Unchurched conservative Christians
Kevin V. writes:
Kristor’s comment contrasting the poll numbers regarding the percentage of Americans who believe in the Resurrection with actual attendance at Easter services is off the mark, I believe. While I am very happy that you both seem to have found a decent church to attend, for conservative Americans this is not so easy. Just this morning, I held a private “service” with my sons and afterwards explained to them my wife’s and my difficulty in finding an institutional church in which to celebrate properly. [LA replies: As I’ve explained, I have not found an acceptable church since the denomination in which I was baptized became a non-Christian body. Sometimes, in order to go to church, I go somewhere.]
I was raised Catholic, but with my new bishop in Los Angeles declaring that the old United States with its “New England focus” is only part of the story of America and that the broader story of the true America starts earlier with the Hispano-Catholic mission, even if I could turn my eye to the Church’s shameful conduct in recent decades, I cannot worship in a house that is a platform for a foreign people’s triumphalism over my ancestors.
I could, like a good friend of mine, attend a mainstream Protestant church nearby. However, the very first words he and his family were greeted with by the pastor on Saturday was a discourse on white privilege and the “murderer” Zimmerman.
I’m technically in the South, so I suppose I could find a solid Baptist congregation. However, the memory of them rushing to “forgive” mass murderers before the bodies of the victims were cold, preening on camera with over-emotional and cheap grace, turns me cold.
And so it goes. And so, we are not there. At the risk of sounding like a Lutheran, does it really matter that we were not in an official house presided over by some earthly authority as we worshipped God this morning?
I suspect that I am not alone in this.
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Brian J. writes:
Funny how synchronicity works, ain’t it? My wife and I just recently left a church for being too liberal and have been discussing what a more conservative Christianity might look like. Here is a rough list we’ve been working on:
1. Job #1 of the Christian is saving souls not civilizing savages.
2. After accepting Jesus Christ as one’s savior one does not cease to be male; female; White; Black;
3. Christianity has little to say about nationalism but is not automatically against.
4. Morals and standards are not unchristian, they are the very heart of Christianity.
5. Being white is not a sin.
6. Equality and Christianity are incompatible.
7. Abortion is not a sacrament.
8. Homosexual conduct is not love, it’s sin.
9. The object of the church is not diversity, but salvation.
10. You can “Progress” as easily toward Hell as any other destination.
11. Karl Marx was not an apostle.
12. Lies, even well meaning ones, are not a form of Christian charity.
13. Because God can do something doesn’t mean he will, or wants to.
14. It is not unChristian to take reality into account.
15. The way to the truth is never through a lie.
16. We never honor God by telling a lie.
17. If you think telling the truth will drive people away from Christ, you don’t know him or the truth.
18. The truth is the way to the light.
19. Progressivism encourages or condones actual sin while creating false nonsensical sins that allow people to feel morally superior.
I would love to hear your and your readers thoughts on these. I know you’ve talked about what a more conservative society might look like, and that too acheive it we must be able to envision one. Have you said the same thing about Christianity? If so I don’t recall that specific discussion.
We are thinking seriously about forming our own church. Just the two of us at first but we’d be willing to grow the thing. But we need to chop away the liberal weeds that are currently choking Jesus out of the church and making it impossible for conservatives to attend.
P.S.: Happy Easter! He is risen!
April 9
Kilroy M. writes:
I have developed a habit of taking a Rosary and a copy of the New Testament to Church. Whenever I hear a leftist buzz-word, or whenever anybody claps, I just leave the Mass and go to the courtyard to pray.
As for forming one’s own Church: absolutely not. What Christianity needs is not another schism (something that plagues Protestant denominations, and amuses us Catholics no end). This is why I have stayed in the “Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,” no matter how degenerate aspects of its bureaucracy have become or how deep the rot has set in. These people want us to leave, which is why I won’t. Leave, and the Jacobins win.
Jewel A. writes:
I got a well-placed kick after reading Kilroy’s comment on staying within his church even when it was practicing apostasy: He can literally say, “Kilroy was here!”
LA replies:
Well, I think you mean that he can metaphorically say it. :-)
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 08, 2012 11:10 PM | Send