Liberal Church Faces Media Scorn


prisonchaplain
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On November 15 the Seattle Times online edition published a feature chastising an area Unitarian-Universalist Church. Interestingly, the article identified the church as a typical Northwest Liberal Christian congregation, then took it to task for its upcoming $17 million renovation. The issue--what to do with four houses the church owns, across the street from its sanctuary? The city says it must spend $1 million to bring the up to code. The families living in them were formerly homeless. The congregation decided to demolish the homes to create 17 additional parking spots. The media outlet blamed them for caring more about SUVs than the homeless.

While the Times may have a point, my first thought was why is a secular media outlet litigating a congregational matter within its pages? My second, less kind thought, is that if media are now going after liberal churches, how precious! They thought that if the bowed to the culture, obeyed the secular mores, took all the right (urr...left) political positions, well, at minimum, they would be left alone--perhaps even praised now and then. Instead, this soft target just took a major hit.

More traditional churches will likely get this treatment in the near future--and I suspect the trend will head out towards the Midwest, and then the South will want to catch up, so it doesn't look backward. HOWEVER, at least our churches are ready--we've seen this day coming. Blessed are we when they lie about us and persecute us for Christ's sake.

THOUGHTS?  

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I think the news really has no place to mock any church.  It does these days, and it's not just in the Northwest.  There are quite a bit of bitter people against Christianity (and that includes all Christians, even the ones that others might not want to include in that category, most anti-Christians lump every Christian denomination together despite what each Christian denomination may want to think about the other).

It does puzzle me why they would spend 17 million on a parking lot.  That's a million per parking space, which is approximately around (depending on the parking space size) 20 square feet each.  That's REALLY expensive for a little pavement and paint.  I'm wondering if they got confused with the number of parking spaces and the amount of money (as 17 million and 17 parking spaces is conspicuously similar.  Maybe the 17 million is a renovation for it's building though, which makes a lot more sense.

If it is 17 million for the parking spaces...I might be questioning it as well.  I could see them not wanting to spend 1 million to update the homes, but it makes no sense if they are willing to spend 17 million on the parking lot.  On the otherhand, if it's to update the church (and maybe there was also a claim of the city upon that building that it also needed updates), I can perfectly see them doing that.  If they need to spend 17 million to renovate the church already, another million on top of that (meaning 18 million now) is actually a hard thing to accommodate in some instances.

It would be much easier to level the houses and slap a cheap bit of pavement and paint (which would probably be less than 100K, maybe less than 10K depending on what they are using, who they are using, etc...etc...etc...could even be less than $1000 if they are simply tearing down the houses and leaving it unpaved with the members doing the work!) than it would be to renovate the homes.

I'm not a member there so I have no idea what is truly going on at their church.  As such, all my thoughts are speculation and I have no real right to say it's a good thing or a bad thing from the little information presented.  That's more something the members of the church would know and decide.

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12 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

On November 15 the Seattle Times online edition published a feature chastising an area Unitarian-Universalist Church. Interestingly, the article identified the church as a typical Northwest Liberal Christian congregation, then took it to task for its upcoming $17 million renovation. The issue--what to do with four houses the church owns, across the street from its sanctuary? The city says it must spend $1 million to bring the up to code. The families living in them were formerly homeless. The congregation decided to demolish the homes to create 17 additional parking spots. The media outlet blamed them for caring more about SUVs than the homeless.

While the Times may have a point, my first thought was why is a secular media outlet litigating a congregational matter within its pages? My second, less kind thought, is that if media are now going after liberal churches, how precious! They thought that if the bowed to the culture, obeyed the secular mores, took all the right (urr...left) political positions, well, at minimum, they would be left alone--perhaps even praised now and then. Instead, this soft target just took a major hit.

More traditional churches will likely get this treatment in the near future--and I suspect the trend will head out towards the Midwest, and then the South will want to catch up, so it doesn't look backward. HOWEVER, at least our churches are ready--we've seen this day coming. Blessed are we when they lie about us and persecute us for Christ's sake.

THOUGHTS?  

I participated in a UU church for a couple of years.  Don’t know that they are a Christian denomination any more. Pretty much they’re creed is “don’t be an inconvenience to my person”. Most UUs are atheist, agnostic or pagan. I knew one UU who said they were Christian. I never heard a sermon about Jesus, never heard readings from the Bible, well heck, never worshipped, period, while I was at the UUs.  They’re Sunday meetings are more like secular presentations on various topics. People bring they’re mugs of coffee and relax while listening.

I wouldn’t say UUs bow to the left, I’d say they are the left.

If a bet could be placed, I’d wager it was a member of the congregation who went to the press. Possibly the reporter is a UU. I just mean to say, it’s all very normal UU behavior. It’s absolutely fine to publicize any and all greviences. It’s how a group of people with a wide range of individual beliefs, get along. 

Edited by Blueskye2
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19 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

It's normal behavior the UU's. They aren't a church. They might be nice and sweet people who mean well but they aren't any kind of Christian church. @Blueskye2 is exactly right. 

Most UUs in UT are people looking for a religious home. Spiritual refugees of sorts, mainly from Mormonism. I didn’t know any who were SJWs. At the time I was an atheist. I left the UUs because the pagan aspect was overriding.  The night they had  Fairy Blessing, ended it for me.

One of my two most enduring memories from that time are when I marched in the Pride Parade, with the UUs. We passed a group on the parade route who had a sign that said, “God hates f*gs”. A grown man in our UU group, in his 60s, broke down and cried, and I mean sobbing. His UU friends gathered around him like an army of love, consoling him and assuring him that he is loved by God.  The most compassionate, Christ like behavior came from the UUs, in my book, and the hateful behavior, from the people with the sign. 

Edited by Blueskye2
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Guest MormonGator
9 minutes ago, Blueskye2 said:

Most UUs in UT are people looking for a religious home. I didn’t know any who were SJWs. At the time I was an atheist. One of my two most enduring memories from that time are when I marched in the Pride Parade, with the UUs. We passed a group on the parade route who had a sign that said, “God hates f*gs”. A grown man in our UU group, in his 60s, broke down and cried, and I mean sobbing. His UU friends gathered around him like an army of love, consoling him and assuring him that he is loved by God.  The most compassionate, Christ like behavior came from the UUs, in my book, and the hateful behavior, from the people with the sign. 

In my view the most hateful behavior comes from the extremes. The extreme christian right and the extreme tolerant left. Don't  get me wrong, every belief system from Catholic to LDS to atheist to UU has scumbags. In my book though like yours-UU's are mostly wonderful people. 

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11 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

I did get the impression they were quite small starter homes, which explains why the church was reticent to spend a quarter of a million dollars on each, so one family could pay somewhat lower rent than they might find elsewhere. 

Minimalizing and/or second-guessing the charitable role churches play in their local communities, is a crucial stepping stone in the PR campaign to revoke tax-exempt status for churches.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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8 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

It does puzzle me why they would spend 17 million on a parking lot. 

I believe the entire renovation project is $17 million. Restoring the houses to code would be $1 million. So, I'm guessing the demolishing and paving for the parking spots would be significantly less.

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3 hours ago, MormonGator said:

 the extreme tolerant left.  . . . In my book though like yours-UU's are mostly wonderful people. 

I don't really mean to poke at UUs--more the "tolerant left." They aren't. They lied when they were the cultural minority. The are most intolerant of the hatred, bigotry, and stupidity that they believe in the right--especially the Christian right. Just the other day, I saw a bumpersticker that said:  Christian Democrat (cute donkey with a fish symbol inside it) -- I can pray and think . . . there is someone who identifies more with his/her "tolerant left" buddies than with his/her brothers and sisters in Christ, who might be more moderate/conservative.  Truly disheartening!

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15 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

I did get the impression they were quite small starter homes, which explains why the church was reticent to spend a quarter of a million dollars on each, so one family could pay somewhat lower rent than they might find elsewhere. 

$250k per house would be more than the cost of tearing down and rebuilding in plenty of places.

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40 minutes ago, NightSG said:

$250k per house would be more than the cost of tearing down and rebuilding in plenty of places.

Seattle has seen skyrocketing housing prices, and affordable rent is a hot local issue here. I predict that the church will end up gifting the four families with relocation assistance, and that the secular fundamentalists will congratulate themselves for shaming/blackmailing the church into doing so. 

Edited by prisonchaplain
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