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Posted
1 hour ago, bluto said:

covid didn’t exist In the Woodlands in the first place. 

It sort of did in TW, and very much so at my Episcopal church. Magnolia, on the other hand, heads totally in the sand. Same with East County, but they don't understand the concept of communicable disease, so that was expected.

Posted
7 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I think people are confusing you with the MAGA movement because you introduce yourself to strangers with "Hi, I'm Guadaloopy, and I'd like to talk to you a bit about the miracle that is the Tesla automobile."

This guy nailed it 25 years ago. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/478.Bowling_Alone

Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein both pimp that book and Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” more than any others.  
 

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

But attempts to "recover" from that often tend to focus on the moralistic rather than the strictly moral.

Brooks spends the first part grounding this and I don’t think it’s accidental he starts with the Greeks rather than early Christians.  He’s reaching for a morality than transcends specific cultures or generations. 
 

As far as your gentle needling about Brooks, I get it-I feel like 50% of his writing could have “Was I an idiot for being a conservative?” as a thesis.  

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Posted (edited)

Its an interesting decline when viewed against the laughably ridiculous trend where just about every athlete interviewed on TV after a game begins with some variant of "first I would just like to say that all things were made possible by my lord and savior jesus christ, and I couldn't do anything without him." I heard a guy the other day  practically begin with a sermon. And then they probably all shower, hit the bars, and fuck a bunch of women out of wedlock. 

Its almost as if celebrity culture increasingly demands you at least pretend to be religious, which I find bizarre when fewer of us give a fuck about the subject every year. My observations of friends, family, and peer's lifestyles mirror the trend of declining religiosity in everyday life, but for some reason the meathead contingent feels the need to parrot the same phrases every time they open their mouth. Maybe its in their NIL deals, who knows.

Edited by Blotto
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Posted
On 7/28/2024 at 9:52 PM, BearSchlong said:

And all the conservative assholes departed for the PCA or Pioneer Presbyterian church, and PCUSA is so damned liberal and loving and I am so grateful I’ve never heard anything remotely political at church other than love thy neighbor. It’s a magical la la land where we still sing 300 year old hymns.

Ditto.  i’m an elder in the PCUSA, and I remember the dust up over gay ordained ministers back in the 90s.  In our contentious session meetings you found out who were the conservative haters, and who welcomed to anyone into the church.   I remember one particularly homophobic elder who was also butt-chapped because our pastor said no - we’re not gonna stick in American flag anywhere near the pulpit.   

it always killed me that the ones having real problems with gay people we’re almost a perfect venn diagram with people who had multiple divorces.  Because I’m the same charming person I am at church as I am on Surly, I would ask them why they cared so much about a subject that Jesus did not find to be a problem, when they should be spending time on what Jesus repeatedly said was a absolute no-no…getting divorced and remarried multiple times. 

I also asked them if they thought advice from the same group who gave us the menstruation tent command should be listened to before the advice from the sermon on the mount guy.   Most of those folks wound up joining one of the PCUSA defectors who aligned with some evangelical Presbyterian Church that was essentially Southern Baptist with a different name tag.

 

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Its an interesting decline when viewed against the laughably ridiculous trend where just about every athlete interviewed on TV after a game begins with some variant of "first I would just like to say that all things were made possible by my lord and savior jesus christ, and I couldn't do anything without him." I heard a guy the other day that practically began with a sermon. And then they probably all shower, hit the bars, and fuck a bunch of women out of wedlock. 

The second I hear some athlete launch i to thanking God, I immediately think of them as a reprehensible piece of shit.

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, LCHorn said:

Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein both pimp that book and Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” more than any others.  
 

Brooks spends the first part grounding this and I don’t think it’s accidental he starts with the Greeks rather than early Christians.  He’s reaching for a morality than transcends specific cultures or generations. 
 

As far as your gentle needling about Brooks, I get it-I feel like 50% of his writing could have “Was I an idiot for being a conservative?” as a thesis.  

Not needling you, I've cited Brooks before.

It's just that these "common gooders," typically fundamentalist Cathoiics, do a great job of identifying the problems, but their proposed solutions are too white-hetero-Christian in perspective.

https://www.patrickjdeneen.com/

https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/adrianvermeule/

I think Deneen is more sane than Vermeule.

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

The second I hear some athlete launch i to thanking God, I immediately think of them as a reprehensible piece of shit.

That's pretty harsh man. A lot of them were probably just brainwashed from an early age. You know how many times VY thanked God?

 

K2so GIFs | Tenor

Edited by SydneyCarton
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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

The second I hear some athlete launch i to thanking God, I immediately think of them as a reprehensible piece of shit.

It must be tiring to get that worked up over random kids playing sports on the TV for your entertainment. 

Edited by Anastasis
Posted
2 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

It must be tiring to get that worked up over random kids playing sports on the TV for your entertainment. 

Now....imagine that random kid is gay or trans....

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdQPWlO20PKIgkSRpbD9A

....and you've built the foundation of America's dominant theology.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Now....imagine that random kid is gay or trans....

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdQPWlO20PKIgkSRpbD9A

....and you've built the foundation of America's dominant theology.

Perfect pivot brisket, you've nailed it. 

Posted
1 minute ago, Hermanator said:

 

 

Okay, in a TINY bit of fairness here....she called asking for something very specific that most churches don't exactly keep on hand.  So, an answer of "we don't have any formula for you" is not a "wrong answer."  It is an incomplete answer, for sure.  For example, if you called our home church and asked for formula, the answer would be "we do not have any on hand.  But, we work closely with Manos de Cristo, and they keep a supply on hand.  How about we call them, and connect you with them so you can get what you need?"  Most churches don't have every possible resource at hand, but most decent ones (and yeah....I realize that these days, there are a shitload that don't fall anywhere on the "decent" spectrum) have a list of resources they know of and/or work with, and will work to connect people with those resources.

So, this particular stunt did prove a point that has a lot of truth to it, but did so in a way that was misleading at least in part.  Again, plenty of the targets of her ire deserved it because their response was shitty from the get-go, but not all churches who didn't directly provide baby formula neglected their call.

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

It must be tiring to get that worked up over random kids playing sports on the TV for your entertainment. 

It's tiring being subjected to totalitarian authorianism built on a false pretext of Woke-ism being shoved down your throat while the exact opposite is true as you're trying to enjoy your bread and circus. 

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Posted
23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Okay, in a TINY bit of fairness here....she called asking for something very specific that most churches don't exactly keep on hand.  So, an answer of "we don't have any formula for you" is not a "wrong answer."  It is an incomplete answer, for sure.  For example, if you called our home church and asked for formula, the answer would be "we do not have any on hand.  But, we work closely with Manos de Cristo, and they keep a supply on hand.  How about we call them, and connect you with them so you can get what you need?"  Most churches don't have every possible resource at hand, but most decent ones (and yeah....I realize that these days, there are a shitload that don't fall anywhere on the "decent" spectrum) have a list of resources they know of and/or work with, and will work to connect people with those resources.

So, this particular stunt did prove a point that has a lot of truth to it, but did so in a way that was misleading at least in part.  Again, plenty of the targets of her ire deserved it because their response was shitty from the get-go, but not all churches who didn't directly provide baby formula neglected their call.

Actually, I like that she asked it that way. It's a (presumably) young single mother with a 2 month old infant that she says she hasn't been able to feed since yesterday. If you're a church and this call comes in there's no ambiguity here. The question is do you help or do you not help. 

This was a small look at a much large sample size she collected. It's illuminating that many of the Catholic churches and  Muslim mosques basically told her to come up and they'll figure it out, even if they dont have any baby formula on hand or a food pantry that's open at the moment. 

Yet, the only Protestant churches that offered any help at all were black churches. That one in Tennessee went so far as to say "our benevolence is for our members only". 

These institutions don't pay taxes because they're expected to provide help for needy people in their communities. It's clear American evengelicism and wider protestantism is nothing more than a money making business selling bullshit. And honestly should be shut down IMO. 

If you're going to pedal bullshit at least serve your community like you're supposed to do. 

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Posted
On 8/20/2024 at 3:10 AM, PRONG HORN said:

 

 

All the goofy Christians in the comments

 

 

 

All I see is this

 

image.thumb.jpeg.dadc53c349366528a5be56cedd8393be.jpeg

 

 

Posted
49 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

If you're a church and this call comes in there's no ambiguity here. The question is do you help or do you not help. 

100%  And I know from personal experience -- and yes, this is anecdotal -- that upon taking urgent calls like this, we have made sure that the connection to Manos de Cristo happened in real time, and that the need was met.  We also have an emergency "pastoral benevolence fund" that the pastor can tap for just this sort of real and urgent need.  I wish we were bigger/had more volunteer time and resources to make such things available, but we're also practical -- we are functionally a suburban church in a pretty well-off neighborhood.  There aren't many folks in urgent need showing up at our door.  BUT, we also work closely with a sister church, located downtown, that absolutely DOES face regularly urgent needs, so we make sure they are regularly stocked (my wife and I will be delivering some stuff this weekend, as a matter of fact).

Maybe my only point is that there are some intelligent logistics and practicalities involved -- a suburban church probably isn't going to keep a dozen cans of formula on hand.  A church in a lower income area, or a mission project of multiple churches (e.g., Manos) absolutely does.

55 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

It's illuminating that many of the Catholic churches and  Muslim mosques basically told her to come up and they'll figure it out, even if they dont have any baby formula on hand or a food pantry that's open at the moment. 

That is indeed illuminating, and not surprising.  In my experience with inter-faith work, both catholic and muslim congregations regularly "walk the walk."  Have any other issues with them that you want, but in terms of "God calls us to tend to the needy," they are often at the front of the pack.

 

57 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

Yet, the only Protestant churches that offered any help at all were black churches.

Also not surprising.  Perspective.  Reminds me of the Eddie Izzard routine about how churches of one of the most oppressed populations nonetheless have some of the most joyous music and worship.  That's because they know well the joy of simply having "enough," when you have been missing "enough" in recent memory.

The response of the more well-to-do protestant (and non-denominational - you should be skeptical of anyplace that calls itself a "bible church") churches is disappointing and also quite unsurprising.



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