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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]You spent 9 years attending a church and don’t know what kind of church it was?[/b] [/quote]

Good evidence of trolling...[/quote]

+1[/quote]

Not really, there are "nondenominational" community churches -- often  they are fundamentalist (strict adherence to the Bible), but not always and they don't have the same set of rules that a denominational church (e.g., pentecostal, Baptist) would have.[/quote]

[b]Right, but it’s ridiculous to claim you attended a church for 9 years and don’t know what church you attended.[/b]

[/quote]

That's complete B.S. Amongst Protestants, there are a gazillion different flavors. I grew up ALC Lutheran (which later was part of the merger that became the current ELCA) and also was kind of cornered into spending equal amount of time at an Assembly of God church (playing piano for friends of my family who had changed churches, formed a gospel singing group, and needed an accompaniest). Can't say I'm an expert on all the fine points of doctrine, but at the time I would characterize the Assembly as a pentacostal church in that the focus was on the "gifts of the spirit". I think there were seven, but the only ones I remember are speaking in tongues and something that caused you to fall unconscious on the floor. Those events were routine and to my 14 year old self absolutely terrifying. Evangelizing I think has more to do with prosyletizing--as in the disciples (well, Paul, really) going out and converting people.

Doctrinal disagreements are legion--the church my great grandparents belonged to, a Norwegian Lutheran church, split in the early 1900s over baptism by immersion vs. sprinkling; infant vs. adult baptism is another disputed area. Among Lutherans (leaving the Missouri Synod aside, which did not join the ELCA and firmly rejects ecumenicalism--defrocked a pastor who participated in an interfaith service after 9-11) there are "free" Lutheran churches which reject the ELCA (too liberal) and probably have some kind of organization of their own--traditionally, churches are connected with seminaries who supply their pastors. These days, of course, you have people who start their own churches, some of which become megachurches.

It's perfectly understandable that someone who attended as a teen wouldn't understand all the religious and doctrinal politics that go on, especially if the message was that the church (like many churches) insisted it was the only one based on the Bible.

As an adult, once I stopped being terrified of dying and going to hell in my sleep if I did not pray, and started learning more about other religions and the fact that they, too, have sacred texts, stories of miracles, and so on, I caught on that the idea of one religion having a monopoly is absurd. I still feel a kinship with the creeds, the hymns, and the ritual of the church I was raised in (could never figure out what the ritual at the Assembly was, just that there was no end to their services) and I attend a UU church.

OP, you do not HAVE to belong to a faith or attend a church. . . or synagogue, or temple, or mosque. The Dalai Lama was once reported to have said he felt Westerners raised in the Christian faith should likely stick to that as opposed to seeking out Eastern religions as a kind of cultural authenticity thing--meaning also that neither did his own religion have a monopoly. Feel free to explore different religions, though, and considering attending services at various centers of faith.

As for hypocrites, they come in all faiths as well as none.

As for reading the Bible, language and translation are always going to affect how it reads; even "literal" translations are based on the understanding of what the original words meant at the time they were written down (after being passed along orally for decades or even millennia). [/quote]

There are a bazillion churches, but attending one for 9 years and not knowing the name of it and the denomination is absolute trollery.[/quote]

Or maybe the troll is the one who continuously accuses someone of being a troll.   OP may have reasons for not giving the "Name" - It was easy enough to get the idea of what kind of church was being described and others have since commented on having similar experiences.[/quote]

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