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UMC Losing Their Religion
“God is nothing,” the self-described “dragavangelist” repeats throughout the poem, adding, “the Bible is nothing” and “religion is nothing.” In the end, he concludes God and the Bible are nothing “unless we wield it into something.”
“God must be f***ing nothing,” he says, “if her boundaryless, transubstantiated bodies of color are run down, beaten, and strewn in the streets of America instead of ruling the runways of life.”
He speaks of God not as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather as the source of queerness, describing him as “nothing but a drag queen with a microphone of biblical f***ing proportions,” “nothing, but if she were, she would be ‘yes, queen’-ing her way down the runways of Paris and Montreal,” and “nothing, but if she were, she would be a seamstress of divide couture, weaving together string theory and self portraits to form the fiercest gowns of queer existence.”
What this poem actually means is “God is Me, and the Things That I Like.” It’s edgy and transgressive, and something I am sure AWFLs would applaud were it read to children in a public library story hour. Shocking the normals is the height of modern artistic expression, but it’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I was raised in the United Methodist Church. I left when I went to college, experienced other denominations, and realized the UMC had taught me really nothing of the gospel except “be nice to each other.” That’s certainly a message of the gospel, but Saturday morning cartoons basically had the same message. (Except for the good ones, like the old Warner Bros stuff.) And this thing isn’t even “be nice to each other.” It’s “look at me, then look at me some more” and “celebrate deviance.”
The UMC, like a lot of mainline protestant denominations, have decided they want to be worldly, not eternal. They rationalize it by saying, “a strong gospel message would alienate the young people; we need to get them into the pews. And then we will teach them to be nice to each other.” The thing is, when a church isn’t offering anything other than the same social justice message as the mainstream media, what’s even the point? The church should be a refuge from this worldly nonsense.
“My faith and my understanding of God calls me to be a part of that; to be a part of change-making and to be a part of creating spaces where everyone, regardless of their identities [or] orientations, can be and exist without even an inkling of ‘Am I welcomed here?’”
Pretty much what every radical queer teacher says to justify teaching six year olds about all the flavors of sexual identity, but invoking God instead of ‘teaching.’
And if we’re going to be really harsh and honest, the lifestyle this individual is celebrating is spiritually and often physically destructive. The mainstream media goes out of their way to sanitize it, but the promiscuous “queer” sexual fringe is fraught with psychological dysfunction, drug abuse, venereal diseases, violence (most from other practitioners of the culture, not bigots), and self-destructive behavioral pathologies. Because if one’s religion is centered on being as transgressive and deviant from mainstream cultures as possible, and mainstream culture is making every effort to embrace your deviance, you have to push ever further to stay on the edge.
In reality, the most transgressive thing a person can do is be religiously observant and live the gospel. That’s been true for about 2,000 years now.
Update: I found this video through the Daily Wire. “Queer holiness” seems to be his schtick because he’s actually not very good at speaking.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Wow.
That is so very, very true.
Doing whatever’s cool at the time is the opposite of transgressive.
The man who wrote that is a Methodist pastor. A servant of a God he doesn’t believe in. What a weird job he has.
I wonder what my Methodist pastor back in Tennessee thinks of this. Lordy…
Victor – Could you link to the story you quote from please? I’d like to read the whole thing.
Thanks.
I’m so sorry to see one more example of how a church has allowed itself to be corrupted.
Victor – Thanks for the link.
I just read the article. Oh my goodness. It’s even worse than I thought:
And he’s a Methodist pastor.
What’s remarkable is that conservatives are losing the culture wars to these people, who say, “When I walk the streets in six-inch heels and wear four pounds of hair, double-stacked wigs, the power which lies within my mystery is released into the world.”
Imagine leading a cultural movement that requires people to pretend to understand and believe things like that. How on earth could your cultural movement gain any ground at all? People would laugh you off the stage.
Except they don’t.
These people are winning the culture wars. With obvious nonsense.
Remarkable…
This will make any church weaker, not stronger . . .
I have occasional contact with the UMC, and based upon that limited experience, I am not really all that surprised by this. Saddened, but not surprised.
I have heard that the UMC is moving toward a formal split between the predominant majority of the denomination that is choosing to embrace the World, and a minority faction that seeks to remain faithful to God and scripture.
Perhaps there are some Ricochetti who know more about this first-hand and can weigh-in?
But we are told by David French….Jonah G….Noah Rothman et al that if you are worried about the culture you are nothing but a Hungarian Fasicst Conservative Rube who wants a dictatorship…..and those same wonder why they have lost influence in the Republican Party…..it is possible to be concerned about the deficit….inflation and culture at the same time……
Mrs. Tim (MT) works for a UMC congregation here. It is an established church whose membership skews a bit older and, for the most part, seems more conservative rather than progressive. The members & staff are really wonderful people with whom MT enjoys working.
As a disclaimer, we are Roman Catholic and so really don’t know a lot about the UMC. However, MT has learned a bit about the UMC from working there for some years. The characterization of their theology as “be nice to each other” sounds about right, but add “acceptance” as a central tenet (i.e., the UMC should accept all who wish to join.)
Acceptance is good. No one should be turned away. What acceptance has seemingly morphed into is a willful ignoring of sin. If one accepts someone into the church, then you should accept them they way they are, sinful behavior and all. The UMC in California has an openly gay bishop, which is against UMC teachings. The rationale for approving of this behavior is that it’s okay because we should be accepting of people. The choice is live your beliefs or be nice. Too often, people choose be nice.
There is a schism coming in the UMC – progressive versus conservative. As I understand it, each congregation will have to vote on which way they will go. Most of the members who will vote progressive have no idea that what is in the OP is what they are voting for.
The Roman Catholic church is following the same path. We’re just not as far along as the UMC is.
It is sad to watch the Church drop their past religiosity and embrace Leftism. But it seems to be the way they are all going. Every last one of them. Some are just taking more time than others.
I would not be surprised to see a time when homosexuality and transvestism is the new clergy of such places.
Acceptance rapidly becomes ‘validation.’ Instead of the church becoming a vessel for raising people up from the debased state of humanity, and bring them closer to the divine state we should aspire to, it becomes, “Jesus loves you the way you are and there is no reason to change unless you’re one of those bad people who votes Republican.”
Some call it ‘the liturgy of feels.’ I frankly think it’s cowardly.
It is a tough spot for the faithful. On the one hand, you don’t want to remain part of a group that is okay with that, but if you leave then you have pretty much handed over the church to a bunch of fruit-loops.
And it usually seems that when churches split it is the Bible believers who have to leave and start something new. As @PostmodernHoplite mentioned above, I did her something about a more organized split amongst the Methodists, but I don’t know any of the details.
Niceness and goodness aren’t the same thing. Jesus was almost always very polite but he always spoke Truthfully so he sure as heaven wasn’t very nice.
Speaking of Jesus, why do moderns think they can do better than Jesus? At least the Beatles were talents.
I think somewhere some Calvinists are tossing “I told you so’s” are those nice-guy, everyone’s-got-a-chance Arminian Methodist founders. How did it get to this point?
It is not like people are being led astray by powerful rhetoric.
The pastor at a church in my neighborhood died a few years back. He was replaced by a woman who was more or less just a gay activist. Like all of the people planning “Pride” events in my town, she was a straight white woman. I watched a few of her sermons online and it was nothing but a bunch of “ums” and “uhs”. So, she didn’t really believe the Gospel and she couldn’t preach, but she got hired (and then eventually fired). *
I can understand if some one uses clever speech to sway that crowd (see Clinton, Bill), but when they have a bad message and say it in an annoying way (see Clinton, Hillary), that doesn’t make any sense to me.
*And people ask me why I drive 20 miles away to go to church on Sunday.
Shouldn’t the message be about Jesus? I’m a bloody agnostic and I still like the guy and want to know more about him.
It should be.
I didn’t become a Christian until I was in my 30’s. When I was a nonbeliever, I certainly didn’t want to join a church and make it in my image. So, I don’t understand why people want to go to church if they don’t believe in Jesus. If it is true, then it i the most important thing ever, if it is not true, why waste any time with it? I think I can relate better to atheists than to casual church goers.
This. A thousand times! The problem for so many churches, both the idiocy of the UMC for calling this person a pastor and the “conservative” pentecostal churches that are more concerned about politics than the gospel, is a failure to preach the words of Christ Himself. Every time I read a story like this, I wonder how the church leaders let it happen. The same goes for the stories about fundamentalist pastors preaching about culture war politics, but not the gospel.
The point of the church is to preach the message of Christ and the life-saving sacrifice he made for us–despite the fact that we are wholly and completely unworthy of that sacrifice. Christ tells us again and again that His kingdom is not of this world and that His followers will be persecuted for their faith. But our reward is not here. Through His sacrifice on the cross, we can have confidence that we will receive our reward in heaven at the end of this earthly life.
When churches and “pastors” stray away from that message and focus on the world, they are not preaching the gospel of Christ. They are preaching a gospel of man. In this case, the UMC wants to be liked by the cultural elites more than God.
It is sad, but it can be fixed. After all, we do have a pretty good guide book to follow.
Christianity is worth studying if you are an atheist. Check out Douglass Murray on his deal. Christians were the first ones to end slavery and I credit Rome for furthering Aristotle’s logic and proto-empiricism. As Claire Berlinski said, “My Father told me to read the Bible. Not because it was true but because if I went into a museum I wouldn’t know what anything was about unless I read the Bible.”
I only know enough to confirm this is happening. My inside source is dealing with personal issues so we haven’t discussed this much lately. I do know she is frustrated over all of it because every church she has been a part of has under gone a split.
I like Ross Douthat’s movie reviews. Apparently, I am not the only one.
Douthat recognizes that Eat Pray Love is self-consciously theological: “this is the rare Hollywood production where the theological message is as important as the plotting. . . . Beneath the glossy surface, there’s the outline of a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress, in which a scattered, baffled modern woman finds happiness by figuring out what God desires from her, and acting accordingly.”
After describing what God wants from the heroine—basically, break up with her husband for selfish reasons, shack up with a handsome young man then dump him, travel the world where she learns to meditate and forgive herself, then fall in love with a new guy—Douthat writes:
To quote the main character in the film: “God dwells with me, as me.”
In response, Douthat quotes G.K. Chesteron’s Orthodoxy (p. 81):
Douthat is operating within space constraints, and the quote in the review ends there, but here is how Chesterton continues:
The sexual revolution went insane when it started to worship the self.
Every denomination is under going this hell. I have a bit more faith the RCC will be ok because they survived the Borgias relatively unscathed (and perhaps better for it), but we are going through a purifying fire. Just remember, God wins.
Tyrants usually do.
Exactly. One goes to church to worship God, not to be worshipped by God.
I think that tyrants always end up dying.
If you think that God is a tyrant, you’re in very big trouble, in my view.
I don’t agree that “acceptance is good” is a correct proposition. I think that it is an oversimplification.
Some people coming to a church may be interested solely in disrupting the church. They should be turned away.
Everyone coming to a church will be a sinner. Someone genuinely seeking the truth should be welcomed, loved, and also taught the truth. The truth is unpleasant to hear. The truth is: “you are a sinner deserving death, and there’s nothing that you can do, in your own power, to fix that.”
The Good News is that we have a Savior. The Good News starts with the bad news about what we are like.
Those who persist in sin, despite proper efforts at correction, are to be shown the door. Those who promulgate false teachings are to be shown the door. I’m not going to elaborate here, but you can figure this out from Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 1 John 2.
I disagree with the portion of this suggesting that churches and pastors need to stay out of politics.
There is little to no guidance in the New Testament about politics. Now that we have a representative system of government, it seems sensible to me that Christians would want Christian morality incorporated in the law. This used to be the case.
It is possible for a church to overemphasize politics. This comment, however, suggests that churches should have nothing to do or say about politics at all. I do not agree with that.
Because we believers are sitting on our hands, while wringing them at the same time; quite a feat, but we seem to be doing it nonetheless.
I don’t know about the UMC, but we Evangelical Presbyterians made that split several years ago for the same reasons.
Stalin and Mao lived to a ripe old age. Henry VIII probably would have if he took better care of his health. I think Stina’s interpretation of G-d is tyrannical and unmerciful while I view G-d as being an uncaring entity. But hey, to each their own. Please note that I don’t want to become a Christian pastor.
The problem is when politics becomes the focus of the message. That’s wrong. Of course there is a role for Christians to play in politics and government. But I think there should be a distinction between Christians and the church as an institution. The church’s focus should be on spiritual matters. My objection is when politics detracts from the message of the gospel. I suspect you and I have different views of where the line is drawn.