Gris, you need to watch Homicide and meet Detective Munch...he'd be so right there with you...otherwise, just enjoy your hamburger, you lucky bastard. I hate your guts now...does that give you some equilibrium back?

Um... yes? I guess?

It's funny, Calli, I flirted with conversion to Unitarian Universalism for a long time in high school, and for some reason it never pinged my parents' radar either. If I were to mention my agnosticism, though, or say I was considering converting to Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or whatever, I think it would make them very... sad, maybe? Either way, it would be a shift they would disapprove of. I'm not sure why, so far as not-Christian religions go, Unitarian Universalism gets a pass on their disapproval.

I love it when my home church does baptism ceremonies (infant sprinkling), but I've never attached any sort of Hell-preventative feelings to them - they are a community acceptance of the baby into the community of the church, for me. Plus, a chance to show the pretty baby off to the other people.

Of course, my knee-jerk response that "Well, the baptism ritual in the Church of Satan is really hard on babies" doesn't do anyone any favors.

Heh. I was going to suggest you just tell them you're waiting for Halloween and let them draw their own conclusions.

My family is supposed to be sponsoring the child of some good friends for baptism on Christmas day. It's making me wonder - these people are totally non-religious, haven't set foot in a church since the last child was baptized, aren't members - I think their only connection with the church at all is through us. Does this bother people who do consider themselves people of faith, or members of a particular church?

'Cause it's kind of bothering me, and not just because it's disrupting our xmas morning traditions. Some of you know I have somehting of a minefield of issues regarding churchy stuff, so I don't know that I trust my own reaction on this.

I'm not sure why, so far as not-Christian religions go, Unitarian Universalism gets a pass on their disapproval.

Back in the day (like when John Adams and John Q. Adam were in it), UUism passed a lot more closely to mainstream Protestant Christianity. I think it still has some residual Founding Father respectability--all Calling of the Pagan Quarters and so on notwithstanding.

If I ever went UU, my dad's reaction would be a never-ending steam of question-mark burning jokes. So it can never be.

I was baptized Episcopalian as an infant. I'm not sure it counts, becaue neither of my parents is actually Episcopal and they more or less picked the church out of a hat as the closest thing to a Catholic/Presbyterian hybrid, which is how they actually raised me. I haven't been inside an Episcopal church since I was five.

(Also? I'm not sure I can actually *spell* Episcopalian.)

Wow. My first post in a month and it goes three times.

My browser must have really *missed* you guys.

flirted with conversion to Unitarian Universalism for a long time in high school, and for some reason it never pinged my parents' radar either.

Since my parents pretty much founded the Unitarian group in my hometown (during a period when my dad was still into religion but getting away from it, and my mom was getting into it but hadn't gotten craxy yet), I think they would've been okay with me converting to UU.

Seriously, if they wanted me to be a member of a religion, though, they maybe shouldn't have thrown them all at me, one per year.

ION, I've gone from mildly annoyed to seriously depressed. The guy who washes car windows on our corner told me that his wife is pregnant. He showed me her ultrasounds. He says he'll have to get a euro from every car, and work all day, and he still doesn't know if he can pay for the delivery. Let alone the baby.

I could give him money, but it won't solve the problem. It won't even put a bandage over the problem.

Just in time for JenP's visit to my backyard, wet and messy stuff. [link]

Hi Lyra Jane! Hi Lyra Jane! Hi Lyra Jane!

((Raq)) It is sad. Your caring does help, and raising Mal to be a caring human helps. I do believe this.

A lot of the churches that do Believer's Baptism baptize via immersion. It's how I was baptized. I mostly prefer it too, but refuse to get dogmatic over it, one way or another.

Me too--at least, I can be dogmatic about it, but I usually choose not to, even when I have to grit my teeth through infant baptism services in my current church. NSM over the infant issue as over the "child of the covenant" way in which it's presented, which is a very Presbyterian thing and one of my lingering points of disagreement with my denomination, because if you follow it all the way back to its origin it smacks of predestination, and I don't see how anyone could love and worship a God who just arbitrarily picks who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

But baptism? Not that big of a deal. Another legacy of my Baptist upbringing is that I believe the sacraments are symbols rather than actual means of transmitting grace or spiritual power. So the "fire insurance" aspect of infant baptism has always puzzled me, though I understand the theology behind it intellectually, because my gut reaction is, "But it's just water. It doesn't mean anything unless the kid comes to believe someday and then decides it does."

I had a college roommate who'd been raised Catholic but then joined a charismatic church that practiced believer's baptism by immersion. By their standards, her infant baptism by sprinkling didn't count. She invited a bunch of us from our college Christian fellowship group to come to her baptism. While we were there one of my friends, a Catholic, realized that Jen had had a Catholic baptism as a baby and was so upset and offended by the idea that this church didn't think it was a real baptism that he very nearly walked out of the service. I could understand where he was coming from, though we ended up having a long, polite, and educational talk about our different perspectives on sacraments coming from opposite ends of the Christian tradition.