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Please join us for our next service on Sunday, September 5, at 10:30. Since this is a holiday weekend we will be having a open forum discussion on the topic of Immigration. Here are some questions that may be considered during our discussion:
1) Should being present in the U.S. without permission be considered a crime?
2) What should be done with people already here illegally?
3) Should children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants be granted automatic citizenship?
4) Some argue that illegal immigrants help to keep prices low for things such as food, hotels, restaurants, landscaping, and other products and services. Are you willing to pay more for groceries, hospitality services, etc., in order to control illegal immigration?
5) How does fear affect US citizens' view on immigration today?
6) Some have proposed mass deportations of millions of people from the US who here illegally. What would be the consequences of the mass deportations?
We will be meeting at Wilkes Family Central at Lincoln Heights. Directions are from the mid-town intersection in Wilkesboro. This is the intersection where Wilkesboro Blvd, Main Street and Oakwoods Rd all intersect.
Traveling east through Wilkesboro, once you go through the light and up the hill you are on East Main. Continue on for .9 of a mile from the intersection.
Turn right at the Wilkes Family Central at Lincoln Heights sign. It's a yellow, red, black and white sign on a brick structure. Go .3 of a mile, through a residential area. You will see a gate and a drive that goes straight off the road, while the road turns to the left. Drive through the gates and down the hill. Park in the parking lower parking lot that is near the picnic tables. We meet in this building. Come in the brown doors at the end. Go about half way down the hall to the Family Room, number 107 on the left.
Coffee and socializing at 10:00 AM
Childcare will be provided.
For a sampling of recent sermons and programs, go to Sermon Archives above.
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Three practical ideals for getting through the day
1. Want what you have;
2. Do what you can; and
3. Be who you are.
From Forest Church's sermon, "How to Make the Most of Hard Times", see Sermon Archives or click here.
"Our Liberal Faith" 
UU Faith is not a believe whatever you choose to believe faith, rather it is a faith in which each of us is free to believe what we are each compelled to believe based upon a free and disciplined search for truth…
Excerpt taken from UU Faith Sermon by D. Doreion Colter, see Sermon Archives "Our Liberal Faith".
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Sundays 10 AM coffee time and socializing
10:30 to 11:30 Morning Lay Led Service
coffee and socializing also following the service
We currently do not have a permanet place to meet. Rose Glen Village has asked us to find a new location. Some of the residents were upset at our presence and since Rose Glen is their home, the director felt that she had to ask us to leave.
We have some ideas that we are pursuing. If you have any suggestions, please contact Clyde Ingle at 973-7839. We cannot afford to pay very much rent. We need two rooms, one for the service and a smaller one for religious education for the kids (usually just 2 or 3). We need restroom facilities. |
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| “Why the Faithful Approve of Torture” |
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“Why the Faithful Approve of Torture”, from the On Faith Blog, Washington Post, May 1, 2009,
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite | May 1, 2009 Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary, Former president of Chicago Theological Seminary (1998-2008), Thistlethwaite is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
The more often you go to church, the more you approve of torture. This is a troubling finding of a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Shouldn't it be the opposite? After all, who would Jesus torture? Since Jesus wouldn't even let Peter use a sword and defend him from arrest, it would seem that those who follow Jesus would strenuously oppose the violence of torture. But, not so in America today.
Instead, more than half of people who attend worship at least once a week, or 54%, said that using torture on suspected terrorists was "often" or "sometimes" justified. White evangelical Protestants were the church-going group most likely to approve of torture. By contrast, those who are unaffiliated with a religious organization and didn't attend worship were most opposed to torture -- only 42% of those people approved of using torture.
One possible way to interpret this extraordinary Pew data is cultural. White evangelical Protestants tend to be culturally conservative and they make up a large percentage of the so-called Republican "base". Does the approval of torture by this group demonstrate their continuing support for the previous administration? That may be.But I think it is possible, even likely, that this finding has a theological root. The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person..."
White Evangelical theology bases its view of Christian salvation on the severe pain and suffering undergone by Jesus in his flogging and crucifixion by the Romans. This is called the "penal theory of the atonement"--that is, the way Jesus paid for our sins is by this extreme torture inflicted on him. For Christian conservatives, severe pain and suffering are central to their theology. This is very clear in the 2002 Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ. Evangelical Christians flocked to this movie, promoted it and still show it in their churches, despite the fact that it is R-rated for the extraordinary amount of violence in the film. It is, in fact, the highest grossing R-rated movie in the history of film. The flogging of Jesus by the Romans goes on for fully 40 minutes. It is truly the most violent film I have ever seen. The message of the movie, and a message of a lot of conservative Christian theology, is that severe pain and suffering are not foreign to Christian faith, but central.
Of course, this is an interpretation of Jesus life, death and resurrection that I reject. It is also an interpretation that I believe has done a lot of harm through the centuries. I think it is impossible, yes, impossible, if you read the Gospels, to make the case that God wanted Jesus tortured for the sins of humanity. But that is an interpretation that has sometimes been made in the history of Christianity and the social and political fallout has been, and is today, that torture is OK, maybe even more than OK. This Pew finding may just be another in a long line of horrible historical examples of that.;
To see readers' responses go to
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