Go to church, meet an atheist

Isthmus ^ | 11/11/10 | Bill Lueders

[chickadee]

Esbensen, 53, who was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1996 and recently became head of a Madison congregation, does not believe in God or life after death. She calls herself a "humanist atheist." She thinks belief in deity has arguably done more to hurt than help the world.

"People who do not believe in God are actually kinder, gentler people," she says. A personal belief in God, for instance, was not needed for Esbensen to comfort the dying woman in Minnesota, to "say what she needed to hear."

This fall, Esbensen became minister of the Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society, 2010 Whenona Dr., near South Midvale and the Beltline. She splits her time between there and Lake Country Unitarian Universalist Church in Hartland, about 40 miles west of Milwaukee, where she's been a minister since 2009.

[boop]

Never understood the appeal of the Unitarians. Why celebrate communion? It seems like they are just a group of leftists masquerading as a “church”. I’d rather stay home and watch football.

[OldPossum]

Re ost32, I am not positive but I think this church is a member of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, and if so, from what I have read, you’re right, it is a lost cause.

Going undercover the other night I went to their Italian dinner (just hungry) and they make excellent spaghetti and meatballs, though.

I appreciate the other suggestions and will see if I can find a church that’s a member within reasonable driving distance.

[OldPossum]

Oh, I’m sorry. I missed seeing your post 30. Thank you for the information.

I was raised in the Presbyterian faith and feel comfortable in those churches, though for many years I have strayed from the straight and narrow. The last church I attended was the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. The Rev. George Docherty was the pastor, and he was an eloquent speaker of the faith.

[El Cid]

Going undercover the other night I went to their Italian dinner (just hungry) and they make excellent spaghetti and meatballs, though.

Hah! I certainly would stay away from a good meal (reading about spaghetti and meatballs right now is making me hungry) -- but I doubt they offer any good Spiritual food (there might be some exceptions amongst the PC-USA churches - but I doubt it... Otherwise they wouldn't be in the PC-USA denomination).

Its hard to find a good Church nowadays. I pray the LORD leads you to one.

[mas cerveza por favor]

Madyln Murray O’hair, prob one of the most famous atheists and an extremely vile person who got prayer taken out of school. Honestly, WHY did they listen to one woman, instead of the majority of the public?

There were big interests behind the removal of school prayer. O’hair was only a front.

[OldPossum]

I appreciate the other suggestions and will see if I can find a church that’s a member within reasonable driving distance.

I'm not drunk, folks, really. I'll redo that paragraph.

I appreciate the other suggestions and will see if I can find a church that is within a reasonable driving distance.

[chesley]

I’m a Baptist, but 10 years or so ago, while I lived in Arkansas, I attended a Presbyterian church.

The pastor there preached the Gospel, although an added attraction was the bagpipe band from Lyon College that gave concerts there from time to time.

If you haven’t heard bagpipes in full roar inside an enclosed space, you just haven’t lived yet.

[OldPossum]

And I thank you for the information in post 28.

[driftdiver]

Individual pastors in PCUSA can be good but you have to watch. But we should watch our pastors anyway, all of our church leaders really.

[Doe Eyes]

It seems like a lot of atheists and progressives spend a lot of their lives thinking about who they dislike and ways to disenfranchise and mock those people that are not like them.

Of course, being a good Christian, you would never do such a thing?

[SunkenCiv]

Esbensen, 53, who was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1996 and recently became head of a Madison congregation, does not believe in God or life after death. She calls herself a "humanist atheist." She thinks belief in deity has arguably done more to hurt than help the world. "People who do not believe in God are actually kinder, gentler people," she says. A personal belief in God, for instance, was not needed for Esbensen to comfort the dying woman in Minnesota, to "say what she needed to hear."

The self-actualization self-help-book pseudo-churches have some of the most fractious, crazed loony congregations, and they wind up either trying to force out their pseudo-pastor, or go looking for another zany pseudo-church. And, btw, she's FOS, atheists are not kinder, gentler people -- or maybe she's never heard of Lenin and his 1921 cabinet members. Thanks chickadee.

[boop]

Weird how O’Hair ended up. Murdered.

[ETL]

Then skipping on over to Rev. Wright's "church" would have been easy.

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
_______________________________________________________

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
_______________________________________________________

Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD

[ETL]

SEAN HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.

HANNITY: But I'm a — reverend

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
____________________________________________

"Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal".--James (Jim) Cone,
African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Paperback)
by Cornel West (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (Editor)
____________________________________________

Malik Zulu Shabazz, chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPP):
"We believe in a Black first philosophy and a Black Liberation Theology."

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1858.shtml

[omega4179]

Correct.

[Scanian]

Sounds like the kind of Church Obozo’s folks attended outside Seattle.

[B4Ranch]

>>This is not a church, it is a tax status.<<

I love it when someone sees through the clouds!

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Atheists are forced to compete with religious people. That’s why so many atheists are good. They also feel the joy of love in their hearts, but without a religious society to bouy them, they devolve.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

“Unitarian Universalist minister...calls herself a “humanist atheist.” She thinks belief in deity has arguably done more to hurt than help the world.”

[Quix]

Wellllllllllllll

maybe some other atheist more consistent in his philosophy

will come along who feels that

swatting that gnat with a very big hammer is merely his artistic expression for the day.