Christ with a cruller: Starter church plans coffeehouse that would double as a place of worship on Hyde Park Avenue in Jamaica Plain

And proud of it!

..."[I]ntellectual, educated, liberal and Godless"!

Can you believe they let me register to vote down here? ;)

There is this persistent misperception among evangelical communities that Atheists are simply ignorant of God, Jesus, the Gospel. That's the only possible explanation that they can see for anyone not believing their "good news" - just haven't been proselytized enough!

It is almost like their drugs are so yummy and addictive to them that they cannot possibly fathom anyone just saying no to them.

Maybe this coffeehouse experiment will mean that some of them will learn that many if not most atheists are atheists because they know all about their theology - and have rejected it. Some people enjoy engaging with people like this to learn more about them, while still not buying it. That isn't a bad thing, just not the thing they are expecting.

FWIW, I dearly love the Well Coffeehouse and will continue to go there. Very friendly, welcoming, and I am happy to support their community-building and service missions.

but your metre belongs in Purgatory.

…. Unitarians are not uniform in their beliefs. At least that’s what the Unitarians I know tell me. The Unitarian Universalists seem to be the most open minded. Apparently they accept all beliefs among the members of their congregations, including non belief.
I went to a service at King’s Chapel some years ago, which from my understanding, is a more conservative congregation that doesn’t or didn’t at the time allow gay clergy. For all I could tell, I was attending a high church Anglican service. The preacher in fancy robes and churchy music. Prayers. An altar. The person I went with was from a progressive congregation that focused mainly on humanitarian works and was turned off by the formality.

I worked at a brain injury rehab in Lynn in 2003-2004. The program was locked, but was legally administered as a nursing home rather than a psychiatric hospital. Folks who had demonstrated consistent safety skills could participate in outings with and without staff, and independently travel to job training outside of the facility. Folks who were massive wanderers or disoriented could go on less frequent outings with higher staffing. Folks who had done unsafe or hugely disruptive things any time recently couldn't go anywhere.

Except, because this country loves protecting religion, we couldn't say no to religious folks coming into the building and providing programming, nor to religious folks taking folks out to their house of worship. It didn't really faze me when it was just normal chaplains coming in.

So a group that was planting churches in the area, also with very similar (maybe the same group?) rhetoric about this area being godless started a "church" in Lynn. They immediately scoped out our facility as having vulnerable people with poor judgment who would give anything to be allowed out of the place or have exciting visitors. So they came in all the time, bringing food, gifts, and setting up fundie church services. And they convinced a handful of people who had never previously been evangelical Christians to be interested in their church. They got the people to say, yes, they'd love to go to church that Sunday. And we were told we couldn't deny people leaving if it was with their clergy. Mind you, the normal clergy only 1) visited people who expressed interest in seeing someone of that faith and 2) completely deferred to us as to whether someone was safe to go out with them, and asked to have staff accompany people who weren't really safe to go out if they were taking them for a funeral or similar. So we decided that rather than have a lawsuit on our hands when someone ran off or decked someone at this "church," we would take them on our van with ample staff. I was generally the clinician working Sundays, so I would have to go with a couple of staff and our group of residents to sit in this place and listen to their horrible worship music while having blatantly homophobic stuff preached at me. #murica

I didn't realize alliteration is the anti-christ

Writing as a Christian who knows that there is an undercurrent of distain for Christianity amongst commenters here (not Adam, who isn’t), I found the headline to be both cute and informative.

I guess any mention of Christ that doesn't end with "Amen" is hateful.

I’ve looked closely at the many variations and formulations of Christianity, the idea of a Christ, the history, the teleological and eschatological aspects of a religion where their lies a claim that Jesus of Nazareth became Divine.

Fantastic stories, beautiful stories, an embarrassment of riches of stories. That includes many horror stories and stories of terrorism.

But I’ve never found a story that talks about God laughing. Plenty of stories of an angry god, of sentimental god, but never down to Earth stories of that show us the Divine had a sense of humor.

Since all of these stories as made by human beings I have to conclude that the story makers, ancient and modern, were always afraid of the idea of Divinity with a sense of humor. Of Divinity that does not take itself too seriously.

What modern people can do to revive religions that have become massive weights pulling folks into narrow lanes of obedience and submission is to give to God the humor that God needs.

And please when using the term anti-Christianity the tell is in the manipulative whiny breath that expresses the ‘My way or the Hellway” belief system.

…wait until you hear what some people who proclaim to be Christian are saying!

Why is your public agent a Church? I realize that Evangelical Christians (and many evangelicals of various religions are able to justify lying since their actions are for "god."

Notice the page from the Public Church website that references "And, once Public Coffee is in operation there will be opportunities to volunteer there, too!"

Do you even live in Boston? Calling Fenway another city?