"This stuff is pink colored.. someday I sell DNA!"
Posted on 12/09/2016 7:08:04 AM PST by rhett october
After I read the story entitled, “Methodist Churches Converting To ‘Virtual Mosques’ For Muslim Migrants,” I spent much of the day in mild shock. I couldn’t believe what was going on inside of a Christian denomination whose founding was so deeply influenced by the great man John Wesley.
I had to know what Methodists thought of this. Surely they didn’t go along with it. At least not all of them or even a majority of them. My assumption, and hope, was that it was a very small minority of Methodists who thought that having worship of Allah in their building was an appropriate, God-honoring event. How could they think their church should double as a church and a Mosque? Surely they had not lost their way and could see how apostate and foreign such a thing was to Christianity and the New Testament. Surely this was just one man who had been led astray or who was seeking his 10 minutes of fame.
So I took to the phones, contacting my Methodist friends to ask their thoughts. Here are some of their reactions and concerns.
Suzanne from near Little Rock, AR
Suzanne – “I heard about it yesterday but couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, ain’t nothing wrong with reaching out to folks, but you don’t sell yourself, your soul to do it. You don’t give up God to make some other religion happy. You don’t join them in worship to a false god.”
Rhett October – "Is your church taking part in this?"
Suzanne – “Absolutely not. And if they did, I, we would not go back there. We’d just find ourselves another place to go, to worship you know.”
Rhett October – "Would you leave the Methodist church over this for another church?"
Suzanne – “Well, I mean, I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that, but you asked so I’m telling you. Yes, I would. My family would. We’re not Muslims. We worship Jesus, not their god, Allah or whatever.”
Kyle from Tennessee
Kyle – “My wife is kind of freaking out about this. She had me call our pastor last night about it.”
Rhett October – "So I guess it’s safe to say you’re against it?"
Kyle – “What, are you kidding me or something? Yeah I’m against it. You think they’d let us in one of their mosques to worship Jesus? You think they’d even entertain the idea? They’d see it as an abomination. They’d…no way.”
Rhett October – "How is your wife reacting? How is she freaking out?"
Kyle – “She’s thinking in terms of, you know, safety. I mean the biggest thing is the, well, you know, it’s an affront is what it is. Trying to water down or make all of the religions equal or the same and like we’re all going to heaven.”
Rhett October – "In what way is she thinking of safety?"
Kyle – “Well I told her if where we go, our church, was to do this, we’d be gone, but what she was saying was, with the terrorism and the attacks by the refugees, Islamic refugees, which is who that Texas bunch is trying to invite in, you know, she’d be worried about an attack or well, and we also have daughters. There have been some rapes by refugees in Europe. It just makes no sense that we’d risk our children. You think we’re going to convert them? We’re not going to convert them. They don’t want to be converted. Of course, what that Texas group is doing would mean the Muslims wouldn't even have to convert.”
Deronte from Austin, TX
Deronte – “My pastor emailed the whole church and he’s was all like telling us that it wasn’t going to happen in our church. People be panicking. People saying they going to leave the church if we starting a Muslim service. I’m right there with them. Right there, you know.”
Rhett October – "So you don’t agree in reaching out to Muslims in that way?"
Deronte – “Alright, so there’s a difference in reaching out to someone and what they’re doing. Yeah, so what they’re doing is incorporating worship of another God into their church. Your church shouldn’t offer worshiping another God as, like a, service they offer. We ain’t supposed to be a buffet. You know what I’m saying?”
Angie from Atlanta, GA
Angie – “I’m just reacting now that you told me and I’m just in disbelief. This isn’t the church I grew up in. It’s not my church now. I just, I, why would they do this? Why would they, when we don’t just substitute God for some other god to make people happy. Who does that? What church would do that? Would they substitute Allah for Jesus and think it’s okay or what, I mean, would anyone think that God would be happy to just be replaced. This just seems too crazy to be, you know, well, it seems impossible. Like it’s not happening. But that’s today’s world. That’s where we are.”
Rhett October – "So what would you do if your church decided to do this?"
Angie – “I can’t think about that. I mean…”
Rhett October – "I’m saying, would you continue to go to your church?"
Angie – “Well, no. I mean, no. How could we? How could we support such a thing?”
Rhett October – "What would you do?"
Angie – “We’d go to another church, that’s what. We’d find a group that doesn’t sell out God for someone else’s God just to look open minded and well, tolerant-looking, I guess is what they’re going for. They want to look like they’re so meek and mild but the Bible says for us to stand firm in the truth, you know?”
Rhett October – "Yes, I do know."
Drudge Report posted a link to the same story and website I did. It was to a website where, even a moderator here noted that she had been very trustworthy in the past and had broken stories that the msm wouldn't until later. I posted a link to that story. It wasn't my website or my story, it was someone else's who is considered trustworthy - Drudge thought so too.
To follow up to that story, I interviewed some people, asking them if they had heard the story - I didn't say it was true. I said it had been reported and asked if they had heard it. I even said in my comments that I thought that surely it was likely to be one man and didn't represent the entire denomination. Then, all of the Methodists that I spoke to were against it and I posted their comments. So I showed that even if the story was true that one church was doing this, that it was certainly not representative of Methodists as a whole.
So I posted a link to a story here from a writer from The Daily Caller that is regularly posted here. Am I supposed to be able to read a report and know if it's true or not? Is the same standard applied to all FR posters? Several of the websites allowed to be posted in the FR news section, with links back to their websites where they post a few paragraphs and then link to the full story (something I'm been lambasted for doing), several of those websites posted this same story - sourcing the Geller Report and writer from The Daily Caller. I notice that some of them have simply removed the story whereas I went in to the post on the website where I wrote it and posted a link to the report that was posted here refuting the story - which is how it is supposed to be done.
Now I still see stories being posted in FR news to those websites (and several were simply a link from FR to the BLOG and then that blog has a few paragraphs and a link to the REAL SOURCE. It's a double standard. One example of an excerpt link was posted to http://overpassesforamerica.com/?p=40103. You'll see that they use quite a few paragraphs from the original and then have a link that says "continue reading here." Yet a link, not to the original source, but to that blog, was posted at FR. As I understand it, moderators here have said that is not allowed, and yet it is.
Again, I linked to a report from what is considered to be a reliable/allowed source. There's no way I could have known that it wasn't true because I am not a media empire or a detective. I can't imagine that anyone else here is held to such a level and attacked if they post a link to what has been considered a credible news website but is then said by another website to be untrue.
The attack is misplaced and it is the website that reported the story and its writer who is to blame. I posted a link on my website to the story saying that the other was false. Someone else posted on the FR thread of my interview (where I posted comments from people who had already heard the story) with a link saying it was false so it would be redundant for me to do so. Don't you think that, maybe, you're being a tad hard on me?
Correct.
"Someone else posted on the FR thread of my interview (where I posted comments from people who had already heard the story) with a link saying it was false so it would be redundant for me to do so"
By the way - The thread you are referring to as if it's somewhere else is this thread right here. But this is the only part of your spew that actually deals with the point of my post. Since you have finally gotten around to it, it goes like this:
Suppose you spill soup on someone in a restaurant.
Then the guy at the next table says to the person you spilled on "Hey! He just spilled soup on you!"
Does that absolve you from acknowledging your clumsiness?
Do you now assume that you need do nothing for the person with soup on their clothes?
Do you apologize by speaking with diners in another room?
"The attack is misplaced and it is the website that reported the story and its writer who is to blame."
We know that "rhett october" is not your real name.
Is your real name by any chance "Dindu Nuffin?"
"Don't you think that, maybe, you're being a tad hard on me?
Not while you're pretending to be a "journalist" without bothering to perform due diligence and trying to peddle your phone conversations with your friends as "news."
Besides ... you make such cute noises when you get poked.
I think you should post examples of this, links to the FR threads where you see this.
The bishops, superintendents and clergy ARE PLOTTING AGAINST THE CONGREGANTS. Please warn those who will listen.
1) Portland, this summer, Methodists gathered at a cost of $10M to hash out some thorny problems with the BOD. Instead, they conspire to STALL. They confronted no issues, but they want the congegant's MONEY.
2) They want the congregants to donate and MAKE BEQUESTS in wills and estate planning. Read your bulletins. There are helpful offers to help manage donations and encourage after-death bequests.
3) I take Pamela Geller's story with confidence, having heard the guilt-tripping "love the stranger" rhetoric with my own ears beware the helpful "language classes" and baby-sitting. The UMC is after the grant $$ they can get from Soros.
Cut them out of your wills! Tell them you're doing so.
the UMC leadership is engaged in a enterprise of dissembling and mendacity. They claim to give no money to Planned Parenthoid, for instance, but donate under a slightly different corporate masthead. Lies and thefts--fleecing the congregants. The Methodists are nothing but an outpost for MoveOn.org. Those FReepers who still occupy the pews should be aware of the wolves pretending to be shepherds.
“Wasting” not “eating”
Once a place becomes a place for Islamic worship, Muslims will regard it as Islamic property.
Humblegunner, okay, I will start doing that. One of the ones I saw yesterday was a link to http://overpassesforamerica.com/?p=40103. They post a few paragraphs and then link to the full source. I also see a moderator doing it but he has been nice to me so I’m not interested in making him look bad. And these sites are not news sources, they’re blogs. One of them was even to a message forum post where a few paragraphs were posted and then a link to the original source. I’ll send them privately to you when/as I see them.
Fine, just one thing.
A link to Overpasses for America tells me nothing about anything here.
Please give examples of THREADS ON FR.
The corruption of the UMC is an important issue. Why all this moaning about blog pimping?
1. It’s already been debunked.
2. Blogpimps are a dishonest blight upon society.
I have no doubt that you are correct.
My issue is not whether the Methodist Leadership are good guys or bad guys in this.
My issue is that FreeRepublic cannot afford to have itself used
as a vehicle for shabby journalistic practices.
With the frontal attack on Conservative media in all its forms in full force right now
having amateur "bloggers" post their hear-say phone conversations as if they were
real reporting of factual events is a bridge too far.
If we let stuff like this go unchallenged we'll soon see FreeRepublic completely blacklisted on all the search engines.
Then we can kiss that precious Alexa rating goodbye.
Next down the drain will be any effective activism that is our stated goal.
In fact I have noticed that searching unique character strings found on FR
does not yield the instant top of the page results it did just a few months ago.
(Of course I'm not going to start a thread about it, because unlike the OP on this thread
I believe you need solid evidence before you start making accusations.)
Wishing you all the best and I hope you're enjoying the Texas weather.
It's gotta beat the pants off this Chicago snowpile I'm staring at right now.
Humblegunner, I would post the link to the thread, but that one was gone shortly after I mentioned it in this thread. I’ll just try to point them out as I see them. But I’m starting up another round of chemo and don’t know if I’ll have the focus for a few days. That doesn’t mean I’m not seeing them, because I have been, it just means that sometimes I feel good and sometimes I just can’t think straight at all when I’m on treatment.
The link to the story was posted on Drudge (does Matt Drudge not care about good journalistic practices?) and other credible sources. When other people post links here, I highly doubt they are doing much checking when it’s already on a credible source. Geller has a lot of credibility and I did nothing wrong by posting a link to their story. The site is still standing by the story by the way. When other people post a link on FR, I highly doubt they are doing anything beyond reading the story.
Above.. it sure looks like you linked to your own blog.
Isn't that a bit different from linking Geller's site?
Methodists Fearful of Islamification of their Churches
Resistance Feed ^ | 12-9-2016 | Rhett October
"Resistance Feed" has no Gellers in it.
Take a look at the article that you posted here - this thread.
Does it say “Matt Drudge” at the source?
No - it says “Resistance Feed” - your blog no?
Take a look at the text that follows.
Is any of it copied from Matt Drudge? From Pam Gellar?
No - it’s your phone conversations with your friends.
You want to post links to Gellar and Drudge? Fine.
I won’t say a word.
(I might choose to agree or disagree with them,
but I won’t question the practice of you linking
to them and posting their stories here without
using your blog as a middle man.)
You want to post the Gellar and Drudge stories and then make anecdotal comments about them?
Again - Fine.
And again - I might choose to agree with you or disagree.
But I will not question the practice.
But this telephone journalism is something different.
As far as I’m concerned you might as well have carried a tape recorder into your local tavern and recorded the opinions of four mooks on the verge of DTs.
And back to the original issue.
You don’t make an error and then print a retraction on a different thread.
There’s a guy at your table who still has soup on his jacket and you want to argue about whether it’s good soup or bad soup.
The dry cleaner and the guy who owns the jacket don’t care.
"This stuff is pink colored.. someday I sell DNA!"
FR is not a news site. It’s a discussion forum.
Fake News was much worse in 1999
Benny Lava!
With a Vindaloo on a Looney Bun!
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