Last summer, I checked out the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church.

Within sects/denominations/religions, there often is a great spectrum. My experience in the Methodist Church exemplifies that: I was a youth coordinator at a LGBTQ-friendly church whose doctrine of "Creation Spirituality" essentially declared that the divine is in everything and thus was accepting of all various beliefs. People at my church could be essentially atheists and view the Bible as a text created by humans with their own personal/cultural flaws and biases. While becoming a youth coordinator, I went to a youth coordinator seminar at a different Methodist church, where they had us join in their worship, which involved people talking in highly evangelical terms, glorifying the blood of Jesus (penal substitution atonement) and stating his unique "only only" specialness in being a vehicle to posthumous salvation and thinking LGBTQ lifestyles were evil.

All in the same denomination. In the same state. Fifteen miles from each other.

So reading the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church's website, one cannot know what one is really getting into. Am I read coded language that they're LGBTQ-friendly (the code term in the Methodist Church is being a "reconciling church")? They are in Yellow Springs, after all. After attending, I'm still not sure. But I am sure of one thing: within the first couple sentences of the sermon, I knew this was not the place for me.

The minister began speaking about the "growing numbers of Christians in China" in glowing terms. Personally, I couldn't give a shit about how many "Christians" there are in China. Not because I don't care about China, but because I think that it doesn't matter how many people self-identify as "Christians" or "Confucians" or "Buddhists". The title one gives oneself is not important to me. I am not on TeamChristian™. I don't believe Christians to be inherently better than other religions. There are great people in all religions. And there are sloppy, lazy, mean-spirited and/or hypocritical people in all religions too.


Another element that is a problem at these Yellow Springs' churches is a lack of childcare. At this particular church, during the summer at least, they don't have any childcare during the services. So you take your children upstairs in the childcare room, let them play, while you can look out the window at the service happening in the chapel with speakers piping in whatever is caught on the microphones. Sort of like watching TV.

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