It’s not as if Bristol is some naive 16 year old. After all, she already has one child from a failed relationship; She probably believes as some of my college friends did: it you don’t “intend” to have sex, you’re still “good.” And when you don’t “intend” to, why go on birth control. Wacky.
Catahoula, yes, it’s been a long thread. But we already tackled the “jones” thing. Several times. A number of posters revealed their own religious-ness…and still found the Duggar behavior reprehensible. And they aren’t garden variety anything, not even close.
Actually, I think what most object to are “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones,” (and making a fortune while lobbing those stones). I suspect many of the posters are Christians so don’t object to the religion, just the hypocrisy!
I would say most church mission trips have a purpose of ‘bringing God’ to others. Many include service projects, medical care, building help, but not all. Church members don’t make a secret about the mission. LDS is pretty open about it, even dressing the missionaries in uniforms throughout the world. Churches and communities do fund raisers to assist the missionaries with the costs of the trips, send support during the projects, sponsor missions. I collected pennies and nickels for pagan babies in Africa when I was in grade school. I don’t find it strange that Jill is using social media to raise money as well as the more traditional methods of asking parents and relatives and church members. People use GoFundMe for a lot more selfish endeavors.
I think it is fine if the people are honest that they are collecting the money to be used to spread a religious message. If you don’t like that, don’t contribute. I would prefer my money to go to the group that does the most actual work, whether there is a religious aspect or not. I’d rather contribute to someone’s trip that includes a religious message but 7 actual days of working on a sewer system than to contribute to a 19 year old college student who will work on a service project for 4 hours but spend 2 weeks in the country on a personal mission (vacation). That’s my choice and others can make a different one. I don’t really see the difference between Jill and family going as missionaries now or Fr. Damien going to Hawaii, or the Maryknolls going to China in the early 1900’s, or the many missionaries in Africa over the years. The United Way was started by churches.
LDS missionaries are mostly sponsored by their parents in my experience, I wasnt aware of any fundraisers.
I think of it as a fairly structured gap year.( a niece & nephew have both completed a misson)
Women dress conservatively but dont really have a uniform.
Young men, generally wear white short sleeve shirts & ties, which could be considered a uniform, I suppose.
The most striking thing, imo, is that they are always in pairs.
As a side note, a lot of people still use the phrase, “mission trip” when they mean a non-religious “service trip.” My girls learned some nifty building skills on two trips sponsored by churches. The purpose was not to proselytize, but to help. No reading about the baby Jesus to poor kids. No talk of salvation. Just lots of hard physical labor.
So I don’t begrudge any Duggars any work that tries to improve another’s lot in life, this life.
Btw, while the govt was confused about how to help after Katrina, it was churches of all denominations that went right into the fray and provided food and services, Southern Baptists, in particular. I don’t really care if they said a prayer before a meal or a bunch of Praise the Lord. That’s different than trying to convert.
The reason that Atheists would barely get that much press out of this is that atheists in general don’t go around proclaiming themselves to be holier than thou, and they certainly don’t in general have a record of telling other people how to lead their lives or promote the idea that somehow their morality is the truth or superior to others, not in the way far too many “Christians” do. The Duggars are very typical of this brand of so called Christian, judgemental, telling everyone else how to live their lives, how they are this perfect “Christian” family and so forth. They get attacked for hypocrisy, for not living into what they claim they do yet daring to judge others. How dare the Duggars, whose son molested their own daughters, dare make statements about same sex couples and their children, claiming them having children is tantamount to child abuse, when their precious little child of Jesus committed actual abuse. Bristol Palin is an outright hypocrite, not because she got knocked up at 16, not because she now is pregnant out of wedlock once again, but because she had the gall to go around as some sort of (well paid) spokesperson for the abstinence only/sex is for marriage religious tripe that is the stock and trade of the religious rite, telling everyone how that is the only way to live, that is rank hypocrisy of the tallest order. This whole ‘attack on Christians’ crap reminds me of defenders of the Catholic Church, who when the stuff hit the fan with the priestly abuse scandal, accused people of a witch hunt, out to get the church, that why didn’t they go after teachers who abuse children and get left teaching or where public officials get caught, that why is the church singled out? Didn’t dawn on them that when you are an organization that proclaims that it teaches moral truth, that the old ‘do as I say and not as I do’ not only doesn’t work, but is going to bring a lot of crap down on you when you fail so badly to live into what you preach. Old Ben Franklin was right, people in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones, if you are going to criticize other people for their lapses (as you see it), if you routinely demonize other people, then when you fall, by God you are going to get it back in spades. There is something these “Christians” forget, that being a Christian means living into the faith, it doesn’t mean believing the truth and then not living into it.
A lot of churches and religious organizations when they say mission trips mean things like teaching, medical care, building schools and the like, the prime reason is not to proslytize or convert people, it is to bring the love of God and Jesus to the people, showing the caring and love Christians are supposed to do. The ‘evangelical’ churches often do similar trips, but they generally use it as an opportunity to directly try and convert people, for example when feeding people, they will require they listen to a sermon, or will actively try and promote the faith to the people, it is very different than what others call a service mission (and don’t get me started on US government funding through USAID and other government grants through the faith based initiatives being used in this manner…).
When I was working at a DV shelter, there was another shelter that we’d refer people to who were homeless as opposed to survivors of DV. I hated doing it because it was a religious shelter that required people do Bible study and other required religious things in order to eat and have a place to sleep at night. Of course, that’s their prerogative but I’m pretty sure Jesus would’ve liked the Nuns we worked with from St. Vincent de Paul’s charity much better. They brought our women and children food, clothes, money, and other necessities and never once tried to force religion on anyone.
But, of course, there are always some who are convinced that calling out a family that happens to be Christian is an attack on all of Christianity 8-|
“Required to listen to a sermon while eating”…reminds me of those time share promotions I’ve heard of which promise freebies if you listen to the hard sell.
“Required to listen to a sermon while eating”, I’m sure many people have the same feeling when they have to listen to mandatory speeches or attend mandatory meetings on a groups rights or grievances at work or a school.
I am a white bread Christian. My denomination is as liberal as many here who are not fond of Christians and hunt them for hypocrisy like beagles and bedbugs. We have had female pastors for as long as I can remember and were at the forefront of the fight for same sex marriage.
We undertake mission trips to places like post-Katrina New Orleans, and always to Honduras. Christians of my and other denominations do enormous good on a personal, intimate level, through acts that don’t involve coercive taxation or money-sucking bureaucracies. We do not proselytize, we don’t attempt conversion, we don’t attach strings. It’s about our own Christianity, not anyone else’s.
My personal mission of almost 30 years has been to teach illiterate adults, often illegal immigrants from Central America, Mexico and China, to read. In the course of those lessons, I’ve donated thousands of dollars of clothing, countless items of food, and even had people lacking a place to live, stay in my home.
This is one of the things that makes my hair stand on end about CC. Evangelical is NOT fundamentalist. Many of the evangelical denominations are straight-up liberal on social issues, including mine. Evangelical in the context of non-fundamentalist denominations do not try to convert and do not impose religious restrictions on those receiving service. You are just wrong about this. For most evangelicals who are not also fundamentalist, evangelism is living the Word and spreading it through service, not conversion.
I wonder how many atheists get into the nitty gritty of service to others. Study after study shows that it’s the religious who donate more money and more service. Not just Christians, but Jews and Muslims, as well.
Therefore and thus, I asked the question. Because it wasn’t mentioned.
I didn’t accuse anyone of Christian bashing. I expressed frustration about the repeated conflation of evangelical and fundamentalist. This is a years’ long battle of mine here at CC.
@zoosermom: You said: "I wonder how many atheists get into the nitty gritty of service to others. Study after study shows that it’s the religious who donate more money and more service. "
I am respectfully asking what those studies are. In my experience, atheists can be and often are as altruistic with time and money as religious people. But of course that’s only my experience.
VeryHappy, I refer you to the David Campbell and Robert Putnam research on the issue. They are researchers from Notre Dame and Harvard and their research for the book that they wrote gave rise to a lot of articles and references to other surveys which are very, very interesting and noteworthy. One of the take-aways that I found most interesting was who gives to religious or secular charities, and that it appears to be social connections, rather than actual religion, that leads to increase in giving. The book is called “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.” I highly recommend it.
Who is hunting Christians? That feels like a generalization. No religious person should feel defamed or persecuted because of the errors of the Duggars. But it can be a learning point. We all can (and should) feel free to self-examine, that is always a good idea- and at the core of many religions (and secular philosophies.) The concept that none are without sin (however one wishes to define the concept that we err,) is supposed to lead to better efforts. Not whitewashing. Certainly, not smugness.
What we do have is an example of, for me, a little too much self-satisfaction, using religion to both assure themselves they’re superior and then forgive themselves. And yet, as important as that is to them, they haven’t been extending the same humanity to others, only to those who think as they do. Something wrong in the equation. It’s not on-message. For me, the engine doesn’t run on the Duggar-type religion assuring people they know what comes next, as long as you make a "show"of certain practices (there’s gotta be a parable about that.)
I do agree religion motivates so many to give back. It’s an important underpinning. The Quaker concept I like is, “putting faith into action.” But it doesn’t just require a named faith- or even religious faith, at all. I do know atheists who “serve.” Just as important, many whose “mission” is more along the lines of making kindness, tolerance and love their goals- and don’t pat themselves on the back.
that’s also not what I said. Please re-read the entire sentence, which breaks to the next line.
Patting oneself on the back is not the same thing as clearing up misconceptions or factual inaccuracies, which have been abundant on this thread.
I don’t know anything about the Duggar’s faith because I don’t actually even know what denomination they are or whether they are part of a recognized denomination. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about that in all the years that they have been in the public eye. Does anyone know that? I know that they go on mission trips and I have the idea that they proselytize, but I don’t know why I think that. Maybe I have always confused them with Mormons, which they are not.
As far as Bristol Palin’s hypocrisy, I actually feel sorry for her. It must really hurt to have your wedding cancelled at the last second, particularly if it’s not your doing and you love the person.