@TRiG I find myself agreeing very much with Deird in her response (defending LGBT-inclusive Christianity), "Don't damn well tell me I'm handwaving the difficult bits because I don't really care about them." Elsewhere caryjamesbond identifies as an ex-fundamentalist and current atheist; I am always sad to see someone apparently rejecting fundamentalism but still persisting in Biblical literalism, insisting others are Doing Christianity Wrong, etc.
@JamesT It's a surprisingly common feature of modern atheism, actually (along with looking at all other religions through the lens of your ex religion).
To an extent, I've escaped it by coming from a minority religion background, but I suspect I haven't escaped it well enough. (And that's a large part of why I read Slactkivist. I really should read more about eastern religions, though. I know very little about them.)
@JamesT I found caryjamesbond seemed to be becoming less and less reasonable as he went on. I could sympathise with his initial outburst (and it was fairly well put, to boot), but he simply refused to listen to the responses.
@TRiG I am also very ignorant of eastern religions :-( I agree, too, that we carry all sorts of invisible baggage/assumptions with us.
Talking with my mother recently, she mentioned how when she was little, the church elders used to issue communion tokens to control who was allowed to receive the sacrament - based on how moral they had been, in the judgement of the session.
Reading the discipline books of older presbyterian churches is very instructive. Lots of people getting reprimanded in public for perceived transgressions. Being made to stand in the front of the church, in a special costume, while they make an example of you. Etc. Nasty stuff.
Anyway, I think this affects my mother's attitude to the church a lot, and mine too to some diluted extent, because although I've never seen a communion token, it's still very recent in the institutional and even personal memory of the church.
So my mental picture of the church has the assumption that it has a physically old building, lots of continuity of history (eg there is a room somewhere filled with yellowing documents), and it is in some sense a community landmark - an important place even for people who do not go regularly.
Also I think that there are things I might intuitively consider scandalous which are not universal.
I'm afraid I have to go in a sec - for a meeting with some of the session, as it happens. If I don't come back it's because I've been thrown in the coal cellar for whistling out of tune (or perhaps at all?).
@JamesT The old churches in Tullamore are the Presbyterian, the Methodist, and the Church of Ireland. The Catholic one burnt down and was rebuilt in the 50s, I think. The CofI is outside town; all the others are in the centre.
The Upper Room
The Upper Room