A Stitch in Haste

As with all mobs, the Evangelicals are beginning to turn on themselves:

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P."

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her from the congregation. "I've been shunned," she says.

Exactly how much Christian love is required to expel and shun a 71-year old lifelong congregant and donor? May I never be so loving.

Of course, gays are no stranger to this insolent contradiction. "We love you, and because we love you so much, we're going to torment you by reminding you how flawed you are." And the ones — whether gay or straight, whether 17 or 71 — who somehow find the strength and conviction to overcome this twisted soul-shredding, are cast out. In God's name.

Behold the miraculous joy of missionary Christianity.

I of course fully acknowledge a church's right, as an institutional owner of private property, to exclude whom they wish, so long as they don't run afoul of the tax law teats from which they so shamelessly suckle. But I also acknowledge that these people are woefully un-Christian and deserve more than a little shunning themselves.

(Via Republic of T.)

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Meanwhile:

In the latest research report by Sam S. Rainer III, who heads Rainer Research, only 39 percent of people who dropped out of the church perceived their church as "caring." Meanwhile, 51 percent of them called their church "judgmental."

Among other unfavorable views from those who quit their church, 41 percent of them said their church was "insincere." Only 20 percent felt their church was "inspirational;" 30 percent said their church was "authentic;" and 36 percent said their church was "welcoming."

The survey was conducted on 18- to 22-year-olds and is featured in Rainer's upcoming book, Essential Church?.

I've often wondered why apologists for strict-conduct religions are allowed to engage in such flagrant selection bias and survivor bias. "Gee, look at all those happy Mormons. That religion must really be doing something right!" But this ignores, of course, all the ex-Mormons who ran away screaming the moment they turned 18 and could scrounge up bus fare to get the hell out of Utah.

If these ultra-intolerant sects — Mormonism, Catholicism, Evangelism — think they can, or must, risk alienating an entire generation of young, not-blind congregants so as to remain true to their doctrine and dogma, then so be it. But children are not entitlements — not even to their parents, let alone to their parents' faith. The alternatives to, and arguments against, one's hereditary brand of mysticism are becoming difficult to avoid in an increasingly interconnected global community (cf., the increasing obsession among Evangelical parents with homeschooling). It is ever harder, approaching impossible, to hide the truth. And the truth will set them free.

(Via Straight, Not Narrow.)