About Ex-Minister Organization
Welcome to the website, I'm glad that you're visiting!
A Brief Introduction:
Hello, Ex-Minister was started a few years after leaving the ministry. My ministry credentials are as follows: 1) a born again Christian for 23 years 2) in 1990, was ordained as a Baptist minister 3) graduated from Tennessee Temple University majoring in Pastoral Studies 4) was on church staffs in Tennessee and California.
One leaving the ministry loses a great platform to do great things. The United Negro College Fund had a great tagline, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste"...I feel that a trained minister's education is a terrible thing to waste. Most ministers went into it to accomplish something good for society. Ex-Minister seeks to harness that spirit of a true minister and organize for a religion friendly secularism that doesn't now exist.
Ex-Minister HAS NEVER been apart of the atheist groups. My personal belief is that yes, there is a God (deism...famous deists in history have been Jefferson, Einstein, Franklin, Washington). Ex-Minister HAS NEVER been apart of organized Deism either, due to their dismissive attitude towards Christianity.
If you are a religious person reading this, you might be shocked to discover that those leaving the faith have no other alternative to destructive secularism...the only organizations "out there" are at war with religion and get funded by the leftish political positions, largely Fabian socialist. They do so because they get paid and organize around hatred of religion as a recruitment tool. I'd characterize these groups as having a lot of passion but otherwise misguided due to not having a good understanding of economics and a desire for an easier life that socialism promises.
People who have rejected dogmatic religion, and retained only a residuum of religious sentimentalism, find a special field in the discussion of the rights of the poor and the duties of the rich. We have denunciations of banks, corporations, and monopolies, which denunciations encourage only helpless rage and animosity, because they are not controlled by any definitions or limitations, or by any distinctions between what is indispensably necessary and what is abuse, between what is established in the order of nature and what is legislative error.
William Sumner, What
Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Sumner was a Mont Pelerin Society member and a social scientist at Yale. He held the nation's first sociology professorship. Sumner alerted the world, but Conservatives missed his warnings a 134 years ago. If you want to know why those leaving religion are the way that they
are, Sumner "summed it up." I think that Conservatives need to pay attention and stop conceding those leaving religion over to the left.
I was
one of the earlier post-Christian skeptic writers before the New
Atheist’s barged in with their religion dismissive attitude. Frankly,
I despise atheism’s muscle and attempts to set the tone on how the
rest of us should view religion. Confession here, I like religion and am
convinced that our literal criticism of the Bible doesn’t justify the
destruction of religion. I'm cognizant of the fact that religion is a
foundational aspect of advanced society. Religion doesn’t need to be destroyed, it
needs to re-focus and get better without the distractions from the
atheists!
Having
spent a few years in the post-Soviet Union (Latvia) observant of a
society that had essentially dismissed God for a 50-year period opened
my post-Christian eyes. I somewhat feel like the George Bailey character
(James Stewart) in “It’s a Wonderful Life” having gained the
perspective of seeing what life would be like if they (religion in this
case) wasn’t around.
This world’s greatest problems are of a spiritual nature (attitudes of the heart). Secularism has great promise in many venues but it isn’t suited to address the problems that religion and the clergy engage in daily.
I’d
like to work full-time upon the subject matter expressed upon this
website. Can a loving, nurturing secular perspective attract necessary
funding, or does it only go towards those taking a destructive path?
I’ve staked a positive dualistic (mutual secular/religious)
non-hostile disposition for those in society that have left religious
practice behind. Ideologically, I believe Ex-Minister’s
position should be the prevailing view of secular society!
Ex-Minister assists clerics, seeking to utilize their talents within society to build bridges and find peaceful solutions to problems exacerbated by secular or religious strife.
Questions and Answers
Q:
If you like religion so much, why be critical? Seems like your
positing a hypocritical stance, why not shut things down for the good
of religion?
A:
Why take a negative view of criticism? Every decent Bible school
teaches Biblical criticism in its Hermeneutics classes. Those that
are ineffective are likely to produce fundamentalists; those that
teach it well are likely to produce common good difference makers in
society.
Religion
has its own paradox; we call it fundamentalism. Virtually no one
objects to a good citizen whose belief in God makes them a better
person. However, the “wrapped too tightly” crusader invokes consternation
to those around him. Simply put, no fundamentalists – no
Ex-minister.
What
is true in love is also applicable with religion; the group 38
Special expressed it well in the lyrics of its hit single “Hold on
Loosely.”
“Hold
on loosely…but don’t let go….if you cling too tight
babe…your gonna lose control”
The
problem with religion & skepticism is that some cling too
tightly to it and become truth crusaders. Rather than being a good
thing, it denigrates into a belligerent destructive force that
invites a never-ending circle of retaliation. Religion isn’t the
problem; Fundamentalism (skeptical and religious versions) is what ails
us.
While
you didn’t ask me, someone needs to be critical of skepticism as
well or else
they will continue to wreak unfettered
havoc upon religion. Someone within skepticism needs to “have the
back” of good religion and do some of their “dirty work” for
pragmatic, common good reasons.
Q: What do I
consider to be the most important issue we face and how do we resolve it?
