I wanted to share a personal experience that I think illustrates why it seems more and more people are turned off not just by Christianity, but religion in general. I'd also like to hear from Christians to get their thoughts and to find out if this is typical. I grew up going to a Methodist Church, but since becoming an adult I've had little interest in going. My main problem with Christianity, and most religions, is the sentiment that "We're right, you're wrong." I just think that's a very ignorant way to look at the world. For a religion that is supposed to love and accept everyone, it's incredibly judgmental from my experiences. Anyways, my brother has started going to a Baptist Church in the last year, and he convinced me and my wife to attend Easter services with the rest of my family. There was a performance about the story of Easter which my niece performed in, and it was pretty entertaining. Everything was going fine, until it ended and the minister decided to start talking. He spent the next few minutes talking about how all other religions were "false religions" and that only Christians would be saved. He also took the opportunity to tell us how horrible gay marriage was, and for reasons I still don't understand, mentioned North Korea. I think the point he was trying to make is that those things were in the news rather than Easter, and that was just wrong. He apparently doesn't understand that Christianity is not the official religion of the world. He also made comments about how Muslims and Buddhists get a pass, but the media is out to get Christianity. Of course during this entire rant about how much he despises people different than him, there was an offering plate going around. This experience presented nearly everything I hate about church, and further cemented my decision to stay far away from it. As for my personal beliefs, I'd say at this point I consider myself a Deist. I believe in something, not sure what it is, and I'm ok with that. I'd like to find some kind of non-denominational church that is accepting of those views, just for the community aspect if nothing else. Thanks for any input!
Similar situation here. I don't usually go to any church anymore but I went on Easter (mainly for my mother's benefit). I did not have your experience, which both my wife and I were pleasently surprised about because we totally expected "yay jesus is alive" to morph into "we hate gays and everyone non-christian" during the sermon. Such is extremely typical in my experience, but I realize that there are other flavors out there (in theory). To be fair though I don't think your title is correct. It's not christianity. It's religion and other collectivist dogma meant to divide people into arbitrary and non-sensical groups. Educated, liberal societies as a whole are turning away from these close-minded constructs. Which might be why they're getting even more obnoxiously in-your-face lately.
That's a good point. My experience has only been with Christianity, but I'm sure it's the same across most other religions.
Denominations aren't meant to divide; each one is intended to attract everyone. Having gone to Christian churches (two primary ones and a handful of others visiting) I have never heard anything said from the pulpit like is being reported here.
I have been to numeorus Catholic churches around the world throughout my 50+ years. I have never heard any sort of "hate" sermon, or "we are right, others are wrong" sermon.
Great post! Your story is pretty much in line with why I don't participate in church anymore. Granted, not all churches are like this, but the sad reality is that most churches deviate from the real message of Christianity. Im not interested in hearing about how Im right and everyone else is wrong, or coming to church for a social gathering.
Why would that matter? Oh, they only preach this hate in Texas? Are these observances hamstrung by your same requirement?
A denomination inherently denotes the splintering of one ideology into competing sub-ideologies. Sure, each intends to be the only denomination. But that only further reinforces the point.
The Modern world has not real RIGHT or WRONG simply technicality/marginalizations/mobile morality If you can come up with a good enough sounding 'reason' you can pretty much justify anything. Christianity and other religions just are not built for a mobile morphing morality than changes from moment to moment/instant to instant. No real 'rules' as much as suggestions and inferrences. Rocket River Just my opinion
To be fair, your experience wouldn't be any different as a Muslim in a similar setting. I'm fairly sure it would be similar if you were Jewish too. I think overall, people are becoming more turned off by religion for various reasons. One of those reasons is that they are simply seeing the damage that organized religion has done in the past. Now people are regrouping and rethinking the their core beliefs to avoid the conflicts of the past. With that change comes less organized religion, and with less organized religion comes more desperation from the religious preachers. Like when a business is getting desperate they start trashing other businesses or have a firesale on their own now-watered down items. That's what competition does. It is sad that preachers have to resort to fear-mongering to get people to buy in, but at the very least, they are becoming less succesful by the day thanks to the boom in cultural fusion and communications technology. Sorry to hear you had a terrible time, but your belief system is probably strengthened given how it seems to have impacted you. MadMax always says, church is not so much a place as much as it is a group of people. Try to find a church where people are on the same page as you are, and maybe you don't have to talk about the same old topics over and over and over again. There is something to gain from being amongst a group of people on the same spiritual journey as you are and it doesn't have to have an unquestioned leader, or a certain label or a name. It just has togive you what you're looking for.
Interestingly enough, in my experiences with catholicism I have not heard sermons like this either. It does seem to be a uniquely protestant thing to overreach from the pulpit like that. Of course, the catholic church has little need to, as the same divisionary rhetoric comes directly from the infallible mouth of god, aka the pope.
Either reasoning is fallacious. I'm not saying that all Christians or a majority of Christians are like this, I'm just saying you can't completely dismiss it. Also, sample size. That's like arguing that the only Rockets game you went to was the game Jeremy Lin scored 38 points. Therefore Jeremy Lin is a superstar. Fallacious logic.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to suggest that all churches are like this. Was just relating my experience, after having not been to church for a while and encountering the exact thing I was trying to avoid. And I do wonder if this rhetoric is becoming more of the norm, as more people move away from the church.
Christianity personally turns me off because it turns helping people into the lowest common denominator---do it, otherwise you'll burn in hell. that's me, and probably a few others as well out there, I imagine.
I can definitely see why Christianity or religions in general turn many people away, there are a lot of hypocrisies going on. Jesus said you received free, give free. Everybody knows where the money is at, the churches. I forget which church it was maybe Lakewood? Anyway I hear that to sit up at the front or near the front you have to pay a certain amount. That is the stupidest thing I've heard. Your supposed to be going to church, not a concert!
I haven't heard hate sermons. It was something else that initially made me start to question Christianity: the appeal to fear. I don't think it's very common for nondenominational Christian preachers to use this tactic, but the one at the church I occasionally attended did. He pulled me aside and talked to me for a few minutes one day about living for Jesus so that I don't burn in hell. What's worse is that this was a youth church. I just remember thinking it was so odd to try to scare kids into Christianity. Fast forward 7-8 years I came out a fully realized atheist, irrevocably hell-bound.
Chrisitianity in Japan back during the Sengoku era was actually pretty popular at first, as the daimyos wanted to get in the good graces of the Europeans who had awesome guns. The problem they found with Christianity was that the Christian Japanese began to question their lords because the lords would do something against God's will. So, when the Tokugawa came into power, they completely stamped out the Christians with well, certain unpleasant means. Not saying I approve, but it is that concept which is my problem with Christianity, which is in fact the opposite of what most people think. I don't like Christianity because I think it allows for too much chaos, as if you just follow the rites of Jesus, which these days is basically whatever the heck you want it to be, you're a Christian. Too egalitarian and chaotic.
Catholic Churches all are required to preach essentially the same thing. So as long the Pope doesn't push that agenda, it won't happen. Protestant Churches are much more individualized. This has good and bad; on the good side, the well-run ones have the ability to reach out to less traditional populations and bring people into the fold that might not fit a traditional church. On the bad side, the crazy ones will do as the OP experienced. I think the the original posts' title should be "Why this one church is turning people off". You wouldn't take an experience with a black person or a gay person or a doctor or anyone else and translate it to all people in that group. Similaryl, it seems silly to judge all of Christianity by one pastor.
