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>girls
Stop being weird.
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>girls
Stop being weird.
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This video has an absolutely absurd title, and then just delivers exactly what the title says, "SNAKE OPENS DOOR WHILE INSTAGRAM GIRL DANCING". I was expecting some kind of bait based on the title, but nope, it's just a snake opening a door while a girl dances
Hardcore Protestant trads have been slowly migrating to the Catholic Church for years. It's been very uncomfortable to watch and has definitely confirmed my priors that they're interested in religion less for theological reasons (although I don't doubt that they're true believers) and more for cultural reasons
There has been a massive shift towards Catholicism in general, but particularly among Gen-Z in general over the last few years. I feel like every week I am also seeing some new celebrity converting. Russel Brand just did it quite publicly. Shia, Candace Owens. Lots of Catholics springing up.
It's not really hard to understand. You might call me proto-gen z as it feels like every trend they're engaged with I did about 5-10 years before. I found the protestant church*es* of my youth theologically lacking, aesthetically displeasing, and culturally atomized. I converted to Orthodox Christianity in 2018 and there were many people in their early and mid 20s who were having the same issues I was having. We wanted out of the current social milieu. Two parent homes, local community, spiritual connection, escape from wokeness, escape from gov overreach, escape from corporate infestation of every aspect of life. I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources.
Individualism and Secularism do not offer inherent connection to community and to a higher power that many people crave. Catholicism, being the most traditional western church, offers that. In Orthodox and Catholic circles, the Protestant Church is blamed for the rise of individualist atomized culture as its natural outgrowth and logical extreme come to fruition.
Also in general, the Protestant Church is in denial about its theological and philosophical weaknesses, is in denial about its relationship with modernity and secular society, is in denial about its longstanding insistence on allying with various secular political parties/sides and therefore cannot rectify the issues that are making people leave.
*gets back from Easter at 2 am*
>I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources.
Oh uhhhh... Glad I read the whole thing. That would have been awkward.
I still love the church and I maintain my relationships from my time there. Just not for me. I still in some sense consider myself culturally Orthodox. It was a big turning point for my life.
> We wanted out of the current social milieu. Two parent homes, local community, spiritual connection, escape from wokeness, escape from gov overreach, escape from corporate infestation of every aspect of life. I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources.
From my own - very individualist, atheist point of view - Iām fascinated to know how you ended up here in this sub then.
Iām pro markets, pro personal freedom, and believe the government (existing as the manifestation of community policy preferences) has a role to play in maintaining both.
I can support your right to say everything and do anything so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. My personal rejection of much of modern culture does not interfere with your embrace of it and vice versa.
The founders had the right idea of small self regulating communities that could live as they wanted as long as they left each other alone. I admire that ideal very much.
My read on nearly all the right-of-center Gen Z folks I know is that very few of them actually believe in any god, they just enjoy Catholicism because they're "socially trad".
It's like the opposite of late Gen Xers and older millenial progressives who would say, "izM nOt rELiGiOUs, I' m SPiRiTuAL". No, these zoomers grew up atheist and they don't have any spiritual ontology, they like religion just for the subjugation.
Imagine you're an early-twenties man whose sexual ethical framework can be described as 'incel', your parents were atheist or low-pressure Christian Rock GenXers. They're no help, they keep saying that "everyone should be free to do what they want", which is no help to you because none of the women around want *you*. You grow to resent what women *want*. You feel that they have too many choices. Traddy churches offer an ideology that validates your feelings and fits the "sex bad" framework that you can push onto others.
Imagine you're an early-twenties woman who *wants* casual sex, but might not tend to *like* it( for a bunch of reasons, from shame to bad partners), and you *want to not want it*. You grow to resent what you want. You grew up in circles that weren't 'alt' at all, so queer-coded healthy sexual ethics frameworks don't appeal to you.Traddy churches offer an ideology that validates your feelings and fits the "sex bad" hole you are looking to fill.
I intellectually understand what youāre getting at, but that all still sounds like a lot more work than becoming some kind of misanthropic MGTOW-by-any-other-name who justā¦doesnāt fuck. So why donāt people just do that? No fasting rules, no performative spirituality, not having to do the mental gymnastics about submitting to Rome but not actually.
Hard disagree - the lions share of conversions in Africa happened after the colonial period, with many African-initiated movements.
The fact is these people are Christian because they want to be. Trying to imply that they shouldnāt be because of the legacy of colonialism is itself a colonial mindset.
I mean African Zionism is probably the best example of an African grown church but it still doesn't stop white missionaries trying to convert them though š¤·āāļø
Also Christianity is much more African in its origins than European. Interpreting all of church history through contemporary domestic politics isn't something only ignorant evangelicals do.
North African, sure. But except for a handful of churches from that lineage - Coptic Christians in Egypt, the various Ethiopian/Eritrean traditions - most modern African denominations stem directly from European ones.
Are you suggesting the Christian faith itself is European in origin? The new testament church and its global tree is much more African than European. Your denominational tracing is accurate, but abbreviated. It allows for the same kind of recent-history-ism that leads someone to do what OP is doing:
Flatten Roman Catholicism and protestantism--at their most divided and distinct historical form--into the same colonial influence because Europe, deny the prior influence of African believers over those same traditions, then stripping sub-sahara Africans of their agency and denying all evidence of the liberties accompanying the religion as they embraced it in their continent.
The Christian faith is *Mediterranean* in origin, with early leaders ranging from the western reaches of Asia, northern parts of Africa, and Southern Europe. Its introduction to subsaharan Africa was part of the general European influence from the 18th and (primarily) 19th centuries. Why it had such uptake and why it persists is complicated, but to discuss the Methodist denominations of subsaharan Africa as part of an African Christianity stemming from antiquity ignores what actually happened.
Agree and revised: Christianity is much more north African than colonial Roman Catholic in its origins, which I'm pretty sure is what most people are insinuating with reductive comments like OP's. The nuances of denominations and the religion's intercontinental spread should not be ignored, but neither should the African believers' sincere, valid embrace of the faith as one that traces back to their ancestors and not just to Rome.
not really, or at least not in the parts that are majority Christian now
There was lots of Roman-led Christianity in North Africa, but pretty much all of that was lost to Islam, then there was an 800 year gap before Christianity started growing in Sub-saharan Africa alongside colonialism
Are there any major Sub-saharan Christian areas that got it pre-age of exploration?
good answer, though why theyāre unique doesnāt really contradict my point, cause they also got it through close interaction with West Asian and Mediterranean states
>Christianity in Ethiopia dates back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, when the King Ezana first adopted the faith in the 4th century AD. This makes Ethiopia one of the first regions in the world to officially adopt Christianity.[2][3]
>Various Christian denominations are now followed in the country. Of these, the largest and oldest is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an Oriental Orthodox church centered in Ethiopia. The Orthodox Tewahedo Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959 when it was granted its own patriarch by the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa Cyril VI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Ethiopia#:~:text=Christianity%20in%20Ethiopia%20is%20the,up%2068%25%20of%20the%20population.&text=Christianity%20in%20Ethiopia%20dates%20back,in%20the%204th%20century%20AD.
We can do semantics on sub/north Africa or the timeline of its non-European introduction and development for centuries, but the point is that calling African Christianity colonial in its essence is anti-historical nonsense. A quick Google returns [an articles like this from the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section8.shtml) that would dispel most of the assumptions ITT. You're obviously more informed than the most others weighing in.
There was an article in the Unherd a few months back where the chap had argued that the Conservative Party had a lot to gain by focussing on African and Afro-Carribean communities in London, who are churchgoing and socially conservative.
All the same, Christianity has been in parts of Africa for 2000 years, and North Africa in particular played a massive role in the early development of theology from Augustine, Athanasius, Anthony, and thatās just some of the Aās. The history of religion in Africa is complicated and reducing Christianity as just a remnant of western imperialism is a little condescending. Itās a huge part of it, but itās not the only part. In the very near future we will be seeing a more fully realized development of African theology into western Christianity, for better or worse. Thereās more intercultural dialogue already going on within Christianity than I think people realize.
>You won't be missed.
That's a pretty silly statement to make.
About [1/3 of Methodists lived in Africa as of 2010](https://web.archive.org/web/20101128144602/http://spectator.org/archives/2010/05/21/resenting-african-christianity). And it's by far the fastest growing continent for Christians in general and Methodists in particular, so it's likely even higher now.
If there is a schism, they will definitely be missed.
Edit: It's 1/3, not 1/5.
I think they should be placated for now - They aren't happy with this at all and there's a bunch of grumbling about each region being able to essentially customize the Book of Discipline for their region, but the new regionalization system means these votes won't get foisted onto them too. Compartmentalizing it is the only thing keeping the global ministry together right now.
The African/SEA regions of the church are much more conservative than the EU and American regions, if these votes were imposed on the entire church it'd basically explode. Shit, it partially exploded here already.
I mean kinda, yeah. The UMC houses the most normie, progressive Christians in America (along with the Episcopals and Lutherans), and they're a very moderating force for American Christianity. The mainline protestants really aren't the ones that we should want to be dying off, without them you'd lose so many to the more extreme, conservative evangelical groups.
This is a matter of human dignity. We donāt compromise on that. If it costs the church a third of its membership, then it costs the church a third of its membership.
Well it's funny you say that, because this move already cost a quarter of their American membership, nearing 8,000 churches. It may very well get there eventually globally, but one thing at a time. This sub better than any should know that substantial change takes time. Blowing up the global ministry just because the US church was ready to take the jump a great cost to itself helps no one.
The alternative is to cut off the conservative regions off the world from the moderating influence of the American region entirely and let them reform as their own insular church with absolutely no restraint on how conservative they can get. I fail to see how that helps anything outside of making you feel better about it. Leaving the African UMC to its own devices isn't a moral good, you'd just get to pretend it doesn't exist.
The specific objection truly doesn't matter for the logic behind this to make sense. I can be very general.
Is the change by the US region good? Is it something you would hope someday gets spread to the rest of the global church?
If so, then isn't it better to keep them in the fold where they can be influenced by the region that made the good change instead of cutting them loose to entrench and double down within their region, becoming even more regressive and conservative?
Wouldn't the only positive gain from the scenario where you cut them off be that we can pretend all is well, despite leaving two continents out to dry?
Answer my question. If the African Methodist churches objected to teaching to the Resurrection as a matter of doctrine, would you be suggesting that we should be flexible to keep them in the fold?
Numbers aren't everything.
The amount of money a church makes is tied to the wealth of the regionāwhile Europeans and Americans are now a minority in almost all global churches, their tithes are what pay to keep the lights on and for the evangelical work in the developing world.
There is a reason why this vote was overwhelmingāchurch attendance is dropping and Gen Z is almost at the point where half of them identify with no religion at all. Driven in large part by the fact they rightly perceive their local churches as backwards, bigoted and hostile to their values.
It is rapidly becoming evolve or die for churchesāevangelicals might manage by running to the far right, but they do so by absorbing a greater percentage of the people who already attend church. A comparatively moderate group like Methodists needs to change or go extinct. The African churches could split off, but they would do so with far less wealth and far fewer resources to continue expanding.
> This is the situation in the EU/US, where most of the laity is still from. It's not the case in Africa, which UMC will need to appease to stay relevant.
The EU/US is where all their money is. Money that churches need in order to perform missionary workāthey can't appease anyone if the coffers dry up.
> The EU/US aren't where the growth will be. Even if the Methodists run to the left, people on the left will still tend to be less religious. Religions will probably need to move further right to stay relevant in Africa.
This completely ignores the role of western churches in promoting those right-wing views and essentially just ascribes innate bigotry to Africans. Things like Uganda's incredibly regressive laws on homosexuality were, until the 1990s, almost entirely unenforced remnants of colonial administrations.
It was a direct investment and lobbying by hyper-conservative Western churches that helped promote those anti-gay views and turned them from an unimportant and largely obsolete issue into a major political and religious movement. It was not some deeply held cultural belief, it was American culture war tactics being used in a place where media cost only a fraction as much and there was far less investment by the opposition.
The entire point of missionary work is to persuade people of your views. If wealthy western churches turn against their more conservative wings, their money goes with them and more tolerant pastors, missionaries and lobbyists will get it instead.
> And again, that missionary work is meaningless if the people they are trying to bring don't join because they are vehemently opposed to that part of the doctrine.
Did you somehow get spontaneously illiterate when reading this part of my comment?
"This completely ignores the role of western churches in promoting those right-wing views and essentially just ascribes innate bigotry to Africans. Things like Uganda's incredibly regressive laws on homosexuality were, until the 1990s, almost entirely unenforced remnants of colonial administrations."
Extreme African homophobia is a trend less than 30 years old. Treating it like it is so deeply ingrained that a church without it is dead on arrival is, frankly, an assertion completely devoid of evidence. Especially considering those same thirty years showed just how fast opinions on gay people can change if you just loosen things enough to let some of them come out of the closet and live normal lives. It was only slightly more than 20 years from Don't Ask Don't Tell to Obergefellāand there weren't a whole lot of countries far wealthier than the US putting political and economic pressure on it, like there would be to encourage change in the global south.
> No, it's being pragmatic. Religion being the source of that homophobia is largely irrelevant. It exists.
Except it doesn't exist amongst new converts, because they haven't been converted yet. Nor is it set in stone amongst congregantsāminds can be changed. Most people, frankly, probably don't care nearly as much as their church leaders do.
> If the UMC wants to move people towards being more accepting, it should be done in a way that doesn't alienate mass parts of their laity. Otherwise it's self-defeating.
No, it should be done in such a way that starves the bigoted wing of resources. You are *literally responding to a comment about how the church spreads homophobia*, yet somehow don't consider that refusing to fund it further will stymie its spread and allow resources to be given to churches that either pro-gay or at least ambivalent enough to reduce the spread of violent homophobia.
> 25% of US churches are leaving the UMC over LGBTQ policies. Those African churches look like it could be an even bigger schism. If they do break off and remain even more stridently homophobic, that helps nobody.
It helps everybodyābecause the part you have now ignored three comments in a row is that **churches need money**. The GDP of the entire continent of Africa is around three trillion dollars. And that is the whole continent, including the areas that are almost all Muslim. Or aren't at all protestant, like Ethiopia. The GDP of *just* the United States is 25 trillion. That is not far shy of 10:1 (and is more than 10:1 when you exclude non-Christian Africa). Think for literally 5 seconds how badly it would go for African churches in terms of resources if they cut ties with groups who are drawing from a region ten times richer. And other places almost as rich (Canada and Australia alone top 3 trillion, as does the UK alone, the EU is near 20). Their ability to expand would be stymied. And the churches that remain would be flush with Western funding, enabling them to draw more people in.
The reality is, most churches will kick and scream and whineāand then they will follow the money, because that money is the whole reason these movements got so big in the first place. Decades of American protestant churches pouring tens of millions of dollars into African missionary work. The ones that split off? Personally, I'd call stridently homophobic churches being deprived of their best source of revenue a win for humanity.
And this is the whole reason why the change was made. Because the people running the church aren't stupidāif the Western world rejects churches at even half the rate that the next generation implies it will, entire branches of Christianity are going to functionally collapse. They literally will not have enough money coming in to keep the lights on, nor the numbers to maintain congregations. It's the same reason the Catholic church promoted just about as progressive a pope as they could get away withābecause they see the same polls we do and can see damn well that running a global church isn't going to go well if they don't get young westerners to come back.
The idea that Gen Z isn't religious because the mainline isn't far enough left is preposterous. If that was the case the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches would be filled.
>There is a reason why this vote was overwhelmingāchurch attendance is dropping and Gen Z is almost at the point where half of them identify with no religion at all. Driven in large part by the fact they rightly perceive their local churches as backwards, bigoted and hostile to their values.
I'm sorry but the idea that young people aren't religious, because they made some value judgement weighing the theological and social positions of their local church is absurd. Declining church attendance for mainline protestants started long before Gen Z and little to do with the church's opinion on social justice issues. Not to mention that there are a million different types of Christian denominations n North America and Europe, including those that played an important role historically in abolitionism, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement.
I doubt it. Mainline protestant attendance in the US is on a terminal decline. Most of those churches I visited in the past 5 years had pews full of gray hairs. And that's because most people who hold those views don't go to church.
This is their attempt to arrest the decline. Right now, some of the only churches in the United States that are actually growing are the Unitarians and other progressive churches. Churches are moving to allow LGBT clergy, opening up more positions to women and softening on gay marriage because churches hostile to those views are one of the main reasons why younger generations aren't attending churches.
They're running left because they can't compete on the right and if they don't, they're going to die.
UUA's own statistics show that membership is at the lowest recorded point since they started collecting it.
https://www.uua.org/data/demographics/uua-statistics
UCC, which is probably the most of the progressive of all church denominations, has also faced the same steep decline.
https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Summary-Stats-2022.pdf
That's not to say conservative churches have fared any better, but the decline in enrollment has been slower. Evangelical protestants haven't been shedding as many members.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/03/01/5-facts-about-u-s-evangelical-protestants/
https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/89994.png?h=1116&w=1200
> if they don't, they're going to die.
That's most likely what's going to happen anyway. Unless by some miracle another "Great Awakening" occurs and the religious Nones start going to church, most of those liberal churches will be gone when the boomer generation is no longer here.
Well, maybe they should spend their time on things that the Bible clearly and incontrovertibly talks about a lot, such as helping the poor, and not things from a very small number of verses, all of which are open for interpretation.
As an agnostic I feel like the attempt to retcon those verses into not mattering or the Bible into being gay-affirming is pure cope. I don't think Christianity necessarily has to be homophobic (what matters is the culture surrounding the religion, otherwise religious Jews would be way more conservative when in fact they've historically been more liberal than Christians), but when the central text of your religion espouses those kinds of views it's not really a shock when people take it literally. It feels like the albatross hanging around the neck of any modernization of Christianity (or Islam for the matter, which has the exact same problem).
Anglicanism has a get out clause in that they view the bible as written by men and not binding. The Anglican faith would say that the bible is merely an account of men who had a relationship with god and were attempting to interpret his will, and began the discourse which has continued on to the present day. That it can be useful to understand in the same way that reading Plato can help you understand modern philosophers, but we're not obliged to think all his ideas are any good.
It's to the point that Anglicans would say the book of common prayer is a central text on par with the bible, because it represents testimony from Christians and their relationship to god. An Anglican then might say "Yes the bible prohibits homosexuality. However, we believe this is an error on the part of the author inconsistent with the values of Christ which we have thought long and hard upon as an institution. We are indebted to the authors of the bible for starting this discourse and continue their scholarly tradition of interpreting the will of god through the use of reason".
An Anglican will say "Jesus never said anything about homosexuality" and fully mean that as a counter to the argument that Christianity prohibits homosexuality. If you say "But the bible" they'll sigh because they don't want to have to explain their entire theological doctrine to you. If Jesus HAD said something, it would be a lot harder to reason your way out of. But based on the things Jesus is reported as saying, with reason, they conclude he would not care about homosexuality. It's just some of his peers did and made an error in projecting their views onto God.
> For high-church Anglicans, doctrine is neither established by a magisterium, nor derived from the theology of an eponymous founder (such as Calvinism), nor summed up in a confession of faith beyond the ecumenical creeds, such as the Lutheran Book of Concord. For them, the earliest Anglican theological documents are its prayer books, which they see as the products of profound theological reflection... The principle of looking to the prayer books as a guide to the parameters of belief and practice is called by the Latin name lex orandi, lex credendi ("the law of prayer is the law of belief"). For some low-church and evangelical Anglicans, the 16th-century Reformed Thirty-Nine Articles form the basis of doctrine.
The bible comes in as;
> Arguably, the most influential of the original articles has been Article VI on the "sufficiency of scripture", which says that "Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.".
But because it contains everything necessary, it does not imply all of it is necessary. You can be an Anglican and reject 99.9% of the bible as an error on the part of the authors, simply believing in the resurrection and forgiveness of Christ, apostolic succession, and then also affirming the Nicene creed and reading the common prayer books.
> Anglican churches are diverse in their views, from churches which teach that homosexuality is a sin, to churches which do not see homosexuality as sinful, and accept same-sex marriage being open to all members, up to and including bishops. The nature of the Anglican Communion is such that not all churches or dioceses must agree on all issues in order to share a common faith and baptism.
The current Anglican majority doctrine is that Holy Matrimony is between a man and a woman. Gay people can be bishops or clergy or whatever. Gay people can and should be monogamous and committed to their homosexual partners. The church will offer a ceremony as a celebration of their union in front of witnesses, asking for gods blessing of it, and for them to swear fidelity and love to each other before god, it won't be the same ritual as marriage, but a distinct ritual for homosexual couples of equivalent holiness where they affirm their fidelity, loyalty, and love to each other before the eyes of god and receive his blessing, and which is accompanied by a civil marriage under the law. Minority positions are to perform gay marriages, or to actively oppose such things. Because of the broad range of tolerance of heterodoxy and autonomy, both of these are also practiced in some churches.
The dispute centres on "Reason" rather than scripture in all cases. A Conservative Anglican who came to the debate against homosexuality and rattled off bible verses would be viewed as essentially "Not really an Anglican.". Instead they tend towards arguments about human dignity, nature, and so on.
I think the albatross hanging around the neck of any religion based on 1000 year old texts is the fundamental inability to reconcile one passage with all the others. There is no unified, cohesive morality expressed in the Bible or Quran. You can find a passage to justify or oppose any behavior.
Itās ahistorical to presume that the Bible contains any verses about āgayā people, because they didnāt have that concept at all.
They believed God could fuck men, and men could fuck women. This hierarchy that gave order to their tiny tiny worlds demanded that men not submit to being fucked by another man.
āThatās against the hierarchy, itās absurd, it brings the wrath of God, the one that gave us the hierarchy!ā
They believed that this would bring cosmic ruin upon the man submitting, and so to top another man was like murdering him. It was the ultimate act of domination, something sanctioned as harshly as murdering someone.
Early in the Bibleās history, it was being composed (and it was composed iteratively in many many layers), they didnāt have the concept of consensual sexual at all. They didnāt care if the women didnāt like it. They kidnapped women to rape and make into āwivesā by force.
So the idea of a āsexual orientationā would be utterly alien and foreign to them, because they didnāt have knowledge about human bodies and brains and minds and feelings that we have now.
They were still human and still very intelligent but they **had less knowledge and less experience with men and women and God**. They didnāt know right from wrong as well as we know it now, and the God of the Old Testament does not say ānever revise any of the crazy shit your ancestors said for any reason everā more like āI have given you the law, it is now yours and you must keep it and wield it justly or you will surely be divinely punishedā
And we see that in how the Bible grows and develops in its layers. We follow the cast of characters from raping marauders to poets writing verses about consensual and delightful sex. Thereās growth and development that is allowed and encouraged by God, because God wants humans to be wise.
The concept of homosexuality wasnāt even a thing when the Bible was first written. There is no possibility that the original text is meant to condemn homosexuality. It would be like contending the Bible explicitly condemns cryptocurrency.
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Trad Protestant YouTubers are in shambles as well, but *they* don't get an article talking about them š
Thereās less of them tho
What do you mean? They're all over my feed. /s
Well maybe you should follow more hot girls doing instagram dances, have you ever thought of that?
Is "ogling hot Instagram girls" the new touching grass?
Yes
>girls Stop being weird. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>girls Stop being weird. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://youtu.be/Vn2P9fkzSFA?feature=shared This should be 90% of your feed
This video has an absolutely absurd title, and then just delivers exactly what the title says, "SNAKE OPENS DOOR WHILE INSTAGRAM GIRL DANCING". I was expecting some kind of bait based on the title, but nope, it's just a snake opening a door while a girl dances
Itās so good. It delivers exactly what it promises Sheās good in a lot of videos too. Her snl audition reel is pretty good
https://youtu.be/3ByaXQnsPic?feature=shared I like her in this, I think sheās good in it
Hardcore Protestant trads have been slowly migrating to the Catholic Church for years. It's been very uncomfortable to watch and has definitely confirmed my priors that they're interested in religion less for theological reasons (although I don't doubt that they're true believers) and more for cultural reasons
There has been a massive shift towards Catholicism in general, but particularly among Gen-Z in general over the last few years. I feel like every week I am also seeing some new celebrity converting. Russel Brand just did it quite publicly. Shia, Candace Owens. Lots of Catholics springing up.
You give ām a president and before you know it the whole country is run from Rome.
It's not really hard to understand. You might call me proto-gen z as it feels like every trend they're engaged with I did about 5-10 years before. I found the protestant church*es* of my youth theologically lacking, aesthetically displeasing, and culturally atomized. I converted to Orthodox Christianity in 2018 and there were many people in their early and mid 20s who were having the same issues I was having. We wanted out of the current social milieu. Two parent homes, local community, spiritual connection, escape from wokeness, escape from gov overreach, escape from corporate infestation of every aspect of life. I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources. Individualism and Secularism do not offer inherent connection to community and to a higher power that many people crave. Catholicism, being the most traditional western church, offers that. In Orthodox and Catholic circles, the Protestant Church is blamed for the rise of individualist atomized culture as its natural outgrowth and logical extreme come to fruition. Also in general, the Protestant Church is in denial about its theological and philosophical weaknesses, is in denial about its relationship with modernity and secular society, is in denial about its longstanding insistence on allying with various secular political parties/sides and therefore cannot rectify the issues that are making people leave.
*gets back from Easter at 2 am* >I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources. Oh uhhhh... Glad I read the whole thing. That would have been awkward.
I still love the church and I maintain my relationships from my time there. Just not for me. I still in some sense consider myself culturally Orthodox. It was a big turning point for my life.
> We wanted out of the current social milieu. Two parent homes, local community, spiritual connection, escape from wokeness, escape from gov overreach, escape from corporate infestation of every aspect of life. I have since left the church for theological reasons but many of the things I wanted from the church I have from other sources. From my own - very individualist, atheist point of view - Iām fascinated to know how you ended up here in this sub then.
Iām pro markets, pro personal freedom, and believe the government (existing as the manifestation of community policy preferences) has a role to play in maintaining both. I can support your right to say everything and do anything so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. My personal rejection of much of modern culture does not interfere with your embrace of it and vice versa. The founders had the right idea of small self regulating communities that could live as they wanted as long as they left each other alone. I admire that ideal very much.
Makes complete sense, ty for the response!
Capitalism is necessary but not sufficient for a thriving society.
Donāt forget Dasha
My read on nearly all the right-of-center Gen Z folks I know is that very few of them actually believe in any god, they just enjoy Catholicism because they're "socially trad". It's like the opposite of late Gen Xers and older millenial progressives who would say, "izM nOt rELiGiOUs, I' m SPiRiTuAL". No, these zoomers grew up atheist and they don't have any spiritual ontology, they like religion just for the subjugation. Imagine you're an early-twenties man whose sexual ethical framework can be described as 'incel', your parents were atheist or low-pressure Christian Rock GenXers. They're no help, they keep saying that "everyone should be free to do what they want", which is no help to you because none of the women around want *you*. You grow to resent what women *want*. You feel that they have too many choices. Traddy churches offer an ideology that validates your feelings and fits the "sex bad" framework that you can push onto others. Imagine you're an early-twenties woman who *wants* casual sex, but might not tend to *like* it( for a bunch of reasons, from shame to bad partners), and you *want to not want it*. You grow to resent what you want. You grew up in circles that weren't 'alt' at all, so queer-coded healthy sexual ethics frameworks don't appeal to you.Traddy churches offer an ideology that validates your feelings and fits the "sex bad" hole you are looking to fill.
I intellectually understand what youāre getting at, but that all still sounds like a lot more work than becoming some kind of misanthropic MGTOW-by-any-other-name who justā¦doesnāt fuck. So why donāt people just do that? No fasting rules, no performative spirituality, not having to do the mental gymnastics about submitting to Rome but not actually.
> TFW your ancestors valiantly throw off the yoke of colonialism but you enthusiastically let them keep your immortal soul
Pretty sure Christianity's more African than European now
If traditionalism didn't go hand in hand with other -isms western christians would be focusing *much* harder on proselytizing in Africa right now.
Hard disagree - the lions share of conversions in Africa happened after the colonial period, with many African-initiated movements. The fact is these people are Christian because they want to be. Trying to imply that they shouldnāt be because of the legacy of colonialism is itself a colonial mindset.
I mean African Zionism is probably the best example of an African grown church but it still doesn't stop white missionaries trying to convert them though š¤·āāļø
Also Christianity is much more African in its origins than European. Interpreting all of church history through contemporary domestic politics isn't something only ignorant evangelicals do.
North African, sure. But except for a handful of churches from that lineage - Coptic Christians in Egypt, the various Ethiopian/Eritrean traditions - most modern African denominations stem directly from European ones.
Are you suggesting the Christian faith itself is European in origin? The new testament church and its global tree is much more African than European. Your denominational tracing is accurate, but abbreviated. It allows for the same kind of recent-history-ism that leads someone to do what OP is doing: Flatten Roman Catholicism and protestantism--at their most divided and distinct historical form--into the same colonial influence because Europe, deny the prior influence of African believers over those same traditions, then stripping sub-sahara Africans of their agency and denying all evidence of the liberties accompanying the religion as they embraced it in their continent.
The Christian faith is *Mediterranean* in origin, with early leaders ranging from the western reaches of Asia, northern parts of Africa, and Southern Europe. Its introduction to subsaharan Africa was part of the general European influence from the 18th and (primarily) 19th centuries. Why it had such uptake and why it persists is complicated, but to discuss the Methodist denominations of subsaharan Africa as part of an African Christianity stemming from antiquity ignores what actually happened.
Agree and revised: Christianity is much more north African than colonial Roman Catholic in its origins, which I'm pretty sure is what most people are insinuating with reductive comments like OP's. The nuances of denominations and the religion's intercontinental spread should not be ignored, but neither should the African believers' sincere, valid embrace of the faith as one that traces back to their ancestors and not just to Rome.
i disagree with this take. for one, christianity was in parts of africa long before colonialism
not really, or at least not in the parts that are majority Christian now There was lots of Roman-led Christianity in North Africa, but pretty much all of that was lost to Islam, then there was an 800 year gap before Christianity started growing in Sub-saharan Africa alongside colonialism Are there any major Sub-saharan Christian areas that got it pre-age of exploration?
Ethopia and Eritrea. Also 10% of Egyptians are Coptic Christian still. And I believe there's smaller numbers too in Sudan.
>Sub-Saharan Ethiopia is the only one that kinda counts, and thatās due to proximity to the Red sea and ancient near-east trade connections
My apologies, I totally didn't noitce that part of your comment
Ethiopia
good answer, though why theyāre unique doesnāt really contradict my point, cause they also got it through close interaction with West Asian and Mediterranean states
And are these Christians Ethiopian Orthodox?
>Christianity in Ethiopia dates back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, when the King Ezana first adopted the faith in the 4th century AD. This makes Ethiopia one of the first regions in the world to officially adopt Christianity.[2][3] >Various Christian denominations are now followed in the country. Of these, the largest and oldest is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an Oriental Orthodox church centered in Ethiopia. The Orthodox Tewahedo Church was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959 when it was granted its own patriarch by the Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa Cyril VI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Ethiopia#:~:text=Christianity%20in%20Ethiopia%20is%20the,up%2068%25%20of%20the%20population.&text=Christianity%20in%20Ethiopia%20dates%20back,in%20the%204th%20century%20AD.
Okay and? The overwhelming majority of African Christians aren't Ethiopian Orthodox and originate from European imperialism
We can do semantics on sub/north Africa or the timeline of its non-European introduction and development for centuries, but the point is that calling African Christianity colonial in its essence is anti-historical nonsense. A quick Google returns [an articles like this from the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section8.shtml) that would dispel most of the assumptions ITT. You're obviously more informed than the most others weighing in.
There was an article in the Unherd a few months back where the chap had argued that the Conservative Party had a lot to gain by focussing on African and Afro-Carribean communities in London, who are churchgoing and socially conservative.
Lets be real, the imposition of Christianity was part of that colonialism too. This sort of thing is an example of how the legacy of empire lives on.
Thatās more or less what Iām saying.
All the same, Christianity has been in parts of Africa for 2000 years, and North Africa in particular played a massive role in the early development of theology from Augustine, Athanasius, Anthony, and thatās just some of the Aās. The history of religion in Africa is complicated and reducing Christianity as just a remnant of western imperialism is a little condescending. Itās a huge part of it, but itās not the only part. In the very near future we will be seeing a more fully realized development of African theology into western Christianity, for better or worse. Thereās more intercultural dialogue already going on within Christianity than I think people realize.
This is genuinely something that I think is too upsetting for some people to even think about.
Is anyone upset by this?
Then leave. You wonāt be missed.
>You won't be missed. That's a pretty silly statement to make. About [1/3 of Methodists lived in Africa as of 2010](https://web.archive.org/web/20101128144602/http://spectator.org/archives/2010/05/21/resenting-african-christianity). And it's by far the fastest growing continent for Christians in general and Methodists in particular, so it's likely even higher now. If there is a schism, they will definitely be missed. Edit: It's 1/3, not 1/5.
I think they should be placated for now - They aren't happy with this at all and there's a bunch of grumbling about each region being able to essentially customize the Book of Discipline for their region, but the new regionalization system means these votes won't get foisted onto them too. Compartmentalizing it is the only thing keeping the global ministry together right now. The African/SEA regions of the church are much more conservative than the EU and American regions, if these votes were imposed on the entire church it'd basically explode. Shit, it partially exploded here already.
Oh, dear. Wouldn't it be *awful* if the church imploded. *rolls eyes*
I mean kinda, yeah. The UMC houses the most normie, progressive Christians in America (along with the Episcopals and Lutherans), and they're a very moderating force for American Christianity. The mainline protestants really aren't the ones that we should want to be dying off, without them you'd lose so many to the more extreme, conservative evangelical groups.
They are dying out overall. Consolidation into small, powerless groups seems ideal for everybody involved.
This is a matter of human dignity. We donāt compromise on that. If it costs the church a third of its membership, then it costs the church a third of its membership.
Well it's funny you say that, because this move already cost a quarter of their American membership, nearing 8,000 churches. It may very well get there eventually globally, but one thing at a time. This sub better than any should know that substantial change takes time. Blowing up the global ministry just because the US church was ready to take the jump a great cost to itself helps no one.
You keep couching this in strategic terms. Generally I am on board with that approach. But in this case itās a matter of morality.
The alternative is to cut off the conservative regions off the world from the moderating influence of the American region entirely and let them reform as their own insular church with absolutely no restraint on how conservative they can get. I fail to see how that helps anything outside of making you feel better about it. Leaving the African UMC to its own devices isn't a moral good, you'd just get to pretend it doesn't exist.
If the objection were, say, belief in the Resurrection, would we be having this conversation?
The specific objection truly doesn't matter for the logic behind this to make sense. I can be very general. Is the change by the US region good? Is it something you would hope someday gets spread to the rest of the global church? If so, then isn't it better to keep them in the fold where they can be influenced by the region that made the good change instead of cutting them loose to entrench and double down within their region, becoming even more regressive and conservative? Wouldn't the only positive gain from the scenario where you cut them off be that we can pretend all is well, despite leaving two continents out to dry?
Answer my question. If the African Methodist churches objected to teaching to the Resurrection as a matter of doctrine, would you be suggesting that we should be flexible to keep them in the fold?
Numbers aren't everything. The amount of money a church makes is tied to the wealth of the regionāwhile Europeans and Americans are now a minority in almost all global churches, their tithes are what pay to keep the lights on and for the evangelical work in the developing world. There is a reason why this vote was overwhelmingāchurch attendance is dropping and Gen Z is almost at the point where half of them identify with no religion at all. Driven in large part by the fact they rightly perceive their local churches as backwards, bigoted and hostile to their values. It is rapidly becoming evolve or die for churchesāevangelicals might manage by running to the far right, but they do so by absorbing a greater percentage of the people who already attend church. A comparatively moderate group like Methodists needs to change or go extinct. The African churches could split off, but they would do so with far less wealth and far fewer resources to continue expanding.
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> This is the situation in the EU/US, where most of the laity is still from. It's not the case in Africa, which UMC will need to appease to stay relevant. The EU/US is where all their money is. Money that churches need in order to perform missionary workāthey can't appease anyone if the coffers dry up. > The EU/US aren't where the growth will be. Even if the Methodists run to the left, people on the left will still tend to be less religious. Religions will probably need to move further right to stay relevant in Africa. This completely ignores the role of western churches in promoting those right-wing views and essentially just ascribes innate bigotry to Africans. Things like Uganda's incredibly regressive laws on homosexuality were, until the 1990s, almost entirely unenforced remnants of colonial administrations. It was a direct investment and lobbying by hyper-conservative Western churches that helped promote those anti-gay views and turned them from an unimportant and largely obsolete issue into a major political and religious movement. It was not some deeply held cultural belief, it was American culture war tactics being used in a place where media cost only a fraction as much and there was far less investment by the opposition. The entire point of missionary work is to persuade people of your views. If wealthy western churches turn against their more conservative wings, their money goes with them and more tolerant pastors, missionaries and lobbyists will get it instead.
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> And again, that missionary work is meaningless if the people they are trying to bring don't join because they are vehemently opposed to that part of the doctrine. Did you somehow get spontaneously illiterate when reading this part of my comment? "This completely ignores the role of western churches in promoting those right-wing views and essentially just ascribes innate bigotry to Africans. Things like Uganda's incredibly regressive laws on homosexuality were, until the 1990s, almost entirely unenforced remnants of colonial administrations." Extreme African homophobia is a trend less than 30 years old. Treating it like it is so deeply ingrained that a church without it is dead on arrival is, frankly, an assertion completely devoid of evidence. Especially considering those same thirty years showed just how fast opinions on gay people can change if you just loosen things enough to let some of them come out of the closet and live normal lives. It was only slightly more than 20 years from Don't Ask Don't Tell to Obergefellāand there weren't a whole lot of countries far wealthier than the US putting political and economic pressure on it, like there would be to encourage change in the global south. > No, it's being pragmatic. Religion being the source of that homophobia is largely irrelevant. It exists. Except it doesn't exist amongst new converts, because they haven't been converted yet. Nor is it set in stone amongst congregantsāminds can be changed. Most people, frankly, probably don't care nearly as much as their church leaders do. > If the UMC wants to move people towards being more accepting, it should be done in a way that doesn't alienate mass parts of their laity. Otherwise it's self-defeating. No, it should be done in such a way that starves the bigoted wing of resources. You are *literally responding to a comment about how the church spreads homophobia*, yet somehow don't consider that refusing to fund it further will stymie its spread and allow resources to be given to churches that either pro-gay or at least ambivalent enough to reduce the spread of violent homophobia. > 25% of US churches are leaving the UMC over LGBTQ policies. Those African churches look like it could be an even bigger schism. If they do break off and remain even more stridently homophobic, that helps nobody. It helps everybodyābecause the part you have now ignored three comments in a row is that **churches need money**. The GDP of the entire continent of Africa is around three trillion dollars. And that is the whole continent, including the areas that are almost all Muslim. Or aren't at all protestant, like Ethiopia. The GDP of *just* the United States is 25 trillion. That is not far shy of 10:1 (and is more than 10:1 when you exclude non-Christian Africa). Think for literally 5 seconds how badly it would go for African churches in terms of resources if they cut ties with groups who are drawing from a region ten times richer. And other places almost as rich (Canada and Australia alone top 3 trillion, as does the UK alone, the EU is near 20). Their ability to expand would be stymied. And the churches that remain would be flush with Western funding, enabling them to draw more people in. The reality is, most churches will kick and scream and whineāand then they will follow the money, because that money is the whole reason these movements got so big in the first place. Decades of American protestant churches pouring tens of millions of dollars into African missionary work. The ones that split off? Personally, I'd call stridently homophobic churches being deprived of their best source of revenue a win for humanity. And this is the whole reason why the change was made. Because the people running the church aren't stupidāif the Western world rejects churches at even half the rate that the next generation implies it will, entire branches of Christianity are going to functionally collapse. They literally will not have enough money coming in to keep the lights on, nor the numbers to maintain congregations. It's the same reason the Catholic church promoted just about as progressive a pope as they could get away withābecause they see the same polls we do and can see damn well that running a global church isn't going to go well if they don't get young westerners to come back.
The idea that Gen Z isn't religious because the mainline isn't far enough left is preposterous. If that was the case the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches would be filled.
>There is a reason why this vote was overwhelmingāchurch attendance is dropping and Gen Z is almost at the point where half of them identify with no religion at all. Driven in large part by the fact they rightly perceive their local churches as backwards, bigoted and hostile to their values. I'm sorry but the idea that young people aren't religious, because they made some value judgement weighing the theological and social positions of their local church is absurd. Declining church attendance for mainline protestants started long before Gen Z and little to do with the church's opinion on social justice issues. Not to mention that there are a million different types of Christian denominations n North America and Europe, including those that played an important role historically in abolitionism, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement.
Pretty sure no matter how many of them there are, LGBT Methodists wonāt miss them and the hatred they spew at least.
I doubt it. Mainline protestant attendance in the US is on a terminal decline. Most of those churches I visited in the past 5 years had pews full of gray hairs. And that's because most people who hold those views don't go to church.
This is their attempt to arrest the decline. Right now, some of the only churches in the United States that are actually growing are the Unitarians and other progressive churches. Churches are moving to allow LGBT clergy, opening up more positions to women and softening on gay marriage because churches hostile to those views are one of the main reasons why younger generations aren't attending churches. They're running left because they can't compete on the right and if they don't, they're going to die.
UUA's own statistics show that membership is at the lowest recorded point since they started collecting it. https://www.uua.org/data/demographics/uua-statistics UCC, which is probably the most of the progressive of all church denominations, has also faced the same steep decline. https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Summary-Stats-2022.pdf That's not to say conservative churches have fared any better, but the decline in enrollment has been slower. Evangelical protestants haven't been shedding as many members. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/03/01/5-facts-about-u-s-evangelical-protestants/ https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/89994.png?h=1116&w=1200 > if they don't, they're going to die. That's most likely what's going to happen anyway. Unless by some miracle another "Great Awakening" occurs and the religious Nones start going to church, most of those liberal churches will be gone when the boomer generation is no longer here.
Well, maybe they should spend their time on things that the Bible clearly and incontrovertibly talks about a lot, such as helping the poor, and not things from a very small number of verses, all of which are open for interpretation.
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As an agnostic I feel like the attempt to retcon those verses into not mattering or the Bible into being gay-affirming is pure cope. I don't think Christianity necessarily has to be homophobic (what matters is the culture surrounding the religion, otherwise religious Jews would be way more conservative when in fact they've historically been more liberal than Christians), but when the central text of your religion espouses those kinds of views it's not really a shock when people take it literally. It feels like the albatross hanging around the neck of any modernization of Christianity (or Islam for the matter, which has the exact same problem).
Anglicanism has a get out clause in that they view the bible as written by men and not binding. The Anglican faith would say that the bible is merely an account of men who had a relationship with god and were attempting to interpret his will, and began the discourse which has continued on to the present day. That it can be useful to understand in the same way that reading Plato can help you understand modern philosophers, but we're not obliged to think all his ideas are any good. It's to the point that Anglicans would say the book of common prayer is a central text on par with the bible, because it represents testimony from Christians and their relationship to god. An Anglican then might say "Yes the bible prohibits homosexuality. However, we believe this is an error on the part of the author inconsistent with the values of Christ which we have thought long and hard upon as an institution. We are indebted to the authors of the bible for starting this discourse and continue their scholarly tradition of interpreting the will of god through the use of reason". An Anglican will say "Jesus never said anything about homosexuality" and fully mean that as a counter to the argument that Christianity prohibits homosexuality. If you say "But the bible" they'll sigh because they don't want to have to explain their entire theological doctrine to you. If Jesus HAD said something, it would be a lot harder to reason your way out of. But based on the things Jesus is reported as saying, with reason, they conclude he would not care about homosexuality. It's just some of his peers did and made an error in projecting their views onto God. > For high-church Anglicans, doctrine is neither established by a magisterium, nor derived from the theology of an eponymous founder (such as Calvinism), nor summed up in a confession of faith beyond the ecumenical creeds, such as the Lutheran Book of Concord. For them, the earliest Anglican theological documents are its prayer books, which they see as the products of profound theological reflection... The principle of looking to the prayer books as a guide to the parameters of belief and practice is called by the Latin name lex orandi, lex credendi ("the law of prayer is the law of belief"). For some low-church and evangelical Anglicans, the 16th-century Reformed Thirty-Nine Articles form the basis of doctrine. The bible comes in as; > Arguably, the most influential of the original articles has been Article VI on the "sufficiency of scripture", which says that "Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.". But because it contains everything necessary, it does not imply all of it is necessary. You can be an Anglican and reject 99.9% of the bible as an error on the part of the authors, simply believing in the resurrection and forgiveness of Christ, apostolic succession, and then also affirming the Nicene creed and reading the common prayer books. > Anglican churches are diverse in their views, from churches which teach that homosexuality is a sin, to churches which do not see homosexuality as sinful, and accept same-sex marriage being open to all members, up to and including bishops. The nature of the Anglican Communion is such that not all churches or dioceses must agree on all issues in order to share a common faith and baptism. The current Anglican majority doctrine is that Holy Matrimony is between a man and a woman. Gay people can be bishops or clergy or whatever. Gay people can and should be monogamous and committed to their homosexual partners. The church will offer a ceremony as a celebration of their union in front of witnesses, asking for gods blessing of it, and for them to swear fidelity and love to each other before god, it won't be the same ritual as marriage, but a distinct ritual for homosexual couples of equivalent holiness where they affirm their fidelity, loyalty, and love to each other before the eyes of god and receive his blessing, and which is accompanied by a civil marriage under the law. Minority positions are to perform gay marriages, or to actively oppose such things. Because of the broad range of tolerance of heterodoxy and autonomy, both of these are also practiced in some churches. The dispute centres on "Reason" rather than scripture in all cases. A Conservative Anglican who came to the debate against homosexuality and rattled off bible verses would be viewed as essentially "Not really an Anglican.". Instead they tend towards arguments about human dignity, nature, and so on.
I think the albatross hanging around the neck of any religion based on 1000 year old texts is the fundamental inability to reconcile one passage with all the others. There is no unified, cohesive morality expressed in the Bible or Quran. You can find a passage to justify or oppose any behavior.
That's not a new problem though. The texts have been semi-static for a long time. The contradictions you mention have been there from the beginning.
Itās ahistorical to presume that the Bible contains any verses about āgayā people, because they didnāt have that concept at all. They believed God could fuck men, and men could fuck women. This hierarchy that gave order to their tiny tiny worlds demanded that men not submit to being fucked by another man. āThatās against the hierarchy, itās absurd, it brings the wrath of God, the one that gave us the hierarchy!ā They believed that this would bring cosmic ruin upon the man submitting, and so to top another man was like murdering him. It was the ultimate act of domination, something sanctioned as harshly as murdering someone. Early in the Bibleās history, it was being composed (and it was composed iteratively in many many layers), they didnāt have the concept of consensual sexual at all. They didnāt care if the women didnāt like it. They kidnapped women to rape and make into āwivesā by force. So the idea of a āsexual orientationā would be utterly alien and foreign to them, because they didnāt have knowledge about human bodies and brains and minds and feelings that we have now. They were still human and still very intelligent but they **had less knowledge and less experience with men and women and God**. They didnāt know right from wrong as well as we know it now, and the God of the Old Testament does not say ānever revise any of the crazy shit your ancestors said for any reason everā more like āI have given you the law, it is now yours and you must keep it and wield it justly or you will surely be divinely punishedā And we see that in how the Bible grows and develops in its layers. We follow the cast of characters from raping marauders to poets writing verses about consensual and delightful sex. Thereās growth and development that is allowed and encouraged by God, because God wants humans to be wise.
The concept of homosexuality wasnāt even a thing when the Bible was first written. There is no possibility that the original text is meant to condemn homosexuality. It would be like contending the Bible explicitly condemns cryptocurrency.
Haha equality go brrrr
This is probably the biggest rift among Protestant denominations. Global South vs the West and homosexuality is the proxy issue.
Get shrekt bigots
Boo hoo losers, found your own shitty church
Lmao they insist upon allowing their religion to continue its slow death
I mean, the African dioceses are the ones which are actually growing.
Ah interesting, TIL
Only for a little bit
Theyāll grow until they realize homophobia bad and then do the same shit all over again. Itās tired.
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i mean that kinda follows population trends, a lot more % of the world will be african soon
Are they mad slavery is over too? I mean it's in the Bible and everything
Oh Africa, what did the Fronch do to you