Disciplined Church Life

[Grace]

I'm not one of these people who wants to celebrate people's sexuality (gay or straight) in church, in the workplace, or anywhere else.

I agree. However that isn't how many gay people view their homosexuality. They want to talk to everyone about it, tell everyone about it, and foist their celebratory gayness on everyone.

Back in 1989 a book was written by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, “After the Ball”. The book laid out a plan to change society in the promotion of a gay agenda. Everything the authors advocated has been done, and more. The book gave a plan how to use the media to normalize homosexuality and sodomy, which has been done. Another pointer in the book is to talk incessantly about homosexuality in public. The writers advocate to portray homosexuals as victims, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them, the victimizers.

As for churches, they encouraged people to portray Christians as haters and churches who preach against homosexual behavior as backwoods bigots.

I agree with Mike,

It's not a front and center issue in my church at all. But it certainly would be if people within the church began to try to change our (historic Christian) position.

[steve-in-kville]

They want to talk to everyone about it, tell everyone about it, and foist their celebratory gayness on everyone.

That's quoteworthy right there

[Ken]

I don't know about the whole conservative church world. But in my own particular extended family it has been the conservative wing that has been absolutely obsessed with LGBT issues and keeps making them front and center to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps my opinions are colored by that.

I take it you must be part of the conservative wing of your family....

It is hard to talk in generalities. I'll give you a specific example and you can judge. I have a cousin my same age (50s) who I am quite close to. She grew up overseas as her parents (my aunt and uncle) were missionaries. She came back to the US to attend college at a Mennonite college in the 1980s, eventually got married, became a teacher at a private Christian school, raised a couple of kids and attended with her family a local Mennonite Church that has probably been around for over 100 years. It eventually became MCUSA in the 90s or whenever that happened. Completely ordinary Menno family story. They aren't gay, their kid's aren't gay. No one is gay. No one is a gay activist. And their church isn't some radical fringe church. Very mainstream and ordinary.

At our recent family reunion last summer I found out her parents refuse to talk to her and have basically cut her off because they are outraged and disapproving of the church she attends. Apparently they believe she and her family are living in sin and their immortal souls are in jeopardy because they attend a church that isn't sufficiently anti-LGBT. They have also influenced her brother who lives in another state and attends a more conservative church to hector her about her church choice since apparently they aren't talking to her. So now she is ostracized from both her parents and brother. Her parent's aren't actually conservative Mennonites anymore. They attend some other ultra conservative evangelical church in Florida that maybe has Baptist roots, I'm not even sure. So this isn't really a Menno story.

It all exploded into a public family issue during the family reunion when her mother publicly attacked another more liberal aunt and uncle of mine, accusing them of corrupting their daughter and leading her daughter to sin and "being of the devil". This is all because this more liberal aunt and uncle who lived in the next state over from the Mennonite College in the east more or less became the place where the younger generation of the family (mostly from the west) would gather for Thanksgiving and Christmas back in the 1980s when my generation were college students. So my aunt blamed this more liberal aunt and uncle for the fact that my cousin and her husband joined an ordinary Mennonite church in the 1980s long before MCUSA existed and long before LGBT issues were even any sort of church topic. Again, no one is gay, no one is a gay activist, no one is a child or even young (we are all in our 50s or older) but the ordinary Mennonite church my cousin attends and has done so since the 1980s has split apart her immediate family and has expanded to become a point of contention in the larger family. And this is not a one-off occurrence. I have other similar stories involving other family members. Essentially they all come down to family members who have left MCUSA over the LGBT issue and who demand and become angry and enraged when others choose not to follow their lead. And yes anger is the right word. It involves shouting, table pounding, and getting into people's faces in public. Again, no one is even gay that I know about much less a gay activist or anything like that. They just choose not to quit the church they have attended their whole adult lives over the LGBT issue.

Maybe my family is weird and unique and this sort of thing isn't representative of other families and churches. I have no idea honestly. But it does color my experience. We also had a lot of weird and intense COVID-related family drama but that is a whole other story.

[steve-in-kville]

Maybe my family is weird and unique and this sort of thing isn't representative of other families and churches. I have no idea honestly. But it does color my experience. We also had a lot of weird and intense COVID-related family drama but that is a whole other story.

If your family is weird, my wife's side is weirder. This very thing goes on, it just bounces from one subject matter to another where people no longer can stand to be in the same room with each other. Its really sad for someone that claims to be a God-fearing Christian can harbor that kind of hate towards another.

[Grace]

Ken, I highly doubt that sort of family drama is the usual with most families, but is an anomaly. But it does explain alot, where you are coming from and the attitudes and responses you exhibit here. Not just on this issue, but on other issues.

Our family get togethers include the most conservative Eastern Mennonite to purple hair, ripped jeans, piercings etc. And everyone is kind and respectful to each other.

[Josh]

Ken, I highly doubt that sort of family drama is the usual with most families, but is an anomaly. But it does explain alot, where you are coming from and the attitudes and responses you exhibit here. Not just on this issue, but on other issues.

Our family get togethers include the most conservative Eastern Mennonite to purple hair, ripped jeans, piercings etc. And everyone is kind and respectful to each other.

Indeed. I can’t think of very many Mennonite families where what Ken described is remotely the norm, and that includes families I know who are spread between FEC, MC USA, CMC, and the more conservative groups.

Perhaps it’s more common up “between the ridges”. I don’t understand the culture up there at all but it’s always seemed very strange to me. It is also disturbing to go to a church where every person you meet has the same last name, the preacher has the same last name, and a couple’s wedding announcement has the same last names.

Once I introduced myself as “Josh” and someone asked me my last name. I said “it’s not Peachey”. We both laughed.

[Ken]

Ken, I highly doubt that sort of family drama is the usual with most families, but is an anomaly. But it does explain alot, where you are coming from and the attitudes and responses you exhibit here. Not just on this issue, but on other issues.

Our family get togethers include the most conservative Eastern Mennonite to purple hair, ripped jeans, piercings etc. And everyone is kind and respectful to each other.

That is mostly how my family is too. Most of the time. But you scratch the surface and sometimes a whole lot comes out. Some of it going back decades and decades. Very disconcerting. It also isn't all Mennonite. Some of the most outspoken conservative members of the family left MCUSA for very right-wing evangelical churches not more conservative Menno churches. So it is a whole mix.

[ken_sylvania]

I don't know about the whole conservative church world. But in my own particular extended family it has been the conservative wing that has been absolutely obsessed with LGBT issues and keeps making them front and center to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps my opinions are colored by that.

I take it you must be part of the conservative wing of your family....

It is hard to talk in generalities. I'll give you a specific example and you can judge. I have a cousin my same age (50s) who I am quite close to. She grew up overseas as her parents (my aunt and uncle) were missionaries. She came back to the US to attend college at a Mennonite college in the 1980s, eventually got married, became a teacher at a private Christian school, raised a couple of kids and attended with her family a local Mennonite Church that has probably been around for over 100 years. It eventually became MCUSA in the 90s or whenever that happened. Completely ordinary Menno family story. They aren't gay, their kid's aren't gay. No one is gay. No one is a gay activist. And their church isn't some radical fringe church. Very mainstream and ordinary.

At our recent family reunion last summer I found out her parents refuse to talk to her and have basically cut her off because they are outraged and disapproving of the church she attends. Apparently they believe she and her family are living in sin and their immortal souls are in jeopardy because they attend a church that isn't sufficiently anti-LGBT. They have also influenced her brother who lives in another state and attends a more conservative church to hector her about her church choice since apparently they aren't talking to her. So now she is ostracized from both her parents and brother. Her parent's aren't actually conservative Mennonites anymore. They attend some other ultra conservative evangelical church in Florida that maybe has Baptist roots, I'm not even sure. So this isn't really a Menno story.

It all exploded into a public family issue during the family reunion when her mother publicly attacked another more liberal aunt and uncle of mine, accusing them of corrupting their daughter and leading her daughter to sin and "being of the devil". This is all because this more liberal aunt and uncle who lived in the next state over from the Mennonite College in the east more or less became the place where the younger generation of the family (mostly from the west) would gather for Thanksgiving and Christmas back in the 1980s when my generation were college students. So my aunt blamed this more liberal aunt and uncle for the fact that my cousin and her husband joined an ordinary Mennonite church in the 1980s long before MCUSA existed and long before LGBT issues were even any sort of church topic. Again, no one is gay, no one is a gay activist, no one is a child or even young (we are all in our 50s or older) but the ordinary Mennonite church my cousin attends and has done so since the 1980s has split apart her immediate family and has expanded to become a point of contention in the larger family. And this is not a one-off occurrence. I have other similar stories involving other family members. Essentially they all come down to family members who have left MCUSA over the LGBT issue and who demand and become angry and enraged when others choose not to follow their lead. And yes anger is the right word. It involves shouting, table pounding, and getting into people's faces in public. Again, no one is even gay that I know about much less a gay activist or anything like that. They just choose not to quit the church they have attended their whole adult lives over the LGBT issue.

Maybe my family is weird and unique and this sort of thing isn't representative of other families and churches. I have no idea honestly. But it does color my experience. We also had a lot of weird and intense COVID-related family drama but that is a whole other story.

Yea that helps to explain where you're coming from. That's not the way Christians ought to behave.

[Ken]

Maybe my family is weird and unique and this sort of thing isn't representative of other families and churches. I have no idea honestly. But it does color my experience. We also had a lot of weird and intense COVID-related family drama but that is a whole other story.

Yea that helps to explain where you're coming from. That's not the way Christians ought to behave.

It is also why I found this forum and then stuck around few years ago. Not the LGBT thing specifically. But to get a better sense of where some of my family is coming from. Like, for example, why some of my CMC cousins are such complete gun nuts*. Since it is really hard or impossible to have these discussions in real life. And I have learned a tremendous amount here that I would never have really understood in any other way.

*When we aren't having LGBT drama the boy cousins love to play hooky from family events to search out their favorite gun shops in the area to look for some special discovery and then stand around in the parking lot with their trunks open, speaking in hushed tones and admiring their latest haul. By contrast, I like to bring my bike along to explore the local back roads that that makes me the weird one.

[Josh]

Weird. I have zero trouble having these conversations in real life.

Even with people who grew up where you say where you’re from based on “which ridge”.