Love one another...

[scheherazade_79]

... but make sure you love some a lot more than others.

Believe it or not, I come from quite a religious family. However, I've had very little patience with the Church for as long as I can remember.

I remember being in school and wondering why the Pope was going around telling people not to use condoms, when his Catholic followers in Africa were all dying from either Aids, or the by-products of overpopulation - famine and wars.

I don't understand how an institution can preach universal love, forgiveness and tolerance, then start speaking out against homosexuality and almost demonising a segment of society. Isn't this how it started with the Jews in Nazi Germany?

I also don't understand how people can adopt a belief because the Bible tells them so, but yet ignore all the written instructions around that particular belief. For example, just a couple of verse before the bit when it says that man must not sleep with man, it actually says that every time a woman gets her period she should go outside and kill two doves. How many Christians actually do that? Sometimes it feels like people and pick and choose what they want to believe, and if what's written down has the faintest hint of intolerance, then all the better.

Today I saw this headline on the BBC news site:

Critics are warning that a vote towards allowing women bishops threatens the Church of England's existence. ​

I'm sorry, folks, but what kind of institution crumbles as soon as there's any suggestion of equality? It seems nuts. Also, what would happen if women suddenly stopped going to church altogether? There'd be no flowers, no organ-playing, no cleaning, no Sunday schools... How can they stay an institution that values them so little?

Just had to get that off my chest.

From the girl who refused to get confirmed, because she didn't want to be part of a misogynistic organisation - and now that refusal seems the most sensible move of her life.

 

[English Lady]

I'm a Christian.

I HATE religion.

Religion is alot of what you've just said, silly rules, self made regulations and it's manmade. it picks and chooses and ignores things that it doesn't like. Actually i think it's what happens when folks get together and start making generalised rules for everyone. it's what happens when preachers, bishops,vicars etc etc start to believe they're one up from your bog standard believer.


Corruption creeps in because it's a man made thing and if one thing we're good at, it's buggering stuff up.

It makes my skin crawl reading such silly things. Jesus must be pissed off whenever he sees the same headlines. Jesus was all for women, all against the religious hoo haa of the time and very much about love. Love and forgiveness.

Words are open to interpretation and we'll twist words till we get the definition we want, we'll go at it till it looks like our cause of action is God Decreed when really it isn't.

Alot of this is why I've not found a church i'm comfortable at. I don't know who'd take me. I write porn. I cannot see that being acceptable in many places and that makes me angry. Because if I can't be accepted for who I am at a church, where can I?

I worship and pray on my own time. I just can't do religion. it sucks.

 

[Belegon]

Everytime I think I have reached a point where I can no longer be surprised by the selectiveness of human morality or memory...I get surprised again. Certainly that is true on an organizational level...

 

[oggbashan]

Losers complain

The Church of England agreed by a substantial majority to start the process to make Women Bishops a reality. It will still take about five years before a woman can be a Bishop.

The opponents effectively said that they will pick up their toys and leave.

Churches in the US, in Australia and New Zealand that are linked to the Church of England already have Women Bishops.

This is a major shift by the Church of England and a severe blow to the traditional faction. That is why they are crying 'foul'.

This debate has been going on for about thirty years. My father was a lay delegate to the Synod many years ago. I am pleased that he voted for women ministers. I think his wife and sisters had considerable influence in his decision to vote that way. He knew and appreciated women who were as competent or even more competent than he was. He couldn't see why women should be regarded as less competent in the Church of England.

Og

 

[erise]

Today I saw this headline on the BBC news site:

Critics are warning that a vote towards allowing women bishops threatens the Church of England's existence. ​

Existance? Yeah right. It's exitance in it's current status quo form maybe, but faith is stronger than stale conventions. I always find it highly amusing to see the outcry when a stale religious institutuion is subjected to the winds of change. If they are so afraid that their dear church will crumble and fall with the introduction of modern ideas, doesn't that mean that they lack faith in it's strength?

 

[scheherazade_79]

EL, I admire you for seeing the wider picture and not losing any of yourself through your faith. Sometimes it's good to be reminded that not all Christians are homophobes or misogynists. As for you, though, you're definitely one in a million!

Belegon, I think it's good that you can still be surprised, otherwise you'd end up spending your life being cynical. So don't change.

Ogg, again it's nice to see that not everyone who's part of the church is like that. Why is it, though, that the most narrow-minded people have the loudest voices? I remember asking a distant relatively, who was vehemently opposed to female ordination, what he had against women being vicars. The only thing he could come up with was that if they fell pregnant, their stomachs would be hanging over the pulpit like a cask. It took me a while to work out what was wrong with this, then one day it suddenly dawned on me - pregnancy is evidence of sex...

Erise, good point. I never thought of it from that angle, lol!


I've stopped being annoyed, folks - I've just been given the day off work tomorrow!