I have individual faith and it's arisen out of a general respect for nature and acceptance of existential philosophical crises but... I'm never setting foot in a church. Organized religion in America is a toxic and terrible institution.
When I was growing up my parents were friends with a couple that had moved up from Georgia, as I grew older I learned that they have moved there after the father had been the pastor of a church and, when their daughter was born with down's syndrome. Due to the birth he had taken a sabbatical from preaching to raise his daughter, and while they were absent they became ostracized by the community. They were given the southern shame treatment and cut off from friends until they gave in and just moved up to New England.
While they were being shamed by their neighbors everything else carried on as normal, those neighbors went to church and prayed with everyone else and I outright reject any institution that supports that kind of behavior.
Organized religion is responsible to so many ills in modern society.
Because the church was the community and the community shunned them as a group. Churches and organized religions lead to group think and in this case that group think was directed toward a deeply hateful purpose.
I have my own personal issues with religions involvement in politics on the modern stage, as well as the general concept of a prosperity gospel and the ills it forces on those who already have so little but what happened to that family is deeply disappointing and stabs at the core of me.
When I was growing up my parents were friends with a couple that had moved up from Georgia, as I grew older I learned that they have moved there after the father had been the pastor of a church and, when their daughter was born with down's syndrome. Due to the birth he had taken a sabbatical from preaching to raise his daughter, and while they were absent they became ostracized by the community. They were given the southern shame treatment and cut off from friends until they gave in and just moved up to New England.
While they were being shamed by their neighbors everything else carried on as normal, those neighbors went to church and prayed with everyone else and I outright reject any institution that supports that kind of behavior.
Organized religion is responsible to so many ills in modern society.