All Comments (21)

He does time to time but if your heart hasn't been changed by the Holy Spirit you won't recognize it for what it is.

TommyO.

From the same movie...

"Yeah if God would only cough or something, just so we know he's really up there"

Great lines from a very funny atheist.

JACOB JOSEVZ STOP PLAYING YOUR DUMB KEYBOARD GAMES.

IT MAKES MY THUMBS HURT SCROLLING THROUGH THAT CRAP.

If only God would give us a clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
(from a Woody Allen quote)

Julie,

I recommend another look at your Catholicism based on the following:

Jesus, the illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter possibly suffering from hallucinations, has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus). Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".

Luther, Calvin, Joe Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingy talking flying fictional thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

Rev. Thistlethwaite,
Let's hope the former Catholics in the UCC find their way back to the church Christ founded.
I left the Catholic Church for a while due to aggresive proselytism by college classmates who convinced me to attend a United Church of Christ. Due to later study and reading, I discovered that what they were telling me about the Catholic Church were lies. Here is a wake up call for better catechesis in the Catholic Church. You won? If removing the truth and making Christianity relative and morality negotiable is a good thing, then yes, you've won.

Given the stereotype of the average American as a rugged individual, endowed with the blessings of liberty, freedom of speech and expression, pride in personal achievement and the means to turn dreams into reality, it's no small wonder that memberships in traditional religious faiths are declining. The Vatican cites moral relativism as the evil of our time. Dogmatic creeds and canons of organized religions, albeit touted as absolute truth ironically obstruct our finding the real truth - the truth of who we are, the essence of our Spiritual Being. Blind compliance with dogma limits our sphere of vision. It makes us intolerant of difference and leads to isolation, communication breakdown and conflict. We must look beyond the external. We must look within and feel the love that burns at the root of all existence. This is what everyone seeks through religion - the experience of the Divine, the experience of Love. Therein we will find God.

GaryD: Whether or not we atheists are increasing as a percentage of the population is mostly irrelevant to me, but there are 12 million of us. That is more than the combined population of Jews and Muslims in the U.S. We're citizens and we're here to stay - you should probably just get used to that.

Haha, Reverend. :)

Can you believe some religions actually go *looking* for converts? Oops. :)

(This is totally said in all good cheer, but,)

You think it's hard when people aren't getting the finer points of *Protestantism?*

Pagan clergy types look at these studies and go, "Exactly what do you mean, 'exponential?' ...Darn it, who told the Gods they were bored!!?"

:)

Good thing a lot of this stuff kinda teaches itself, bumps and scrapes aside.

My advice, ...you have to laugh about this sort of thing... Look at me....Twenty years ago, I think I'm settling in this nice quiet religion that maybe just me, the Gods, and some like-hearted friends happen to have, next thing I know I'm arguing with the U.S. Army about burial plots. :)

Who knew. :)

I think people'll end up where they need to be, in due time. People tend to expect it's easy and all laid out for them, whatever it is, but that's a story we tell ourselves.

Define Protestant. Not Catholic is wrong.

The chief Problem in most Protestant churches is that they abandoned sound doctrine and feeding the sheep as the sheep ought to be fed in order to appease the world.

You want to grow a real church instead of a country club that's only open two days a week give the believers a true home and feed them regularly on the word of God, the pure unvarnished truth. It has worked in the past it will continue to work today But few if any seem to have the guts or the faith to try.

Pseudo,

The flaws in religion are not restricted to orthodox Christianity. BTW, Professors Crossan and Funk and Fredriksen and Borg earned their right to critique Christianity. And your critiques are backed by what credentials??

I've moved from the Methodist to Episcopal to Unitarian in recent years, grew up as a Methodist, but it has become more conservative and I was appalled by what I would call "Church Cheerleading" in the Methodist church when we had a Jewish rabbi come to speak at our Bible Study. All the group wanted to do was spout bible verses at him in an effort to determine who was on the right path. After that I really didn't feel part of the church and when I heard nearly all of the members going great guns for George Dumbya Bush in 1999 and 2000 I left. I've never attended what I would call a "Fundamentalist" Church, but I've been horrified by their rise and the parallel rise of such fruitcakes as Dumbya and Huckabee who serve them....
Huckabee's flat-earth rejection of evolution is really sickening to me, but I've been VERY close to the Baptist Church all my life(I attended a Baptist University) and I know what a rigid and intolerant religion it is. I believe that religions evolve too, which ought to really rile up the Fundamentalists out there who hold the key to my eternal salvation! And I feel quite sure that our nation's religion is evolving more than it might seem at first, and I predict we will see some really big changes in the near future as we move away from the mindless dogma of fundamentalism...

Thank you, Susan, for this insightful commentary. Isn't this what Wade Clark Roof described in 1999 as a 'spiritual marketplace?' He described America's anchorless spirituality, touted by a generation of seekers. He noted that religious experience could not survive without the supports of creed and community. Certainly, many believers-on-the-move are finding new communities to nourish their experience, but I would agree with you that the creeds that once held us together are endangered in favor of a designer religiousity. I see this in my own denomination. I am fascinated by your description of Protestants who find more in common with those who share similar religious cultural assumptions than they do with people of their own religious affiliation. I think this is similar to the observation that there are adolescents today who find more in common with peers around the world than they do with those of an older generation living under the same roof. Rapid cultural shift seems to have re-aligned our patterns of association. I also wonder how much of this has to do with consumption replacing conversion as a way of establishing religious identity.

Lets understand something Ms. Thistlewaite, Atheists do not appear to be gaining much ground as the shift seems to be more from one religious group to the other. Part of this is because increasingly churches are not strong on doctrine but rather put forth feel good pablum like what you get from the prosperity theologians for whom God seems to be more of a genie in a bottle rather than the all powerful almighty creator of the universe.

Very few churches any more give the people in the pews something to hang their hats on in the way of doctrine and many of those that do are so obviously clueless as regards the basic elements of logic that real Christians keep moving on looking for real food for the meat with which the Bible is loaded and find instead the same milk they've heard since they were children. Is it any wonder than that they keep moving from one church to another in search of the real deal?

Lets understand something Ms. Thistlewaite, Atheists do not appear to be gaining much ground as the shift seems to be more from one religious group to the other. Part of this is because increasingly churches are not strong on doctrine but rather put forth feel good pablum like what you get from the prosperity theologians for whom God seems to be more of a genie in a bottle rather than the all powerful almighty creator of the university.

Very few churches any more give the people in the pews something to hang their hats on in the way of doctrine and many of those that do are so obviously clueless as regards the basic elements of logic that real Christians keep moving on looking for real food for the meat with which the Bible is loaded and find instead the same milk they've heard since they were children. Is it any wonder than that they keep moving from one church to another in search of the real deal?

Shell Script:

Crossan and Funk who you worship them with fundamentalist fervor, have been deflawed.

You do not need to waste time repeating their flawed doctrines.

You do not need to waste time repeating their flawed doctrines.

You do not need to waste time repeating their flawed doctrines.

Why are many of us dropping our orthodox affiliation and becoming persons with religious reservations, secularists or atheists??

The answer is simple, the "pew sitters" and "bowers" are becoming more aware of the flaws in the founders and foundations of religion and no longer accept the myths, embellishments and lies associated with these religions.

Rev Thistlethwaite, excellent observations as always.

I think our American tradition of individualism and self-relience come from Protestantism.

I think there is a struggle with our individual freedoms and the social freedoms such as freedom from poverty and crime. How much is an individual repsonsible for their community?
Is it possible to keep the indiviual freedom we have and reduce our problems with poverty, racism, and crime?

From reading your articles, I know that you are knee-deep in fighting for the unfortunate.

The chart in the New York Times shows that Protestant affliation decreased from above 60 percent to below 50 percent. Those who are unaffiliated has increased steadily, and the Catholic trend is about to break out of its "trading range" or volatility range. Somehow the chart shows bad for Protestants but the news story reads bad for Catholics. Why is that?

The analysis on Catholicism is downright un-American. Researchers say that American Catholicism is doing far, far worse than the numbers show because the church is filling pews with immigrants. What a scandal in a nation of immigrants!

Are immigrants who are naturalized Americans somehow less patriotic than native-born Americans?

If these Americans love their country no less, then why is the American Catholic church considered weaker because of them?

If immigrants who are naturalized Americans and Catholic have remained with the faith of their youths, then why aren't they considered part of the resurging Catholicism success story?

Imagine this: "Catholic churches have seen a dramatic increase in the number of Americans participating in services due to the high number of naturalized Americans who are Catholic from birth, and who have remained in their faith. Protestant demonomations show no such revitalization within their congregations and affiliation has erroded dramatically in recent years as those claiming no affililation has grown."

The media deserves a lecture from that loud-mouthed, gap-toothed, Catholic guy that screams at liberal bloggers.

The spiritual community you desribe at the UCC sounds a lot like the one I have at my UU congregation. You need to add Pagan and Wiccan to the mix of faith traditions. I might have considered something like UCC when my orthodox Jewish upbringing no longer worked for me, but the Christ bit is even less of a fit. UU spirituality and community is a fine place to seek encouragement, support, direction and accountability for me. And it is very post-denominational.

Get a life CCNL...no one is listening to you, and all your credibility and respect has been lost. Don't quit your day job!