...so I regularly attend/visit both catholic protestant & orthodox churches around california; and of course in the catholic church, the priest is supposed to be unmarried & celibate, and this is honored & respected by the parishioners; in contrast in most protestant churches, the pastor is almost always married with children and they sometimes go so far as to look suspiciously on unmarried people, or at least enjoy championing themselves & pat themselves on the back as "married with children." And that's fine...it's a good tension between catholic & protestant as long as one or the other doesn't cross the line and actually start believing their own superiority BS. Well, the pastor at his protestant church was starting a new series on "winners/losers" , and he began his sermon by saying something to the extent of "society says..." and he listed a bunch of different groups and stereotypes of various sorts that society labels as "losers" including "unmarried without children" as one of these negative stereotypes. Hmm, I was thinking to myself. Did I miss something? I'm not married & don't have children, but have never felt that society did this. Maybe the church does this, but secular society, they could care less. Actually, what he was doing was positioning himself as "superior" because he, himself, was married with children. Nobody else in the church at the moment , I don't believe, was thinking that either society nor themselves looked negatively on unmarried people without children. And that was about all I could take. I stood up and left. Preacher's can use their pulpit for good or bad. There's so many little games they can play , and usually get away with it. But it's wrong. We need to demand and expect the best from our pastors. Don't play political games from the pulpit. If you need to be married because you can't handle being celibate, don't play "switcharoo" on us from the pulpit. Be glad that you have a wife and kids. Be thankful. Don't start acting as if it is a superior position , as if you have done something more noble than those who remain celibate.
and so we pray for this pastor who seems to be insecure about being married with children and is trying to use this pulpit to make others feel insecure for not being married with children. People shouldn't be marginalized like this in the church. Of course, his sermon was to go on and say that people who are not married with children are actually winners, but we all get the tricky point at the very beginning. Sleazy.
