All of them. But specifically this one place my parents took me to that just started speaking in tongues right in the middle of the sermon. This went on for like, half an hour, everyone just flailing around and speaking in “tongues”, which was just them making up a bunch of gibberish.
My dad said it wasn’t a great service.
He’s right, it was the worst.
Also, that, plus many other stupid and incongruent moments led to my exodus from the church, and religion as a whole.
I’m much happier now, not being forced to attend these silly wastes of time that are church sermons.
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.
…day eet dah poopoo
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.
Wow. A tornado needs to find its way there.
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.
Strong baby Billy vibes agreed
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.
Next time I’d recommend reporting them to the IRS for promoting political activity.
They likely won’t do anything. The IRS is extremely gun shy about enforcing that doctrine ever since the Church of Scientology thing.
I let my college RA bring me along one weekend to a megachurch she attended. The pep rally vibe I can accept as just not my style of worship, but the order of service was short on scripture and long on homilies of questionable theology.
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.
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.
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. 🙄
All of them
There was the one where the guy said “feminism is the worst thing that has ever happened to women.”
The one where the guy said “[Jesus] rolled away the stone and crawled out of his tomb fully healed even though his legs were broken” was pretty interesting giving the blatant blasphemy of it all. He has to apologize next week.
The one when it was my job to carry the crackers for communion up to the alter. About a half down slid off the plate when I turned.
I’ve got a bunch of horror stories that take some detail to explain, but I remember a couple moments of shock in particular.
Was actually a Methodist service, Easter Sunday. it was when they cut a baby lamb’s throat and it bled. It was great special effects with a real lamb but children started crying.
Also, the time we all went to see Passion of the Christ, 9:00 or 10:00pm showing. There was a mother smacking the shit out of her toddler for crying when the torture started. I’m a different person now and would put a stop to something like that now.
Not a church service, but I attended a church wedding.
Pastor gave a sermon as is tradition during a church wedding. Every minute or so, he somehow managed to work in “and since you are in a place of God, you should not disrespect the bride and groom or our worshippers by using your phones”.
Bitch, I’m here to support my friend who’s getting married, not your church or your worshippers. I know for a fact that my friend chose to get married in the church because it’s cheaper, not because she’s super religious. Also I’m agnostic and haven’t read the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say “thou shalt not use mobile phones in churches”.
I very pointedly had my phone out for his entire sermon out of spite
Imagine not being able to leave your phone in your pocket just for the duration of your friends’ wedding ceremony, irrespective of the location. Insufferable behaviour.
I’m sure your friends felt great knowing that Facebook was more important than their wedding ceremony.
If your friends didn’t care, fine I guess, it was their wedding after all. If you don’t understand why this makes you look selfish and callous though, then you’re not the kind of person I’d want at any party, let alone a wedding.
I ripped one on a pew during a Christmas eve service once
Went to a wedding and the pastor’s pre-ceremony sermon was fire and brimstone followed by a rant about how it was God who gave him the right to marry, not the state. Lots of stuff about the wife being subservient to the husband and acting as his servant. The deep state government was being controlled by a satanists who call themselves secular humanists. Marriage can only happen between a man and a woman and the state was defiling marriage by allowing gays to marry, but it wasn’t real marriage according to God. Some really wacky stuff to talk about at a celebration. Killed the mood.
Turns out my friends had joined one of those extreme, right-wing cults and this was their normal pastor. This group was worse than any of the usual bad actors and interacting with any of their congregation was weird. We fell out of touch for some reason.
Reminds me of my great aunt’s funeral.
So I come from a muslim(ish?) background, but no one in my family or extended family goes to mosque or anything, or says “selam aleykum” everytime we meet (we just say “merhabalar” (i.e. ‘hello’)). It’s just a cultural thing. Most cultural christians want a priest at a funeral, and most cultural muslims want an imam.
Anyway, back to my great aunt’s funeral. The imam was there, doing the prayer in arabic because that’s what you do, even though no one could understand what he was saying. At one point however, he switched to a language that we could understand, and it was very clear he was telling us that we were bad people and bad muslims for not attending mosque, and that our aunt will pay the consequences of our failings.
Needless to say, at the next few funerals we went with a different imam. A nicer one. One who understands that religion is not a key aspect of many people’s lives, but that spirituality in times of distress can be a great comfort.
That first imam, kicking the family while y’all were already down. :/
Nothing stands out in particular, they were all pretty dull. Haven’t attended one ever since I was 16 and could make my own choices.
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
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.
Learning about Jesus while your underpants are full of poop is a good way to make a negative association.
Seeing that religion is generally full of shit, I find some irony in this scenario.
Yeah the 60s were a different wotld heh
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.
Can you type out a longer, detailed play-by-play so we can eat popcorn as we read it?
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.
