Do most religious people fully believe the sermon/teachings?

[xfundy]

Not trying to start a fight, but to better understand.

I was raised Southern Baptist, forced to go to church Sunday mornings, nights, and Wednesday nights. And VBS in the summer.

Sitting in the pews, I heard all kinds of stories from the bible, as well as tales of modern miracles, such as spontaneous healings, etc. But when church was over, we'd go back home, and as I tried to believe what I'd heard (many things, but in this case about "love for all&quot , I couldn't help but see examples of the opposite; for example, when a black man showed up in church, the whole congregation turned around and gave him a dirty look; the preacher lost his place, and I heard lots of hate after church and at home, all directed at that man who was brave enough to enter a "white" Southern Baptist church in the 70s.

There was a lot of hate spewed toward ppl of color, but that's an aside from my main question to believers.

Do you honestly believe what you are told in church and the bible? Do you take it in and never examine it again, or think about it during the week? Do you accept it as absolute literal fact, or attribute much of it to hyperbolic "examples", such as tales that are told to children to help them learn concepts like sharing, being nice, helping others?

In my case, all this confused me, and the contradictions and blatant hypocrisies (such as the church deacon who also owned a liquor store) caused me to question the whole thing--and my questions were never really answered to my satisfaction; answers such as "we can't know till we die" are a huge cop-out, yet they seem to top the list even today.

I don't really follow threads I post, so please DUmail me responses or links to this and I'll try to respond.

Thanks!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I belong to a denomination that Southern Baptists would consider "loose"

(Episcopalians) and was raised in another denomination that is almost as "loose" (ELCA Lutheran).

Episcopalians aren't much into private life rules. Nobody cares if we have an alcoholic drink as long as we aren't harming ourselves or others. Nobody gets bent out of shape if an unmarried couple has sex. Only a minority are anti-gay, and we have a number of GLBT clergy, and of course, women clergy since the 1970s. Owning a liquor store would not be considered a bit of hypocrisy, since we don't ban drinking.

We have a set order of service that doesn't change much from week to week except for the hymns and readings, and the Bible readings for the week are on a three-year rotation. The clergy are expected to preach on one or more of the passages assigned for the week.

They almost never take a literal approach. It's more about what the reading means on an emotional level or about the historical context of the lessons or about analogous situations in modern life.

Sometimes the sermon is worth remembering; sometimes it isn't. Some clergy are just better preachers than others.

But in the Episcopal church, unlike some of the more informal denominations, the sermon is not the centerpiece of the service: the Eucharist (Communion) is. Instead of having a pulpit in the center, we have a pulpit on the congregation's left and a lectern on the right, with the altar as the focal point of the sanctuary.

Our denomination sponsors a number of study courses with various emphases, such as the four-year course called EFM, of which I have completed three years. It takes a historical-critical approach to the Bible, church history, and theology.

Individual parishes have short-term study groups led by either clergy or lay people, which might cover history, meditation and prayer techniques, personal problems, or whatever else. I once belonged to a church-based reading group that read either explicitly religious books ("Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" by Bishop John Shelby Spong, "Questions of Faith" an anthology of interviews by Bill Moyers, "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time," by Marcus Borg) or novels ("A Prayer for Owen Meany," "Saint Maybe.&quot I don't think ANY of these books would have passed muster in the type of church you grew up in.

I've never been told, "Believe this or go to hell," not even when I was a Lutheran (although Lutherans vary widely). In fact, I've had clergy talk about their own non-standard beliefs.

One thing that is very different from the Southern Baptists (aside from our practice of infant baptism) is that congregations are not fully independent. They have to have the bishop's approval to hire or fire clergy, and congregations that are dissatisfied with their clergy can appeal to the bishop. Furthermore, the bishop visits each parish at least once a year to confirm new members or youth and to meet with the clergy to find out how things are going.

I'm not sure that this is what you're after, but I hope it has helped.

[Dorian Gray]

2. Pretty much all that was said

by Lydia about the Episcopalians is true of the Roman Catholic service, too. (Though the Episcopalians generally are more liberal.) Our particular church is a gay friendly church in Brooklyn, and our homilies generally tend to be liberally slanted. But the sermons are less important than the focus of the mass, communion, and they are written by individual priests. Some may be more geared toward my sensibilities than others. I've found myself tuning them out, especially now that I go to Mass with my 14 month old child who gets extraordinarily restless.

[ButterflyBlood]

3. I actually go to an evangelical church and it's nothing like your Southern Baptist one

Owning or working at a liquor store wouldn't be an issue for us since we don't have an issue with drinking either, and in fact have even held 21+ church sponsored events at bars. The congregation is quite relatively young, so I'm sure we got tons of people in attendance who work at bars or liquor stores too, and it's a non-issue. In fact more likely than not we have a non-insignificant number of people who go home after the service and get stoned, and I doubt many would see that as a big deal either.

As for our sermons, they aren't of the fire and brimstone variety or about how everything in the Bible needs to be taken literally, but rather about how Jesus' example and stories in the Bible can be applied to your daily life, with titles like "Loving Others As God Loves You". They're never about condemnation of others, in fact for the second week of Advent the topic was the first part of the Book of Matthew covering the family tree of Joseph and how many of the people mentioned weren't admirable or good people at all, it included prostitutes, adulterers, murderers and wicked rulers, but how this just proved that Jesus came for EVERYONE and therefore you should never feel unworthy...things like that. So not many sermons are a big issue if you don't take the Bible literally as the message isn't quite about that (though I doubt atheists would find much in them as they often involve about how one has a relationship with God.) I have never once heard anything along the lines of "If you don't believe this you will go to hell" and there are in fact frequent admissions by the pastor you may not agree with everything that he's saying and that's OK.

Like the two replies above, we have Communion, but it's not the focal point of the service, more of an afterthought really, we have plates in all four corners of the room with a bowl of crushed crackers and tiny cups of wine and you just help yourself during the medley of worship songs at the end. But unlikely Episcopalians and Catholics we don't believe that the communion elements become anything more than crackers and wine and they are simply understood as a symbol and memorial ritual which is the main reason for the discrepancy in focus.

BTW my experiences lately has sort of convinced me that a lot of evangelical traditions are in fact more appropriate for a liberal tradition and it's just by historical accident that they get associated with the religious right. They work fine in my liberal-leaning church which is still unquestionably evangelical. Things in evangelicalism I prefer and consider more appropriate for a liberal religious tradition are believer's baptism instead of infant baptism, no ceremonial vestments for the clergy, no liturgical schedule and freedom for the individual congregations, acknowledging communion as merely symbolic (especially this, it's quite odd that those who are bigger on Biblical literalism tend to hold this view while the allegedly "looser" denominations insist on some type of miraculous transformation.), more contemporary music and encouraging people to move around and raise their hands instead of just standing still and being "reverent". Evangelical churches were also the first ones to encourage people to dress casually and "come as you are" instead of wearing "Sunday's best", and while it's not uncommon now or controversial for people to wear jeans and T-shirts to mainline churches you are no doubt far more likely to see people in suits and ties and very formal dresses than at most evangelical churches. At my church wearing a tie is so out of place that if anyone ever does it it's very obviously an attempt at a sort of "ironic" fashion hipster sort of thing (there's a guy in the worship band who frequently does this, often while also wearing holey jeans.)