My wife and I were both baptized in the Roman Catholic church.
We also got married in the Catholic church, and our children were baptized in
the church when they came of age. After we moved to Illinois, both of our
children made their first communion at a Catholic church in Naperville,
Illinois.
We joined a newcomer’s group after we settled in Aurora, and
one of our friends was the Loveless family.
Sharon and Marge hit it off immediately, and Marge soon invited us to
attend her church, an ELCA church named St. James. Their pastor was a dynamic
young pastor named K.C. Hendriks, and we DID enjoy his sermons.
Although we continued to go to the local Catholic church (a
new parish had started up very close to our new home) we found that the
Catholic priest was boring, and we struggled to get our kids to come to church
with us.
As a result, we started to go to the ELCA church on a regular
basis. Eventually I wound up becoming the council president, even though I was
not a Lutheran. Both of our kids made their confirmation at the church.
Somewhere along the line, K.C. Hendriks had an affair, which
ended his marriage, and his association with the church. He was replaced by
Roger Timm, who was a nice guy, but a little boring. In a fairly short time, he
was transferred to a parish in Oak Park that had an older congregation.
He was replaced by Rob Douglas, who is a great guy. We both
liked cigars, and had more than a couple of beers together. That was the parish
that we attended until I moved to China, and Sharon and Kelly moved to Chicago.
After we moved to Arizona, we attended a few masses at the
Catholic church in Flagstaff. Eventually, we were referred to a Baptist church (Mountain
View) that was led by a dynamic pastor named Michael, who has since moved on.
Sharon and I both worked for the Flagstaff United School
District. She was a teacher’s aide, and I was a substitute teacher. After
spending all week working with kids, the though of traveling back into town for
a one-hour service became a burden, and we stopped going to church altogether.
After we moved to Tucson in the fall of 2015, we made no
effort at all of find a new church community.
The message below was posted on Messenger a few days ago:
“It takes a great deal of arrogance to live in the United
States with over 200 different sects of Christianity, all with their own unique
theology, yet insist that only your sect has the moral authority to speak, not
only for all Christians, but for all the people in our country as well”
Tommy and Dick Smothers addressed this issue a VERY long time
ago:
AllReligions | The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (youtube.com)
After I joined Toastmasters in the early 1980’s, I learned
that you always need to be careful when discussing religion and politics –
especially with people that you do not know well. As a result, I am NOT going
to criticize anyone’s religious beliefs. At the same time, I am not going to
tolerate anyone who criticizes MY religious beliefs – or lack thereof.
I am of the opinion that going to church that going to church
every week does not make you a better person, and it is also true that not
going to church at all does not make you a bad person.
After we moved to Evanston, Illinois, I discovered that there
were roughly 100 places of worship in town – so I decided to visit as many of
them as I could.
Since I worked on Friday nights, I was unable to attend either
a mosque or a synagogue, but I DID manage to visit about 65 churches before I ran out of
energy.
Most were OK, a few were reminiscent of a cult, and a few of
them I liked well enough that I made some return trips.
We are drifting closer and closer to Christian nationalism in
our country, and that is a dangerous thing.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/08/christian-nationalism.html
Religion is one of the topics that I have written about on my
blog, and I have done it a lot. Like many people, our friends and relatives
range from Catholics who attend the mass every week to a few people who have become
atheists.
My mother-in-law was a very strict Catholic, and she would not
let her daughter (my wife) go to a church that was not Catholic. For that
reason, I thought you might like to hear from some “fallen away” Catholics:
The first response I got was from
a couple that we have known for more than 50 years. I’ll refer to them as
librarian 1 and librarian 2.
He was brought up in the Lutheran
faith, and she was raised in the Catholic faith. After the military transferred
overseas in the early 1970’s, they met a couple who practiced the Baha’i faith,
and it was not long before they both converted to that faith.
Here are her comments:
“”
As members of the Baha'i
Faith, we recognize all religions as true and do not impose our beliefs on
anyone. We are happy to share the principles of the Baha'i Faith with
anyone who is interested. But we do that in the spirit of creating meaningful
discussions, not in an attempt to proselytize.
• Universal peace upheld by a world government.
• Independent investigation of truth.
• The common foundation of all religions.
• The essential harmony of science and religion.
• Elimination of prejudice of all kinds.
• Universal compulsory education.
• A spiritual solution to the economic problem.
• A universal auxiliary language.
The link above goes into more detail
on each of these principles.
The first Baha’i’ temple in the world
was built in Wilmette, Illinois, and it was dedicated in 1953.
All nine temples share certain design features, including domes and gardens. Each temple is nine-sided because Bahá’ís consider the number nine—the highest single number—a symbol of oneness, comprehensiveness and unity. In Wilmette, the temple includes nine entrances and nine verses above the doors and the alcoves. Of all the temples, the Wilmette house of worship is the oldest. It has been named a National Historic Landmark, one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois and is visited by 250,000 people a year. Aside from being called the “Temple of Light and Unity,” the 1100-seat Wilmette building is known as the “Mother Temple of the West” by Bahá’ís around the world. Today, it remains the only Bahá’í temple in the U.S.
********************************************************************
Unitarianism is a Nontrinitarian branch of Christianity. Unitarian Christians affirm
the unitary nature of God as
the singular and unique creator of the universe, believe
that Jesus Christ was inspired by God in
his moral teachings and that he is the savior of
humankind but he is not equal to God himself.
Unitarianism was established in order to restore "primitive Christianity before later
corruptions set in" Likewise, Unitarian Christians generally reject
the doctrine of original sin. The
churchmanship of Unitarianism may include liberal denominations or
Unitarian Christian denominations that are more conservative, with the latter being known
as biblical Unitarians.
The birth of the Unitarian faith is proximate to the Radical Reformation,
beginning almost simultaneously among the Protestant Polish Brethren in the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth and in the Principality
of Transylvania in the mid-16th century. The first Unitarian
Christian denomination known to have emerged during that time was the Unitarian
Church of Transylvania, founded by the Unitarian preacher and
theologian Ferenc Dávid (c. 1520–1579).
Among its adherents were a significant number of Italians who took refuge in Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, and Transylvania in order to
escape from the religious persecution perpetrated
against them by the Roman Catholic and Magisterial Protestant churches.
In the 17th century, significant repression in Poland led many
Unitarians to flee or be killed for their faith. From the 16th to 18th
centuries, Unitarians in Britain often faced significant political persecution,
including John Biddle, Mary Wollstonecraft,
and Theophilus Lindsey.
In England, the first Unitarian Church was
established in 1774 on Essex Street, London, where
today's British Unitarian headquarters is still
located.
As is typical of dissenters and nonconformists,
Unitarianism does not constitute one single Christian
denomination; rather, it refers to a collection of both existing and
extinct Christian groups (whether historically related to each other or not)
that share a common theological concept of the unitary nature of God.
Unitarian Christian communities and churches have developed in Central Europe (mostly Romania and Hungary), Ireland, India, Jamaica, Japan, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In British America, different schools of
Unitarian theology first spread in the New England Colonies and
subsequently in the Mid-Atlantic
States. The first official acceptance of the Unitarian faith on the
part of a congregation in North America was by King's Chapel in Boston, from where James Freeman began
teaching Unitarian doctrine in 1784 and was appointed rector. Later in 1785, he
created a revised
Unitarian Book of Common Prayer based on Lindsey's
work.
Like the Baha’i faith, Unitarians are respectful of other religions. As example
of that is the fact that the Unitarian church in Evanston hosts an
inter-denominational service every year, which I attended in 2010:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-with-enemy.html
70% of the people in America
consider themselves to be Christian – but America is NOT a Christian nation.
That fact was stated in the 1st amendment to the Constitution.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
The fastest growing group in America
are the folks who are not affiliated with any religion, a group that includes atheists,
agnostics, and “none”.
Muslims make up less than 1% of
our population, but they (like Jewish people) are most likely for face
religious prosecution. For what it’s worth, I am one of the few Caucasians that
has actually read the Koran, which is more similar to the Bible than you might
think.
The link below will allow you to
read my thoughts on the book:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2021/08/what-vietnam-can-teach-us-about-koran.html
The main reason that freedom of
religion is enshrined in the constitution is that the Founding Fathers were aware
of the centuries of religious wars in Europe, and were also familiar with religious
discrimination in America. One example is the Quakers:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-quakers-died.html
30% of the American population believe
that the Bible is literally true.
The links below explain why that
makes no sense at all:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2013/04/noahs-ark-and-othe-rfairy-tales.html
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/09/bible-told-me-so.html
In summary, if you are looking to
find the one true religion, you’ll eventually come to the same conclusion that I
did.
There isn’t one.
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