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HEY GAIL posted:never get a tattoo in a language you don't know unless you doublecheck it or triplecheck it. Is this aimed at me? 'Cause I can read it, and the Chinese calligrapher and I discussed it so I knew what I was doing.
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Mar 8, 2017 10:59
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Thirteen Orphans posted:Is this aimed at me? 'Cause I can read it, and the Chinese calligrapher and I discussed it so I knew what I was doing. i triplechecked my Latin tattoo and i also had my ex look at it, i was so paranoid edit: i did not mean to insult your tattoo. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 11:00
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HEY GAIL posted:nope, it is just a christianity thread PSA. Oh gotcha, no worries.
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Mar 8, 2017 11:06
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Goobish posted:I'm working on reading through the thread so I apologize if this sort of basic question has already been addressed, but since we are on the topic of lgbtq in the church I figured I'd go ahead and ask. well hello brother, or should i say "hello opportunity to justify my masters degree." justin tanis' "transgendered" is probably your best bet. it's the best written book on trans theology, albeit both out of print and just... not great, honestly. it's an accessible text for people new to christianity and has some okay breakdowns of various christian sects. as for the gay part, i'm gonna suggest robert shore-goss' book "jesus acted up: a gay and lesbian manifesto" and susannah cornwall's "issues in queer theology." the former is a gay and lesbian theology and the latter is a good summary of various lgbt theologians and their theologies, though the former is actually more accessible than the latter i also just remembered there's a collection of essays on trans theology by the same book series (controversies in contextual theology) called trans/formations but the quality of the articles is really hit or miss don't read mollenkott. she thinks because she's a butch lesbian she's transgender. she also has really lovely opinions about trans women because we're more traditionally feminine than her, and someone who doesn't understand the institutional reasons for that is a lovely scholar of trans issues. also don't read "crossing over: a transgender liberation theology." it's poorly written, poorly argued, and is something an undergrad would write. i could write a better book, contrary to what paul knitter might think
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Mar 8, 2017 14:41
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also even though trans bodies trans selves has a "chapter" on religion it's poorly researched and poorly summarized. you're better off looking at hrc's website than reading that book, and even then it fails to account for the diversity within buddhism and hinduism! why will no one pay me for this
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Mar 8, 2017 14:45
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Senju Kannon posted:why will no one pay me for this I think they give you a t-shirt saying that, along with your masters degree.
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Mar 8, 2017 16:34
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actually it costs forty dollars
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Mar 8, 2017 16:38
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i'm also somewhat uncomfortable with the title of the book i recommended to goobish, because saying it's good to be "tolerant" opens you up to the riposte of "well why don't you tolerate my intolerance, huh?" and "so much for the tolerant left" once you start kicking nazi rear end. but once again, it was the freaking 70s and a lot of people made bad decisions then. the dude's hair in his author portrait is similarly of its time
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Mar 9, 2017 00:15
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i didn't click the link until now cause i was on mobile when i posted earlier but i gotta say i have never read john boswell. read about him, sure, but never actually sat down to read him in my defense, even though i did lgbt theology i did it from a systematic perspective and not historical so boswell wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse but even i'm not fully convinced of that
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Mar 9, 2017 00:22
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Thirteen Orphans posted:This has been on my mind lately, so I thought I'd share. I've been struggling with the faith a lot. If you asked my sister she'd probably tell you I seem OK: I frequent the sacraments, she knows I do daily prayer, hell about a year ago I commissioned a master Chinese calligrapher to do my modified Jesus Prayer for a rib tattoo and it is perfect (I literally cried when I took off the bandage.).*I could lose my religion and, like my alchemical tattoo, would still think it's exactly what my body needed. I know how you feel. I've felt the same way for about a year now. God is leading me to a better place I feel, and I pray he leads you there too
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Mar 9, 2017 00:28
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Senju Kannon posted:i didn't click the link until now cause i was on mobile when i posted earlier but i gotta say i have never read john boswell. read about him, sure, but never actually sat down to read him poo poo, even foucault is a terrible historian, which takes me out of the thread of things whenever i read him
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Mar 9, 2017 01:05
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i prefer dame judy butler anyway
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Mar 9, 2017 01:11
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judy is fun. giorgio agamben owns if you wanna combine theology, philology, and political theorizing into a massive (and massively pessimistic) left-wing sandwich
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Mar 9, 2017 01:22
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Senju Kannon posted:i didn't click the link until now cause i was on mobile when i posted earlier but i gotta say i have never read john boswell. read about him, sure, but never actually sat down to read him Can you elaborate on "LGBT Theology?" That sounds fascinating.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:24
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Bel_Canto posted:judy is fun. giorgio agamben owns if you wanna combine theology, philology, and political theorizing into a massive (and massively pessimistic) left-wing sandwich I'm not sure about that one. Agamben is interesting for, but he has the most wretchedly irritating prose style of anyone worth reading. I feel like I want to slap him three times for every decent point he makes.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:35
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Bel_Canto posted:judy is fun. giorgio agamben owns if you wanna combine theology, philology, and political theorizing into a massive (and massively pessimistic) left-wing sandwich
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Mar 9, 2017 01:56
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I wondered why you left Benjamin off that list, but then I realized that you're right. His pretentions at being Walter Benjamin redivivus are probably easier to stomach that way.
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Mar 9, 2017 02:15
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Numerical Anxiety posted:I wondered why you left Benjamin off that list, but then I realized that you're right. His pretentions at being Walter Benjamin redivivus are probably easier to stomach that way. benjamin is fully loving sick though
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Mar 9, 2017 02:16
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NikkolasKing posted:Can you elaborate on "LGBT Theology?" That sounds fascinating. another chance to poorly justify my choice of graduate degree! well i mean it's what it says on the tin; theology written by and about lgbt people. mostly it's been focused on gay and lesbian issues, people like elizabeth stuart, patrick cheng, and robert shore-goss are pretty major names in the american scene that have occasionally paid lip service to trans issues but trust me; it's not great. and as for trans theologians, i can't really think of any that i would like.. consider to be on the same level as those guys. like maybe it's a bit arrogant to think "i coulda been a contender" but there's definitely room for a trans theologian to do actual, good theologizing. all we have now is just a few scattered "trans 101 for christians" or "christianity for trans people" books, which aren't bad but are still far behind the nascent field of trans theory, which for those in the know can tell you that's not good. some of the essential themes are around textual interpretations and the bible (a la dale martin and probably other philologists and classicists), reconciling with a church community that actively fights against lgbt people's inclusion (though sometimes the argument is more  ), working towards sexual and political liberation, and essentially trying to take queer theory's ideas and applying them to christian thought. honestly if you'd caught me even 18 months ago i could probably have gone into more detail, but the combination of leaving christianity and graduating have kinda left me a bit lukewarm on a field that is, quite frankly, a constant disappointment. not because it's bad, some of the things being written about are very good (though i am eternally grateful that i do not have to read dale martin write about jesus' penis every again) it's just disappointing that this theology never seems to enter the mainstream. even when churches are more open and affirming, they don't really follow from the work set out by these theologians and instead go about it from a more secular position, which okay, fine, but still feels bad!anyway robert shore-goss' work, "jesus acted up" is a manifesto about what christianity means for gay men, especially in light of the aids crisis and the church's inaction (and occasional sabotaging) in the face of it. it's a liberation theology, and so if you've ever read any liberation theology you can guess the themes but goss specifically ties jesus' teaching about the kingdom of god (his basileia teachings as goss calls them, and apologies in advance if whatever you use to read posts can't make heads or tails of my mangled attempt at remembering the greek word goss used) and how it means good news for the oppressed. i think i'm rambling at this point. there's just a lot of people saying pretty much the same basic thing but in different contexts and with different resutls. elizabeth stuart is all into baptismal erasure, saying that by virtue of baptism we become one in christ and our differences are ultimately erased but that's a really, really biased memory cause i freakin hate that idea lmao. as though baptism can ultimately erase the way our gender and race impacts us throughout our lives! i have no idea why she kept insisting on erasing difference, and the fact that the time she decided to write about trans people she wrote about how we especially need to keep in mind the transient nature of gender was laughable. still better than patrick cheng and his essay on guan yin as a metaphor for the queer jesus, where he devoted next to no time talking about guan yin LITERALLY BEING A MAN AND A WOMAN depending on the circumstances and considered transvestites to be trans. ugh cis theologians. anyway i guess my elaboration is "there's a lot of different things being done by different people that has the same basic message but god drat if they don't gently caress it up in some way or another and how come none of them are trans? how come every book on trans theology is out of print except for the ones written by the woman who seems to think she's trans cause she's butch and thinks trans women are bad because we're too feminine?"
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Mar 9, 2017 02:26
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HEY GAIL posted:benjamin is fully loving sick though  , also i went to a mall once while on weed" and agamben's point is "everything, absolutely everything on earth, = auschwitz" so they don't really hang together in my mind even though you are right, they're related
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Mar 9, 2017 07:05
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Senju Kannon posted:another chance to poorly justify my choice of graduate degree! All good things with time I suppose. The smart people I watch and listen to who actually went to college say there's been a tremendous leap forward in LGBT scholarship in the last decade or two. Maybe we'll see a flood of trans theology stuff in the near future? Although I have a friend who's far more active in the LGBT community than I am and she says there are some people in the LGBT community who feel transpeople shouldn't be included in that list. Not because they're against transsexuals but because transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual orientation, unlike everyone else in that list. I guess it's less that they don't want transpeople included and more that they disagree with the label and terminology. But I guess that's neither here nor there. Still, the whole idea of coming at Christianity from a gay perspective sounds interesting, although I have to admit you didn't exactly sell me on any of the named scholars you listed. lol And while this is the Christianity thread, I wonder if there is similar work being done on other faiths?
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Mar 9, 2017 07:29
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NikkolasKing posted:Although I have a friend who's far more active in the LGBT community than I am and she says there are some people in the LGBT community who feel transpeople shouldn't be included in that list. Not because they're against transsexuals but because transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual orientation, unlike everyone else in that list. I guess it's less that they don't want transpeople included and more that they disagree with the label and terminology. But I guess that's neither here nor there. I've read that the T is in LGBT for historical reasons. Because trans people have been in the gay scene ever since such a thing existed, and have been important in the gay rights movement. Trans women were involved in the Christopher Street riots for example. So I guess either perspective makes sense. There is some modern work on eastern / pagan religions that back-projects modern attitudes and goes full noble savage on e.g. traditional Hinduism, claiming them as a pro-trans force because they have a "third gender". I'd be careful with that sort of thing because many other cultures still have very different ideas about sexuality and gender than we do in the modern west. So I'd want to read about those things from people inside that culture if anything. There's also the fact that many non-Abrahamic religions care way less about giving you instructions for your personal everyday life. In imperial China, Buddhism and Confucianism certainly frown upon sexual immorality, but it's not as central, and concrete instructions are only found in to-do lists alongside things like "don't let your wife walk into the ancestral shrine in front of you" and "buy turtles and release them". And most of Daoism only cares about your sexuality insofar as it affects your energetic balance. There's actually some great story collections about "immoral monks and nuns" which were best-sellers in their time. I've read some and they're just weird porn. I wonder if such a thing existed in 1500s Europe to, or whether we're just getting around to that now, post secularization.
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Mar 9, 2017 07:57
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NikkolasKing posted:Although I have a friend who's far more active in the LGBT community than I am and she says there are some people in the LGBT community who feel transpeople shouldn't be included in that list. Not because they're against transsexuals but because transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual orientation, unlike everyone else in that list. I guess it's less that they don't want transpeople included and more that they disagree with the label and terminology. But I guess that's neither here nor there. those people are loving idiots whose sense of history goes about as far back as the last lady gaga album. like seriously that is such contemptibly bad history that i wonder how they remember what they had for breakfast this morning. the gay and trans communities have been heavily intertwined for most of our modern history, and how very convenient that gay marriage passes and suddenly more of the gays want to jettison the trans community. what's been canonized as the start of the modern gay rights movement started with trans women throwing bricks at cops. the gay community's success on a couple of not-actually-that-great issues (marriage and the military) doesn't suddenly absolve us of our duty to keep up the fight until all our sisters and brothers are free. dissociating our struggle from theirs is rich white gay men's way of clearing trans people from their oh-so-delicate consciences, because it turns out that managing hedge funds while sitting on the board of the Human Rights Campaign might actually be morally inexcusable. sorry for the rant, but i have very strong feelings about this. we have a duty to see this struggle through to the end. none of us is free until we all are
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Mar 9, 2017 08:00
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pidan posted:There's actually some great story collections about "immoral monks and nuns" which were best-sellers in their time. I've read some and they're just weird porn. I wonder if such a thing existed in 1500s Europe to, or whether we're just getting around to that now, post secularization. 1300s Europe. More people should read The Decameron.
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Mar 9, 2017 08:04
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HEY GAIL posted:i'm also somewhat uncomfortable with the title of the book i recommended to goobish, because saying it's good to be "tolerant" opens you up to the riposte of "well why don't you tolerate my intolerance, huh?" and "so much for the tolerant left" once you start kicking nazi rear end. Because, really, a great deal of ideologies are used to hurt or injure people or deny the personhood of others. Facism is one of them.
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Mar 9, 2017 08:49
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pidan posted:I've read that the T is in LGBT for historical reasons. Because trans people have been in the gay scene ever since such a thing existed, and have been important in the gay rights movement. Trans women were involved in the Christopher Street riots for example. I have found the history of homosexual monks in Buddhist monasteries pretty interesting, honestly. I'm currently learning more about actual Buddhist thought and philosophy but I am a fan of Japanese history in general and I came across a book about the aforementioned gay monks and indeed, gay behavior in Japanese history. Then gain, as you noted, we have to be careful of "noble savages." The Japanese didn't think of it as being "homosexual" or different. I have no idea if that's better, worse or just different. I just find it interesting. Bel_Canto posted:those people are loving idiots whose sense of history goes about as far back as the last lady gaga album. like seriously that is such contemptibly bad history that i wonder how they remember what they had for breakfast this morning. the gay and trans communities have been heavily intertwined for most of our modern history, and how very convenient that gay marriage passes and suddenly more of the gays want to jettison the trans community. what's been canonized as the start of the modern gay rights movement started with trans women throwing bricks at cops. the gay community's success on a couple of not-actually-that-great issues (marriage and the military) doesn't suddenly absolve us of our duty to keep up the fight until all our sisters and brothers are free. dissociating our struggle from theirs is rich white gay men's way of clearing trans people from their oh-so-delicate consciences, because it turns out that managing hedge funds while sitting on the board of the Human Rights Campaign might actually be morally inexcusable. It's no problem. I understand where you're coming from very well. It's kind of perplexing that even progressive movements have backwards thinking, like feminists who hate transwomen. Ugh.
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Mar 9, 2017 09:01
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pidan posted:many other cultures still have very different ideas about sexuality and gender than we do in the modern west. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sex-Gender-Greeks-Freud/dp/0674543556 if you picked 17th century europe up whole and plopped it down somewhere next to us, their people who are between men and women / people who turned from women into men (i am unaware of 17th century people who turned from men into women) would probably end up being somewhere near where we put "two-spirits", mentally: "this is like our trans people, but based on an utterly different understanding of what's going on"
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Mar 9, 2017 09:32
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Josef bugman posted:Because, really, a great deal of ideologies are used to hurt or injure people or deny the personhood of others. Facism is one of them.
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Mar 9, 2017 09:32
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NikkolasKing posted:All good things with time I suppose. The smart people I watch and listen to who actually went to college say there's been a tremendous leap forward in LGBT scholarship in the last decade or two. Maybe we'll see a flood of trans theology stuff in the near future? quote:Although I have a friend who's far more active in the LGBT community than I am and she says there are some people in the LGBT community who feel transpeople shouldn't be included in that list. Not because they're against transsexuals but because transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual orientation, unlike everyone else in that list. I guess it's less that they don't want transpeople included and more that they disagree with the label and terminology. But I guess that's neither here nor there. quote:Still, the whole idea of coming at Christianity from a gay perspective sounds interesting, although I have to admit you didn't exactly sell me on any of the named scholars you listed. lol And while this is the Christianity thread, I wonder if there is similar work being done on other faiths? also yes but it's different by nature of other religions having a different scholastic tradition
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Mar 9, 2017 13:58
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pidan posted:"buy turtles and release them". This is pretty awful as practiced nowadays because it's mostly businessmen buying cheap river turtles and releasing them into the sea to die painful deaths of salt poisoning.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:01
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NikkolasKing posted:It's no problem. I understand where you're coming from very well. It's kind of perplexing that even progressive movements have backwards thinking, like feminists who hate transwomen. Ugh. terfs are about as progressive as nazis. it's what happens when your movement allies with the religious right all the time and promote islamophobia
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Mar 9, 2017 14:01
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my dad posted:1300s Europe. More people should read The Decameron. Ysengrimus is the oldest polemic against immoral monks that I can think of, which was mid 12th century. Coincidentally it also contains the first example of furry cuckold porn in Latin so there's that. e: also last Sunday was the Rite of Election and they played ...this... when the catechumens were going up to meet the bishop. Bel_Canto can you please come assassinate the diocesan music director. The Phlegmatist fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 20:15
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The Phlegmatist posted:Ysengrimus is the oldest polemic against immoral monks that I can think of, which was mid 12th century. Coincidentally it also contains the first example of furry cuckold porn in Latin so there's that. You can't say that and not elaborate 
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Mar 9, 2017 23:15
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The Phlegmatist posted:Ysengrimus is the oldest polemic against immoral monks that I can think of, which was mid 12th century. Coincidentally it also contains the first example of furry cuckold porn in Latin so there's that. How can that be true when there are all those Roman stories about horny centaurs and satyrs and stuff.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:23
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are centaurs furries, most controversial forum thread in existence locked after 12,314 pages of debate
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Mar 9, 2017 23:32
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Tias posted:You can't say that and not elaborate Think REALLY hard what you just said. 
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Mar 10, 2017 00:23
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I have a question for socially/politically aware Christian goons. We've all herd about falling church attendance rates or how fewer people say they're religious in surveys. Some of the Christians I know have argued how to combat this, just like the big wigs are apparently trying to figure this out, too. But my main point and query is, some of the Christian posters I read say that conservative churches maintain attendance and that, quite t o the contrary of its intent, a church becoming more liberal and inclusive results in members leaving it. I think the example of the Anglican Church was used once. I think it's a fascinating topic, but I have no idea if it's true. Does anyone here know about this? There was some speculation on why this might be, such as liberalizing or modernizing a church removes all the mystique. It becomes a place just like any other and thus defeats the whole point of church. Meanwhile, a church that remains firm in tradition with unwavering rules will appeal a lot more to certain folks.
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Mar 10, 2017 10:56
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It's true (to a certain extent), it becomes apparent for example in the huge success of evangelical churches all over the world who offer strict rules that have to be followed, a simplistic worldview that's easy to get into and also promise huge rewards for belonging to them ("everybody else will absolutely burn in hell", and with many there's also an element of "if you join us God will reward you with earthly goods, promise!). I'm pretty sure that the notion in the mainstream churches of liberalism and ecumenism played a large role in this - as you said, when it apparently doesn't matter if I attend church or not, then why should I? This is especially large a problem for the mainline Protestant churches who have experienced membership loss on an unknown scale during the last couple of decades . The "demystification" of faith was already present in them from the early days on, and the principle of individual worship already led to many people turning away from participating in services or other forms of collective and organised worship a long time ago. And when social pressure to "belong" started to wane too, you end up with the rapid decrease in membership numbers for the Anglican Church or the Lutheran Churches in Germany. Nowadays more people attend Catholic Mass every week in the UK than there are people going to an Anglican service, and the Catholic diocese in Germany with the lowest weekly church attendance still has a significantly higher percentage of churchgoers than the Lutheran church with the highest one. I don't know the membership statistics in the US by heart, but I know that the experienced some serious losses during the last century or so too. When you're looking at the Catholic Church itself, there is a similar pattern: liberal congregations shrink and vanish, conservative ones grow. In part this is explained by there being many more liberal parishes (at least over here in Germany) than especially conservative ones, and so the number of people attending Mass in the latter would naturally have to be higher. But I still think that there is a strong correlation between "actively participates in prayer and Mass and maybe even consideres entering the clergy" and "going to a congregation that actively promotes the sacred as separated and different from the mundane and has strict rules". Many monasteries in Germany and Austria are dying, whereas the (very conservative) monastery of Heiligenkreuz near Vienna has more monks right now than they had during the last three hundred years! This article shows that the more conservatice a diocese or a monastery is, the more seminarians and novices it can prepare for, and explains this difference in vocation in the redefinition of the role of the priest during the Second Vatican Council: before it, priests and indeed the clergy altogether were seen as "especially holy" human beings who deserved respect and high social status by virtue of their ordination alone. The Council mostly got rid of this sort of thinking, but didn't relax the high cost of entering the clergy (namely celibacy and obedience) either. So why would anyone now still get ordained or professed , when going by official church teaching you might as well remain a layperson and become happily married? The article was written in 2000, but this (somewhat polemical) article shows that this phenomenon is still going on. Outside of vocations, the same pattern is recognisable: when the only reason you're still going to church is the social aspect, than there are a thousand other venues to meet and socialise with other people that don't require sitting in a church at Sunday morning and listen to an elderly priest drone on during an especially boring sermon. When, on the other hand, going to church gives you the feeling partake in something special and sacred that nourishes you spiritually, than there are few other viable alternatives to that. The liturgy reflecting that 'sacredness' is an important part in that, I think, and something that suffered greatly during the aesthetic crassness of the 1950s-1990s. On the other hand, reading that might lead you to think that the Second Vatican Council (for Catholics) and the social upheavals of the 1960s (for everybody else) would be solely to blame for this. That's of course not true; Catholics were experiencing a serious decline in priestly vocations during the very late 18th and early 19th century as well, when anti-clericalism and secularism were running high during the aftermath of the French revolution (especially when the contrast to the enormous number of priests during the Baroque only a short while before was so stark), and for the Protestants Eduard von Hartmann already described the inherent problems of liberal Protestantism as early as 1874. The Catholic view of the sacrament of ordination as it was redefined by the Second Vatican Council was heavily influenced by the reactionary antimodernism of the Church during the 19th century and has relatively little in common with what was before, too. So in short: I think it's highly likely that there is a certain correlation between a decline in church attendance/vocations and the respective congregation being 'liberal' (be it liturgical or doctrinal or, as it almost always is the case, both), but it's not like the 1960s flipped a switch going from "yooge, beautiful church with all the best members and vocations" and "religious desert, noone goes there") either - it's (as always) more complicated than that. e: I hope my ramblings are at least somewhat coherent, I probably should make it a habit to reread what I just wrote before hitting the submit button, but eh  . I also wanted to add that there was a noticeable uptick in vocations immediately after the council because many people thought that the requirement of celibacy would soon fall, too; the Catholic Church in Scotland even built a brand new seminary in expectation for that. They had to sell it off a few years again afterwards because when it became apparent that the curia had no intention at all to open up the priesthood, there not only was a drastic decrease in vocations, but also a large number of men leaving the priesthood again. I guess that it was similar with laypeople attending Mass, though I don't have any statistics on hand for that.
System Metternich fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 12:07
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NikkolasKing posted:I have a question for socially/politically aware Christian goons. In this post, when I say conservative / liberal I mean politically and socially, unless otherwise noted. I think the reasons conservative churches get more people than liberal ones are pretty obvious. In conservative circles, being religious (specifically Christian) is still seen as a positive thing, so most people who are conservative are also religious. And when you're conservative and religious, it only makes sense to go to a conservative church. By contrast, many liberals have a pretty negative view of Christianity. So more liberals are non-religious, and even those who aren't tend towards "spiritual but not religious" type outlooks. Another aspect that is relevant is that church attendance is sinking in general. People used to go to church as a matter of course, and most people would just pick the one closest to their home, or the one their family and friends go to. But nowadays, the casual church goers just don't go any more. So among the younger people who do go to church, the proportion of people who really care about it has shot through the roof. And people who really care about church are just more attracted to traditional forms and seriousness over modernity and entertainment. It makes sense in a way -- church as a bit of singing and meeting your friends on Sunday morning is not that attractive, you could meet your friends a million other ways, if the people in the area are even your friends to begin with. But if you want the incense and god-fearing atmosphere, there are relatively few alternatives. Also, churches that cater to niche interests tend to thrive even when they're not conservative. For example, in my city the foreign-language churches tend to be packed, the university church is full of students, and the churches that play Mozart masses aren't lacking for people either. It's just the old parish churches, that are now way too big for the few people who actually bother going. I even once went to a parish church that actually sang the hymns in harmony (with different melodies for high / low voices, dunno how to say this in English), and that one was pretty full too. I'm not 100% sure about this, but as far as I know the churches that explicitly see themselves engaged in LGBT outreach get lots of people too. So in summary, niche churches full, mainstream churches empty
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Mar 10, 2017 12:11
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 13:18 |
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pidan posted:In this post, when I say conservative / liberal I mean politically and socially, unless otherwise noted. And even among the 'spiritual but not religious' types, I suspect the interest in actually attending church is driven down by the assumption that ALL churches are as conservative, or that most of them are, or that liberal ones are too hard to find, or that their hip socially-conscious friends would look down on them if they did go, or that by going even to a liberal church they'd somehow be supporting the conservative ones, or.. whatever. There's a lot of potential reasons but the end result is the same. quote:Another aspect that is relevant is that church attendance is sinking in general. People used to go to church as a matter of course, and most people would just pick the one closest to their home, or the one their family and friends go to. But nowadays, the casual church goers just don't go any more. So among the younger people who do go to church, the proportion of people who really care about it has shot through the roof. And people who really care about church are just more attracted to traditional forms and seriousness over modernity and entertainment. And this is the part where the tendency for liturgical liberalism and social/political liberalism to go hand in hand gets infuriating. gently caress me, I just want some nice oppression-free bells & smells.
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Mar 10, 2017 12:34
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