Sad our church turned its back on dd

[TeenLifeMum]

Dd has been to church all her life. At one point we moved to a different church that suited us more but we made lovely friends etc and dd was attending youth group until she was 15. Suddenly she was less keen but focusing on GCSEs so we didn’t push it. With clubs etc for the other dc, regular attendance dropped a bit but we were fairly relaxed.

I believe in god but have always had issues with “the church”, but put that aside to be with people of faith.

I recently learned why dd stopped going to youth - they did a full session on how they should pray for gay people in the hope of healing them. How they are so angry about people loving each other is beyond me.

dd is gay. Her girlfriend is loving, kind, polite, and caring. I want all my dc to have loving healthy relationships so have no issue and naively thought others wouldn’t care. Turns out they do. Two of her closest friends stepped away due to her being gay (parents we’d met through church) and now she understandably doesn’t want to go to church, and neither do I.

I’m angry. I hope they’re really proud of themselves from their high horses. On the off chance they’re on here - no, you’re not good Christians.

Thanks for humouring my rant.

Just wow @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime .

And quite apart from your friend’s awful experience, I’m sure God would be thrilled to have bouncers on the door turning away some of the most vulnerable people in society in his name….

I don't remember linking that website anywhere.

But what it says is basically what I already explained. I.e. if someone openly abandons the faith, you maintain the relationship and keep an open door (so you're not disowning them). You don't treat them as if they're a Christian (e.g. invite them to take communion), because they're not, so that would make no sense.
If someone claims they are a Christian but are living a lifestyle that is contrary to Christianity, you maintain a relationship with that person (other religions would not allow this), and you don't disown them, but you also don't mislead them in their false beliefs that they are Christians, because that's deceitful and harmful. That's basically what is meant by "ostracisation" here.

You just linked to one if their youtube videos.

If someone claims they are a Christian but are living a lifestyle that is contrary to Christianity, you maintain a relationship with that person (other religions would not allow this), and you don't disown them, but you also don't mislead them in their false beliefs that they are Christians, because that's deceitful and harmful. That's basically what is meant by "ostracisation" here.

From the page:

As long as the friend claims to be both a practicing Christian and a practicing gay person, there’s no hanging out together. Spending free time with each other is a thing of the past.

That doesn't sound like maintaining a relationship to me.

Wow, this thread offers vivid proof that homophobia is alive and well among evangelical Christians.

Hugs to all the survivors of Christian communities with toxic belief systems.

As a parent I'm far from perfect, but my DC know that being gay or bi is just as ethical as being straight.

They also haven't been fed the crazy idea that you have to wait till marriage to have sex. So many young people I grew up with married very young, because they believed it was wrong to have sex before marriage. Unsurprisingly, a lot of these marriages ended in divorce.

And my DC know about contraception. Again, educating young people about contraception was taboo in my evangelical community, so there was a high rate of teenage pregnancy.

Not that there's anything wrong with divorce or teenage pregnancy, but those should be choices, not the result of being pressured by a patriarchal, homophobic belief system that claims to be Christian but absolutely isn't.

I knew someone gay who was in an evangelical House and when he was discovered to be gay his House Father told him that to avoid sin he must marry one of the female members of the House. They did as they were told, it was an utter disaster, and I don't think she ever entirely recovered from it.

Whether you like it or not, the bottom line is:

But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 1 Corinthians 7:2-3.

Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Hebrews 13:4.

Biblically speaking (which obviously matters to Christians) all sexual activity (not just intercourse) before or outside of marriage is sinful (i.e. morally wrong/against God's plan and design for sex). That includes loving, consensual, heterosexual sex between an adult man and woman.

What is an 'evangelical house'? I move in these circles and have never heard of a 'House Father'.

I think they mean House Church, which was (is?) a movement of small churches held in people's houses because (cynical? Me?) the big churches had Got It All Wrong and had way too much in the way of accountability and safeguarding

Sounds like it, yes. It felt pretty heretical to me because the ultimate authority seemed to be the House Father, who as far as I could tell had no actual qualification of any kind and was answerable to nobody. Oh, and gave downright wrong instructions to kids of twenty which screwed up their entire lives... Because it was all about him having a direct line to God so he always knew what God wanted and they were just little ignorant creatures who ought to take his word unquestioningly.

Not the only time I have met that among ersatz christians.

Good thing gay people can now get married then.

OK, so you believe that everything Paul said in his letters is meant to be taken literally, without acknowledging the specific cultural context. Great.

I'm sure you believe that slavery is fine then, because Paul also wrote,
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Ephesians 6:5

And I hope that when you pray, you always cover your hair (assuming that you are a woman), because Paul is very emphatic about this in 1 Corinthians (just a few chapters on from where the bit you quoted about marriage comes from!):
Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered disgraces his head. But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered disgraces her head, for it is one and the same thing as having a shaved head. For if a woman will not cover her head, she should cut off her hair. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, she should cover her head. For a man should not have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man. I Corinthians 11:4-8.

The thing about fundamentalist evangelicals is that no one ever interprets the Bible completely literally, not even the New Testament. There are always passages where the 'experts' explain that things were different in Paul's day. So they are picking and choosing which verses to interpret as timeless universal commands, and which verses to interpret through a more culturally relative lens.

That's why saying 'The bottom line is' is a cop-out.

Thank you for this intelligent, sensible, measured response. It is very much appreciated.

Does it ever strike you that Paul, like John Ruskin, was a bit phobic about women having hair at all?

Paul had a big problem with women in general. Quite why the early church put so much faith in some random bloke who never even met Jesus is something I have yet to see adequately explained.

I agree. I have heard this said before.

His followers came out on top, and people like Peter who had actually known Christ got sidelined by Paul's mob. (It's a lot more complicated than that, really. But Paul had the gift of the gab and also wrote things down, and his writings got preserved and included in the pravda. i mean, sorry, the bible.)

😂Your username is very appropriate.

The thing is, Paul also wrote 1 Corinthians 13, which has to be one of the most beautiful passages in human history. When I read it, I understand why Christianity still resonates today. It begins like this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. [...]

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends I Corinthians 13:1-3, 7-8

That just goes to show that you can be a talented writer/speaker and still be an utter shitshow of a misogynist. Paul is responsible for an awful lot of abuse and oppression of women, and Christians need to own that and do something about it.

Good thing gay people can now get married then.

Ok @erwachen putting Paul aside for a minute, lets see what Jesus Himself said about marriage:

“Haven’t you read,” [in the Scriptures] he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:4-6.

There's your answer.

Jesus is referring back to the Old Testament - something He did a lot. Genesis 2:23-24 (about Adam and Eve) specifically in this case:

The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

In other words, it was a cult.

Cool story bro. Doesn't take away from from what I said.

Yes, I know the passage (by heart, and in the King James version: I was at that sort of school for a while). In the same passage is "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" which is nearly in the same league as "annihilating all that's made to a green thought in a green shade". It doesn't alter the fact that much of his writing sucks swamp through a straw. See also Wordsworth, of whom James Kenneth Stephen wrote

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Who bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times,
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst;
At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A, B, C,
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

You now have to explain what you mean by "cult", and explain why the CofE (which after all is not the original Christian church) is not one. The Latter Day Saints and the Jesuits probably are, if they are not sects instead; how does your church differ from them? Is the Roman Catholic Church itself a cult, or a sect? Are Lutherans a cult? Methodists? The Society of Friends? Why not? How does a cult differ from a sect?

(Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.)

All of that says it’s ok for men and women to marry each other- none of it says there shouldn’t be same sex marriage.