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Comment by zellyn | Hacker News Reader

It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people. And that doesn't preach guilt and condemnation in a thousand overt or subtle ways…

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I live in the south and even here a ton of the churches are ok with LGBTQ and don't harp on guilt or how we all need to be saved. Unitarians, Episcopalean, Presbyterian (USA), Quakers, etc. It's still hard to sit through a service where you don't believe anything.

Unitarian, you just have to be searching.

I'm honestly not searching, though, so even the Unitarians feel awkward. At least as I understand it, Unitarianism is still at least deistic. The most I could offer would be moral introspection and some meditation work, none of it in real connection to the supernatural. I'm not opposed to religion on principle, but I'm certainly not trying to find something to place my faith in.

If anything, the best I can see aiming for is some equivalent to cultural Judaism, where even non-believing Jews are invited to attend major ceremonies.

Same boat here. I've repeatedly thought about going to UU events, but they're still too New Age for me. I've long been somewhat envious of my Jewish friends for the strong community aspect of the culture, which requires too much religion in other, well, religions. Nothing else seems to really drive as much community though, as far as I've seen at least.

I feel like this is a surprisingly common response (especially since so many people in the tech world meet a lot of practicing-but-nonreligious Jews). I have a lot of respect for UU organizations, but I just don't feel like I fit in with it, and I haven't found a good substitute. Solstice parties and their ilk are A) too rare for community-building and B) sort of a pallid imitation of real organizations.

Hobby groups and community organizations offer a bit of this, but it seems like there's a fairly specific identity/culture gap that's not easily filled with anything else for non-Jewish atheists/agnostics.

Funny thing about UU is, every congregation is different. I live in a college town; even the carpenters have a PhD. You meet all kinds at UU meetings.

But yeah the demographic of UU members is "High functioning non-contributors"

> It's so difficult to find a church that (a) values community, and (b) hasn't made some kind of big, public decision against LGBTQ people.

What's a 'big, public decision'? The Bible is very clear that there is such a thing as sexual immorality and that same-sex relationships qualify. I've heard arguments that a long series of translation errors means that certain kinds of same-sex relationships are fine, but even so, the Bible does say there is such a thing as sexual immorality. I haven't seen a church that is fine with homosexual acts that also has a coherent position on those passages of scripture.

The only coherent position that's possible is that the Bible is just a good book with a lot of good ideas, but I'm not sure how to organize a community around that principle.

Let's say I put my foot in my mouth and hurt someone's feelings and need to apologize. There is a Bible verse in which Jesus said that we need to prioritize reconciliation over religious habits. If I thought the Bible was just a pretty good list of suggestions, I could easily ignore that teaching because <insert reasonable excuse here>.

That is to say, I don't really how to remove scriptural authority and still have a clear understanding of who God is and what that means to us.

Yeah. I haven't squared it all myself, and I'm not sure I expect to. I do know that many of the oft-quoted passages are in the Old Testament, and thus explicitly superseded by the New. There are however a few troublesome passages in Paul's writings for sure…

Then again, as Scot McNight makes undeniably clear in the opening chapters of The Blue Parakeet, everybody picks and chooses: it's just a matter of degree.

Episcopal

We lasted about five minutes in the Episcopal church near us. Our two-and-a-half year old was happily talking about the stained glass windows (months later, he still talks about them), when someone came up to "helpfully" tell us where the nursery was. "People are trying to be prayerful." She was slightly confused when we headed towards the exit rather than the nursery.

I think we're going to give it another try - we've since met some other members who were horrified at our experience. :-/ We'll see. If they want to drive away families with young kids, I figure they'll last another 20 years or so…

There seems to be someone "helpful" like that in every church. Unless your kid is truly disruptive (running around, damaging things), the best thing to do is ignore the "helper" and try to keep your kid focused on something that'll quiet them down, or keep them seated/near you. But kids talk, you can't stop that, and oftentimes don't want to.

Heh. Our kid stops talking when he's asleep. Mostly.

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