• bizarroland@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    I went to a wedding, my girlfriend’s friend was getting married.

    For context I’m a brown skinned native American man and my girlfriend was a white girl.

    The pastor of the wedding had never met the people he was marrying and assumed that I was the groom.

    I told him I wasn’t and he moved on.

    I thought that was the end of it.

    Queue the pre-wedding little religious ceremony thing and the same pastor who had met me assuming I was the groom and shook my hand said that he believed that with the power of Christ any relationship can work, even ones between people of different races.

    He looked directly at me when he said it.

    I was the only non-white person at the wedding. I’ve never wanted to beat an old man’s ass before. I didn’t know I had that urge within me.

    And now I know.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The church is just another avenue of oppression, no surprise it is full of people who can manage to be bigoted about topics their religion does not even actually talk about.

    • cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world
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      4 months ago

      Ugh, I imagine the pastor going through his sermon mentally before the ceremony and thinking he would get bonus points for incorporating how “inclusive” marriage through Christ is. 🙄

  • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’ve blanked a lot out of my memory but I do remember one particularly awkward time where the pastor spent way too long explaining how god designed the asshole and its not for fucking.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    When we were young and first married, my wife and I decided to try a church that we had saw online. The website and name made it seem like it would be alright and more modern thinking. We were wrong.

    We pull up and the church building is a double wide trailer, a congregation of about 30 people. The preacher appears to be in his 70s.

    He sees that he has guests and singles us out and puts us on the spot to introduce ourselves to whole congregation. He never refers to my wife by her name instead just calling her “Wife”. He prays for us multiple times during the service and bring us up during the sermon. (Still just referring to us as TORFdot0 and wife)

    Speaking of the sermon, he begins the sermon talking about the gay democrat agenda and how the gays are ruining God’s institution of marriage and how it will soon be illegal to be married to a woman. This gets an audible sigh from the ladies in the front row.

    He also preached to cherish our Bible before the black socialist devil in the white house takes them from us.

    He compared the Bible to an old hound dog and started barking for going on two minutes. It’s like a dog because it warns us of things to come.

    After what seems like an eternity of a sermon, he invites the kids up to the alter for some “Hallelujah” Candy (it’s the Sunday before Halloween). One child takes a second handful of candy and the elderly pastor chastises him and then bends him over his knee and starts spanking him in front of the congregation.

    Needless to say we did not give that church a second visit.

    • pseudonym@monyet.cc
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      4 months ago

      I don’t know why but the more I read of your story, the more the pastor turned into Baby Billy in my mind. Perfect match.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        They likely won’t do anything. The IRS is extremely gun shy about enforcing that doctrine ever since the Church of Scientology thing.

    • TriPolarBearz@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      it warns us of things to come

      Ezekiel 23:20

      She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose semen was like that of horses.

  • echo@lemmings.world
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    4 months ago

    A Mormon service… the amount of brain-washing and misogyny was incredible…

  • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    All of them except the one where they handed me a collection plate and I thought they were giving me the money so I took it.

    • TehBamski@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      I didn’t grow up in a church that had one of those. So I’ve always wondered what would they do if you came to Sunday service, in a hobo outfit and took some of the money in the collection plate. The defense being, ‘What? I’m poor. I’m homeless. Jesus would have given.’

      • oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
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        4 months ago

        Nowadays? Depends on a whole set of indeterminate variables.

        But odds point to tazing. arrest, something on that end of the spectrum.

      • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        I was around 9 or 10 when this happened. I went with my best friend and his mother. Everyone made a big deal about there being someone new at the church. Then i was handed a gold plate bowl thing of money, so i started stuffing handfuls of money into my pockets thinking everyone was welcoming me with cash. My friend was giggling, i looked at his mother and she was shaking her head. I passed the plate along but kept what was in my pockets.

    • Vladkar@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      After looking up how much money my local megachurch took in last year ($60 mil) versus how much they spent on charity ($3 mil), I think you were probably justified.

  • FullOfBallooons@leminal.space
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    4 months ago

    It was right around the release of Star Wars Episode I, and the new pastor thought if he brought modern pop culture references into his sermon, maybe The Youths would sit up and pay attention.

    The sermon was a whole thing about “being a Jedi Knight for God” and it was insufferable. I’m not sure time has ever gone by slower. I was twelve and absolutely not won over, I wanted to crawl out of the pew and die.

  • Jayb151@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Not church per se, but my uncle blew his brains out. At the wake, the priest turned his little speech into how evil abortion is. Yes, let’s talk about killing babies… Anything not to tell about the dude who killed himself.

    • TehBamski@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      This is a grand example of how people in such positions, are prone to making any and every moment about something that’s been on their minds when it really shouldn’t be.

      (Sorry for your loss. That must have really hurt to get the news.)

  • Vladkar@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    When I was a freshman in college, I let this youth group convince me to visit their weird church. The “pastor” was a young guy who spent the entire sermon talking about how he squandered his time in college before eventually dropping out. Fortunately, the old pastor took pity on him and gave him a job as an assistant—running errands, cleaning, etc. Then one day the old pastor died, so our hero basically just took over since no one else wanted to.

    When it was done he tried to sell us bags of stale coffee.

      • Vladkar@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Because the youth group was serving it with free donuts—it’s pretty much the reason I went. To be fair, they were really nice; it was just a bizarre experience. I didn’t realize you could just inherit a church and declare yourself a pastor without any formal training.

  • PineRune@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Being a kid with ADHD, all of them. Each and every service drove me to the brink of insanity. I stopped going once I was old enough to decide for myself.

  • Botzo@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The power team. Apparently vast amounts of sweat, tearing phone books in half, bending steel rods and blowing up hot water bottles is godly and there were several alter calls.

    Then I had to see them at Jr. High the next day to preach about how bad drugs are.

    Here’s an article about a visit.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      4 months ago

      OMG I had a visit in elementary school from these guys! The school was a sad fundie kid-prison, but these guys were pretty neat. Rolled up a frying pan and did the blowing up a hot water bottle thing.

      I find it so weird hearing about them again lol.

      IDK, power to 'em. (Lol pun) Unlike a lot of nasty political preaching, I hope these guys are just being straight-edge motivators preaching the Gospel.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Oh my God this brought back a memory. It was probably the time my friend invited me to their church and expected me to speak in tongues. Like wouldn’t let me leave until I was filled with the spirit and speaking in tongues. It was terrifying.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        It was so long ago, I remember being surprised that such a regular girl belonged to such a terrifying church, I guess if you grow up in it, it seems normal?

        We arrived with her parents and sat towards the middle of the pews, there was the usual call and response and singing and a sort of sermon I don’t remember but then one by one the people in the audience started standing up and babbling. Then my friend did and their parents and the pastor was exhorting us that EVERYONE needed to submit and be filled with the spirit, EVERYONE!! Who, me? EVERYONE! I stood up and made some nonsense sounds and that seemed to satisfy them. I was congratulated and hugged and then there was some more churchy stuff not so crazy.

        I mostly remember being scared, and also being so confused that this was “church” to my friend. My mom made us go to “church” and it was guys in robes and some singing, a sermon, some praying, a little more singing, a benediction (really pretty - “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you”) and then walk out in an orderly fashion. Mostly really boring, not scary because I didn’t believe any of it.

        But to her, “church” was this mass of people being crazy and babbling and the preacher yelling, and it never, like, coalesced into order, it was literally a pack of shouting mostly adults, who seemed convinced this was an essential sign that God was speaking directly through you.

  • oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
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    4 months ago

    A Catholic Christmas Eve Vigil (not Midnight - different kind of Mass).

    The scene was thus: A strange-to-me Catholic church off of something and Capital in Milwaukee, near where my mom, not a religious person but a nice person, took me and my sis when Christmas happened to fall on our regular visitation weekend one particular year.

    The priest spoke on and on, as fathers and Father tend to do. The readings familiar, unre(M)arkable, (L)ukewarm, Psalm verse, same as the first.

    The Homily was delivered in the patented priestly monotonic nasally drone, the incense and insensitivity flowing too freely. The easily-employed white, gray-haired, “middle class rich”, Kohl’s-suited, stoic husbands stood, sat, knelt, genuflected, stood, knelt, stood, sat, stood, knelt, genuflected, prayed, sang-chanted, with their wives, who were fully guilt-jeweled for common marital slights, whether real or imagined, or who benefited from rich parents who left their ill-gotten legacies to their ill-raised, now boomer kids who have become reluctantly over-sexed wives. The department store credit cards tucked safely in their expensive clutch purses, these women were fully-prepared to wage full-out Karen-esque, post-Christmas sale consumerist war in the following post-holiday sales season.

    Retail workers never stood a chance.

    In short: The church was overheated, like hell hot, probably good prep for some of these people, and my not-Catholic mother was next to me trying to morally fix or better herself, or maybe she was trying to impress my sister and I, or, more than likely on reflection, trying to placate my very-Catholic dad and stepmom, but mostly I had been standing for what seemed like FOREVER, and my knees alternately locked and unlocked, and my youth-fitting suit that was too small but too expensive to replace at Kohls just yet sweltered me under imagined and real guilt, and the incense, and the droning, and the HEAT…

    I was about 4 seconds from passing out when some stranger approached me and said “Hey, you don’t look OK. Let’s go outside now before you faint.” and I swear it’s the best religious experience I’ve ever had: A human being a human and taking pity on a young kid dealing with physical and emotional distress. I went outside and cooled off in the Midwestern December air. Soon after, my mom and sis came outside and we left in the beater car that smelt like gas if the heater was fully turned on, so we had to leave the freash air selector on and the slider control at no more than 3/4 quarters, but that’s OK because the A/C, which hadn’t functioned in many presidential election cycles, was fully-replaced by the December air, the religious experiment over.

    I’m not at all religious but I hope that guy knows just what he did for us that night. We were faking faith, just trying to be good people, and the droning, heat, guilt, and THAT FUCKING CHRISTMAS INCENSE just did us in.

    Lesson learned.

    • ianovic69@feddit.uk
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      4 months ago

      Not only was that an interesting experience to read about, but you wrote it very well. It was like reading a novel, where the main character is narrating some back story.

      If you don’t already write, you should give it a go. I’m no expert but I’ve been reading actual books for pleasure since about 1975. I have a mind which generates images from text when I’m reading and they are more vivid with writing that I enjoy. Lots of imagery was flowing from your words.

  • nolefan33@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    I have clear memories of the pastor at my parents’ church talking about how the gay agenda’s next steps were legalizing bestiality and pedophilia. Probably would’ve been somewhere around 2014-2015. Looking back, it was absolutely the beginning of the end of me having anything to do with religion, so maybe it’s actually the best sermon I ever sat through.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    When i was six i had to sit in my own poop for an hour long sermon because nobody would let me get up to go. Course they also had to sit in it with no reaction heh

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      That is outright neglect. That level of strictness is just ridiculous. If they really wanted you to sit and listen, and take the sermon seriously, you certainly can’t do that while sitting on a turd, while also having the attention span and understanding of a six-year-old.

  • Davel23@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    I was raised religion-free, my mother didn’t push any beliefs on me (one of the few things she did right) so I grew up as a natural atheist. One Easter when I was very young, I don’t remember how young precisely but I was probably 10 or younger, one of our neighbor families offered to take me to church for Mass. I guess they thought they were going to save my soul or something. My mother left the decision up to me. Now, in my mind Easter was bunnies and candy and egg hunts and all that good stuff so hell yes, I wanted to go. I don’t know what I expected but what I definitely didn’t expect was sitting quietly on an uncomfortable bench for (what seemed like to me) four hours while some guy talked at me. If I wasn’t an atheist before that would have sealed the deal.