A south Alabama bayou river country amiga replied on Facebook to the The Golden Flake Clown's younger brother, R.I.P. post about my bisexual younger brother killing himself and trying to make it look like murder.
ElizabethThe southern baptists have come to my methodist church and are bullying the elderly into disaffiliating from the UMC so that they can get the property for 1/1000th it's current value and I have prayed all over it.
Sloan Bashinsky
You are speaking out in your church about this? You have reported it to UMC? You have reported it to the local newspapers? There is a newspaper in Foley? I know there is one in Mobile. Are the Southern Baptists local to your little river village? Are they from somewhere else? I keep hearing in my thoughts,
Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
And now,
Matthew 12 Then Jesus entered the temple[a] and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 He said to them, “It is written,‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.”
Elizabeth
The UMC is who explained the coup. The usurpers aren't from here and don't even live here.
God hates a coward. I will fight this contagion.
Sloan Bashinsky
Yep, God dumped that on you, but the UMC is doing what? You will have to speak out in that church, and perhaps to newspapers and radio show hosts and local bogs, like you are doing on FB. I don't think there is any way to walk with God and not take risks, which Dietrich Bonhoeffer did when he joined a movement that tried to get rid of Adolph Hitler. Bonhoeffer's iconic book, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, speaks of "cheap grace," as opposed to being in the flames. He is said to have said, "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil." He was captured and put in a camp and executed.Speaking out in her Birmingham church was the difficulty I had with a very old dear friend when she told me about what the new minister in her very old line Presbyterian church was doing. I told her she had to speak out in the church, raise hell, interrupt the church service, but as far as I know, she didn't do that. She didn't like my telling her a demon was in the church, and the demon was infectious and was infiltrating everyone there, and it was attacking me, and I didn't care for that. We have not spoken or seen each other since then, and I can look out my living room window and see that church any winter day, when there are no leaves on the trees.
Elizabeth
It's true and I am making waves.
Sloan Bashinsky
My experience is, sheep and/or the sleeping and the dead don't care much for waves, and my experience also is that it when it is given to me to make waves, not knowing what might then happen, I mostly don't see much change, but it was mine to do anyway.
Elizabeth
It's looking like I am the only member who's not going along with the dirty deeds for the deed. The only one who thinks it's evil to judge. I guess there's no one to fight for. Somehow the Methodist Church wasn't clear enough along the way in every way that what it means to be a Methodist is being the love of God. Not judging, just loving. The members are FINE to leave the above and embrace the hate.
Sloan Bashinsky
I thought this was about selling the church land to make a lot of money? Jesus was very clear that there are times when something must be spoken to, regardless.
Elizabeth
For the minister who came in and started this, yes, the financial reward will be large. But apparently they're all bigots like him and want to disafiliate from the Methodist Church for their loving embrace for all who want to come.
Sloan Bashinsky
Well, mammon chase looks to me like a very different issue from to be be a Methodist is being the love of God. Not judging, just loving. Love without Truth is mush, Truth without love is harsh, they live together, or die together, is something that flopped out of me in the fall of 1995 and then I proceeded to screw it all up pretty well. Jesus was not nice when he brought out his whip in the temple. If the usurpers are outsiders, and the minister is going along with them, you might be looking at going to church in your flower garden. For, when are we ever not in church, really?
Elizabeth
The minister is the main outsider. Word is that everyone else likes him fine. Has seen no bullying and will vote under his direction to leave the UMC, leaving the church and desirable property for the minister to take from the UMC as allowed if they want to disafiliate for everyone being welcomed. They do so there's no one to fight for other than the UMC. Since finding out first hand that fellow members care a great deal about the sex lives of others and are disturbed at the very thought of a possible gay member, they can tell it to a higher authority than me.
I'm turning it over. I wash my hands of them. They can handle their own flowers and be oh so proud of being themselves entirely perfect enough to break the only Commandment Jesus gave. [Love your neighbor as yourself]
Elizabeth
Oh, and the Gulf Shores UMC is doing the same. No more will they be Methodist. Fine with taking the property from the UMC due to a very stupid clause that allows it.
Damn.
Sloan Bashinsky
I recall in the Gospels that Jesus told his disciples to go forth and spread the Gospel and where they were not welcome, to shake the dust off their shoes at the doorstep and leave. I confess I was sort of puzzled when you first started telling me about this church and the good effect it was having on you. I was puzzled, because you have never come across to me as someone inclined to get involved with a church. Maybe when you were younger, but not now. I can't imagine anyone who channelled the "pigs in mud" poem being a "good church girl".
All want the security of the well fed pig.
Horror at the baseness unrecognized.
A lifetime spent in shirt stuffing.
And pen comparison.
Is truth more palatable when honeyed?
Is a stark soulscape less so with the eyes of Monet?May my affectations always be understood.
ElizabethThere surely are still Christians and Christian churches. My gay step sister and her wife attend one. But apparently the people of the deep south hold bigotry in high honor.It's just cultural. If the Naziesque ideologies prove to pay enough, it'll spread like it did in Germany.Sloan Bashinsky
I think that's a different topic than the Southern Baptists taking over Methodist churches to get their land. I was begged the other day by a woman I know pretty well, and her husband, to attend their church with her, because I am one of her favorite people and she wants to see me in the afterlife. I asked her how many churches Jesus built? She said, "One." I said, "And it was not made of stone and mortar and wood. Church is everywhere. God is everywhere." I'm still undecided whether I will accept her invitation. She isn't coming on to me. She really believes I need to attend church.
Elizabeth
It's the exact same topic if the Baptist minister took a position in the Methodist Church expressly to use bigotry to take the church.
Hey, it works. Just have a member who secretly was never Methodist in his heart recommend a Minister they know preaches not from the Christian part of the Bible but rather the Old Testament.
It would be lovely to have fellowship and discourse with like hearts. You are fortunate to be asked.
I will place my no vote. Beyond that, it seems that they actually never were Methodist if they will vote to leave over gay people being allowed to attend. They were always Baptists in their hearts I suppose.
Sloan BashinskyAgreed, and that's a very different topic than mammon worship. I have a trans grandchild, who had surgery to become male. I have zero tolerance for religious freaks that do what you describe here. Yet, they abound, and they are totally convinced God is their Authority. However, there was at least one Southern Baptist church in Birmingham, which I sometimes attended, mostly an eclectic Sunday school class, which welcomed gay men, whom I persuaded to give that Sunday school class a try, they would like it, after I convinced them St. Paul was gay My very old dear friend, described earlier in this thread, is lesbian, she is in the open with it since long before I met her in maybe 1975, sang in the church choir. But the new minister at her church went on a tear about baptizing infants, and did other things that caused her to think he was an evangelical freak, and she was not alone in that congregation, feeling that way, according to her. The church was in her bones and DNA, so to speak, and I can't imagine she would ever leave it. But I don't see how you could cope with what you describe about your church. I couldn't cope with it.
As for the invitation to attend my friend's church, I told her the people at her church might not care to have me around, and I would think about it. I'm still thinking about it, and a dream last night caused me to think perhaps I should take her up on her offer. Then, see how it goes. She gets onto me about saying damn, hell, shit. It's not Godly. You can imagine I'm wondering how else she and I and her church members might differ.
Sloan BashinskyShared with Public
Elizabeth
Sloan Bashinsky After contacting church officials, I reached out to one of the members who expressed that she didn't care for the bullying by the minister. Told her I requested his removal and she answered that that was wrong. That most agree that we're to love another but not tolerate perversion and sin. My answer is below, since I can't message you.
My dear, wonderful stepsister is not a pervert. She was the Orange Beach librarian. People acting for the Adversary made her leave her church and state.
Of course her current church is not bringing up Old Testament and judging her. No more than we'd stone our dear organist for being divorced. Or eating shellfish.
Unless Jesus said for me to judge another, I never shall. Other than if they judge another Child of God.
I have Vascular Ehlers Danlos and will not get to be your age. The up side of knowing that I am so close to death is that I know it.
I'm leaving the matter since everyone wants to judge the woman who taught me about Jesus and turning the other cheek.
I'd rather stand next to her, knowing that she never allowed anyone to diminish another child of God than be anywhere near the Life Review of one who did. I will continue calling on Jesus and Archangel Michael to deal with the ones who would cause strife in God's Sanctuary, meant for all.May God's Grace cover you.
Sloan Bashinsky
Thank you, Elizabeth. In my 20s, I was very prejudiced against gays, but I grew out of it and I cannot pin point why. Perhaps learning my younger brother was bi-sexual had something to do with it. It really bugged me many years later, when I concluded he had killed himself and had tried to make it look like murder, because someone was going to out him and there was nothing he could do to stop it. I sent someone I met yesterday a link to the chapter about his death in The Golden Flake Clown's Tale. This person is a pathologist at UAB Medical Center. He said he works with the Jefferson County Medical Examiner. I told him that the Jeff Co ME had determined a relative's suicide was made to look like murder.
https://goldenflakeclowntale.blogspot.com/2023_03_26.
ElizabethIt's sweet. I see nothing wrong with it.
Sloan Bashinsky
You were in love with your Methodist church, encouraged me to come down there and attend services with you. I've had many experiences in Birmingham churches, and churches elsewhere. Who knows what my friend's church is like? She is sincere, no doubt of that. The only way to find out is I go there and be with people who are convinced the only way to get into heaven is attend church.
Elizabeth
I can't hurt.Sloan Bashinsky
That's not the point. She is convinced the only way to get into Heaven is attend church. That's her stated motivation to get me to go to her church. It could hurt a whole lot if I absorb psychic shit in that church, which I have done a lot in churches in past times.
Elizabeth
Well, I guess that's truly what some people think. It's still sweet that she cares for you that much.
Sloan Bashinsky
Yes, in that sense, No, in the sense she is convinced I will go to Hell, if I don't attend church. Is not that bigotry?ElizabethNot if she's just thinking about you staying in a high vibration.
Sloan Bashinsky
I think you need to step back and meditate on what you are saying. What's the difference between a church person believing your sister is ungodly and going to hell because she is lesbian and my church friend thinking I'm going to hell because I don't attend a church? Nearly every time I go into a church, I feel the palpable presence of Lucifer. I then have to deal with it, and it's never pretty. If I'm told by God to go to her church, I will go. But staying in higher vibration? If my friend had to deal with what God has dished out to me since 1987, she might wish there was no God? As might any Christian I have known, might wish that, if they had lived in my skin that long. I don't wish that, I am very glad God took a direct interest in me, and I wish God would do that with everyone. This would be a very different world, if that happened. Meanwhile, because God does not do that, look at the mess in your church.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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