Godless Girl

… and her adventures in Atheism

Archive for category christianity

Beware teh gay! Protect your children!

Aug 26

Posted by Godless Girl in Fundy Friday, christianity, politics, society, videos | 18 Comments

From the youtube video: CitizenLink [a Focus on the Family affiliate] Education Analyst Candi Cushman offers tips on what to look for and tools to help parents push back against the gay agenda in local schools.

Quote: “There’s a lot of talk about tolerance: We need to be accepting and embracing and tolerant. But there’s not a whole lot of tolerance or embracing or accepting of Christian values and the families that want their children raised with Christian values.”

So now we must tolerate prejudice and bigotry? We need to embrace “values” that shame other human beings for their most precious and core traits? Maybe I’m unable to tolerate their “values” as valid ideas because I see them as fundamentally unacceptable and harmful to others.

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Teenagers Ditching Youth Group & Church

Aug 11

Posted by Godless Girl in christianity, religion, society | 13 Comments

photo by marcia furman

USA Today published a short piece on how the days of overcrowded youth groups and church trips are over.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.

A few individuals guess why kids are ditching:

“Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook,” says Barna president David Kinnaman.

“I blame the parents,”who didn’t grow up in a church culture, says Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kan. … “Remember, 80% of kids don’t have cars. Their parents could be lazy or the opposite — overstressed and overcommitted. If parents don’t go to church, kids don’t, either.”

Don’t forget the overcommitted teens themselves, the recession and growing competition from summer mission trips, says Rick Gage of Go-Tell Youth Camps, based in Duluth, Ga.

But then this quote sneaks in at the very end without any explanation or curiosity from the authors:

“I started to question if it was something I always wanted to do or if I just went because my friends did,” says Atkeson, now 18. “It just wasn’t really something I wanted to continue to do. My beliefs changed. I wouldn’t consider myself a Christian anymore.”

This is where I think the article would get interesting! Why did they stop there? This may be the most important issue—beyond lazy parents and facebook.

There must be more to kids leaving Christianity other than “I’m not attending church” or “I’m not going to camps with my youth group.” Many Christians often say things like, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a mechanic.” If Christianity and faith is so much more than just attending services, then what’s causing this shift in teen commitments?

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Sexism in the Bible

Aug 5

Posted by Godless Girl in Fundy Friday, christianity, god, relationships, religion, the bible | 18 Comments

sexism - Archie comic

From PEP #192, April 1966

The evangelical magazine Christianity Today (which I’ve mentioned quite a bit) published an article titled “Woman As Folly” about the many curious Bible passages about women as possessions, being below or weaker than men turning women away from Christianity and god:

… “I think men are more aware than women of their tendency to sin,” one of the men suggested. “Maybe they can use this wisdom to help guide their wives.”

I couldn’t believe this was being discussed as a legitimate idea.

“Don’t they understand?” I said [to my husband]. “These sort of misconceptions—the idea that Christianity subjugates women—drive people away from the church.”

I wondered what he thought was so clear—that women bear a greater burden for the fall of man? “If I wasn’t a Christian,” I said, “these comments about women would turn me away from God.”

I wanted to deconstruct the ideas that were chipping away at my confidence in the Creator, but I felt outmatched. Among the men in our group, conversations often felt like a Scripture-quoting duel. Each time a new passage was referenced, I had the same question: What’s the context? Their response was nearly always a puzzled look. It was as if I’d just suggested we tear out pages from our Bibles and fold them into paper airplanes. Scripture, they reminded me, is inerrant.

This woman is starting to see sense. You can almost feel the warmth of the light bulb glowing brightly above her head.

Could this be the birth of a feminist? A liberated woman who realizes her entire religion has been anti-woman for 2000+ years? Maybe she could actually re-consider her belief in a god who would use authors with misogynistic values to be its voice?

But no. She can’t doubt god or the Bible. She has to pound the square peg into the round hole any way she can. So she goes looking for a comforting justification for the sexist teachings in her holy book.

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Ted Haggard “Over-Repented?”

Aug 1

Posted by Godless Girl in christianity, religion | 2 Comments

ted haggard

Iz just kidding bout teh butt secks! lulz!

So Ted Haggard—former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of a right-wing megachurch in Colorado Springs, Colorado—had a long-standing affair with a gay prostitute and smoked crystal meth. This was back in 2006. He resigned from his leadership positions and publicly apologized for his “sinful behavior.”

Now, Haggard is working on building up a new church which is, yet again, in Colorado Springs, CO. “In a July 2010 interview he gave to CNN, Haggard claims that his feelings of sexual attraction to other men have miraculously disappeared. Haggard now portrays his encounter with the prostitute as a massage that went awry (wikipedia).” That was one long-term massage, Mr. Haggard!

After changing his story, now Haggard claims he “over-apologized”:

It seems to me that Haggard may be back-peddling to make his sin sound less awful than he previously admitted it really was.  Perhaps he’s trying to justify his right to preach morality and righteousness. Perhaps he’s downgrading from “horrible sin” to “street cred”. Check out this article on his return to the pulpit where he explains how his public sin has become a great thing for his church.

Oh, what a guy.

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