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Originally Posted by ISiddiqui
ELCA in the House! I was just attending a Virtual Holy Week(end) with a group of young leaders in the church, focused on George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. The youth here in our Church also give me hope.
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I think I mentioned this to you before, but I know about a dozen ELCA pastors and see Facebook posts about their youth group conventions and such (and my father was an ELCA pastor heavily involved in the national stuff in the 70s and 80s). Most of them are in the northeast, but, I do have a cousin pastor that just moved from South Carolina to Durham.
I don't go to church now, but every so often out when I'm feeling brave and my friends are church-bashing I kind of gently work in that I grew up in a church that wasn't at all like the ones they're familiar with or think they're familiar with. Though I have to remember that their experiences are very different than mine - I know some people whose parents disowned them because they were gay, etc. I'm not looking to convert them or anything, I just don't want to judged or assumed to have certain traits. I still kind of have a hard time connecting the Christianity that I grew up with with the hateful version I hear about. Those things just don't make sense to me together, and to this day I really don't know any conservative Christians, in my family or otherwise.
So my perspective on church and religion is kind of wacky because my friends and acquaintances are almost all either far-left Christians or far-left occasionally vocal atheists. Even among my friends in Idaho. They're all very similar in almost every way except half finds great value in the church and half believe church is the root of all evil. Sometimes I think I'm a good influence on the latter group - I'm Christian, work in the criminal justice system, AND am a Boston sports fan. Basically a trilogy of evil. But they still like me. And I tend to keep those things to myself until I know someone well, I have found all three to be triggering to some people in certain contexts.