Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Your implication that we just supply the money is wrong. Who do you think operates these ministries?
I guess you missed the part where I said this...
Quote:
I'd suspect that there are some volunteers to the poor in your church
I will say that it is certainly possible that your church is so big that a number of people are deeply involved in these ministries to the poor. But the entire church is not in the thick of it like many Black churches are.
Again, trying to explain what I perceive as the difference between Black and White Christian conservatives.
I am truly not trying to pick on your particular church or any white church in general. and I apologize if you are getting that from me.
Just trying to describe the sociological aspects as I see it in regards to this.
This reminds me very much of what happened at the school where I was principal. Our school boundary was mostly solid middle class to upper class (with one small area that was quite poor). One year our PTA came and said that they wanted to do a drive to collect things that a local homeless shelter could use...which was quite a surprise. I had an idea how it would go down, but I not only gave my permission, but also supported their efforts, and they took in a truly significant amount of appropriate clothing items, canned goods, and other necessities that homeless shelter people could use. And then, when they were finished, they came to me and said, "Okay, Mr. Victor, you can deliver the stuff to the homeless shelter now". Part of the reason was that they wanted to use my van for delivery, which was fine. But when I said, "Well, we can use my van, but I need to see some of you and some of your children helping when we arrive at the shelter", I thought they were going to have a collective stroke. "We can't go there around those people!" "Well, then I guess all that stuff won't ever get to the shelter". After much angst, one parent finally said, "Okay, my daughter and I will volunteer", and then a couple more did. But, as you point out, they wanted to do good, but at arm's length.
After reading your post... I wanted to share something that impacted me as a high school student when Richard Hogue started his "megachurch" in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1975.
My family were charter members of this church. We started out in the cafeteria of my high school. Edmond was an up and coming suburb of Oklahoma City so our members were white middle to upper middle class types of people. A pretty homogenous group.
When he started the church, Richard Hogue had managed to get an OKC radio station to broadcast the services. At the end of each service Pastor Hogue would do an altar call... and he would always say "if you are listening to the radio... and you want to give your life to the Lord... say the sinners prayer and come by Edmond Memorial High School this afternoon for counseling and our afternoon "Lunch with the Lord".
(We had a feed in the cafeteria an hour or so after service was over).
After a while we started to have these rif raffy people from OKC showing up saying they had gotten "saved" on the radio broadcast. They would come to the feed and then they would be encouraged to attend the Sunday night service to be paraded in front of the congregation to claim their salvation.
One time this girl showed up for night service (not the meal) claiming she had gotten saved. She looked like she was likely a prostitute and she was wearing the shortest miniskirt I have ever seen (and miniskirts were out of style by '75). Pastor Hogue let her up in front of the congregation to publicly claim her salvation. It was one of the weirdest scenes I ever saw in church.
After that, Pastor Hogue quit encouraging the radio audience to come to the church but instead he gave out a telephone number for them to call instead of showing up.
Once winter was over we moved out of the HS cafeteria to an outdoor pavilion while our sanctuary was built. It could have been completely a logistical thing... but we didn't have anymore "Lunches with the Lord" after we moved out of the HS cafeteria. After we moved from there we no longer had any of those type of people showing up at our church.
After reading your post... I wanted to share something that impacted me as a high school student when Richard Hogue started his "megachurch" in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1975.
My family were charter members of this church. We started out in the cafeteria of my high school. Edmond was an up and coming suburb of Oklahoma City so our members were white middle to upper middle class types of people. A pretty homogenous group.
When he started the church, Richard Hogue had managed to get an OKC radio station to broadcast the services. At the end of each service Pastor Hogue would do an altar call... and he would always say "if you are listening to the radio... and you want to give your life to the Lord... say the sinners prayer and come by Edmond Memorial High School this afternoon for counseling and our afternoon "Lunch with the Lord".
(We had a feed in the cafeteria an hour or so after service was over).
After a while we started to have these rif raffy people from OKC showing up saying they had gotten "saved" on the radio broadcast. They would come to the feed and then they would be encouraged to attend the Sunday night service to be paraded in front of the congregation to claim their salvation.
One time this girl showed up for night service (not the meal) claiming she had gotten saved. She looked like she was likely a prostitute and she was wearing the shortest miniskirt I have ever seen (and miniskirts were out of style by '75). Pastor Hogue let her up in front of the congregation to publicly claim her salvation. It was one of the weirdest scenes I ever saw in church.
After that, Pastor Hogue quit encouraging the radio audience to come to the church but instead he gave out a telephone number for them to call instead of showing up.
Once winter was over we moved out of the HS cafeteria to an outdoor pavilion while our sanctuary was built. It could have been completely a logistical thing... but we didn't have anymore "Lunches with the Lord" after we moved out of the HS cafeteria. After we moved from there we no longer had any of those type of people showing up at our church.
In high school I attended a rural church of, at the time, about 50 members. This was a town of 750 people serviced by four churches. It was a northern Illinois town, very white middle class.
There was an elderly couple that literally lived down by the railroad tracks (it was too small of a town to have a "right" and "wrong" side to the tracks, but due to the noise of passing trains, the cheap real estate was next to the tracks). They were recent arrivals. Apparently the wife took in every stray cat, so they, er ... smelled pretty bad, but were "nose blind" to it. They visited our church, which had been optimistically constructed for about 250 people but never came close to filling it. Normally, everyone sat pretty evenly distributed around the auditorium. This couple came in and sat in back, and everyone else moved and huddled up front. No one shook their hadn't or greeted them. Some made disgusted faces. The couple never returned. I later heard they had been turned out of the other three churches also.
I remember the stench myself so I'm not failing to understand the delicacy of the situation; cat urine is not exactly a social lubricant. But in retrospect what should have happened is that even stinky people should have been treated kindly. Someone could have put some vaseline up their nose and done a home visit and offered some practical help to what was probably an old and infirm couple who was lonely enough to go to not one but four churches ... with mounting evidence of people being crappy to them.
I wasn't proud of us at the time but I was just a kid. I was watching the adults to see how they would role model in this situation. They did not cover themselves in glory, let us just say. I have remembered this situation with discomfort for about 55 years now.
Christian evangelicals are big on going to other countries and recruiting people into their faiths. You see this real plainly in Hawaii, which was a separate country back when. Living there, I saw that other Christian faiths like Pentecostal are making steady inroads into the Hawaiian culture. Whether or not Pentecostal is an evangelical thing I couldn't say.
Evangelicals have also been making big pushes into Central America for some time. Their style of Catholicism can be more evangelical to begin with compared to Western countries. I once attended an evangelical Catholic mass in Hawaii, but that seemed to be a one time thing. It felt and looked super weird compared to your normal quiet and low key mass.
In the South, Black churches look and sound nothing like the White churches, although most of both are going to be Baptist unless you're in an area that has experienced a longer lasting Spanish influence. These were usually coastal cities, since that's how the Spanish got here to begin with, and of course ALL of those Spanish were Catholic.
Last edited by stephenMM; 02-11-2024 at 09:03 PM..
I saw that other Christian faiths like Pentecostal are making steady inroads into the Hawaiian culture. Whether or not Pentecostal is an evangelical thing I couldn't say.
I would classify traditional Pentecostals as fundamentalist. They generally come from the Holiness tradition and tend to be extremely conservative and dogmatic.
Charismatics, on the other hand, it depends. They could be Catholic, or any protestant denomination, with the addition of belief in gifts of the Holy Spirit, most particularly tongues. The "Charismatic Movement" was something that was relatively ecumenical and took root in whatever churches would tolerate it. As far as I recall it was not an organized movement so much as an idea that sort of organically spread wherever it could. It is generally considered to have originated in Anglicanism in April 1960 (specifically in Van Nuys, CA). It was basically a reversal of the tendency for people who became charismatic to separate from (or be thrown out of) their host denomination; rather, they began, increasingly, to remain within them and to find a degree of tolerance for their practices.
There are some exceptions, such as the Vineyard movement; some independent evangelical churches have become charismatic but do not consider themselves to be Pentecostals.
Christian evangelicals are big on going to other countries and recruiting people into their faiths. You see this real plainly in Hawaii, which was a separate country back when. Living there, I saw that other Christian faiths like Pentecostal are making steady inroads into the Hawaiian culture. Whether or not Pentecostal is an evangelical thing I couldn't say.
Evangelicals have also been making big pushes into Central America for some time. Their style of Catholicism can be more evangelical to begin with compared to Western countries. I once attended an evangelical Catholic mass in Hawaii, but that seemed to be a one time thing. It felt and looked super weird compared to your normal quiet and low key mass.
In the South, Black churches look and sound nothing like the White churches, although most of both are going to be Baptist unless you're in an area that has experienced a longer lasting Spanish influence. These were usually coastal cities, since that's how the Spanish got here to begin with, and of course ALL of those Spanish were Catholic.
Yes and it’s usually easier to convert Catholics and mainline Protestants into Evangelicalism or Pentecostalism , than it is to convert other religions or the atheists or irreligious.
Bear in mind too that in many countries, such as on the Indian subcontinent, China and in many Muslim countries, Christian missionaries are banned and attempting to convert the locals to Christianity is highly illegal with severe penalties involved.
Yes and it’s usually easier to convert Catholics and mainline Protestants into Evangelicalism or Pentecostalism , than it is to convert other religions or the atheists or irreligious.
Bear in mind too that in many countries, such as on the Indian subcontinent, China and in many Muslim countries, Christian missionaries are banned and attempting to convert the locals to Christianity is highly illegal with severe penalties involved.
I've seen guys on steps in Bangkok preaching christianity and the Thais find it very entertaining. Lotsa laughs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
