Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00394)

Reminds of some things in Dan Brown's Da 
Vinci Code which, although it's fiction ...

kpauljohnson wrote:
> Hey, 
> I went to church yesterday, Chesapeake Avenue Methodist in which I 
> was baptized 40 years ago. Had been to Christmas and Easter 
> services for years and taken communion. But now they have a new 
> minister, and instead of making broad welcoming invitations to 
> everyone to share in a sacrament, he specifies only those who accept 
> Jesus as their personal savior to come.
>
> So I sat there while the whole pew climbed over me, feeling myself a 
> rock in a stream of consensus. But this new preacher had talked 
> about Satan and Jews in ways that scared me, and it was as if from 
> being Unitarian-flavored this Methodist Church had gone Southern 
> Baptist.
>
> The thought occurs to me that communion being open or closed to 
> those who don't follow a party line is metaphoric of the positive 
> and negative aspects of Christian attitudes toward others.