When was the last time you went to church?

Last time IN a church was when Ed's cousin got married. Last time AT church was when taken to church of dad's new and evil wife in EEEEEK! Bloomington at about 15.

But i won't go in a church unless I absolutely, positively *have* to.

The last time I went to church service was 1990??1991? For Christmas.

The most interesting was representing my school at the Commonwealth Day service in Westminster Abbey in 1991. I saw Prince Charles' bald patch and the Queen's hat.

It wasn't in a church, it was my cousin's wedding in a synagogue. It was interesting because Orthodox Judaism is rather different from my barely practicing Congregationalist family. ("Ooo, seating divided by gender!")

Well actually the reception was what was interesting, too.

My sister got slightly sanctimonious because she claimed I wasn't interested and then proceeded to give out to me for not having a big row with my mum to convince her I shouldn't go. She reckons going and not being in the spirit of it is worse than really annoying Mum on Christmas morning. It was a fairly big row actually but it didn't ruin Christmas.

I wasn't interested but I think she thinks I have strong negative feelings towards the Church because I said the sermon was poorly delivered and cliched, I am ambivalent about the faith or other peoples faith, in fact people who are vocally critical of the Church here often annoy me in that they fail to acknowledge the benefits of it to those who participate, I guess the older generation.

The most interesting ceremony I've ever attended was in Taize, sort of young peoples religious place in France, the church holds about 7000 people and everyone is given a candle on Easter Saturday, the mass consists of that ecclesiastical chanting stuff. It was a spectacle I guess, it was a school trip and some people left feeling invigorated and religious, I didn't really get that side of it. It was a lovely place though, very relaxing, lots of nice young people too.

Either that or the time a dog came into the local Church at home and walked onto the altar.

It was a school mass. That is like the only time I go.

Does going into a church in order to have a nose about/admire the architecture count? If so, I went into any number of them in Malta... nothing much since, mind. (xpost)

As far as being at an actual service counts, fuck knows. A good four or five years ago, I think. I am a recovering Catholic.

he soon became uncomfortable when he noticed that one of the altar boys had been a prom date, one had been a winter formal date, etc. we haven't been back for a while.

(these weren't little boys, BTW, for the high holidays they bring out the older pros. and i went to catholic school, that's how i knew them)

haven't attended a mass that i believe in for nearly 10 years, probably. but had to go until graduation. and i was blackmailed/bribed to go through confirmation...

I haven't been to Catholic mass in probably 17 years, aside from a funeral ten years ago.

What's the most interesting church/church service you've attended?

Midnight mass, Anglican church in Saratoga Springs, Christmas 1984. The crispness and clarity of the air outside, the warmth and beauty inside -- the church really was a vaulted mini-cathedral in ways -- the candles, the songs. Very, very good memory of mine.

I count "going to church" as attending a church service that has nothing to do with Christmas, Easter, school, weddings, concerts, christenings, funerals or memorials. So if you discount all of the above, I have been to church once in my life, to mass in Chorley about 3 years ago. I found it quite interesting, though shorter than I expected and without nearly enough Latin. It did nothing to cure my dogmatic atheism.

Personally, though, I don't think I've been in a synagogue since the day of my Bar Mitzvah, except for when my dad got married and maybe one or two other occasions.

Apart from Christmas, births, weddings, funerals etc last time I was at a service would be in the late 70's.

It's more an honorarium than anything else, something like $50/week + extra for concerts and rehearsals.

(well, it pays for all my meals and pocket cash every week at least, and gets done before I used to wake up on Sundays)

What in the hell? This is the sort of crap that made me run a mile from the church I used to go to as a teenager (Uniting Church, which is an australian offshoot of presbyterians). The amount of church communities Ive seen that gossip about less well-to-do people or unmarried mums or whatever... rarrgh. WTF were you doing to make them tell you you werent welcome, Webcrack?

I attend Catholic Mass every Sunday, so the last time I went to church was yesterday. I will go to my church tomorrow night for practice, and then I will attend Mass again next Sunday. My faith helps keep me whole. I feel like I've missed out on something when I don't get to go to Sunday Mass. I could happily live out the rest of my life without converting anyone to my faith. So there.

What matters ultimately, though, the attendance or the spirituality of the person? And does the latter require the former? Much of what has happened in Western belief since the Reformation revolves around a key idea advanced there, namely that it is the individual person who meditates upon the divine, however considered.

Well, I'd like to think that BOTH matter, but that's just my own bias rising up. Certainly, it would be nice if the majority of the non-attenders I take note of are off on their own spiritual journey, but it just seems to me that I can either only find others who are so gung-ho about The Faith that they wouldn't even dream of listening to "secular" music, or people who are so anti-faith life that they sneer at people such as myself, particularly if I'm dealing with people around my age.

Maybe this divide won't be as noticeable once I get into my thirties, though the thought of having to wait that long is just... grah.

I stopped going to Mass when I was a freshman in college. I realized that Christianity was completely opposite of so many of my views that there was no way I could consider myself a follower. I haven't pretended for family or otherwise since.

Regardless of the human-imposed prejudices (against homosexuality, abortion, etc) I can't believe in something that is so fundamentally mysoginsitc.

What's a church? Why would one go there?

Still, I'm a regular heathen. Haven't stepped into a church since I was 12. Got tired of falling asleep during Mass---and those everlasting homilys supposedly leading me away from Hell. (Life can be boring enough, so why not go the fun route?)

I like going to church - baptised Catholic, but have attended Anglican and Lutheran services. But only if it's really traditional and the sermon and music are good! A few years ago, I had a terminally ill relative and felt that it would mean a lot to them to attend church on their behalf. I don't go regularly but if weather permits I still go for them.

gf's grandmother's funeral late last year, gotta do these things

I go to the local church's roast beef dinners.

I like churches but I'm not at all religious and apart from weddings and funerals haven't attended a proper Sunday service or mass since I was about ten.

Almost 2 years ago for the funeral of my friends mother

I've been inside churches for funerals, weddings and musical programs over the last few years, but the last time I attended a church service was 2001.

wait a minute, i went to church for an easter mass in mexico city last year

i went to church a couple times when i slept over friends house when i was a kid

I honestly can't remember when I was last in a church. I think maybe 2005, for my grandfather's funeral? That's the last one I can remember, anyway.

My dad works the door during Communion at his LDS (Mormon) church. When you ask him what "works the door" means, he says "You know, Communion is a sacred act. We don't want people going in and out during it."

Which goes back to my complaint about non-Catholic churches in the first place: What's up with everyone walking around chit-chatting, waving at other congregants and balancing their checkbooks during the actual service? That my dad's church would need someone to close the doors and get everyone settled is beyond me.

Then again, the funny thing is that in the Catholic church, it's during Communion that most people are going out the doors anyway, after 50 minutes of participating in the Mass.

apart from funerals,baptisms, and weddings, which i think should be ignored for the purpose of this thread, ive not been in a church since i was 15 or 16. so 12 or 13 years.

oh yeah leaving early after communion. id forgotten about that, i used to do it.

I can't imagine regularly going to church without being in the choir, to be honest. The whole idea of going to church weekly to pray and hear a sermon feels suspiciously like going to school.

Outside weddings and funerals, I went with an ex to a Catholic mass a few years back. I don't think I'd been to a religious service that wasn't a wedding/funeral for over a decade at that point.

I was pretty comfortable but the gf kept asking if I was uncomfortable with all the sitting/standing/kneeling and such. I wasn't! I think I was really making her uncomfortable by the fact I was there but wasn't really participating.

Catholic services are kind of fun, it's like there's long, protracted low-impact aerobics going on throughout the entire thing

I do holidays with family. And I occasionally go to a tiny rural church when we stay at my dad's childhood farm house. I really like the country church. Most of the itinerant rural pastors I've met are very liberal. I'm related to half the people in the congregation, including the organist. Average age = 70. Some folks actually come straight off the lake with fishing gear. Plus a walk through the lovely churchyard to pay respects to my pioneer-type ancestors. I've been an athiest long enough that church doesn't bother me so much as mystify me, or exist as a place to congregate with my quirky country relatives. Plus, I like funeral ham sandwiches with strong bitter coffee.

that sounds p awesome

otm

I went just before Christmas but didn't say or sing any of the responses, mostly because I'm not willing to even mouth words about how filthy and sinful I am and how glorious God is for caring enough to lift me out of the muck. I'll sing the hymns, though, if the organist isn't completely terrible.

Oh man, I forgot the only thing that I almost got in trouble on, though. Some girl went up to speak about a college Catholic group that was accepting donations for something or another and she mentioned something about how of the Catholics who regularly attended church before going to college, only 30% did post-graduation.

I wanted to blurt out "WE HAVE TO STOP THESE KIDS FROM GRADUATING!" but I held back.

Went to Mormon church/temple or whatever it is with my neighbors when I was 7 or 8. All 30+ kids in Sunday school enthusiastically sung a "welcome" song to me and it was kind of weird.

i thought non-mormons weren't allowed in temple?

i believe the actual term is 'damned'

Why is Mormonism sometimes described as a secretive religion?

The most common and visible target for charges of suspicious secrecy in the Mormon religion are the temples. After dedication, these buildings are closed to the public and church members do not talk openly about the rituals that take place within. The church holds that the temple and its rituals are sacred and therefore private, not secret. They maintain that early Christianity featured similar special practices and bodies of knowledge that were kept quiet to preserve their sacred nature.

There are temples, like the one described above, and then there are the precincts, which is your more common everyday church where everyone is welcome.

There are only like 75 temples in the U.S.

3 Sundays ago, or was it 2?

what goes on in a temple

polygamy

Last visit to a place of worship: Basilique Notre-Dame, Montreal, age 40
Last flirtation with a religious community: First Unitarian Society, Madison, age 31
Last Mass: obligatory attendance, Jesuit high school, age 17
Last time I believed in non material things: age 9
Last communion: age 7
First communion: age 7
Last time I believed in a god worthy of worship: age 6

I keep thinking I should start going to church again. I was raised catholic. a number of weird things have happened lately that, if I were more superstitious and/or spiritual, i would think are 'signs' that I am supposed to be attending church. however, I'm also really resistent and haven't gone to church since shit got really political and all of that crap scares me off. so who knows.

last time I was at a service was for my father in law's funeral, which was Armenian Orthodox.

baptism of the dead is some n/l shit you gotta admit

Last time was right after 9/11. Really drove home how un-useful church is (it was a Quaker meeting, actually). Never again.

what goes on in a temple

― teaky frigger (darraghmac), Friday, January 27, 2012 12:58 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

theres an excellent temple scene in big love maybe season two, u should track it down, it's quite unlike church, a bunch of all white living rooms sort of where families come to perform esoteric rituals, its p fascinating, people make fun of Joseph smith for making ridiculous claims but he was clearly on some level a religious genius

In the last 15 years I've only gone a handful of times and they've all been due to either a wedding or funeral mass.

I actually took communion for the first time in > 15 years last September at a friend's wedding. I have no idea why but I was suddenly just compelled to do so. Momentary irrational fear that I was going to burn up on the spot or something followed by fleeting weirdness over why I did that.

I have cheated once in my life and eaten a communion wafer, although not a catholic one. Kind of think it's like a challenge to get away with.

At first it was weirdly comforting I think mostly because it was a ritual from my childhood. I also couldn't help but think that about how happy my mom would have been lol. What's amazing to me is how much of the stuff I remember in terms of what to say and when to stand and/or kneel.

I don't know firsthand what happens in a temple. The only person I've known to go into one was my grandmother, and all she'd say was that it was very beautiful, a lot like Heaven.

I think there are...white curtains?? I don't know where I got that thought, probably from some polygamy shock-value memoir.

My grandmother did not tell me about this, however.

http://mormontemples.com/files/2009/05/oquirrh_temple_baptistry.jpg

http://lasvegasmormontemple.com/files/2008/07/mormon-temple-washington-baptistry.jpg

http://mormontemplekansascity.com/files/2011/10/mormon-temple-baptistry.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gtHHbk_l3ns/SXnuCTrd0tI/AAAAAAAABYE/lPQbUjWnDPw/s400/med_3_BAPTISTERY_30Dec08.jpg

As far as Christian denominations, last time was for my grandma's 3rd wedding, at a Catholic church in Florida a few years ago. I'd never been to a serious Catholic church so I was oogling all the bloody pics of Jesus and stuff.

Mostly I've been going to B.A.P.S. Swaminarayan mandir in Lilburn, just outside of Atlanta. The main temple is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and I've been to a few festivals with friends. Really wonderful food, cool music, etc. At Diwali they bring the statues of the deities outside, cover the marble temple with multicolored lights, and throw them a huge party with thousands of candles everywhere and fireworks going off over head.

I went to a few other Hindu temples around Atlanta. One was for a festival called the Garba Dance which was held in a heavenly decorated giant auditorium. Hundreds of people dancing in circles, the circles concentrically bigger, rotating in other directions, weaving in and out of each other. It was amazing. Afterwards we all went outside and ate sweets.

I think one of these days I'll try and sit through a Christian service, but the few times I've done so I just get extremely bored. The Hindu stuff tends to move me spiritually with little effort on my part. The otherworldly beauty of the temple, all shining white marble with thousands or delicate carvings. The peaceful and loving expression in the faces of the statues. The sense of the divine presence just comes across so much more directly and effortlessly. Plus everything is superficially gorgeous as well.

church attendance falls as working-class white Christianity becomes 'deinstitutionalized'

Research suggests that children who attend church perform better in school, divorce less as adults and commit fewer crimes. Regular church attendees even exhibit less racial prejudice than their nonreligious peers. The M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber found that for many of these traits, this relationship is causal: It’s not just that privileged kids who attend church skew the data, but that attending services produces good character.

These benefits apply broadly, across a range of faiths, so the phenomenon appears unrelated to doctrine or place. Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad’s medium-size evangelical church — my first real exposure to a sustained religious community — that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together. The church even collected money to help families in need and established a small school and home for single expectant mothers.

Despite these benefits, church attendance has fallen substantially among the members of the white working class in recent years, just when they need it most. Though working-class whites earn, on average, more than working-class people of other ethnicities, we are in a steep social decline. Incarceration rates for white women are on the rise, white youths are more likely than their peers from other groups to die from drug overdoses and rates of divorce and domestic chaos have skyrocketed. Taken together, these statistics reveal a social crisis of historic proportions. Yet the white church — especially the evangelical church that claims the most members — has seemingly disappeared....

A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror....

The most significant evangelical contribution to fiction in the past 20 years was the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series. The books are riveting, but their core message is that corrupt, evil elites have gone to war against Christians. Some version of this idea — whether delivered in church or on TV — finds its way into many topics in a modern evangelical sermon: Evolution is a lie that secular science tells to counter the biblical creation story, the gay rights movement usurps God’s law. Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world’s money supply. Paranoia has replaced piety.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/the-bad-faith-of-the-white-working-class.html?_r=0

I feel like commercialized evangelical christianity has a lot to answer for, from the megachurches that are less about promoting community than promoting their certain brand of community, or the people using identity politics as a barb against any group they perceive as "non-christian" (which is synonymous to some with "non-american."

Of people I know who are regular churchgoers but not espousing contemptible things in that vein, there are mainly presbyterians and a handful of catholics who fall on the more liberal side of that faith.

i would agree that making christianity subservient to capitalism is probably a bad decision. that said, the whole two-thousand-year history of the christian religion, from peter onwards, is in large part a lengthy chronicle of poor decisions. christian identity politics didn't begin with the religious right by any means.

and in some ways so-called "mainline" protestantism has just as significant issues. there's a certain complacency to it, a belief that "evangelism" is a dirty word, that is not particularly in accordance with the religious foundations of christianity. there's this inability or refusal to differentiate between telling other people what to believe and telling other people what you believe, and why. there's this culture of serial over-sharers who nevertheless believe it necessary to remain silent about their core beliefs. this silence allows people to reasonably conclude that the preachers you see on tv speak for all of christianity. and so mainline protestant congregations are dying, dying all over america.

i mean the interesting thing about that op-ed is that the formal churches, evangelical or otherwise, aren't the problem by any means. it's the vast number of people who declare themselves "spiritual but not religious", who practice their faith without any recourse to formal religious community. they're subject to all of the pitfalls of faith and none of the social benefits. they don't talk to people about their shared beliefs. they don't even sit quietly in a stadium and listen to somebody tell them what to believe over a loudspeaker. their religious beliefs are based on what they see on tv, or even worse, the internet.