[OFB Cafe] Time Magazine and NY Times on Sarah Palin

[Timothy Butler]

On Sep 4, 2008, at 8:17 AM, Chris Olson wrote:

> I never went to church much but my wife got into this "Christian"  
> stuff =
> after we got married and she's the only reason I was in that church  
> in =
> the first place - because she wanted to go there.  On the way home I =
> told her, "I ain't goin' to that frickin' place no more because  
> those =
> people are weird."  She didn't quite see it my way until a couple  
> months =
> later when we got kicked out because they decided my wife was a  
> "sinner" =
> simply for wearing a mini-dress to church.

	Well, it is as I said before: no church is perfect, and some are  
terrible. That said, if you truly want to be fair, you ought not  
assume that because one church was that way that every church was that  
way. There are many fine Assembly of God churches, although they are  
quite different in both perspective and style from the sort of church  
I attend. They tend to be more fundamentalist leaning and much more  
into "experiential gifts" like speaking in tongues. I don't intend to  
make a judgment on them for that, but I submit the following: one  
cannot assume from an experience in an AoG church what it would be  
like to attend a Presbyterian or Catholic church.

	But, honestly we can find things to annoy us in any church. I can in  
mine, and you can find it in anyone you walk into. But, that's true of  
anything human, if we are honest. I can find things to annoy me in  
every retailer, every club, every newspaper, every political party,  
every computer, every country, every everything.  Yours seems to have  
been an especially bad case; but I mention this because I'm not going  
to say going to the church down the street will be perfect.

	What I am saying is that stereotyping is not typically a good idea.

	-Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "The theologian who labors without joy is not a
Editor, OfB.biz   | theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts
tbutler at ofb.biz   | and boring ways of  speaking are intolerable in
timothybutler.us  | this field."
                                                       -- Karl Barth