generally crazy nuns and in high… Read more »
The Society of Pius X:
http://sspx.org/en
The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita http://www.brizek.com/endtimes/altavend.htm
Dan; I don’t know about the Masons subverting the Roman Catholic church for the simple reason that I am not one, but I have seen homosexuals in action subverting the Episcopal Church. As I related some time ago on another thread, back in the early mid-’80’s I went to the Bar Mitzvah of one of my wife’s colleague’s son. His mom, her male colleague’s wife worked for the Episcopal hierarchy, despite being Jewish. She brought two of her own work colleagues. They were both pretty openly gay. Now, the heirarchy’s jobs paid poorly and the Episcopal Church had yet to… Read more »
I don’t know if the gang here is all familiar w/ The Daily Shoah podcast, (why aren’t you? It’s great), but they were discussing a recent article by some famous faggot, whose name I’ve forgotten, who has written & spoken in gritty detail about his time as a practicing homosexual, his horrendous health issues, etc., culminating into finding religion. My understanding is, that he had experienced quite a bit of disillusionment when his fellow priests were continuous trying to make ass buggering assignations, w/him. In any event, I found it to be a very interesting, (and sad), commentary about our… Read more »
Feeling like Sunday mornings were just another volunteer committee meeting my husband and I had to go to in the mid80s, we left our very large and posh Episcopal Church in a handsome suburb and began attending an Anglo-Catholic inner city church that had escaped the clutches of the local diocese with its church building, but not much else. Nice-enough pastor, kind of scared of his own shadow. Burnt-out neighborhood. About a dozen families, from 30 miles away, some of us, a handful of children including ours who were then grade schoolers, and a largish group of arty gay men,… Read more »
Left the Episcopal Church for much the same reasons as you listed, plus they denied us the use of the church for his funeral. I believe they were having a little in-house war over the new (female) radical minister. Too busy. We had a few good years with the Congregational Church, but the advancing influence of their incorporation with the UCC and a new bleeding heart, liberal minister ended that. The last straw there was the replacement of the “Pilgrims Hymnal” with the “New Century Hymnal”. (they even rewrote the words to “America the Beautiful”. I hope that Glen Filthie… Read more »
You just hit the nail on the head. They rewrite everything. Like dogs who just have to pee on every hydrant and lamppost. They can’t leave well enough alone and accept things as they are.
I don’t think is this particularly new: during the Albigensian Heresy of the 1200s, the Church was openly corrupt with many nunneries operating as brothels, priests extorting money, and fathering illegitimate children, and so on. So the reaction was to rather than reform, frame the physical world as of the devil, claim Jesus was only divine, not part human, and do things like voluntary self-castration, suicide, and opposing reproduction even among farm animals. This is an old, old feature of Western thought that invaded (mostly) Western Christianity but not so much Eastern Christianity — the physical world is flawed and… Read more »
Great article. Definitely my favorite of your most recent.
OT I think, anyone here may enjoy the new series “American Gods” which is about the old gods being displaced by new — modern deities — because that’s who the population thinks about now (the new gods).
> I’d like these guys to point to the passage in the Bible that covers men who like to play dress up or people so mentally unbalanced they believe their sex organs are imaginary. Sure, here you go: Deuteronomy 22:5 A woman shall not wear men’s clothing, neither shall a man put on women’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your G-d. However, Christianity has a big problem, which is that this is one of the many, many commandments in the Bible which pertains to Jews. Christians like to pretend that they are the… Read more »
It’s pretty clear that the fastest way for a religion to murder itself is to get soft on enforcing its rules. Religion is about intolerance. It draws bright lines between what is and what is not acceptable. That’s most of its appeal. People like rules.
Christianity is in need of a restoration movement.
The question is what its rules are and where they came from.
Christianity itself is largely Judaism with most of the rules thrown out the window for feels and marketability.
Hard to say “yeah, but we will never throw the rest of the rules out” and get it to stick in the long term.
It’s like knocking out some growth inhibitor genes-every successive mutation makes the next more likely.
If you’re going to restore, you might as well restore.
I thought Christianity was mostly Christ?
That is a very good question, Karl. You have no idea how big a can of worms it opens. Putting that aside for now, what Baruch seems to be saying is that since its beginnings, Christianity has been picking and choosing which of the Old Testament laws it wants to follow. In the last century or so, that has provided a beach head for progs to invade and destroy Christianity from within. It’s a very good point, actually. How do you enforce the Old Testament laws on homosexuality if you don’t enforce the dietary laws? By ignoring the dietary laws,… Read more »
The civil and ceremonial laws given to Israel have expired in Christ who fulfilled the law. The moral law, summarized in the Decalogue, was published at creation and, though fulfilled by Christ, remains in effect forever.
If Baruch is going to be such a stickler for the ceremonial and civil laws given to his people, why haven’t his people razed the Dome of the Rock, rebuilt the temple, re-instated the Levitical Priesthood, and resumed sacrifices? Seems he’s picking and choosing himself. Talmudic lawgic knows no bounds to its hypocrisy.
That’s the issue right there: “forget all those Bronze Age rituals, the important thing is, you’ve gotta be moral.” Well, what’s moral? It turns out “moral” means “loving”, loving means “nice”, and you’ve got to be “nice” to trannies, Muslims, etc. (never mind that the 10 Commandments include keeping Shabbat and the prohibition on graven images, which both went right out the window from the beginning of Christianity-I guess those have nothing to do with morality) As for why we haven’t rebuilt the Temple etc.-give it a bit of time, we’re working on it. El Baboso, it’s not the last… Read more »
You don’t know anything about Christian ethics which is why you’re making these ignorant statements. Actually read the New Testament before commenting like this. As a Jew, you’re in a glass house and shouldn’t be throwing stones. Even when you had a temple, Levites, a sacrificial system, and a king in the Davidic line (which God gave to you to restrain your waywardness after the period of the judges), you failed to keep the law. You accuse us of making graven images and working on the Sabbath, what about your worship of Baal and Molech and taking up the other… Read more »
The point of the original post was, the Christianity thing is not working right now, and it’s getting worse. I pointed out that the reasons it’s not working are inherent in its very makeup and origin. Your response is, “yeah, well, you Jews X, Y, Z”. First, this is a non sequitur. Even if we sacrifice babies to Moloch every day and twice on Saturday, that will not make Christianity work any better. Personally, I would like it if all Christians were good Christians, and so it brings me no joy to see Christianity failing, since its replacement is presently… Read more »
Baruch, you’re both right and you’re both wrong. Good points are made by you and PRCD. For example, he said, “The civil and ceremonial laws given to Israel have expired in Christ who fulfilled (OBEYED) the law…” The rest were “moral”—and remain. This is no doubt true, from a Christian perspective (that is in believing on Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God); but your point about defining “moral” is a valid one. It seems my brethren in Christ have very much confused God’s Law as to what it is, who it applied to, and for how long.. Most… Read more »
You’ve got Jacob and Isaac confused there.
We come from Jacob, largely through Judah and Benjamin, partly through Levi.
As for who the Progs are-was John Brown Jewish? Was Judah P. Benjamin Progressive? Come on-Progressivism is a typical Christian heresy.
Malachi 1:4 does not speak about the Temple but rather about Edom, which is traditionally associated with Rome and its heirs.
Obviously, anyone can look at the Bible and say, hey, I don’t believe that Bronze Age stuff. That’s totally within their rights (although they have a bit of a quandary explaining how that Bronze Age stuff spread throughout the whole world, while all the other Bronze Age stuff didn’t, and why parts of it are coming true before our eyes, as opposed to the prophecies of Mithras or whatever-but it could just be a string of coincidences.) On the other hand, one can believe in it, and see the return of the exiles of Judah to the Land of Israel,… Read more »
You are correct about Jacob and Isaac–I should have clarified. Modern Jews and Christians are both the seed of Abraham and Isaac, but nearly all the stock of ethnic Jewry today are demonstrably of Esau/Edom, not Jacob. As I said, the Pharisees of Jesus’ time denied they were of Israel, even claiming “we have never been in bondage!” Which Jesus did not refute, rather told them they “were of their father, the Devil”. Malachi 1:4 is speaking about the temple–and all of the “desolate places” of Jerusalem. God said, “they shall build, but I will throw down”. They have thus… Read more »
You assert that we are descended from Edom, without any support whatsoever. In our sources, Rome has been consistently identified with Edom: http://noahide-ancient-path.co.uk/index.php/christianity-2/esau-edom/2013/06/rome-edom-the-image-of-rome-in-judaism/ http://www.jewish-history.com/cresson/cresson25.html https://asknoah.org/faq/edom-magdiel-rome Malachi does not anywhere in this passage state that he is referring to the Temple or the Jews. He explicitly says Edom. The Talmud is very clear on innate human inequality between various peoples, genders, etc. It certainly takes a very dim view of sexual degeneracy. It believes very strongly in private property and its protection by laws. It believes procreation to be a great thing, and marriage to be required. All of these are… Read more »
There is a bright line between accepting all people as God’s children, and celebrating the deviance and illness that is contrary to the word of God (and a properly functioning culture). Once the mainlines decided to celebrate the deviants and shame those who would notice, the game was over for them. The rest of it, over the last few decades, is just a playing out of the string.
You’re completely wrong about this.
…and once they’re fully converged, the Anglicans will make attendance and tithing mandatory for all, just like the “good old days.”
TRX, A long time ago I bought a house from someone who had apparently been a member of the Episcopal Church. Who cares, but for at least ten years I was getting the house rag from what was plainly a seriously converged sjw anti-church. I occasionally flipped through it before tossing it into the trash. Nothing in that pathetic publication would surprise anyone reading this thread- but near the end I was amused to see that they had instituted mandatory diversity training for church deacons, costing $200 each, if I recall. Apparently it wasn’t enough coin, because soon after that… Read more »
[…] I attend an Anglican Church which is part of ‘the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion), using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s small, but not tiny, and growing. […]
[…] Talking to my friend, he tells me that there are elements within the Episcopal Church that know what must be done to save the church. The trouble is they are outgunned and out maneuvered by the radicals. That’s the thing. The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda. The conservatives are constantly outmaneuvered because they are not playing the political games. They end up getting marginalized, despite having numbers. […]
The West is done, the Marxists won.
Question: If SJWs use struggle sessions and purity tests to boil off non-SJWs, then should we assume that non-SJWs must also adopt some sort of signalling regime which will boil off SJWs? If SJWs invade and then force the organization to require signal ping-backs, such as affirming transgender as a sacrament, then aren’t non-SJWs also required to force the organization to require signal ping-backs which dis-affirm SJWs? I’m not sure if this can be done. The Left is a cult, a religion, which is always via positiva, meaning that it has positive aspirations around ‘equality’. They have a positive vision… Read more »
I’ve heard for years that the Catholic Priesthood was infiltrated in much the same way by homosexuals, and possibly pedophiles.
The true Church may have to go form it’s own Church.
My wife worked part time for the Episcopal church in Conyers Ga. They were assigned a pastor from California after the old one left, and he has destroyed what was left of it in less than two years. The final straw was 9/11 when he brought in a guest speaker. It was a Muslim who propogandized for his faith in place of a sermon. Possibly the only growing episcopal church in the state of Georgia is in the next town to the east. It’s gained 75% of the Conyers congregation since entirely due to it’s more conservative pastor. They were… Read more »
[…] The Church of Modern Lunacy […]
[…] is not a libertarian issue, it’s a twisting. Which brings me to the Z Man. This blogger by no stretch can be called religious and yet out he comes with the recent […]
There are several reasons why Christian church attendance in the US is on the decline. But the number one is the failure for parents to practice what they believe in, and to teach their children to live the Gospel principles in their lives. You cannot just show up at Church once a week, like a spiritual tune up, and then just go the rest of the week living like the world. Daily prayer, scripture reading, significant donations to the Church and poor, and giving oneself to the service to others makes one character become more like Christ. A religion that… Read more »
How can the average Muslim know any of his own theology if he is forbidden to own a Koran in any language other than Arabic? You started out well and then drove your car through the guard rail and over the cliff.
“How can the average Muslim know any of his own theology if he is forbidden to own a Koran in any language other than Arabic? ”
My point is, look at how Islam, promotes their members to follow the traditions of their faith. You must admit they seem to have a stronger commitment and community unity than most Churches in the West do. Too many Protestant churches have dropped their core teaching of repentance and striving within to become a better disciple of Christ, and instead focus on political social issues and stress self-righteous virtue signaling.
There’s certainly some truth to this, Ron, but Christians have been failing to fully live up to the tenets of their Faith for over 2000 years, and it hasn’t destroyed the Church. Something new is at work. The churches used to encourage people to live the Gospels, now, as we see, it’s the reverse. People are by definition weak and fallible, that’s one reason that they need the support of a great institution like the Church. They are not getting it, to put it mildly. A lot of what you are describing is a symptom, not a cause IMHO.
In the past, people needed to conjure up all of the support they could find from family, friends, community, and church to survive and prosper. I mean this in the economic, social, and spiritual sense. It all went together, and those who could not socialize to the point where they had all these things going for them could easily end up ostracized from the community and starve, physically and mentally. These days, the general prosperity and the safety nets of government programs and diktats, along with EBT cards, has rendered moot all of the old necessities for survival. The old… Read more »
For me Christianity is about a relationship, not a religion. There are lots of “religious” people of all faiths, but what’s important is a relationship with Jesus Christ. I think too many depend on an institution, rather than working on improving a relationship. It’s like people who are in love with the idea of being married, because the like the concept and the sense of security. But they put very little effort into the actual relationship and then wonder why it failed. At no time does the Bible talk about believing in a church, it’s all about a personal relationship,… Read more »
I’m not Catholic, but I highly recommend likemotherlikedaughter.org. She addresses exactly what you talk about here. There is some great wisdom on raising children and living your faith.