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Ship of Fools: Vision Baptist, Glendale, Arizona, USA


imageShip of Fools: Vision Baptist, Glendale, Arizona, USA

Heaven or hell – choose wisely!

Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here


Comments

  • Wonderful! Thankyou, Miss Amanda. It is so liberating to get an overview of Christianity.
  • PortolaPortola Shipmate Posts: 38
    Thank you for your graphic description of this service. I find two things disturbing about the attitudes you described in the sermon: first, the un-Christ-like aggressiveness over against “liberals” and unbelievers”; second, the total lack of accountability which it reveals. In some churches a preacher can seemingly say whatever he wants. He can invent his own alternative reality: without regard for empirical evidence or for the complexity of the world, without regard for the historic contexts of Biblical texts, with no higher authority to challenge him except the God who has been created in the image of a particular denomination.

    I can identify with your description of your escape. The last time I visited a fundamentalist Baptist service, I tried to escape after the service, but as soon as I was out of the door I heard a voice in the church saying “Watch out, he’s getting away!” I was immediately surrounded by a group of men, one of whom put his arm around my shoulder and slowly pulled me back into the church, asking me if I preferred Cool-Aid or coffee. I was then subjected to a long testimony of faith experiences.
  • Jesu, mercy. Mary, pray.

    What sort of 'religion' is it that is so desperate for adherents, that it has to resort to what surely amounts to physical assault, and spiritual abuse?

    Miss Amanda's Guardian Angel was clearly working overtime, whereas Portola's appears to have been off duty!
  • I was apparently not the only visitor that morning. The pastor said something to the effect of "A special welcome to visitors, of whom we have a few this morning. We pray for visitors, and God always blesses us with some." I did wonder how visitors manage to come across the church -- it's on a rather obscure side street in a not especially well-traveled neighborhood. I found it via Google, looking for nearby churches that I haven't yet visited.

    But there are details I left out of the report that even my strongest smelling salts would have been ineffective against.

    The disconnect from reality really did put me off. I've heard it before, though -- a Catholic priest, for example, saying that Protestants pick and choose those books of the Bible that they want to include. (Never mind that St. Jerome himself doubted the canonicity of the apocrypha.) Or a well-known and generally well-respected television preacher opining that "No priest can forgive sin." (Someone must have picked and chosen not to include John 20:23 in his Protestant Bible.)

    The ones I pity the most are the children. What kind of life do those boys have ahead of them who were told to marry the woman that God chooses for them?
  • They would do better to simply find a woman who hates them, and buy her a house.

    Cuts out all the messy stuff in the middle...
  • I wonder if the girls are told that they must marry the man God has chosen for them -- or, rather, the man God has chosen them for.
  • The latter, I suspect.
    Yuck.
    :angry:
  • Hookers_TrickHookers_Trick Admin Emeritus
    Miss Amanda this is hands down one of the best MW reports I have ever read. Thank you for your sacrifice in bringing it to us.
  • You're most welcome, and very kind. Miss Amanda is tough -- she can take it -- with a little help from her smelling salts.
  • Miss Amanda this is hands down one of the best MW reports I have ever read. Thank you for your sacrifice in bringing it to us.

    Yes, I thought that, too.

    Now, Miss Amanda, we are Big Boys and Girls around here, so might it be possible for you to divulge some of those Other Details you left out? On a Hell thread, perhaps, if more appropriate...



  • I really can't. I will only say that I was surprised that someone wasn't watching the Sunday school children more attentively.
  • O I see.

    Fair comment.

    Apologies for prying, and I think you need Say No More.
    :scream:
  • O I see.

    Fair comment.

    Apologies for prying, and I think you need Say No More.
    :scream:

    I'm suddenly hearing Eric Idle and Terry Jones.
    :smile:
  • An unintentional reference, but thank you for the compliment!
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