Going To Church

I WENT TO CHURCH a coupla weeks ago, a Methodist church with a progressive young lady for a minister and a relatively progressive theological viewpoint. By that I mean that they don't condemn LGBTQ people to eternal damnation, nor anyone else that I can tell. The Methodist church is one of many Protestant demoninations which over the years has fragmented steadily, into liberal and conservative branches, and everything in between. Politics pervades religion these days, to the detriment of both. One begins to wonder which of the ever larger lot the true God, meaning of course the Christian biblical one, prefers, if any. The minister, as I understand it, is in fact a staunch supporter of gay and LGBTQ rights and equality, and it gets better. In the local conservative small town highly conservative newspaper she wrote an op ed in which she condemned book bans of all types. Like most progressives, she believes that teachers, librarians, and parents at the local level are quite capable of generating an appropriate, academically challenging reading list and library inventory, and that the matter should be left in their hands, rather than being subject to legislation by the state. In every state in which book bans are being placed ineffect, you guessed, the bans are being promulgated by conservative Republicans of the Christian conservative kind. You know how those big government Republicans are. They just can't seem to keep their grubby little hands off people's books, bodies, and lives. Doubtless most folks are familiar with developments along those lines in conservative southern states, especially Texas and Florida, where books are banned and female bodies firmly under their control... Up north, things are considerably different; Illinois is proudly proclaiming itself the state which "does not ban books", as is the commonwealth of Massachussets. Thus, there is hope. I assume the the very presence of a female minister here or anywhere has rankled and is rankling the sensitivities of your basic right wing, fundamentalist religious types. The bible says no the ladies of the cloth, let there be no woman on the pulpi, blah blah blah.. Right here it says, the heck with the Bible, the most violent, primitive, and barbaric book on the planet, despite it containing, as Mark Twain described it, some clever fables and noble poetry. Twain also pointed out more than a "thousand outright lies", in scripture, as he put it. They can be easily found and documented. Although I am not religious, never have been, and never will be, I like, from time to time, to skip around and visit various church services, for my own edification. I am just as likely to attend an Islamic, Judiac, ir Wiccan servie as any other, if they would let me. My open mindedness knows no bounds. Why should it? After all is said and done, after all the churches and splinter churches and the th and the wonder thereof, which is embodied in the quote from Einstein: "My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the nighest importance to man, but not to God." Well said, sir, and thanks you for helping me find and srticulate my true "faith". I must trust that all the Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, ad infintum will, if not approve of my beliefs and agree with them,at least tolerate and respect them and accept them as genuine, and genuinely my own. Good luck with that. Maybe they at least won't condemn me to hell, or burn me at the stake like a seventeenth century "witch". Again, good luck with that.