I went to a meeting at the local United Methodist Church last night the purpose of which was to discuss possible "disaffiliation" because of the denomination's position on LGBTQ issues.
The general consensus was "let the denomination (i.e., church leaders) adopt whatever policies they like and we'll just ignore them if we don't agree."
No one in the crowd was willing to take a stand against the church.
I stood up and walked out...so that might be considered something of a minor stand.;-)
The Conflict Between The West And Russia Is A Religious One
> by Emmet Sweeney for the Saker blog, August 23
The war currently underway in Ukraine, which pits Ukraine as a proxy for the collective West against Russia, is primarily an ideological or religious one, with Russia representing what is left of Christian Europe, and “the West” representing a totalitarian ideology that abhors religion in general and Christianity in particular. This statement may sound strange, given the fact that some Westerners – though fewer every day – still see “the West,” (basically Europe and North America) as Christian, and Russia as Communist, or crypto-Communist.
But this is no longer the case, and has not been for some considerable time. In fact, the thirty years that have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, has seen a complete reversal of roles; the collective West is now a totalitarian and aggressively anti-religious power-block that seeks to export its anti-Christian and anti-human ideology onto the rest of the world. And Russia is loathed by the West’s ruling elite precisely because it has resisted this process and moreover has gone in the opposite direction: having once been an active proponent of “scientific materialism” and atheism, Russia has reverted to its Orthodox Christian roots and has rolled back the more pernicious policies and attitudes of the Soviet era.
In order to demonstrate the truth of this, we need to look at the history of Russia and its interaction with the West since the early 1990s.
[rest of an excellent essay at link]
https://thesaker.is/the-conflict-between-the-west-and-russia-is-a-religious-one/
The Churches that are thriving don’t tickle your ears. Good for you.