Undercover Agnostic (Update 26): People Can Do Amazing Things, Despite Their Awful Beliefs

This morning, as I entered the church a little late for the beginning of Sunday School (I had a hard time waking up and getting ready this morning), I had walked into the room where Jason * normally has his Sunday School class, and the room was mostly empty. The music director of the church was telling me that Jason was in the hospital with his sister Kelly*, she has had recurring heart problems for years, and she was in emergency surgery to open an artery.

She had noticed that heart attack like symptoms were starting, and with her medical history (she had open heart surgery only about 4 years ago), she knew it was, and that it was definite cause for concern. Reports are that she hadn't had a heart attack yet, but was very close to having one, it was stopped in time.

The music director was trying to redirect people from Jason's class to his Sunday School class, but I went on to a class with a teacher and people I was more familiar with. This class, and a larger class was carrying on their tradition of meeting together for announcements before splitting into their classes, planning future events together both in and outside the church.

For some odd reason, both of these classes are mostly made of of middle aged people, some are married couples, but most are divorced (which is highly ironic, considering the views that the church has on divorce). some were divorced while they were at this church, others before they ever came there.

The church, among some other charitable endeavors that include a food pantry and clothes closet, has a habit of serving food in the church fellowship hall twice a month to a large number of poor and homeless people in the area.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 20): If You Are Going to Go New Testament on Us, At Least Be Consistent About It

Recently, “Jason”, a frequently occurring character in the Undercover Agnostic series, invited me to a viewing of an old A&E special on the history of the early church at the house that he owns with his sister “Kelly”.

Our new pastor, let’s call him “Pastor Jones”, was interesting in viewing the video himself, so Jason had let him preview it before the showing at his house. Pastor Jones’ has been a pastor in churches mostly in the south for some time (North Carolina and Arkansas, he is originally from North Carolina himself), but his theological background is mostly in church history, he has a seminary doctorate in church history in fact.

Since the video was produced by the cable network A&E, it looks more at the history of Christianity from well, a historical and outsider’s perspective instead of a more rigid fundamentalist view. Pastor Jones had a few objections to some statements and assertions that were made, and he had come with a printout detailing his disputes. We were all discussing his list, and then the discussion took a different turn.

Jason spends quite a bit of time with Pastor Jones, especially when he is counseling new church members or prospective members. He had talked about an incident where he had went with Pastor Jones to speak to a man who had been attending the church for a while with his young daughter, and had wanted to convert and join the church.

The pastor asked him if there was anything that he wanted to confess to god and to him as his pastor, and the man said that he had been living with his daughter’s mother, but was not legally married to her. Pastor Jones said that before the church would accept him as a new member, he must either break off the relationship with his girlfriend, or marry her. Jason said the man never contacted either of them again, and both this man and his daughter have not been to the church since.

It started a discussion on marriage and divorce, and Kelly brought up something I never knew about the practices of the church. She said that her son wasn’t willing to join our church because he has been a member of a moderate Christian denomination (I can’t remember which one, I think it was a branch of the Lutheran denomination), and he had married his wife in a ceremony officiated by a female pastor, and the church had already told her and her son that they would not consider his marriage to be legitimate because he was married by a female minister.

I was rather shocked by this, since in over 12 years of being a part of that congregation, (although 3 of those years have been spent undercover), I had never heard of such a policy in place. I had asked the group then about what the policies on divorce were, because I had never heard of anyone being excommunicated, refused membership, or having their second marriage deemed illegitimate in the eyes of the church before. For reference, let’s look at the New Testament view of marriage, divorce and remarriage before, I discuss the group’s reaction.