What Did You Or Your Former Church Consider Heretical Or Too "liberal"

[Prysm]

Maybe a bit off topic, but some of the bizarre rules my bible college had...

 

No smoking for anyone

No drinking for anyone (including faculty, even wine)

You can't go inside a bar, even if you aren't drinking

You can be in a place that is not a bar that serves alcohol as long as you do not sit AT the bar or dance

You can dance, but only if it is OFF campus and in a place that does not serve alcohol (watch out for that wedding champagne!)

Kissing ON campus

Having an arm around a significant other ON campus

Cross-gender backrubs ON campus

Spaghetti straps for girls

Pants with holes

Shirts with alcohol logos

Piercings other than the ears

Getting a tattoo while enrolled (obviously they can't do anything about prior ones)

Exposed undergarments, like boxers

Windpants in class

Watching BET, MTV, VH1, and a few other selected channels

Having a tv in your dorm room

Watching movies in a public place on campus

Watching R-rated movies ON campus

Skipping chapel or conferences (they charge you per skip past the allotted amount)

 

There were probably others that I'm forgetting, and I ignored a majority of them anyway. At least they had gotten rid of the rules about mandatory skirts for girls and hair length for guys by then. Ugh. Hooray freedom in Christ, eh?

[godlessgrrl]

I thought it would be interesting for us to share what we and/or our church considered heretical, liberal, or just "bad". What sorts of ridiculous or not so ridiculous things were frowned upon by you or your former church community? Were there things that your community pushed that you thought were "evil" or otherwise inspired by Satan?

 

Let's see:

 

-- Women

-- Sex

-- Masturbation

-- Physical pleasure (not just sex, could be anything)

-- Sexually active women

-- Premarital sex, mostly for girls

-- Homosexuality

-- Catholicism

-- Abortion (including birth control methods that prevented implantation)

-- Birth control (except when used by married couples, and as long as they used methods that didn't prevent implantation)

-- Comprehensive sex ed (because of course if you teach kids about sex, that will make them want to go out and have it)

-- Divorce (but plenty of people did it anyway)

-- Adultery (but plenty of people did it anyway)

-- Polyamory (considered worse than adultery)

-- Pornography

-- Couples living together without being married (i.e., domestic partnership)

-- Dating non-Christians

-- Role-playing games (D&D was the big one)

-- Researching other religions

-- Wicca/paganism (equated with Satanism)

-- Other religions in general

-- "The occult" (nobody ever quite explained what that was, though)

-- Horror movies

-- Rock/secular music

-- Nonreligious TV programming

-- Doubt

-- Questioning the Bible, god, or the pastor

-- Nudity

-- Postmodern art

-- Not tithing

-- Not speaking in tongues (yeah, I was AoG...)

-- Not going to church and/or Bible study

-- Learning "too much" about other cultures, languages, or religions

-- Democrats

-- Atheism

-- Communism/Socialism (usually associated with atheism)

-- Reading religious books other than the Bible or those by Christian authors

-- Swearing/profanity

-- Sexual fantasies

-- Drinking alcohol (hard alcohol worse than beer or wine)

-- Drug use

-- Not praying enough

-- Fantasy novels (except C.S. Lewis, and sometimes Tolkien, depending)

-- Feminism

-- Women in positions of real authority

-- Mothers working outside the home (depending - sometimes it was okay, or considered a necessary evil)

-- Being overly materialistic

-- Mental illness

-- Any action, thought, idea, feeling, etc., that didn't "honor god"

-- Doing anything without putting god first

 

Those are just a few. All of them had religious origins, but didn't all come from the same source, and they weren't absolutes for every church or religious authority I had any affiliation with. Some of them would also depend on circumstances (like mothers working outside the home).

 

Basically being an average, normal, healthy non-Christian human being was sinful.

[mahjong]

Sing to these are a few of my favorite things:

 

Smoking and drinking and talking to heathens

Oral sex, anal sex, coffee and threesomes

Ice cream and doughnuts all covered in sprinkles

Don't dare do anything considered kinkles

 

I'll bet somebody can finish this song

Better than I can, it won't take you long!

 

And since I'm on a roll, I want to remind you

To stick it, stick it, stick it up your butt!

[Neon Genesis]

What was considered liberal in my church

 

-believing in theistic evolution

-women preachers or women that are the head of their families

-treating the LBGT community as equal human beings

-not believing premarital sex and other "non-traditional" relationships were a sin

-being pro-choice

-not supporting the Iraq war

-voting for a Democrat

-not believing in hell or not literally believing in all the miracles in the bible

-not accepting everything in the bible as the literal perfect word of God

-atheism

-believing God is a force of energy or an impersonal deity

-believing all religions are just different ways of worshiping God

-not believing America is a Christian nation

 

 

Other beliefs we thought were bad but not necessarily liberal

 

-worshiping God with musical instruments

-having any sort of icons in a church building (like how some fancy churches will have all that artwork of Jesus on the ceilings or whatever)

-wearing cross necklaces (although this was mostly only frowned upon by the older members)

-speaking in tongues

-claiming God spoke to you

-celebrating religious holidays

-believing in the Pope

-basically any denomination that wasn't the Church Of Christ, including other fundie denoms

 

I was raised in the COC. Our church allowed us to have kitchens in the church, but my grandmother's didn't allow it for some reason and I never understood why.

[HelloWorld]

Maybe a bit off topic, but some of the bizarre rules my bible college had...

 

What Bible college is that, if you don't mind me asking? Are all Bible colleges like that. No TV in your dorm room is kinda extreme. But I guess if they allowed it, you could watch naughty things that they wouldn't be able to catch you watching unless they were Big Brother.

[HelloWorld]

-believing in the Pope

 

Hmm...

[GraphicsGuy]

Ditto to everything in gwenmead's list...

[Prysm]

I'd rather not give the name, but I will tell you that with bible colleges, there seems to be a direct link between the weirdness of the rules and how literally they read the bible. I'm sure I'm forgetting some of them.

 

In my fundamentalist church at home, the joke about not playing cards carried a grain of truth, since it'd only been a decade or so since they started to allow it. Gambling in casinos or playing poker with a buy-in was still off limits.

 

I'm surprised no one has said Harry Potter (you know he's a satan worshiper).

 

Oh! Two-piece bathing suits for girls were off limits. Tankinis were pushing your luck.

 

Any piercings for guys or piercings other than ears for girls and any tattoos are considered a sign of degeneracy and rebellion.

 

Side hugs only, no two-arm hugs (except between two females or married couples)

 

There was sort of an unspoken hint that people who speak in tongues are actually possessed by demons.

[Amethyst]

I'm surprised no one has said Harry Potter (you know he's a satan worshiper).

 

Harry Potter hadn't been written yet, although some people in my church thought Star Wars was TeH Eb1L.

[burntwings]

I've got a LONG list, but I'm just going to include my favorites.

 

From my private Christian school

-Reading Harry Potter. Magic is evil.

-Power beads. Anyone remember these? They came out around 2000 and each color stood for a different "power" like luck, happiness, stuff like that. You were supossed to pray for those things instead.

-Pokemon. Because in Japanese, it's pocket monsters. And therefore demons.

-Alcohol. Doesn't matter how old you are, or how responsible you are in your drinking. It's evil.

-Boys weren't allowed to have hair that went past the collar on a collared shirt, couldn't have facial hair (until they were seniors). Girls could have one hole in their ears, but boys couldn't have any piercings. Nobody could have tattoos. And any flip-flops other than Rainbows were against the dress code....that's still one of my favorites

-Homosexuality. They actually expelled one kid for being gay, even though they couldn't prove it, and he hadn't even come out yet. His parents then sent him off to an all boys boarding school as punishment. Ironic?

-Sex. It's only ok between a married man and woman, and should only be used for procreation.

-Skipping church.

-Most secular music. In one chapel, when I was in 7th grade, the lesson was about how evil the Backstreet Boys are. Because they "wanna see you out that door." And some other stuff I don't remember.

-Lying could get you the same punishment as cheating on a test because it was against one of the 10 commandments. Just to test them, I made comments about how much I wanted something of someone else's around teachers all the time. I never got in trouble for it.

 

I think those are the best ones....but I'm sure there's more I can't think of right now.

[Guest singerc1]

I've got a LONG list, but I'm just going to include my favorites.

 

From my private Christian school

-Reading Harry Potter. Magic is evil.

-Power beads. Anyone remember these? They came out around 2000 and each color stood for a different "power" like luck, happiness, stuff like that. You were supossed to pray for those things instead.

-Pokemon. Because in Japanese, it's pocket monsters. And therefore demons.

-Alcohol. Doesn't matter how old you are, or how responsible you are in your drinking. It's evil.

-Boys weren't allowed to have hair that went past the collar on a collared shirt, couldn't have facial hair (until they were seniors). Girls could have one hole in their ears, but boys couldn't have any piercings. Nobody could have tattoos. And any flip-flops other than Rainbows were against the dress code....that's still one of my favorites

-Homosexuality. They actually expelled one kid for being gay, even though they couldn't prove it, and he hadn't even come out yet. His parents then sent him off to an all boys boarding school as punishment. Ironic?

-Sex. It's only ok between a married man and woman, and should only be used for procreation.

-Skipping church.

-Most secular music. In one chapel, when I was in 7th grade, the lesson was about how evil the Backstreet Boys are. Because they "wanna see you out that door." And some other stuff I don't remember.

-Lying could get you the same punishment as cheating on a test because it was against one of the 10 commandments. Just to test them, I made comments about how much I wanted something of someone else's around teachers all the time. I never got in trouble for it.

 

I think those are the best ones....but I'm sure there's more I can't think of right now.

 

this sounds exactly like my private school!! Even the Backstreet Boys chapel!! Just out of curiosity...you're school isn't in the metro detroit area was it?

[HelloWorld]

-Pokemon. Because in Japanese, it's pocket monsters. And therefore demons.

 

I can actually relate to that one. It wasn't a church enforced thing, but my mom always said that Pokemons weren't good just because in Japanese it meant pocket monsters. To this day, I still feel a little weird talking about Pokemon, even though I don't actually believe there is one thing wrong with them.

 

-Homosexuality. They actually expelled one kid for being gay, even though they couldn't prove it, and he hadn't even come out yet. His parents then sent him off to an all boys boarding school as punishment. Ironic?

 

If ANY kind of behaviour is sinful, THAT kind of behaviour is sinful. I can hardly believe this. I suppose that there is really nothing anyone could do since the school was private and they can admit or expel whomever they want. Plus, it seems like the kid's parents weren't very supporting either.

 

And I agree, sending him off to an all boys school as punishment is rather silly.

[Skeptic]

We never attended a church that believed all of this, but here are my parents' beliefs:

 

-Homosexuality is a sin. If homosexuals were allowed to marry each other, it would completely change the definition of marriage to where even relatives could marry each other and people could marry their pets/inanimate objects. But we don't hate homosexuals. (I think my dad does, though.)

-Everything that "celebrates death" or involves the occult in any way is banned. This means no Harry Potter, no Halloween, even THE SMURFS were banned. If I read any of these, it opened the door to demons. (For some reason, though, I could read LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia even though there was magic present in both because they were "allegories".)

-I couldn't watch any TV show that showed disrespect to Christianity or one's parents. This meant no Simpsons or South Park (I still watched them both, though, and read HP books).

-No poking fun at hymns and christmas carols.

-Don't take the lord's name in vain.

-No sex outside of marriage.

-Christians can't date or marry people who aren't Christians.

-No mentioning of other religions. xianty is the One True Religion and all others are blasphemous.

-No dark music or anything that can be classified as possibly Satanic. I could listen to secular music, though, including Classic Rock.

-George Bush and all Conservatives are great and Liberals are evil.

 

There might be some more but I forget them.

[Skeptic]

-- Masturbation

-- Catholicism

-- Abortion (including birth control methods that prevented implantation)

-- Comprehensive sex ed (because of course if you teach kids about sex, that will make them want to go out and have it)

-- Divorce (but plenty of people did it anyway)

-- Adultery (but plenty of people did it anyway)

-- Polyamory (considered worse than adultery)

-- Pornography

-- Couples living together without being married (i.e., domestic partnership)

-- Role-playing games (D&D was the big one)

-- Wicca/paganism (equated with Satanism)

-- Other religions in general

-- Horror movies

-- Nudity

-- Learning "too much" about other cultures, languages, or religions

-- Atheism

-- Communism/Socialism (usually associated with atheism)

-- Swearing/profanity

-- Sexual fantasies

-- Drug use

-- Not praying enough

-- Fantasy novels that had any mention of magic that weren't by CS Lewis or Tolkien

-- Being overly materialistic

-- Any action, thought, idea, feeling, etc., that didn't "honor god"

-- Doing anything without putting god first

 

These are the ones that I didn't mention.

[burntwings]

I've got a LONG list, but I'm just going to include my favorites.

 

From my private Christian school

-Reading Harry Potter. Magic is evil.

-Power beads. Anyone remember these? They came out around 2000 and each color stood for a different "power" like luck, happiness, stuff like that. You were supossed to pray for those things instead.

-Pokemon. Because in Japanese, it's pocket monsters. And therefore demons.

-Alcohol. Doesn't matter how old you are, or how responsible you are in your drinking. It's evil.

-Boys weren't allowed to have hair that went past the collar on a collared shirt, couldn't have facial hair (until they were seniors). Girls could have one hole in their ears, but boys couldn't have any piercings. Nobody could have tattoos. And any flip-flops other than Rainbows were against the dress code....that's still one of my favorites

-Homosexuality. They actually expelled one kid for being gay, even though they couldn't prove it, and he hadn't even come out yet. His parents then sent him off to an all boys boarding school as punishment. Ironic?

-Sex. It's only ok between a married man and woman, and should only be used for procreation.

-Skipping church.

-Most secular music. In one chapel, when I was in 7th grade, the lesson was about how evil the Backstreet Boys are. Because they "wanna see you out that door." And some other stuff I don't remember.

-Lying could get you the same punishment as cheating on a test because it was against one of the 10 commandments. Just to test them, I made comments about how much I wanted something of someone else's around teachers all the time. I never got in trouble for it.

 

I think those are the best ones....but I'm sure there's more I can't think of right now.

 

this sounds exactly like my private school!! Even the Backstreet Boys chapel!! Just out of curiosity...you're school isn't in the metro detroit area was it?

 

Haha, nope. More like South Carolina.

[OpheliaGinger]

-Boys weren't allowed to have hair that went past the collar on a collared shirt, couldn't have facial hair (until they were seniors). Girls could have one hole in their ears, but boys couldn't have any piercings. Nobody could have tattoos. And any flip-flops other than Rainbows were against the dress code....that's still one of my favorites

 

At my private school, the boys couldn't even have hair that touched their ears. If one wanted to conform to the rules, you had to have a buzz cut.

 

Strangely enough though, they allowed for the reading of Harry Potter. I'm not sure if they had it in the library but they never got onto one of my teachers for having a set on his desk.