Going To Church

I ATTENDED CHURCH on July 2nd, the year of our cosmos, two thousad and twenty three. I enjoyed it, and will probabbly go back. I might return to the ame church, or give another one a try. Hell, I'd be happy to attend every church on the planet, any religion, at least once, just for the learning experience....So I'm open minded. So, shoot me, oh ye iniquitous evangelical pro Trump Christian. There are thousands of religions on Earth, and the major ones are all fragmented into thousands of splinter groups, "denominations", leading me to suspect that not only is religion a human invention, but that, at the end of the day, one is about as good as another. I have a close frined who attends yet another Methodist curch, in which he plays in the gospel band. He waid he was unhappy with the church, with the way many of its menbers treated him. Then, one recent, blessed, glory hallelujah day, the conservatives all quit, to start their own church, and, as my friend gleefully put it: "The trumpers walked out". Now, he's happy again... For me to choose, settle into, and become a member of any church in particular would be problematic, indeed, impractical, unworkable. Membershhip in any religion, any religious tradition on Earth requires, I must assume, strict adherance to and belief in the dogma within. Why bother to have a chucrch at all if if includes members who don't believe in it? The only religious beliefs I embrace are my own, not anyone else's. I am "condemned", happily and by choice, to be only a wandering visitor in the churches of other people. I am a follower of Goethe's admonition "when I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine." I attended a Methodist service, liked it, particualr liked the fact that the minister was an attractive young lady. I prefer religions which include gender equailty, assuming there are any. In a fairly large college town about twenty miles from my house the Methodist church, once the biggest congregation in town, split into not two, but three parts, each of the three amended congregations going its separate way, one of the three remaining put in the old building, the other two finding new venues. I assumed the split was over politics; conservaives versus liberals, but why, then, the three way split? What else is there other than liberal or conservative? Well, issues in politics and religion include many areas and topics, and aligments can become rather complicated. For that matter, why not four, five, or a hundred dfferent groups? These Methodists should probably all go their seperat ways as individuals, each individual starting his or her own church. Ultimately, isn't what we do anyway?