Banned From Church

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120061470848399079.html?mod=hpp_us_leisure


Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent.


On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P."

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs. (Listen to the 911 call)

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her from the congregation. "I've been shunned," she says.

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.
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on edit: forgot to mention - note the School Board mention - school boards are powerful. get yourself on one.


the religiously insane are insane

and they get the cops in on the action

ya gotta love it.

They want a return of the Middle Ages. Clearly despotic.

Fire and brimstone theocracy will bring about the end of mankind.

It's only a matter of who's fire and brimstone.

Maybe I should get on one of those instead...

nt

While I have a lot of sympathy for the 71-year old woman who was abused in this way, I hope what happened to her will be a wake-up call to others in her congregation and those like it. Churches are private clubs. They do not have the right to dictate policy or laws in the United States. Some of them are truly ugly, nasty groups of people. They do not represent "the word of God" and they should not be given any more respect than they individually deserve.

I'm sick and tired of Christianity being some kind of assumed leader in this country. People can be Christian if they choose, but it doesn't give them the right to tell everyone else how to live.

He did nothing to stop the stoning. This was in Adua Ethiopia.

I can understand because the driver was Hamasein and the people of Adua are Tigray.

]We don't know if the woman was innocent our guilty either. We didn't know if she had committed a crime of such magnitude that their reaction was understandable. It was ugly.

I probably have layer upon layer of PTSD.

:hug: :loveya:

It's still not clear if he wants to cure or control.


Thanks I will need to cry it out of my system. Not sure if there are enough tears to cry out all the horrors I have experienced in my life.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is bull shit. It fucks you up. You die a little just to survive.

make it. :hug:

the part about sin and casting stones.

He was doing it in Ge'ez, an ancient language still used in the Coptic Church there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge'ez_language


Ethiopia at that time was effectively a theocracy. It was run by a monarch that claimed to be a descendent of King Solomon. He was just an asshole. There was a lot of brutality against the common man and woman.

These are the wolves the Bible talks about. They are false preachers of a false gospel. If more of these so called christians read their bible they would find the part where it says "the Holy Spirit is able to lead you into all understanding". With this in mind, preachers have no authority to tell you what the truth and proper understanding of the Word is.

The whole thing? Or just the parts you agree with?

There are so many contradictions in the Bible that anyone can use it to justify anything.

Religious moderates are part of the problem because they don't admit that they're doing the same thing that religious conservatives are doing: bending the Bible to fit their version of morality, not the other way around.

I challenge you to read Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and then explain to me why the Bible should be used as an authority for anything.

Instructions for selling your daughter into slavery and tells you to love your neighbor... WTF?

no big loss. She's fighting them, and good for her. But a church like this is not much better than Westboro Baptist of Topeka, Kansas.

Church attendance has been dropping overall. They only make themselves more unappealing this way.
Duh.

:shrug:

...because Jesus wasn't a fucking ass hole. Pastors can't seem to tell the difference :eyes:

Haven't missed it all. Haven't missed the groveling prayers or the tithing, either.

file charges for wasting time on a 911 call.

and the cops were doing their duty removing a trespassing person. Like it or not, the church did nothing wrong (in the eyes of the law). I am not saying that they treated this woman properly, however, the church has it's doctrine that it wishes to follow and the congregants can make a decision to follow or not.

Now, the appropriate justice for this church, would be for it to disband due to lack of membership as the parishioners leave due to this incident...

sP

*sigh*

was going into a recession they would do everything they could to block any stimulus package designed to help the Democratic candidate in the coming election. The Democrats need to resort to every ploy thay can in order to do the same, without it hurting their image. I would paraphrase Winston Churchill and say that we need to resolve ourselves to nothing but blood, toil, sweat and tears in the coming year in order to demonstrate to the voting public just what Bush's insane economic policies have done to them. The Democrats don;t need to bail them out yet again. Once the Democratic candidate has been sworn in in January, the time to enact a stimulus package of tax cuts will have come.

Which is good.

you better say yes or you'll end up like this lady.

to make an old woman go away. some fucking sanctuary that church is. this is why religion gets a bad name: it's bad. what is good or uplifting about this story? how could anyone in that building remain seated and have any respect for that pastor who must have an incredibly tiny dick to be that controlling. did you notice what her sin was?! questioning his authority. questioning his authority! and to prove how authoritative he is he calls 911 on her and has her put in handcuffs and arrested for trespassing in the church where she has worshipped for 50 years?

many many times i have said though i don't believe in god i have no problem with those who do; it's religion i have a problem with. what was done to this poor woman was a far greater crime than any she committed, in my opinion. i am really outraged by this story.

:woohoo:

and not everyone who lives in a 1300 mile radius of it due to that fact.

so congregations like this with rude ministers are not going to be growth industries. I even know people who have switched protestant denominations if they do not like the pastor at the denomination that is in their town. So, for instance they will stop going to the Methodist church and start going to a Presby. one instead just because they like the preacher better.

Let that be a lesson to you, all you uppidy ministers out there. This is not Europe, with its "one preferred protestant sect per country" rule.

One more thing. When I was growing up, we had a name for preachers who thought that they knew everything and whose word was the word of God. We called them "Catholic." For real, since my extended family was Catholic (my nuclear family was atheist, I'm Buddhist)

This practice has never faltered in the more conservative evangelical churches.

The "sinner" is approached privately by two senior church leaders, and if he doesn't repent, he's brought before the congregation and his "sins" are announced, then he's banned from the church.

Nothing new or retro about any of this.

Cafeteria Christianity.

-Ximenez

What have they done to this women? She will spend the last years of her life thinking shes gonna burn in hell. This is horrible awful emotional abuse, that can only be caused by religion.

would hang Jesus back up on the cross again, if he came back now. They would call him a liberal and would say that he didn't support the troops and would call him a traitor.