Church for Non-Believers

See the post above yours.

 

Best thing I have ever heard on this subject.

 

Productive toward what?

 

Thanks to everyone for thoughtful replies. I think we're going to go this summer after doing some more research about where to attend first. I'm leaning toward the United Church. I will say from the pictures online it appears that we will be the only people present without white hair, so I suspect we'll receive some attention.

I have a question about communion. I get the idea that we shouldn't take it, but do you just stay seated when everyone else goes up? It's not considered rude?

That might be a really dumb question. Sorry. I'm starting with as little knowledge as possible for an adult to have here. I don't even know what communion is, exactly. I know it's when you get the cracker and the wine, but I don't really know what it's supposed to do for the people who take it.

 

You have misread me. I don't believe that we carry a soul that looks like a ghost and departs our body and goes to Heaven when we die. I believe we have a real part of ourselves that goes beyond the purely physical, and it can be bolstered and wounded just like our bodies. I use "soul" the way other people would use "conscience," I guess. It helps me to think of that as a more tangible vessel.

Hope that's okay with you and I can still be a journalist.

 

Yep, just stay seated. Not a stupid question; not at all considered rude.

 

In Catholicism, you are actually not supposed to take communion without having gone to confession, either. So, you might not be the only ones abstaining, so don't worry about that.

Communion is supposed to be the accepting and receiving of the body and blood of Christ, a re-enactment and a celebration of the Last Supper, if you will.

 

If the church gets up to take communion, then you'd stay seated. If it's the kind of church where everyone takes it at once - in their seat, with a little cup of juice and the cracker/bread, then you don't take one.

And it's not a dumb question. Christianity has far too many "traditions," rules, liturgical thingys you won't find in the Bible. Communion is in the Bible, though, and it's one of the things nearly every church does with regularity.

 

If you are at a United Church in Canada you would be welcome to take communion. It's not a sacrament like in the Catholic Church ... it's more about a symbolic Last Supper and fellowship with the other church goers. They really are a very welcoming place.

Edited to add: Communion in the United Church is not a wafer, just a piece of bread (often with rice crackers available for those who can't eat wheat).

 

Maybe I did it wrong, but growing up semi-Catholic I did not consider communion to be the literal body and blood of Jesus. That was patently preposterous.

The last time I took communion, more than 30 years ago, it had been a while. The priest put the wafer on my tongue, The body of Christ. And instead of saying Amen, I said Thank you. Yeah, of the hundreds and hundreds of times I took communion, that's the only one I remember. It's not exactly up there with the memory of the first time I had sex, but, still.

In Catholic school in eighth grade, we had the priest put the wafer in our hands because fuck anybody but our girlfriends being that close to our tongues.

 

A sacrament can be symbolic. It doesn’t have to be Transubstantiation to be a Sacrament

 

When I was 10 we went to Northern Ireland to visit family. On Sunday we went to church with the very Catholic relatives -- not something I had experienced. When everyone got up to take communion I didn't understand why they got juice and cookies and I had to just sit there.

(On a side note, 1977 was a hell of a time to spend a week in Derry. I wish I was old enough to better understand it then but it probably would have scared the bejeezus out of me.)