My church flies these flags and it means a lot to see. The sense of feeling welcome is immediate. I've been going here with my fiance and have always felt comfortable.

For background, I'm a heavily tattooed female bartender, who is also an unwed mother. I understand that from an outside perspective, I do not "look" like a typical Christian, and I didn't really start to pursue my relationship with Christ until I found the Episcopalian church. I always struggled with the idea that being gay is a sin, and a non-believer is a sinner. I just don't see God's love as so black and white, and it wasn't until I found my church that I encountered true, radical love.

Today at work, a group of men selling banana bread for their church specifically approached ME at my bar, asking if I believed in the word of God. I said yes, and that I go to service at my church as often as I can. They asked which church, and I answered. Cue a BARRAGE of very personal and targeted questions towards me regarding my sexuality, sexual experiences, what other sins I have committed and if I TRULY believed that that such a liberal Church was guiding me towards Christ. I was terrified and embarrassed, and being so soon into my Christian journey I didnt feel like I had the knowledge to defend myself, not to mention being at my literal job I couldn't just walk away like I would do on the street.

Is this normal? Am I a bad Christian for specifically searching for a church that aligned with my views? Is that specific search limiting my knowledge and relationship with God because I don't want to align with things I don't agree with? I don't really know how to navigate this. I have pretty liberal political views, and my belief system is also built on that. I just can't rationalize condemning people for things they can't control. Idk, some clarity would be nice if anyone can offer it.

Long ago, pretty much a Month Ago, I made a Post requesting others to Pray for Me because I described the Psychological Abuse that has happened in my Household, which was mainly driven by the belief that I \*must\* stop being a Trans Girl and become a Cis Boy. The Prayers were mainly to make sure my Plan to seek Help from LGBTQ+ Organizations would Succeed.

In the end, I didnt talk just to a LGBTQ+ Organizations, I also talked to a Helpline for Minors going through Abuse, which apparently is also capable of sending in my Country's Child Protection Services, which where I live are Simply called "Social Services".

Two Days ago, the Social Worker who interacts with our Family to help us with State Welfare called my Father to the Office, and yesterday he was told that this Social Worker's Colleagues would come visit our house. Besides coming out to my Childhood Friend who witnessed my Mother giving birth to me, (She also revealed to me that shes Bisexual) I talked to the Social Workers who came to our home and I can say that my Parents will officially stop all attempts at changing my Gender Identity.

This is because the Social Workers explicitly stated that if my Parents ever try to suppress my Gender Expression, force me to cut off Friends just because they Support me or are Queer, or perform a "Small Exorcism" against my Will with the Desired Outcome being Identity Change, they will get in SERIOUS Legal Trouble.

Whether I can begin the Psychological Percourse towards getting HRT (Which lasts from 6 to 12 Months) is yet unclear, but its said I will indeed begin a Psychological Percourse that does NOT involve someone whose best Advice for Gender Dysphoria is "Focus on your Hobbies and pretend the Dysphoria doesnt exist", and my Parents will also begin one with a Separate Professional.

I hope any other Fellow Trans Girl out there whos going through what I went through before Finding the Light manages to reach the same Victory as me, the Era of being free to exist as my Authentic Self has just begun.

Ive been in the SBC for pretty much my entire childhood. Both Churches I had attended ALWAYS pushed the “you are a horrible person who deserves nothing but pain and suffering just for living cause you love wrong“ rhetoric. They‘ve also always pushed women being submissive to men and abortion = murder. My current church has a youth pastor who quite literally wears an “Abortion Abolitionist” t-shirt. My first church also used “babies go to hell since they can’t verbally profess Jesus as their savior“ as an argument against abortion. Anyways, thanks for listening to my rant and have a blessed week <3.

For those that dont know, Arthur is from a video game called Red Dead Redemption 2, hes a outlaw and lived a very bad life and struggles with morality but is absolutely capable of being a good when given opportunities.

He contracted tb after beating a sick man who was loaned money from Arthur's gang to death and towards the end of the game you watch cone to terms with his sickness and the consequences of his actions.

Here hes talking to a nun were he tells her he's afraid and she lovenly tells him, "Take a gamble that loves exists and do a lovenly act."

Which he does.

What about you guys? Looking for to reading yalls responses.

Hey all, i want to apologise if this doesnt make sense, I'm just writing my thoughts.I would like some advise and support about believing after my recent trip. So I went last week (11th - 19th) and don't get me wrong it was a nice experience,ish. I went with my church and I just feel like it just started wrong. We left really late in the evening, like 9pm and didn't get to Taiźe till 3pm sunday and we were all just so tired. It just felt like we had so much to do with getting a job and setting up etc. As time went by, i had some good experiences with God which was nice but the people around me with the church just felt..weird. It just felt like I was being babied by some people and like I had to do the majority of the work cause one of the people couldn't get over the wasps which at the time felt fine but idk. Then a storm happend. I've got anxiety and autism so I was petrified. I was in tears and trying not to have a panic attack on the phone to my mum and my paster who was on the trip said in the group chat not to use our phones (in a way that made my anxiety worse) and didnt even try comfort me or see where I was during it. I then got moaned at when I saw her and a thing I noticed was her eyes. (My nan has Bipolar and i can just tell with eyes when someone changes) it was kinda scary. I wasn't comforted once by anyone but 1 women. Anyway, then I went to the town over to get ice-cream and I left my charger in the church to charge my powerbank. I told her and she (my vicar) said not to worry and she'll look after it ect. When I came back and went to the service my phone was dying so I went up to her to get the charger ect and she denied even saying that and had no idea where it was. She was more concerned about her adapter then anything else and didn't even bother to help look for it. Then on the last day I got shouted at for just sitting down and looking over by the vicar and her daughter (her daughter shouted) and then she ignored me for hours until she kinda apologised saying she don't know why she shouted ect but she was still distant. During that time I also felt incredibly home sick, in pain with my joints and just masking everyday.

I've been feeling distant and I'm really struggling to believe in God ever since coming home because if he loved me then why would be let me go through that? Why would he let me struggle during the trip? If he knew what was gonna happen, why didn't he help or even stop the struggle? Any advice would be great!!

Religious ritual is not magic or superstition. All religions practice rituals, but religions interpret their rituals differently. Some offer “magical” interpretations of the ritual as a supernatural technology that produces material outcomes: “If we just pray hard enough, she’ll be healed.” Other religions interpret rituals as meaning-making activities, superimposed on life to create order from chaos. If life appears random, we can provide some order to it with periodic observances. 

In our account, religious rituals are not magic, nor are they meaning-making activities. Instead, they are meaning-accessing activities. Religious rituals access a preexisting meaning woven into the universe. Because they access the sacred, they are sacraments: portals through which the grace that lies within the cosmos flows into our everyday lives. 

Religious ritual confirms the basic sacramentality of the cosmos, reminding us that everything is holy. Due to this universal holiness, awe is the most legitimate attitude toward life and gratitude its most natural fruit. To feel a sacrament is to feel awe and become grateful, because the sacrament celebrates what we overlook in our distractedness—the intrinsic beauty of life, the sacredness of matter, and the importance of each person. 

Sacramental celebration brings existential healing to a despondent world. Life is stunningly beautiful and intensely difficult, with the ever-present possibility of intense suffering and great joy. We are material beings in a material universe through which courses Infinite Spirit. We are fully embodied and fully ensouled; our physicality entails risk, while our spirituality entails passion. Embracing the intensity of life, faith celebrates this unification of body and soul, a unification that heightens experience, deepens awareness, and unceasingly generates more.   

We need grace to bear that more. Recognizing this need, sacraments use the constituents of the universe—space, time, energy, and matter—as channels of divine encouragement. Such material sacraments reveal material existence to be holy: matter manifests spirit, and spirit reveals matter to be more lively than common sense alone could explain. 

Religious ritual is not harmful superstition, outdated magic, or pre-scientific technology. Religious ritual is a medium of the sacred with transformative power. Indeed, this power may be so transformative that it seems magical, working wonders in our interpretation of life. 

Transformation bequeaths knowledge. We think differently, feel differently, and act differently after transformation. By way of consequence, religious ritual is a powerful way of acquiring sound knowledge about human existence in a sacred cosmos. It reminds us what we should never forget—that we are sacred, life is a gift, and more beauty of every sort is forever available to us. 

Such knowledge cannot be proven or disproven. It can only be felt, and felt to enrich. The knowledge that ritual confers is not discursive: it cannot be translated into language, because it is first and finally embodied. The reduction of this embodied knowledge to language, even when necessary, will distort and attenuate it. (I am distorting and attenuating your ritual knowledge right now, for which I apologize.) 

Ritual knowledge must remain what it is—directly experienced, distinctly embodied, and resolutely unlanguaged. Participating in religious ritual may lead thought from reason to rumination, and theologians may even translate ritual experience into doctrinal concepts, but all religious ritual resists intellectual mastery, because ritual exceeds cognition, just as reality exceeds system. Life is always more than we can think. If we reduce life to understanding, then we shall have impoverished ourselves. God grants more, and some of that more God grants through ritual. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 233-234)

*****

For further reading, please see: 

Driver, Tom F. “Transformation: The Magic of Ritual.” In Readings in Ritual Studies, edited by Ronald L. Grimes, 170–87. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Jennings, Theodore W. “On Ritual Knowledge.” In Readings in Ritual Studies, edited by Ronald L. Grimes, 324–34. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

First off I want to day that I think being in a poly relationship isn't a sin despite my personal feelings towards it, if you can make that work and everyone is happy then good for you.

But these groups I see are super weird about it, like saying if you were polygamous you wouldn't have to worry about jealousy or cheating and that men need more then one wife; I even saw someone asking if the women can take more then one husband and she was told that it'd be adultery like what?

They just use super weird arguments for it too, and I notice that almost always the people are Judiazers and always say that modern churches are going to hell?