United Church of Christ

[keita]

(This thread is an outgrowth from our discussion of "Evolution"which can be read here.)

On another thread, ybrown wrote

UCC is the church that recently endorsed gay marriage, that also ordained the first gay bishop, first lesbian minister, believes in abortion, as well as a slew of other ungodly nonsense. Last month they even had to VOTE on whether or not they truly believed in Jesus!

This site has even dedicated a links page to various gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered sites.

There's a lot more of this type of stuff throughout the site, and the most damaging thing about it is, it doesn't promote Jesus, its just really promoting the gays and their agenda.

Anytime a so-called Christian person/organization/site calls him/her/it self "progressive" that means they endorse "gay, lesbian, abortion, New Age, liberal Bible interpretation, feminizing God, etc." This site promotes all those things throughout.

The devil is a slickster, he'll try any and every trick in the book he can to steal god's Word from us. If we start out swallowing a grain of his lies, soon it'll be a spoonful and before you know it, he'll be the one feeding us.

I won't be going there again.

Keita, I'm not sure if you want to point the Saints there to anything on that site.

Nikkol wrote

I still think it is good to know what is out there. Additionally, not every church of UCC is with the gay agenda nor do all the churches support it.

ybrown wrote

Even though their churches operate independetly, the official position of the church is that they endorse and support gay marriage in totality, including performing gay "weddings". This passed with an overwhelming 80% of their board endorsing it. The General Synod actually told its members "not to discriminate against couples based on gender" in performing ceremonies.

Even if member churches don't support that endorsement, there are a slew of other unGodly things they support, just by the very nature of them remaining as members - abortion, the ordination of gay clergy, the endorsement of the use of only gender neutral bibles, the changed hymnals to be gender neutral, the changing of the Lord's Prayer to read "our Father-Mother in heaven," among many other things. They actually had to vote on whether or not to keep Jesus and acknowledge the Lordship and Divinity of Jesus Christ! What Christian church has to vote on that?

These are just some of the reasons why this church is hemorrhaging members and member churches.

The churches that remain with UCC - why would they?

[krazeeboi]

From what I understand, there is a subset of churches in the UCC called "open and affirming churches" which basically accepts homosexuality. I would imagine that this would not exist if there was an absence of churches on the conservative side in the organization.

[Nikkol]

I agree... at the same time, there is a particularly "process" to getting involved with UCC as an affiliate. Some churches may not really have the funds at the given time to go and become independent.

At the same time, in other churches the only thing that differentiates those churches from USS is that they actually spoken up about it. Many of us probably could name at least one pastor that we know is gay, a few pastors that are sleeping around, a few pastors that have set up abortions for people in their ministry... the list goes on and on.

[ybrown]

electladynb said:

I agree... at the same time, there is a particularly "process" to getting involved with UCC as an affiliate. Some churches may not really have the funds at the given time to go and become independent.

There's no process or financial burden for leaving. All a church has to do is take a vote, then they leave and that ends their affiliation with UCC. There are no financial obligations because two-thirds of the local churches in the UCC send NO funds whatsoever to the national group.

There are some UCC members that don't agree with the gay marriage endorsement, but they're now the minority. In an internal survey, only 27 percent of people who attend UCC churches identify themselves as evangelical. The rest, well....

The UCC is a church on the wrong path and the reasons I listed are just a few among many others. But lets say for example we neutralizes the gay marriage endorsement, do you think the other unGodly practices that this church has endorsed over the years are acceptable?

It would seem those churches that don't have the designation as "open and affirming" in terms of gay marriage are open and affirming of these other practices by the fact that they remain a part of the church.

But still, the UCC brags that they ordained the first openly gay man as a minister in 1972, then the first openly gay female shortly thereafter. So member churches either had 30 years to see that their denomination was going in the wrong direction and leave back then, or they joined the denomination after this endorsement - so they knew what they were getting into.

Either way there's really no excuse for those member churches to remain yoked with a church that openly and proudly endorse what the Bible clearly states is wrong.

[krazeeboi]

It would seem those churches that don't have the designation as "open and affirming" in terms of gay marriage are open and affirming of these other practices by the fact that they remain a part of the church.

Good point.