I saw a weird headline yesterday: Some megachurches closing on Christmas. What?? Are they going out of business? Are people actually going to stop acting like they're at a football game and join a smaller church where they practice religion and can know everyone?
Apparently not. It seems that these megachurches are closing their doors on Christmas Day (and New Years Day) despite being Sundays, because nobody will show up. One church is so large it actually requires 500 volunteers to get it up and running on a Sunday morning. The religious reich, of course, is going nuts. Long used to just attacking liberals and athiests, they probably feel betrayed by their baptist brethren. One evangelist (he actually teaches other people to be evangelists. Does that make him a "mega-evangelist"?) said "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing." (underlining mine)
Individualism? Some of these churches have 30,000 members and generally seat 8,000 of them on your average Sunday. And these members acting in unison are showing individualism? Look, I know we can argue until we turn blue about how extreme some of these people are, on abortion and sex and Sunday beer, but how extreme do you have to be to call a sheep in a 30,000 sheep pasture an individualist? And to imply that individualism is a bad thing? It's scary that these people have any power over our current government. Considering our nation has a long tradition of individualism, where one person bucks trends and becomes a hero, it's pretty frightening to think that people who think like our President believe that 30,000 people acting in unison are "too individualist".
Maybe by "individualism" they mean "not exactly like me"?
6 comments:
That would be AWESOME MOVIE! "Godzilla vs. Mega-Evangelicist"! Godzilla awakens to come ashore and save the people from Mega-Evagelicist, of course, inadvertently leaving a swath of destruction in his wake...but that is a price I would be willing to pay. GO GODZILLA!!
I'm with Sylvana. Give me five bucks on Godzilla.
HAHAHAHA!!!
Actually, Scott, I suspect they are right in that people wouldn't attend services. I cannot think of anyone I know who goes to church on Xmas day, nor can I think of any two families I know that have the same traditions about opening presents or when to eat the big meal, etc. on Christmas, so they're probabyl just hedging their bets. It does strike me as somewhat out of character, though, that on the biggest day of the religion they'd shutter their doors...
The greeter at Wal-Mart saying "Happy Holidays" on November 28th instead of "Merry Christmas" is a war on Christmas.
A church closing its doors on Christmas Day, however, is ... uh ... freedom on the march?
Maybe they should keep the churches open and show movies instead of being all preachy...
Ooh, where can i buy tix for the movie?
BTW, I think that guy's not just a mega-evangelist. He's also a META-evangelist, one who evangelizes about evangelizing.
Whoa.
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