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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to be annoyed that church is so boring and missing an opportunity to teach something inspiring

418 replies

somethingmustchange · 08/01/2018 08:31

We rarely go except on visits to MIL. Each time the service is read from exactly the same booklet, the sermon teaches nothing and is just boring reciting of the bible, the hymns are dire and sung terribly by everyone including choir. I always leave feeling depressed and cross that the vicar doesn't try to inspire a new generation or give feelings of hope, happiness, community etc. Then the church goers (all 70 plus apart from maybe 2) have coffee and judge other people that are their supposed friends. How are churches supposed to have a future if they carry on like this?

OP posts:
VileyRose · 09/01/2018 14:10

'Good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but the only way to make a good person do something bad is with religion'
👍

Make your own ways. Christianity is very patriarchal and that's why I can not go along with it. I pray when I need to. I pray to the world, myself. I do not for one second believe a god is above us. We all have the magic and don't need to look above for it.

MotheringMilly · 09/01/2018 14:25

Our church is pretty much split between the elderly and couples with young kids that need to attend as to stand a chance of getting the kids into the best school in the area.

I thought we would resent needing to attend but we don’t mind it, the service itself is pretty mediocre but we’ve met lots of other couples in the area and the kids get to have a play on a Sunday.

I think lots of churches would struggle if it was not for the school connection.

araiwa · 09/01/2018 14:33

Most of our moral system originates within religion. Like murder, rape and theft not being okay

thats just laughably untrue

are you saying everybody was murdering, raping and stealing all the time until 2000 years ago? then suddenly they stopped because the bible said so. how did moses and his ragtag bunch get to mt sinai without killing each other before he got the 10 commandments?

every society in the world knows murder is wrong. i dont need religion to tell me that murder is wrong

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 14:43

are you saying everybody was murdering, raping and stealing all the time until 2000 years ago

Yes. Go and look up some ancient history. Human sacrifice etc, etc. Vikings raping and pillaging. Egyptians putting to death servants to send them to the afterlife with their masters.

You may have a complete inability to imagine a different value system to those based on the Abrahamic religions and a complete lack of ancient history. But those value systems very much existed.

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 14:44

every society in the world knows murder is wrong

Actually lots of societies endorse murder in certain circumstances.

midnightmooch · 09/01/2018 14:45

Actually lots of societies endorse murder in certain circumstances.- including Christian countries - like USA.

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 14:47

every society in the world knows murder is wrong.

Even that statement is based on the Abrahamic religion's belief that all human life is sacred. You've internalised it so much that you can't even identify it. But that's where it has it's routes.

Many societies did not believe this and believed that the power of life or death should come from rank and power rather than an instrinsic right.

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 14:56

Actually lots of societies endorse murder in certain circumstances.- including Christian countries - like USA.

Yes, that's true. But just because a society is nominally Christian doesn't mean that everything that happens within it is. And many Christian groups campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty - notably Quakers.

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 14:57

*roots. Ffs auto correct

araiwa · 09/01/2018 15:01

if everyone thought murder was ok, then there would be no humans at all

coconuttella · 09/01/2018 15:03

are you saying everybody was murdering, raping and stealing all the time until 2000 years ago

Since when did religion start 2000 years ago!?

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 15:06

if everyone thought murder was ok, then there would be no humans at all

But there were belief systems which advocated that certain people could murder other sorts of people and that was okay.

And before that you could murder whoever you liked.

midnightmooch · 09/01/2018 15:07

The loudest voices in the US seem to be the Christians in pro death penalty - don't they use the bible to justify the killing?

PatriarchyPersonified · 09/01/2018 15:15

"Most of our morality comes from religion"

Speaking of causing offence, it's statements like this one that genuinely offend many non-religious people, because it's another example of religion infecting us and trying to take ownership of morality.

Morality has no basis in religion. Morality is an evolved social construct that has been coopted by religion after the fact.

To use the Bible as an example, many posters on here have gone to great lengths to state that the really bad stuff in the Bible is not to be taken literally, it's just allegory etc. My question is how do you pick and choose which bits of the Bible are ok and which aren't? You use your moral sense to know that some of it is pretty fucked up and some of it is relatively acceptable.

That sense of morality can't have come from the Bible though, because you are using it to decide which bits of the Bible are ok and which bits aren't. It must be innate within us.

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 15:16

Morality has no basis in religion. Morality is an evolved social construct that has been coopted by religion after the fact.

Then why don't you believe in similar systems to the Aztecs or Vikings or Celtic pagans?

Strawberrybubblebath · 09/01/2018 15:16

OP - try a different church - ours is nothing like that. Our church has 3 services a day all with about 400 people.
Family service, lively with a band, dancing, sometimes people acting, video clips, a talk from the vicar and worship songs, children's groups from babies to teens with crafts and games for little ones and breakfast and discussions for the teens. Coffee/tea afterwards.
11am service, traditional wording reading from service sheets, old fashioned hymns with church organ, communion every week. Tends to be popular with the elderly. Tea/coffee and cake after.
Evening service, very modern and lively, snacks after, tends to be full of youngsters and young adults, students from local uni,

We also do weekends away, quiet worship, women's groups, men's groups, older peoples groups, mother and baby groups, toddlers groups, Messy church, small groups in peoples houses, support groups, alpha groups, parenting courses, marriage courses.

Service wise (together with other churches) we run the local food bank, night shelter, lonely peoples lunches, Street pastors, counselling, debt counselling, tradecraft markets, a work scheme for adults with learning difficulties, support an orphanage overseas and of course anyone that needs individual support. Probably a few more but that's off the top of my head.

Old fashioned churches like your MIL's are loved by many (often elderly) but there are lots of different more modern churches too.

PatriarchyPersonified · 09/01/2018 15:17

And if morality has its basis in religion, why are atheists not the most evil people on earth? In fact atheists commit crimes at the same rate as any other demographic.

Vitalogy · 09/01/2018 15:19

It must be innate within us. Star

derxa · 09/01/2018 15:19

It always amazes me that so many people think its fair game to belittle, harangue and generally be rude to Christians Slight amendment.

araiwa · 09/01/2018 15:19

the bible advocates killing a bride by stoning for not being a virgin at her wedding- a great moral teaching for all

thats murder

Eltonjohnssyrup · 09/01/2018 15:20

Or many traditional Aztec belief systems? All of the above and these don't intrinsically view murder as wrong or human life as sacred. Many don't include the concepts of wrong ('sin') and right towards God or others but only the concept of serving oneself.

You've internalised the belief systems of the Abrahamic religions so deeply you are incapable of imaging anything (or nothing) else.

araiwa · 09/01/2018 15:21

Then why don't you believe in similar systems to the Aztecs or Vikings or Celtic pagans?

Christians killed them all

PatriarchyPersonified · 09/01/2018 15:21

Eltonjohnsyrup

I'm sorry I don't follow with that Aztec, Celt thing? Do you mean things like human sacrifice etc?

Didn't God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son?

Jesus is the most famous human sacrifice in history. I don't see the difference.

The Bible allows all sorts of horrendous things that we now believe are unacceptable. I won't bore you with a long list but you know the things I'm talking about.

If I drew my morality from the Bible, I'd would be a very messed up person.

PatriarchyPersonified · 09/01/2018 15:23

Morality is a subjective, evolved social construct that is innate within us due to our culture and an element of biology.

If you want to go down the road of stating that morality is objective, we can have that discussion, but it doesn't really help the religious cause much.

BlahBlahBloodyBlah · 09/01/2018 16:33

Patriarchy, are you just going to keep arguing until we all agree with you?

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