Religion/Spirituality

Which religion or spirtual path do you follow?

  • None

    Votes: 1 50.0%
  • Spiritual, not religious

    Votes: 1 50.0%
  • Christianity

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Judaism

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Islam

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hinduism

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Buddhism

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Paganism/Druidry

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wicca

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2

Iskanderia

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Yeah, to be fair, I was just basing it on my experiences with wicca as a teen and with other teen wiccans. Magic is a part of it regardless though, so even if adults practice it for more mature reasons, the belief in being able to affect your surroundings through magic is still a central premise. Otherwise, you might as well just call yourself a pagan.

It is super weird that it's big in the military. I can't imagine what that's about.
 

Kyuketsuki

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Incense is a pretty subjective thing. I like it, but my dad, who grew up with the Latin mass, really dislikes it, haha. The water thing only happens on special occasions- generally, you have no idea what's going to be constituted a 'special occasion' when suddenly the sprinkler thing's pulled out and you're just like "lol k." Latin mass does it in every mass, or every high mass, which should be your regular sunday deal.

If you ever wanted to go and just observe the mass, if you can find a latin/tridentine mass to go to on a sunday (they can be rare), sitting in the back and keeping to yourself is just fine. *I'm* catholic and I still sit in the back and keep to myself, and I generally don't go up for communion. Not everyone goes. You're only supposed to go up if you're catholic and have been to confession recently anyway. Non-catholics taking communion at a catholic church is probably considered the biggest no-no of the mass, so no one will mind, or probably even notice, if you don't go up. Communion is conducted way differently at latin mass anyway, which is one of the main reasons why I don't go up, haha. So yeah, don't let any of that stuff stop you from sitting in the back (or halfway to the front if it's fairly empty- not everyone's keen on latin mass) and observing the proceedings if you want to. If even from an historical and anthropological perspective, it's probably worth sitting through once considering how old it is. :) In the words of my grandmother, "This is the mass that the Saints went to!!" :lol: Fair warning: Latin/tridentine mass is also an hour and a half to two hours long depending on how elaborate the proceedings, but to its credit it goes pretty fast. Make sure you have no plans for half of the afternoon. ::kisaki::
 

PureElegance

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Berserk wrote:
@PE: But I do like incense (I think I did a poll on that here and I was like the only one who did XD), so maybe I would still enjoy it! I would go to one one of these days just to learn more about it, but I feel uncomfortable being the only person who doesn't take Communion. Also, I feel like a hypocrite crossing myself with holy water and genuflecting when, you know, I'm a heathen ::transform::
Yes, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who likes incense. I don't mind it usually when it's in the ball being flung about (I have no idea what this is called), but sometimes they put so much inside the ball that I die. I always take communion, but not everyone takes communion though, so it wouldn't be awkward. Even in elementary/middle school some kids didn't take it, and when we asked why it was either they weren't Catholic or they hadn't been baptised yet or some other reason, so it wasn't a big deal. Even at my church not everyone goes up and takes communion and I don't think people would really care anyway. Not everyone genuflects or crosses themselves with holy water either. Usually when it's over I leave and forget to genuflect or I just do the sign of the cross. (LOL the memories of being taught how to genuflect!) So you can attribute it to forgetfulness, but as I said, I don't think anyone would bother you about it since everyone has their reasons for doing what they do.

I think it's kind of ironic that so many saints were martyred by Pagans (all Roman Pagans, I think), when so soon afterwards the tables would be turned and "witches" would be burned at the stake by Christians. I'm so glad we're past that crap now :roll:
Sometimes I wish we could return to those good ol' days when we persecuted heathens. *sigh* But Christians are still being killed now for their beliefs or for converting especially in places like India and the Middle East.

Anti-Christian violence in India refers to religiously-motivated violence against Christians in India, usually perpetrated by Hindu nationalists. The acts of violence include arson of churches, re-conversion of Christians to Hinduism by force and threats of physical violence, distribution of threatening literature, burning of Bibles, raping of nuns, murder of Christian priests and destruction of Christian schools, colleges, and cemeteries.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religio ... -East.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/world ... d=all&_r=0
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oc ... y-hinduism
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... y-row.html
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=56908
http://www.meforum.org/3444/muslim-pers ... ember-2012
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 09,00.html

One of my hobbies is keeping up with the news about the Christians who die in these areas because hardly anyone talks about them.

I wish we had as good of records of Pagan martyrs as the Catholics do of their saints. I mean, if the Catholic saints are any indication, I'm sure their stories would be pretty damned interesting.
I REALLY liked Sigrid the Haughty, even just for her name XD And dude, poor Raud the Strong! I can't believe he died like that. It's always admirable at least for me to see someone die for their beliefs, I think that takes a huge amount of courage.
 

Berserk

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@Kyu: I found a list of churches in the U.S. that do the Tridentine Mass, so I'll have to add it to my bucket list. Most of the ones in Michigan that do it are in Detroit, actually, which probably has the best Catholic architecture in the state too. But even in the D my options are limited because I don't really want to travel far from the downtown/midtown area, even on a Sunday morning ::meev::

@PE: Ugh, that's just horrible. I've always known Christians are persecuted in some parts of the world, but I never hear about it in the news so I didn't know about specific cases like that. I'm surprised that the Hindi are so violent and forceful about it! I always assumed they were chill like the Buddhists. Hearing about them burning down houses, threatening to kill children, and painting bindis on crying women just paints them in a whole new light. However, I feel like there's more to the story than what's presented in news articles. I would be surprised if the British didn't force any Hindi to convert when India was under their rule, so there's probably a long history of bad blood between the two religious communities.

I don't like anyone trying to convert people, forcefully or otherwise. It's one thing to spread the word and tell people about your religion, but to badger them, coerce them, or threaten them over it is just despicable. There's this missionary organization on campus here at OU that called themselves "Crusaders for Christ". As if missionary work isn't questionable enough, they were actually referencing some of the bloodiest, most forcible conversions in Christian history? They changed their name at least, but the people I've talked to in that organization just shrug their shoulders and don't know why anyone had an issue with it. Yet they're the ones going to indigenous communities in South America and "educating" them to leave their traditional spiritual practices and convert to Christianity. Maybe they could educate themselves a little first :mad:

I think those missionary organizations would be put to better use trying to uphold the religious rights of people who are already Christian, and want to practice but can't.

Hopefully someday we'll realize that there is no one true religion, and as long as they aren't hateful or violent about it, everyone should be free to practice whichever religion they choose.
 

PureElegance

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Berserk wrote:
@PE: Ugh, that's just horrible. I've always known Christians are persecuted in some parts of the world, but I never hear about it in the news so I didn't know about specific cases like that.
The ONLY reason I first came to know about anti-Christian violence was through my theology class in high school because our teacher would tell us about it. I remember one of them was the story of a priest in India riding his motorcycle to attend a service and he was shot.

I haven't heard much about it in mainstream media or anything really since, except through articles I can find which are normally from European and Middle Eastern and Christian news sources. At least it's not so easy to find. You'll hardly find anything in places like the New York Times except for the 2008 pogroms and some articles there, but not as many anywhere else. I can't believe I have to find out about these things from Indian, African, and Middle Eastern websites. Seriously, the last thing you have on the Human Rights Watch is from 1999 (http://www.hrw.org/en/news/1999/09/29/anti-christian-violence-rise-india). I seriously never would've known about it if I hadn't heard about it in high school. Anyways.
 

MissUMana

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Berserk wrote:
Hopefully someday we'll realize that there is no one true religion, and as long as they aren't hateful or violent about it, everyone should be free to practice whichever religion they choose.

This is the very essence of our 1905 law instituting our republic as secular.
 

Kyuketsuki

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PureElegance wrote:
I don't mind it usually when it's in the ball being flung about (I have no idea what this is called).

Censer. :grin: I love incense, personally, but yeah, it isn't for everyone and sometimes it does get a little too smokey. I think this is because the altar servers/kids are setting it up rather than the adults. :P

I think perhaps christian persecutions aren't being actively mentioned in US media because christian radicalism is already bad enough without giving those kinds of people yet another reason to harass non-christians both at home and abroad through "missionary work" and other mislabeled organizations. Also, the ratio of christian persecutions today compared to persecutions of other religions is probably way smaller, thus why the Sunni/Shite conflict, for example, gets more airtime.

@Berserk: Oh man, you guys have Crusaders for Christ, too? They really changed their name?? :lol: I wonder if that's an organization-wide thing? That's so funny. There are several (protestant) christian organizations at my old university that used to do or sponsor so many crazy/offensive things. Because it's the south, they can get away with it, though. The only thing the catholic building on my campus did that I found shady (every christian religious denomination seems to have a building on campus, to the point where one road is actually nicknamed "church row" where the brunt of them are) was that the Pregnancy Emergency center was located at the back door of the catholic center (lol), and opening up a recent weekly student newsletter listed an event where "women affected by abortion" could go on a retreat to talk about it, and at the veeery end it said was sponsored by the catholic center LOL. The first thing I thought of was "IT'S A TRAP! D:" So, while they do have one thing against them, at least they play it subtly compared to most everybody else. ::meev::
 

Berserk

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@Kyu: Yeah, I checked their Wikipedia page and the entire organization eventually changed its name:
Wikipedia wrote:
On July 19, 2011, it was announced that Campus Crusade for Christ in the United States will be changing their name to "Cru" in order to overcome existing barriers and perceptions inherent in the original name. This name was already in use on a number of college campuses.
It's hardly any better if you know what their original name was. All they did was abbreviate what was so offensive about it ::meev::

And they've been around since 1951, too, so they had that name for quite awhile before they (or anyone else, probably) considered it a problem.
 
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