The entire history of religion in America is, pretty much, UR DOING IT WRONG, HEY LET'S SCHISM! (With periodic waves of immigrants arriving and saying "HEY! THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG HERE! THEY'VE SCHISMED!!!")
(I just recently finished listening to this really fantastic lecture series on American Religious History. Did you know that the Oneida silverware company started out as a freaky Christian sex cult in upstate NY? And they only started the metalwork thing to fund their freaky cult commune? Basically the Oneida family patriarch believed that sex was holy and you should have as much of it as possible, but orgasms and marriage were evil. So they got a lot of early converts who came for the promiscuity but left once they realized it wasn't going to be any fun. It didn't last long.)
Funny that their bread and butter is the marriage industry.
but orgasms and marriage were evil.
Orgasms are evil? I get the tantric thing and all. don't get me wrong, it's heaven. but NO orgasms?!?! Um. Is that sex then? I'm confused.
It was sort of "every sperm is sacred" taken to a totally illogical extreme. In order to not waste sperm, men weren't allowed to have sex with premenopausal women until they could do it without ejaculating. (Female orgasms, unsurprisingly, didn't really count.)
There was also a kind of selective breeding program which determined who was allowed to ejaculate, and when, and into whom. Like I said, the commune pretty much fell apart after a single generation.
The town I grew up in had 12,500 people and at least 23 separate churches. All the way from Catholic to Protestant.
I keep fussing with my hair. I got it cut today, and I haven't quite figured out what to do with it. Also, she put some kind of "curl serum" in it that made it look good for about an hour, but then all the curls seemed to collapse, so my hair is just kind of wavy now. Do not want. (And I know that once I wash it again and put my own product in, it'll get back to curly, but right now, I'm too lazy.)
Ugh. I feel your pain, Hil. I always have trouble after a haircut, because of the curly--if for no other reason than it was just fiddled around with and combed and pulled so much that it's never going to look like it actually will, PLUS then they blow and primp and put weird products in it...I always leave the salon and am like "I wonder how this will really look..."
You have to have a "come to Jesus" moment where you realize that you are a sinner, and you ask Jesus to save you from that sin and live in you (as the Holy Spirit). So, if you have not done that, you are not going to heaven.
Huh. I guess it just seems so weird to me because of the way I was raised. Washed in the water, apparently. :) I'm like "you can't just believe?? You can't have accepted Jesus and live like that and go to church, you have to have a MOMENT?? Like, I had First Communion, and Confirmation, those aren't moments enough??" Heh. Ah well.
Thanks for the explanations!
t edit: and of course now I have a DIFFERENT country song in my head, about the Bible and the "words written in red". YEESH. All this religion and country songs!!
I'm currently reading Wordy Shipmates and it's very funny. And informative.
The hairdresser put a lot more layers in my hair than usual. I do like how it looks, but it's all confusing!
Oneida Community = fascinating. Thanks Jessica, I had never heard of them before.
