Presbyterians are broke.
Perhaps this belongs on the evangelicals thread. But since it's a response to this comment, I'll leave it here.
I grew up religious (Presbyterian), and although I don't practice now, my parents are very committed to their church and I go with them when we're home for holidays and such. The preacher that was there for 30+ years recently retired, and they have had a new preacher for the last 6 months or so. The Sunday before Christmas was the first time I heard him preach.
No joke, this is at least the 6th time I've talked about his sermon since I heard it, and I literally don't think I've ever discussed a sermon after the fact before. As one of my friends said, it was the most "woke" sermon he'd ever heard.
It was titled "Mary and Joe: Refugees" and talked about their trek to Bethlehem, and then subsequent journey to live in Egypt to avoid Herod, and then coming back to Nazareth when Jesus was a little older. He talked about the difficulties of being a refugee then and now. He differentiated between immigrants and refugees (as a subset) and defined what a refugee was. But did not differentiate between the two when he quoted Jesus and other portions of the Bible imploring us to treat foreigners in our land as we would our own people.
I was kind of blown away and impressed. And I still wonder what some of the blue hairs in the back were thinking.
IMO, Mainline Protestant churches like the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Quakers, Methodists, etc. tend to be very different from Evangelical/Fundamentalist sects, like the Southern Baptists. While there's definitely still some Republicans in these groups, overall I've found over the years that members of these churches tend to be more liberal, or at least moderate, in their politics, even in small towns. The fact that all of these denominations, except for some Methodists, are usually more openly accepting of gay rights (and even Methodists are generally more tolerant of gay rights and marriage, at least in my experience, than Baptists), is evidence of this. The Social Gospel was a great result of Mainline Protestant churches. Until the 1960s Mainline Protestants actually outnumbered Evangelicals, and they were the dominant strain of Christianity in this country until they began a sharp decline in the 1960s, which has continued to this day. That allowed Evangelicals (like the Moral Majority in the 1970s) to replace them as the dominant voice in American Christianity, with some very negative consequences.
I think that’s a fair assessment. At least as it refers to white churches. There were certainly influential evangelicals throughout the history of progressivism in the US, but that voice is all but lost at this point. I do think if evangelical movements survive trump (I don’t think they will), younger evangelicals tend to be more progressive on most things. I’m fascinated at the future of The Church in America, but I think trump is probably the beginning of the end.
Not crazy.
Real Trump supporters. Real posts.
Please tell me you don’t actually know someone who posted this.
Please tell me you don’t actually know someone who posted this.
Possibly. I don’t use The Facebook, so I don’t see this kind of shit, except when I come here.