How can I get myself back into going to church?

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I'm biased, but I wouldn't consider Baptists to be mainstream. They may have a lot of people, but they get out to the fringe far more than other denominations.

I was raised Catholic. I went to Sunday School every week. You know what we talked about? The Monsignor's sermon that week. His favorite subject was poverty. His pet project was our sister church in Haiti. So that's what we talked about, Jesus and charity. We also talked about Jesus and kindness, and how it was terribly important to love others especially if they were sinners. There was no divide between what we learned in Sunday School and what was preached by Monsignor.

I'd like to say that while I am, these days, an atheist, and I fight the church where it needs fighting, you seem to assume that the worst beliefs held by a small, vocal minority of Christians is what they preach, and it's not. First, the most likely parishes to hold beliefs that hardcore are protestant. The largest organized Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, does not condemn those with AIDS, does not teach that science is of the Devil, preaches evolution as doctrine, and while they do not permit female priests, they also have no problem with an active, upwardly mobile professional woman. Many protestant faiths have their own ways in which they are more and less liberal. Unitarians... well, all bets are off, but they tend to be very permissive. Just because they are Christian does not mean they are all Southern Baptists. That's why there are so many denominations, so that people can find a decent fit. Of course, that also brings into question the strength of their doctrine, since it can be so easily manipulated to one's personal beliefs. Like slapping a brand name on something.

My point is, you can't just take the most extreme, unacceptable views of a vocal minority and use them to describe all Christians.

True ... but when you have a list of over a hundred "official" and oppressive doctrines held by Christian denominations, it's a pretty good bet that at least one of them will apply, and I've rarely encountered a denomination that held less than a quarter of them as valid.

In Christendom, the largest denominations are:

• Roman Catholicism – 1.2 billion
• Protestantism – 540 million
• Eastern Orthodoxy – 300 million
• Anglicanism – 115 million
• Oriental Orthodoxy – 75 million
• Nontrinitarianism – 26 million
• Nestorianism – 1 million
• Old Catholicism - 0.4 million

As far as the Baptist denomination being mainstream, the Baptist World Alliance reports more than 41 million members in more than 150,000 congregations[3]. In 2002, there were over 100 million Baptists and Baptistic group members worldwide and over 33 million in North America[1]. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 16 million[2].

1. Cross, FL, ed. (2005), "Baptists", The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, New York: Oxford University Press
2. "Baptist." 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
3. "Member Body Statistics". Baptist World Alliance. 30 May 2008.

I guess I didn't see that one. But to be honest, that's kind of a vague statement. It could be interpreted as "you must let religion brainwash you and let it control your life" or it could be seen as an argument that simplicity is the path to spiritual enlightenment, not unlike in Taoism. With that said, I do not believe that religion should be used to brainwash people.

YES! THANK YOU! I hate it when people assume that all Christians are stupid, corrupt bigots. It's just as bad as when many religious people say that all atheists are heartless, hateful psychopaths.

Your Avi looks like Albrecht Dürer more than Jesus.

Last edited by Drehmaschine on 21 Mar 2013, 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I prefer this Jesus.
What do most Christian's think of Wicca And Buddhism?I got told I was worshiping demons.
Notice I said most not all,I know some outstanding Christians that Jesus would be proud of.
But a few more that had some really awful opinions on gays,abortion,if you drink your gonna burn(of course I will,alcohol is flamable )all other religious beliefs are devilish & heathen.
And if you didn't go to church for every service you were a backslider.

Now I have a raging hard one. Thanks for making it nearly impossible to work in the shop without banging my man parts on the workbench.

If you are not being sarcastic, then I am reporting you, because frankly, your comment is very sexist.

I have to say you make a great case for leaving religion.
Trouble is, most of the world belong to a religion of some sort. They believe.
I am going to make a statement, and I don't expect you to reply:

You believe in the reincarnation of the soul.

Which comment? I made several of them.

Perhaps "comment" wasn't the best word to use. The whole post is sexist. And the last comment is especially sexist.

Set the alarm clock and get up and go. If you don't like the particular church, then shop around. It seems pretty straight forward.

One problem with Catholic Church statistics is it counts people who've been baptized, not people who actually go. It'd be fairer to count confirmed maybe. In my case, I and my sister were baptized Roman Catholic to make my grandparents happy but I never went to Catholic mass as a kid aside from my grandparent's funerals. I've gone to half of an RC morning mass as an adult simply because I was up in the morning and bored and the church had cool statues in it. So even though I was raised Baptist and am now Orthodox catechumenate, I still am Roman Catholic.

I don't think confirmed would be a good method either. I was confirmed when I was 14 years old. When your 14, you do what your parents tell you to do. There are probably a lot of people who were confirmed around the age of 14 because it was their parents decision. I'm sure a lot of these people do not consider themselves Catholic.

If you really want to be Christian, why don't you practice random forms of kindness and spend the time you would go to church helping a group in your community, even if you do it on-line? I taught English at an orphanage, made me feel better than spending time in a church.

You just walk into on at around 8 am sunday morning! Hehe Im tempted to pull a church prank some day by paying a guy with torrettes to go into church *the kind with the cussing ticks* and have a hidden camera on him then upload that on YouTube hehe!