Come on guys, we're going to be late for church!

[Modem Butterfly]

You need to finish your coffee, tie your ties and make sure your slips aren't showing, or else we'll miss the opening hymn and love offering! Come on, come on, we don't want to be late! Jesus punishes for lateness!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

:rofl: :evilgrin: :rofl: :evilgrin: :rofl: :evilgrin:

[Arianrhod]

1. You may be a strange person

but I love your login name. :)

[YankeyMCC]

2. ROTFLMAO!

You're right I do need to get up and go though...to Dunkin Donuts for a coolata it's much to hot for standard coffee.
;)

[Bzzzz]

3. Can I wear...

my new t-shirt???? Please, pretty please?????

[fshrink]

4. That's actually when I go shopping.

Less crowded. Less agitated people. Etc...

[goddess40]

7. me too,

but I have to get home before the damn church people hit the streets - they seem to be extra rude after they get a dose of Jesus. Maybe the are feeling righteous after being in church - a license to feel superior.

[onager]

5. That brings back memories from childhood...

n/t

[noamnety]

6. I went to church today

I'm a born and bred atheist, my husband was raised Lutheran. It's never been a problem, we don't try to convert each other. Since we're both musicians, but not dedicated enough to be in a real symphony, we play in his church orchestra. So we have weekly rehearsals, and once every few months I go along because the orchestra plays for the services, but that's not a regular thing.

The church has done a few memorably offensive services. I don't know, since I don't usually go, maybe they do a lot of them. Today was one of them, anyway.

The basis behind the sermon was secularism - or, more specifically, what the pastor found as a definition for secular, when he looked it up in wikipedia. By the end of the sermon, he had managed to say that secular societies base everything on ethics, and without God as an authority, the ethics, by necessity are "personal ethics" (you have to picture that said with a menacing tone, the way a person would describe the villain in a ghost story. Nevermind the irony in him using wikipedia of all things as his source to explain why people can't come to a consensus on what is right without some higher authority.

He made a case that the separation of church and state is a bad thing, because the church is forced to comply with the government's laws - and therefore God is made subordinate to the people's will, which led into how secularists are the voice of the devil, and are like the snake in the garden of Eden trying to use rational thought to lead you away from God. (This has been a common theme since the elections got heated - that logic, rational thought, and knowledge are the work of the devil.)

And then, somehow, he went off on a rant (but it was a pre-planned one, because it was identical in the second service) on "secular humanism" and how it relates to (menacing devil voice here) "universal human rights."

The pastor actually made a case against human rights, I'm not kidding.

My husband and I don't usually (alright, ever) discuss the services. There's not much point. I'm okay with him believing what he wants, he seems okay with me believing what I want. But today on the way out, I dryly apologized for being the voice of the devil.

I almost fell over at his response - he said "I know. This has turned into the Church of George W lately. If it doesn't change, I'm going to have to start looking for a new church."

[Warpy]

8. Wow. The Lutherans are usually a lot more sensible

The preacher must've gotten a fat check from Dummy for some faith based pet program and is being appropriately grateful to his new demigod.

If your hubby is serious, steer him to the Unitarians. You will both be welcomed there.

I remember my mother's breaking point. The same stuffed shirt of a priest who had told a class of 10 year olds that women should be glad to die in childbirth because the baby might be a male gave a longwinded sermon about how the only place for women in the church was cleaning it.

He was defrocked a few months later when it came out that he'd been banging one of the teachers in the adjacent school.

It took my mother the agnosic another two decades of being a twice a year Catholic to give up on them entirely, but she eventually did, turning down an offer of last rites because she said she didn't want to die that big a hypocrite.

I often wish she'd discovered the Unitarians. They're good people and would have offered her a great social support system.

[noamnety]

9. I suggested United Church of Christ

figuring the only things I knew about them are that they're Christian (which he definitely is) and they weren't all hysterical about spongebob trying to push his gaysponge agenda on them.

He said he's not planning to leave the Lutheran church, and I asked if he thought it was just his pastor, or if his parents' church had gotten that way too. He said his parents' pastor has turned into a wacko as well (his wording).

I'm pretty certain they have some kind of newsletter the church is sending out to pastors for talking points, because we happened to have dinner with a Lutheran pastor the evening before the last service I went to. At dinner, the guy - out of nowhere - starts talking about The Da Vinci Code, which neither of us had read, making a point of telling us it's fiction, the author has said it's fiction ... on and on. And then the next day, the husband's pastor is suddenly working The Da Vinci Code into his service, using the same talking points. Today, the special prayers included a person in the congregation who has cancer, and another person who just had a baby, I noticed there was a little prayer for the president (which I don't recall from when Clinton was in office) as well as a prayer for oppressed people IN IRAN. WTF?

Then we got into a discussion of synods, and I guess his is the middle of the three - there's a more conservative and a more liberal one. I told him as long as he didn't pick one where people are holding their hands up in the air and looking like they're about to speak in tongues, I'm okay - I need something where everyone looks slightly self-conscious and uncomfortable, so I don't stand out too much.

He said there'd be no worries of that, and reminded me what happened when the pastor tried to make the congregation clap with one of the hymns recently. Even the orchestra director admitted afterward that there's not much hope of an entire congregation of midwestern Lutherans being able to clap on the beat.

beat---beat---beat---beat---beat---beat
clap--clap-----clap----clap--clap-clap

So I guess we'll do some Lutheran hopping and see if there's anything else local that isn't spouting hate speech instead of preaching the bible (I don't recall anything about human rights being the work of the devil in the bible), or spouting Fox News propaganda. I don't think he's ready for the Unitarians yet, though.

[leftofthedial]

10. I got your "love offering" right here

[beam me up scottie]

11. Should I wear the

black or the red fishnet stockings?
They need to compliment my red stilettos.

[rexcat]

12. Sorry, no do...

I play tennis Sunday mornings and I can't let anything interfere with my tennis.