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Bible Study
Posted 26th January 2007 at 10:33pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed

Having been to a church here for the first time on Sunday I proceeded to meet a friend from my course who duly invited me to join him, and others, at the church run bible study on Thursday. I accepted the invitation, and we went there after our last lecture. Before the study we had a reasonably nice meal, then we split into groups and began to read over a passage. All very nice, and quite boring in the recollection. However the reason I'm writing all this here isn't due to my inability to think of anything good to post today, but because of what happened in the second half of the evening.

Once we'd finished looking at and discussing the passage we had a talk by the minister of the church about the concept of "church." It looked at where the word church turned up in the Bible, and what it really meant, both definitively and to the minister himself. It was here that things began to go awry, as he showed some rather worrying opinions on what should and shouldn't be considered a church, throwing around the words heresy, heretic and un-converted. He told us that he believed the Cathedral here in Durham was a waste of the money used in its upkeep - a valid point in some cases, but forgetting everything except a pure practical reason for its existence, and even putting his foot in it totally when he later complained that the church building he uses was not big enough for the congregation of students; I think maybe the cathedral would suffice.

Regardless of that opinion it was his views about seemingly innocent and occasionally forward thinking church practices that astounded me the most. He disagreed with the Roman Catholic practices - so do I - but went on to say that churches that did not teach from the Bible were also heretical and denounced churches full of the un-converted. From what I understand converted means that someone has come to Christianity from another faith, no faith or perhaps a weak faith, but do you have to have to have been converted? I know I've always believed and always felt the same way, am I un-converted because I lacked the sudden revelation that others have experienced?

Going on someone asked him a question about going to a church with their parents where they did not teach from the Bible. He said that there were levels of heresy - that "Grade A heresy" would be a church that preached that the bread and wine became the body of Jesus (a Catholic belief which I do disagree with) or preached that homosexual sex was OK. Woah! Hold on just a second there mate - you're now saying that it's best to learn from the Bible, but that we should condemn homosexuals as heretics? What happened to "love thy neighbour"? What happened to the ideas put forward by that guy called Jesus? You know, the one who founded this whole religion?

As if this wasn't enough he then called for a spade and proceeded to dig as he described "Grade B heresy" which is apparently a situation that wouldn't lead to your damnation but that you shouldn't make a habit. Oddly he only gave one example of this kind of heresy in a church saying:

One that preaches the Bible, but lets a woman preach.

O RLY? Once more flaunting a severe ignorance of any part of the Bible actually containing stuff Jesus said, and ignoring any progress made by ordained woman in the past few decades, he chucks this one out to his flock of students, despite the fact that about half are female and are going to have a rather more enlightened opinion on that issue than he does, what with being female and not a stuck-in-your-ways evangelical idiot like preachy up there.

Yep, this is me now openly mocking a member of the clergy, but to be honest who wouldn't? Far be it from me to pass judgement, despite the fact that he seems to have few qualms about such activities, but I'd say he'd be better off hawking this crap in the market next door than to a church. A quick rifle shot of his other opinions include a dislike for the Alpha Course because it tries to convince people to become Christian through ideas of spirit and forgiveness rather than fire and brimstone, the Charismatic church for much the same reason and pretty much everyone who hasn't had a flash of light conversion and donated their house to his church.

So, a big thanks to Alex for inviting me, thanks to those in my group for making it an evening of interesting discussion, and thanks to the muppet in the dog collar for putting me off ever going to that church again whilst giving me something to both rant and sound clever about at the same time on my blog.

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