B. H. Manners

Original Post by vaelarian:

I suppose they just wore the hoods.[/QB]

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No duh and I bet that whoever is in charge of that shindig is well aware that is what a lot of folks will think too. One of the slickest and most effective psychological tools CoC preachers use is drill into their members heads that they should do things different just for the sake of being different and unlike the lost denominational world. By distancing their members from other people religion wise it is easier to keep them in the fold and convince them other folks are false Christians, liars, or fools. This is why the CoC's leaders trashes other denominations and calls them false so much.

Someone above posted they were glad to get out of the CoC because it is so cultlike and I agree. As more and more traditional CoC doctrines are shown to be erroneous many members will not accept change (but many more will) becoming reactionary and even more dogmatic than before. Unfortunately for the traditionalist preachers this is not the early 20th century and late 19th century with the membership composed of ignorant emotionally led sheep who stand in utter terror of so called spiritual leaders. The membership today will demand logical defenses of CoC doctrines and when the traditionalists cannot do so and resort to bluff, threats, and bluster the church will probably implode in many areas like the Worldwide Church of God did.

Remember, to the CoC people who have been raised and taught its doctrines all their lives there is no other church to turn to. It has been drilled into their heads from birth that all others are false and led by the willfully dishonest shysters . When the CoC is exposed for the shitheap it really is and the membership realizes it many will probably give up Christianity.

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

B. H. Manners

Here is an example of CoC cultlike behavior.

There is a minority of CoC's that are referred to as the "one cup brethren." These people believe communion must be taken by having everyone drink from one cup of grapejuice in the Lord's Supper. These people also tend to oppose Sunday School and hold to that fucked up doctrine over who to help out of the treasury I mentioned above.

Before I left I was able to visit and meet many of them and their ministers. A couple of them were preaching at a gospel meeting and bluntly came out and said that the concept of religious freedom was bad. They felt that the CoC should be the only church allowed and if others did not conform to it then they should be shut down. If necessary the other denomination's ministers could face legal penalties if they refused to stop spreading their "false doctrines." In other words this group of CoC's believe the idea of religious freedom is wrong. They want the go back to the Middle Ages with the CoC the priviledged church and not the Catholic. In honesty these folks are only about 5% of the total membership and are active really only in Texas, Louisiana, California, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. However, beware for they often turn to love bombing visitors and can nag worse than JW's if you show any interest in them.

Another thing about these one cup folks is they have a horrific fear of women being out of role in the church. Now all CoC's believe it is sinful for a woman to preach but these folks go so far as to forbid a woman to teach the Bible anywhere except the home if even that. I mean NO WHERE not the store, bank, or anywhere. Even then many still have problems with women talking to a non-relative about the Bible in their own homes. Many a time I was at a one cup persons house and when I and the preacher talked about the Bible his wife felt she had to leave the room because she would break some rule about a man's authority in religious situations. Think, a grown woman had to leave a room in HER own home because I was there talking about the Bible.

Lastly, these folks make a very big deal over authority. In this brand of CoCdom the elder is the final authority and when they speak it as if they spoke knowing God's mind. In this church authority is really all that matters and it is unquestioned as well.

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

B. H. Manners

Bump.

Mr. Brojees do you have any comments for all of this?

ohwilleke

Shit!!!! Absolutely frightening.

vaelarin

Yep. And their official "apology" when the black students got pissed (gee, I wonder why...) was to set aside 3 days of Af-Am appreciation during the required daily chapel services - during which they did some really inovative things like, have negroes conduct the chapel services. (I hope my satire in that statement is obvious)

I remembered another incident at a church summer camp that was a similar to this. The week before I went had been "teen week", and one of he "kids" at camp my week had also gone that week. Long story short, it was a black guy about 17-18, and they did the same thing. He naturally got really upset by it. Hell, if I were an 18 year old black kid in south Mississippi, out in the middle of the woods with a bunch of white kids who were burning crosses, I think I'd have been more than just a little upset. But anyway, I overheard him talking to the guy that owned the camp and he was pretty much told, 'this has nothing to do with being black.. so hush'

The idea started with a bunch of teenagers who would write a "confession to God" (eh?) on a piece of paper, pray for forgiveness, and then throw the piece of paper in a bonfire. Nice little pagan ritual for fundies. Another group was doing something similar, but nailing the paper (their sins) to a cross. TBut some of these kids started going back and reading the other kids confessions. From that, somehow the two ideas merged into confessions on paper nailed to a cross, then burned ==&gt; the Mississippi Burning styled yearbook.

Now what gets me is that none of these people ever stopped to think, or spoke up and said, "hmm, this might not be the best idea". It was and is very much like BH said above. The CoC holds a very "us vs them" picture of the world. Everything they do is godly, everything else is sinful and "of the world". It's a bad blend of extreme paranoia, persecution complex, martyr complex, and isolationism. It's also why I insist that the CoC is a horrible cult and should be treated as one.

Terracotta

Social club? Bwhahahahaha! I was in Shantih (IOW, a goody-goody club, at least when I was there from 94-98).

However, I tended to be a bit of a rebel as well. I have great contempt for Harding and all the oppressive rules and policies therin. They want you to act like adults, but they treat you like children. My own parents were less strict than that damn school, and that's saying a LOT.

BH, I agree that the CofC is more like a cult, at least the more traditional ones. I've been to some more "progressive" ones that don't seem to have the cultish views, but of course those congregations are hated by many in the "true" CofC. I've never been in a "one-cupper,", but I've been close.

I will never go back.

Talulah

I have never asked anyone in the mainline (read not anti) churches of christ what they thought about religious freedom but I would imagine that it would be something along the line of what BH said he heard.

They might hee and haw a bit about wanting 'freedom' but it all boils down to they are the only right ones and the only 'true church' and therefore should be treated with the respect they deserve. I imagine that the people in the church of christ would actively participate in tearing down all the churches they could, included those among themselves that they think have strayed from the path of righteousness. In the end, the fact is that they believe they are the only ones deserving of freedom.

They get such glee in slandering others from the pulipit that I could hardly imagine how great they would feel to be able to take an active part in the destruction of churches they didn't agree with.

Along the vein of racism, when I was growing up (and realise this was the late 80's, early 90's) the church I went to with my parents where my grandfather and great-uncle were elders wouldn't allow blacks to be members of their church. They not so subtly told some black people that visited that they weren't welcome at our church and to leave. That caused a stink with some more progressive members and eventually our church ended up funding a black church to start a few miles away and they began to point all visitors to that church in a way that I am sure wasn't as obvious as it once was. I hear all the time about how the church helped those 'poor black brothers' who needed a church and couldn't start one on their own. Gag.

I don't know about the rest of you who grew up in the Church of Christ but racism was real and rampant in my church and family. It was something that I accepted and absorbed along with the CoC doctrine. It was nothing for an aunt to tell me she had this video tape of David Duke when he was in the Klan or to hear my Dad say as he watched the news "Another n*gger got killed, that's one less to suck the country dry."

Growing up, to not be racist, went hand in hand with the all dreaded 'liberalism.'

The Other Michael

Hi Talulah,

My only experience with them was when I went to Italy a couple of years ago. The people I went with were C of C, and we were staying with their daughter/sister who was teaching at a school run by Harding in Firenze. It was a 14th century villa they'd bought and I think a limited number of Harding students got to go over for a semester at a time.

Anyway, the father of my step-bro-in-law was invited to address the students - I gather he'd done missionary work in Italy and was pretty well known. I declined the invitation to listen to the address and waited out in the courtyard. But I could hear much of what went on, which seemed to consist of telling the students about the horrors of Mariolatry and why the Catholic Church was sooo wrong.

However, other than these religious beliefs (and they didn't try and inflict them on me on the trip) they were very nice folks. I don't know that they'd be prone to doing anything more than preach against the other sects.

I'll have to admit that the students seemed, other than the religious comments, to be pretty typical late teen/early 20s people. Some of the women were quite attractive and certainly didn't seem to be dressing in a particularly Godly fashion! But then I guess even God can't beat fashion every time.

cheers,
Michael

Talulah

That seems to be part of it to me. They LOOK normal and do normal things/act normal ect. It is just when they get together and spout their true feelings that things start to get weird. I have often sat in devo (christian get-togethers at college) and watched as seemingly normal well-adjusted people handed out papers that in detail described why every religious body in the world except the church of Christ was going to hell.

The way I have seen it is either they are burdened terribly by the idea that everyone except those that hold to their beliefs are going to hell or they get a fiendish delight out of being special, chosen if you will, and are happy to disperage others (though only among like believers understand)

Both create a fanaticism that is unhealthy and downright harmful.

B. H. Manners

The Other Michael,

There are some of them who are very nice people who would give their right arm to help someone in need. I personally have good memories of the non-class folks and learned most of what I know about the Bible and religion from them. However, Talulah is right, what a lot of them say and act in public is a lot different than what they say in their church assemblies and bible classes. You could say they are the elitists of all Christianity. they alone are completely true in doctrine, practice, and theory. Lastly, keep in mind and I pointed it out that "one cup" CoC's are a very small minority. They only have about 500 churches with about 20,000 members. This is out of a grand total of about 13,000 congregations with 1.5 million members overall.

[ April 29, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>