Maggie's Farm

For almost twenty years, my wife and I went to a Methodist church. Most of the Methodist clergy comes from Duke Divinity School. I am led to understand that Duke, while predominately Methodist, is somewhat nondenominational so I'm not surprised that Leef would not experience any pressure to become a Methodist but if you look at the direction the Methodist Church in the US is taking it's hard to argue that the Methodist Church is not saturated with wokeness.

Now, did that come from the divinity schools that provide the majority of the Methodist clergy (as Duke is a part), or did it sprout up honestly and organically? To answer that, I think it helps to look at behavior in the school and the position of the recent grads.

Leef mentions the well-regarded professor who was "driven into retirement" for objecting to diversity training. Well, he certainly doesn't seem woke to me and "driving him into retirement" sounds a lot like "got rid of him" to me.

In my church, I was part of the committee that hired two young pastors. Wokeness or lack thereof was never brought up in front of me yet quickly after they took over, they would often inject "migrants" and "LGBTQ+" in the service as a major concern of our church.

Later, our church published a "Welcoming Statement" where it became the policy of that church (we had left by then) to "accept" people of all races, sexual orientations, and gender identities. It must be said at that time, we had already had three black pastors and that one family had a "gender queer" son who lived in New York City. He would come to attend services when he came to visit his family - wearing a dress, high heels, a beard, ear rings and half his head shaved. He was always welcomed and I never heard a single negative word about him. I bring this up only to show that the "Welcoming Statement" must therefore mean more than those people were welcome in our services or membership - we were actively doing that already - but likely to segue to marrying gays and accepting gay and transgender pastors. I do not think that "Welcoming Statement" would have gotten off the ground without the pastors' support.

All that is to say that I do not have the confidence that Leef has that Duke is not in the woke camp. I could be wrong and I hope I am, but I need evidence that Duke (or other divinity schools for that matter) are not woke or going woke rather than supposition that because an outspoken conservative was given a warm welcome then things are not so bad as we might imagine (I imagine some really bad things so being not as bad as that is not comforting to me).

“If any of these folks have actually read the Bible, there’s precious little evidence.”

That is why we are drawn to a Baptist church, but we miss the ceremony and the guitars and drums don’t really do it for us so we’ve been just watching the sermons online.

I think you’re exactly right! The left builds nothing. They take over successful institutions and destroy them. The UMC is next.

I don’t know what their official position on guns is but you’re probably right that they are anti.

A few years ago or so there was a church shooting somewhere. I considered buying a shoulder holster (I had always worn a coat and tie to services) because I was not willing to get shot at while at church without being able to respond. I checked and there was no sign prohibiting guns but on the other hand, I would expect them to be unhappy if they thought someone was carrying at church. I almost did it but decided that as unlikely as it would be, it would probably be more likely that someone might get a glimpse of my gun and freak out than it would be to be attacked by a gunman.

I’d been told that people in our congregation already carried to service and there were gay couples, too. I didn’t doubt it but I had no idea who they could have been.

I have a buddy who goes to a Baptist church and he told me they talk guns in their small groups! Something for me to think about while we decide on our new church!