The New Road

I went to Church today

In fact, I went to two. The first was a Lutheran church where I met a nice you pastor who was teaching bible school in Chinese. I came to talk to him about the separation of church and state, dominionism and reconstructionism. I was very up-front, saying that I was an atheist with no intentions of attending the church, but that I would like to ask some questions if he had the time. He did and we had a nice talk about the current politics of religion.

This Lutheran pastor voted for Kerry, felt that his religion was being politicized, and was strongly against domininionsm. In fact, we both agreed that it was a very scary concept. Our conversation was pretty short.

After lunch on the way back to the office I stopped by a Baptist church for two reasons. First, to get my car washed. They did a fine job with that. Second, was to talk with the pastor. A very nice middle aged man who reminded me a lot of my old friend Joel Farley. We had a long conversation. He is a reconstructionist. He believes that both welfare a public schools should be disbanded. He does not believe in a theocracy, in fact be believes that to be an invention of the liberal press. When pushed he named a politician as the source of that, and couldn't name any outlet that he would describe as liberal being that source of that information. Suffice to say his is a Republican who (I assume) voted for Bush. Despite what you are thinking we had a very nice conversation. I was praised for being, in his words, not combative as some people are, and was invited back for another talk as he found this one very enjoyable. I may take him up on that. Though I will likely visit other churches first.

We agreed on a number of things. He really didn't proselytize to me. He quoted scripture a great deal, but mainly about a Christian's relation to government. And he spoke a great deal about history. Which kind of rambled. In fact, it was kind of a personal sermon, but directed. Which I didn't really care for. But I was there to probe and listen.

As an aside, and probably much to his displeasure if he knew, I took a page from the movie Kinsey and smiled and encouraged everything he said. Even when it was disparaging of me lifestyle, that of my friends, other races or religions. Which didn't happen that often, but was there at times.

Anyway, back to the point. He believes that there are three domains of authority in a persons life; family, civil and church. When I asked him what his ideal world would look like he said; no public schools, no welfare, a very small government. When I probed further an asked how I, or someone not of his faith would fit into that world, he said that I would be fine and that I would not be pushed to adopt his faith.

What I came away from these two conversations with is a sense that what's being heard from the Christian world are a couple of kooks in the corner with megaphones blaring something about dominionism. And that most folks, as you would expect, are content to just raise their kids, pray to their God and try to live a good life. It's really a shame about how the far right, and these radical extremists have hijacked the public face of the religion. As an extension, it seems to me that this is happening to both Christian and Muslim faiths.

Anyway, that was my walk the walk and talk the talk for the day. I will probably do it again. I've had it in my mind to talk to some pastors for the last couple of weeks. Probably since the time that I implored anyone who was a Christian to talk to their pastors about these things. Dominionism and Reconstructionism aren't unknown in the church. Have a chat with your pastor. Find out what their position is. And if you feel comfortable I encourage you to ask your pastor to be vocal within the church system to be vocal against the extremists.

We need to come together as one America. The church isn't going away, and the secular world isn't going away either. So let's all talk together, learn that we are all Americans, and see that we can all just get along and move the whole country forward.

I think my next visit will be to a Unitarian church.