Could be hot Texas southern Baptist sermons running way too long while we all fan ourselves with paper fans we made from the printed agenda, or maybe it was a lively one on some random church-hopping day with speaking in tongues and prophets translating, or maybe it was one where my uncle said shit that was masked condescension cast towards his kids, or or or. It was definitely NOT one where I “went to the bathroom” but actually went hiking.

I let my college RA bring me along one weekend to a megachurch she attended. The pep rally vibe I can accept as just not my style of worship, but the order of service was short on scripture and long on homilies of questionable theology.

It was right around the release of Star Wars Episode I, and the new pastor thought if he brought modern pop culture references into his sermon, maybe The Youths would sit up and pay attention.

The sermon was a whole thing about “being a Jedi Knight for God” and it was insufferable. I’m not sure time has ever gone by slower. I was twelve and absolutely not won over, I wanted to crawl out of the pew and die.

I was raised religion-free, my mother didn’t push any beliefs on me (one of the few things she did right) so I grew up as a natural atheist. One Easter when I was very young, I don’t remember how young precisely but I was probably 10 or younger, one of our neighbor families offered to take me to church for Mass. I guess they thought they were going to save my soul or something. My mother left the decision up to me. Now, in my mind Easter was bunnies and candy and egg hunts and all that good stuff so hell yes, I wanted to go. I don’t know what I expected but what I definitely didn’t expect was sitting quietly on an uncomfortable bench for (what seemed like to me) four hours while some guy talked at me. If I wasn’t an atheist before that would have sealed the deal.

The power team. Apparently vast amounts of sweat, tearing phone books in half, bending steel rods and blowing up hot water bottles is godly and there were several alter calls.

Then I had to see them at Jr. High the next day to preach about how bad drugs are.

Here’s an article about a visit.

When I was like six or seven years old, my great aunt Ruth stayed over Christmas eve. She was a nun, so because it was important to her, we were going to open all of our Christmas presents after mass.

Mass was almost three hours. I remember this pretty clearly because I had a cheap casio wristwatch and I was timing it. I probably didn’t hear a word of the sermon.

I have clear memories of the pastor at my parents’ church talking about how the gay agenda’s next steps were legalizing bestiality and pedophilia. Probably would’ve been somewhere around 2014-2015. Looking back, it was absolutely the beginning of the end of me having anything to do with religion, so maybe it’s actually the best sermon I ever sat through.

When we were young and first married, my wife and I decided to try a church that we had saw online. The website and name made it seem like it would be alright and more modern thinking. We were wrong.

We pull up and the church building is a double wide trailer, a congregation of about 30 people. The preacher appears to be in his 70s.

He sees that he has guests and singles us out and puts us on the spot to introduce ourselves to whole congregation. He never refers to my wife by her name instead just calling her “Wife”. He prays for us multiple times during the service and bring us up during the sermon. (Still just referring to us as TORFdot0 and wife)

Speaking of the sermon, he begins the sermon talking about the gay democrat agenda and how the gays are ruining God’s institution of marriage and how it will soon be illegal to be married to a woman. This gets an audible sigh from the ladies in the front row.

He also preached to cherish our Bible before the black socialist devil in the white house takes them from us.

He compared the Bible to an old hound dog and started barking for going on two minutes. It’s like a dog because it warns us of things to come.

After what seems like an eternity of a sermon, he invites the kids up to the alter for some “Hallelujah” Candy (it’s the Sunday before Halloween). One child takes a second handful of candy and the elderly pastor chastises him and then bends him over his knee and starts spanking him in front of the congregation.

Needless to say we did not give that church a second visit.

I’ve blanked a lot out of my memory but I do remember one particularly awkward time where the pastor spent way too long explaining how god designed the asshole and its not for fucking.

When I was a freshman in college, I let this youth group convince me to visit their weird church. The “pastor” was a young guy who spent the entire sermon talking about how he squandered his time in college before eventually dropping out. Fortunately, the old pastor took pity on him and gave him a job as an assistant—running errands, cleaning, etc. Then one day the old pastor died, so our hero basically just took over since no one else wanted to.

When it was done he tried to sell us bags of stale coffee.

I threw up in one once. I actually don’t recall anything any worse than what it usually was. I actually went further into the evangelical baptist rabbit hole as my family drifted a bit from it, but that would reverse and end with me being an atheist-leaning agnostic.

I do remember Sunday school teachers being angry that I was allowed to have D&D books and games. In a different church when I was in middle or high school, I quoted the movie name “Oh God you Devil” and my buddy whose family took me to church slapped me. That was a good time. /s

There was the one where the guy said “feminism is the worst thing that has ever happened to women.”

The one where the guy said “[Jesus] rolled away the stone and crawled out of his tomb fully healed even though his legs were broken” was pretty interesting giving the blatant blasphemy of it all. He has to apologize next week.

I went to a wedding, my girlfriend’s friend was getting married.

For context I’m a brown skinned native American man and my girlfriend was a white girl.

The pastor of the wedding had never met the people he was marrying and assumed that I was the groom.

I told him I wasn’t and he moved on.

I thought that was the end of it.

Queue the pre-wedding little religious ceremony thing and the same pastor who had met me assuming I was the groom and shook my hand said that he believed that with the power of Christ any relationship can work, even ones between people of different races.

He looked directly at me when he said it.

I was the only non-white person at the wedding. I’ve never wanted to beat an old man’s ass before. I didn’t know I had that urge within me.

And now I know.

Not a church service, but I attended a church wedding.

Pastor gave a sermon as is tradition during a church wedding. Every minute or so, he somehow managed to work in “and since you are in a place of God, you should not disrespect the bride and groom or our worshippers by using your phones”.

Bitch, I’m here to support my friend who’s getting married, not your church or your worshippers. I know for a fact that my friend chose to get married in the church because it’s cheaper, not because she’s super religious. Also I’m agnostic and haven’t read the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say “thou shalt not use mobile phones in churches”.

I very pointedly had my phone out for his entire sermon out of spite

When i was six i had to sit in my own poop for an hour long sermon because nobody would let me get up to go. Course they also had to sit in it with no reaction heh