I visited a Lutheran church the other day out of curiosity

[zarus tathra]

The people there... they were so docile. They were like wild rabbits. Too suspicious to let anyone really get close, but completely harmless, and ready to bolt at the first sign of sudden movement. Personally, I feel that we should just leave them be.

[Shiranu]

Grew up in the Lutheran church... I don't know if docile is the word I would use, but they are not in your face. The branch I was a part of had just recently decided to allow gay marriage in their church, and that was like... 4 years ago. Most of the people I knew in the church were liberal and actually donated to charities and did "god's work" (not preaching, but actually helping the needy).

It is also a branch that took the German ideal of, "You work for what you get" instead of, "Lol just pray and you are a good person!". Out of all the branches of Christianity it is my favourite, biased as that may be.

[Solitary]

My favorite Christian religions are the Universalists and Quakers that even accept atheists.  =D>  Solitary

[SGOS]

Grew up in the Lutheran church... I don't know if docile is the word I would use, but they are not in your face.

I was confirmed in the Wartburg Synod.  The people where I went were not in your face.  Docile?  Yeah, maybe, depending on the definition intended.  The pastor would read a line of verse, the congregation would dutifully read the next line, and back and forth.  Much of the service was scripted so to speak with a format that repeated over and over week to week.  Maybe that could be docile in the way they just did it as a tradition.  But no one in church would holler out, "Amen," or go into paroxysms of ecstasy.  Then we would go home, and carry on as life required, not thinking much about church until the next Sunday.  I don't know what happened in other Lutheran families.

My grandmother, who lived upstairs was a Baptist, however.  Holy Christ Jesus!  Things were a lot different upstairs.  I loved my grandmother, but Lord, she scared the shit out of me when I was three or four with highly graphic tales of never ending torment in Hell.  My mother may have had to talk to her about that and get her to cool it somewhat.  The stories were not in the Bible exactly, so I'm not sure how she came up with them.  The Devil would force you to work in flames with a coal shovel, feeding the fires of Hell, which were apparently controlled in furnaces.  He would whip you while you worked. I suppose this was because most of the people in our neighborhood heated with coal, and we all fed the fire a couple times a day with a coal shovel.  It was dirty work.  And the inside of the furnace was a blaze of horrible flame.  LOL.

[Solitary]

My mother was a Southern Baptist that would take me down in the basement and put my face close the burning coal and tell me that's where (hell) bad boys go when they die if I don't behave.  :shock:  :roll:  Some religious people have a strange way to show their love, like using a switch on your ankles to control you.    Solitary

[Jmpty]

I grew up in the Lutheran church as well. Pretty harmless for the most part.

[aitm]

I once fucked a lutheran girl and she most surely was NOT docile....

[stromboli]

I went to church today. A Free Will Baptist, just to see if anyone said anything about DOMA. Not a peep. A few welcoming handshakes and a lame lesson about getting to know Jesus better. And lots of vacant smiles. Nothing has changed.

[SGOS]

I went to church today. A Free Will Baptist, just to see if anyone said anything about DOMA. Not a peep. A few welcoming handshakes and a lame lesson about getting to know Jesus better. And lots of vacant smiles. Nothing has changed.

That kind of surprises me.  Maybe they're seeing the future and coming to terms with it.  Although, I've read a couple of articles where both sides claim the fight it still on as they move from the feds to the states.

[stromboli]

I think its a case of denial. God is in control, yada yada.

[bericks999]

I grew up in the Missouri synod of the Lutheran church and they too were docile.  So much so that the pastor had gotten somewhat out of control over a period of several years and started ex-communicating members for such silly things as not titheing, living together while not married and the one they got me on (you can read 'bout it in my intro thread) - having sex in the church/school (when I was a teenager).  

The Synod, being as docile as they were, actually ex-communicated the church while that pastor was still installed there and the church started it's own Synod.

Believe it or not, he died of brain cancer less than three years later, the church found a new pastor was accepted back into the Missouri synod!  

See, proof right there that God is in control!

[stromboli]

I grew up in the Missouri synod of the Lutheran church and they too were docile.  So much so that the pastor had gotten somewhat out of control over a period of several years and started ex-communicating members for such silly things as not titheing, living together while not married and the one they got me on (you can read 'bout it in my intro thread) - having sex in the church/school (when I was a teenager).  

The Synod, being as docile as they were, actually ex-communicated the church while that pastor was still installed there and the church started it's own Synod.

Believe it or not, he died of brain cancer less than three years later, the church found a new pastor was accepted back into the Missouri synod!  

See, proof right there that God is in control!

 :rollin:

[Colanth]

My grandmother, who lived upstairs was a Baptist, however.  Holy Christ Jesus!  Things were a lot different upstairs.  I loved my grandmother, but Lord, she scared the shit out of me when I was three or four with highly graphic tales of never ending torment in Hell.  My mother may have had to talk to her about that and get her to cool it somewhat.  The stories were not in the Bible exactly, so I'm not sure how she came up with them.

She probably got them from the same place the rest of Christianity does - Gehenna (literally Valley of the Son of Hinnom) and the KJV translating both Gehenna and Sheol as 'hell'.  Sheol is the place of the dead.  Gehenna is the place where the worshipers of Moloch sacrificed their children by tossing them into the flames )and also the destination of evil people).

IOW, typical myth-making.  One from column A, one from column B and you have a myth.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

There are three branches of the Lutheran church in the US.  From largest to smallest they are ELCA, Missouri, and Wisconsin.  That is also the same order if you were to define them as basically relaxed to most radical (as radical as Lutherans can get, that is.)  So the Wisconsin Synod is both the smallest and the most rigid.

These three branches each belong to one of three world-wide branches.  The ELCA is a member of the Lutheran World Federation.  The Missouri Synod is part of the International Lutheran Council.  The Wisconsin Synod is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference.  Again, that is listed by by size (from largest to smallest) and by strictness (from least to most).

Odds are, if you meet a Lutheran, he's probably ELCA.  If overseas and you meet a Lutheran, he's probably in an LWF affiliated church.

And in terms of them going crazy, they are one of the more harmless denominations, and concentrate much more on actually studying the theology.  But, on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran until she found they weren't crazy enough and switched to Evangelical.

[SGOS]

There are three branches of the Lutheran church in the US.  From largest to smallest they are ELCA, Missouri, and Wisconsin.  That is also the same order if you were to define them as basically relaxed to most radical (as radical as Lutherans can get, that is.)  So the Wisconsin Synod is both the smallest and the most rigid.

These three branches each belong to one of three world-wide branches.  The ELCA is a member of the Lutheran World Federation.  The Missouri Synod is part of the International Lutheran Council.  The Wisconsin Synod is a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference.  Again, that is listed by by size (from largest to smallest) and by strictness (from least to most).

Odds are, if you meet a Lutheran, he's probably ELCA.  If overseas and you meet a Lutheran, he's probably in an LWF affiliated church.

And in terms of them going crazy, they are one of the more harmless denominations, and concentrate much more on actually studying the theology.  But, on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann was a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran until she found they weren't crazy enough and switched to Evangelical.

There is also the Wartburg Synod in the US, or maybe it's under the umbrella of one of the three you named.  I think I remember my mother saying it was a small synod of German and Scandinavian origin.