the religious services page

[calimac]

I spent last night and part of this morning using the many resources of the web to undertake one of my more delicate tasks for Mythcon this weekend: compiling a list of local religious services.

It's been customary at Mythcons for one or another enthusiastic Protestant to lead a "mere Christian" non-denominational service in some quiet corner on Sunday morning. The problem is that, though the authors we celebrate in the Mythopoeic Society were Christian, the Society itself is emphatically non-sectarian and neutral on religious issues, so it gets up some people's noses if we list it in the program book. It looks as if we're sponsoring it.

So here's what we do. First, we ask our Scholar Guest of Honor, who happens to be a Jesuit priest, if he'll conduct a mass. I know offhand of four seriously practicing Catholics who'll attend Mythcon - I've driven most of them to masses off-site from Mythcons in various cities in past years, as I am 1) geographically enabled, 2) usually in possession of a car, 3) married to one of the Catholics - and they'll go (if they wake up in time, because this is going to be early).

Second, we list these two events, not in the program book, but on a separate sheet to be included in the membership packet.

Third, we fill out the sheet with a list of religious services off-site. I volunteer to compile this. Our chairman (active in his Presbyterian church, and a big fan of the Jesuit's scholarship) tells me to be as inclusive and wide-ranging as possible. Include the Buddhists, he says.

Oh boy, do I. Berkeley is a thriving religious city. By the time I'm done, I have four varieties of Buddhist, two Hindu, one Muslim (yes, there's a mosque in Berkeley: it's only three blocks away from our site), five Jewish (including both my own variety and one I wouldn't walk into on a bet), and an uncountable number (all right, 26) and variety of Christians, including such outliers as the Mormons and the Quakers as well as the 7th-day Adventists and the Christian Scientists. I don't even know what all these things are. What does "Methodist Episcopal" mean, anyway? Is it Methodist or is it Episcopal? It doesn't matter; we also have both Methodist and Episcopal each straight-up. And every one of these is within the city limits, though I've been selective: usually only one per denomination, and focusing on those nearby.

Some of these churches have straightforward web sites. Others list everything except the time of their services. Some don't have services. The Buddhist temple (that's a fifth Buddhist group) and the campus Hillel (sixth Jewish) are closed for the summer. One church's website has been hijacked by Russian spammers; I don't list it. The LDS is highly centralized: individual stakes don't have their own websites, and though you can get a list of temples on the Church's main website, because they're tourist attractions, you have to get an account and sign in to access the list of stakes. I get its information from a general online church directory instead.

And if all this riot of variety gets up the noses of any devouts who favor listing religious services so long as it's not, you know, Those People, then so be it.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I think Methodist Episcopal is a name that reflects the history. The Methodists started out as a dissident movement within the Church of England, or, as it's called hereabouts, the Episcopalian Church. So they were the Methodist (branch of the) Episcopal Church. That is, historically, all Methodists are Methodist Episcopal. But when they parted ways with the C of E, some kept the word "episcopal" and some didn't.

Wikipedia says that the Methodist Episcopal Church is the largest Methodist denomination in the United States and is part of the United Methodist Church.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

There is also a traditionally-African American denomination known as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's the one. Fortunately I put "African" in the listing, because I didn't realize it was part of the denominational name. The other Methodist church says it's United Methodist. This stuff can be tricky if you don't know it, and a lot of the depths of Christian sect distinction are a mystery to me. Terms like "Presbyterian" and "Episcopalian" sound to me like exotic foreign words.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I can tell the Anglican Communion churches, including the Episcopal church, and the Lutherans from the others, but I would have to do some research to say anything intelligent about the differences among the various Protestant churches, and I have to stop and think about the meaning of evangelical in that context, as well. Oh wait - I'd have to look up evangelical. I have a vague sense of the degree of liberalness among them - the United Church of Christ is typically quite liberal, for example.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I do not have that sense of the social connotations of particular denominations at all, and I find it very hard to pick up, because everyone assumes you already know it. I was particularly started the first time I heard Episcopalians described as liberal, because when I hear the word Episcopalian, I think of Poppy Bush, not the world's foremost liberal.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I ran into this when I worked for Sociological Abstracts, decades ago. Sociologists used to talk about the "EPC" churches—Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist—and contrast them, especially, with the Baptists. The difference is not one of "liberalism" in the ordinary political sense: It's about, at root, how literally the denomination takes its scriptures. There is, at present, a statistical association between scriptural literalism and political conservatism in the United States, but "liberal" means something more about intellectual interpretation.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It was clear from context that the Episcopalians were deemed as being liberal in ways that Mr Bush is probably not, even if they weren't political in the narrow sense, though many of them were - ordaining women, pro same-sex marriage, liberal sense of economic and social justice.