It has been a interesting journey personally from the Universe/Dinosaur/Geology loving naïve 14 year old gobbling up Plain Truth to a personal view that if you can't really show it then you can't really know it. Over time I have come to believe that my former perspectives were simply pious convictions based on marginal information. In hindsight I repressed my natural curiosities about the world and origins of everything from where did humans really come from to where did the Universe itself come from or more accurately how did it come about, for my own restrictive religious faith beliefs.
It's also been an informative and interesting experience writing on Banned over the years now finding a few friends but mostly learning that I have no right to quote the Bible because I question it and that I'd think differently when thrown into the Lake of Fire. I guess I'll wait and see.
As a WCG Pastor getting shuffled around over 28 years to 14 different congregations in 5 states and programming myself and family for difficulties down the road and going through the near daily stress of WCG drama and trauma, it's no wonder I am still here.
While it is of no value to anyone else, I have come to recognize that in personality and perspectives I have most of the characteristics of an Empath and a HSP or Highly Sensitive Person. It's probably the traits that drew me to ministry in the first place and while one did not go to Ambassador to "become a minister," I did or I would not have gone. I chose Ambassador over Robert's Wesleyan College in NY, which was a Methodist Seminary. Naïve to think that Ambassador was a seminary but the college prospectus I read never having no real background in WCG seemed legit and normal for a seminary, I thought. (It was not true however)
I pastored between 1972 and 1998 and those years were nothing but one WCG conflict and disaster after the next. Not exactly what I signed up for. It was made up of:
Sent to Minneapolis under Keith Thomas. I was told it was the premier assignment for me being top of my class etc and "Dennis for you, the sky is the limit" which struck me as an odd thing to say because I had read "he that is 'greatest' among you, let him be your servant" even when a Presbyterian kid.
Garner Ted booted by HWA from the Church 1972
GTA returning in 1972 '73
"East Coast Rebellion" 1974 I was in the thick of it working for the Regional Director in Chicago
Fired by association
Rehired by request
(Blew my chance to move on when still young)
Move to Findlay Ohio, (Replaced by Ron Weinland) Kentucky, New York, South Carolina (Followed Gerald Weston)
1979 Church Goes into Receivership
Bunch of Church Bullshit
HWA Dies and the Tkach years begin
Bunch of Bullshit
Depression and Anxiety increase,
Greenville SC as last Church I pastored proved to be the most divisive group I ever got stuck with. I replaced Gerald Weston. I think when I refused to go to what I considered the Happy Slappy Promise Keepers Million Man Cult Expo and all the elders did as per Tkach suggestions , that was the beginning of the back stabbing, and experience I was not used to. I also let most of the people Gerald Weston bounced out of WCG because they wanted to come back and that went over like a lead balloon with his loyalists who were in touch with him constantly.
Depression and Anxiety increase and I spent a week in a Charter Hospital getting my head together. In hindsight I was depressed as function of repressed anger that I felt was either something I had no right to express or the price for doing so would be too high at the time. Told by Victor Kubik when he got in to see me and not on my list to see me, "We think you are just hiding here."
Borderline and somewhat accidental DUI and spent night in a SC jail which scared the Hell into me being an HSP etc. A depression and anxiety thing no doubt.
(Whew...felt good to get that one out there! Never told Church Administration. lol)
Terminated because my church had been reduced by the Tkach's adventure in wheel reinvention from 450 to 95 and then shortly after, 16. Every congregation I ever built in sincerity no longer exists now of course.
Found a kindred spirit to share my thoughts, beliefs and fears with
Bunch of stuff and divorce
(My fault not hers)
Therapeutic Massage School which was one of the best decisions I had made in the previous 28 years.
Bunch of relationship stuff
Moved to Oregon hating South Carolina for a few dozen reasons
Entering year 70 content to just be myself , enjoy my successful practice in the Willamette Valley not missing the irony of that.
And an atheist....
"As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population."
Sam Harris
This finding comes as no surprise. Social science has long revealed high rates of secularphobia – the irrational dislike, distrust, fear, or hatred of nonreligious people – within American society. For example, a study by Penny Edgell of the University of Minnesota, from back in 2006, found that atheists come in last place when Americans are asked to rank members of certain racial, ethnic, or religious groups as potential spouses for their kids. And a Gallup poll from 2012 found that 43 pecent of Americans said that they would not vote for an atheist for president, putting atheists in last/worst place, behind Muslims (40 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a Muslim for president), homosexuals (30 percent wouldn’t), Mormons (18 percent wouldn’t), Latinos (7 percent wouldn’t), Jews (6 percent wouldn’t), Catholics (5 percent wouldn’t), women (5 percent wouldn’t) and African Americans (4 percent wouldn’t).
Additionally, psychology professor Adrian Furnham found that people give lower priority to patients with atheist or agnostic views than to Christian patients when asked to rank them on a waiting list to receive a kidney, and legal scholar Eugene Volokh has documented the degree to which atheist parents have been denied custody rights in the wake of a divorce.
Consider further evidence of secularphobia in America: It is illegal for an atheist to hold public office in seven states; atheists aren’t allowed in the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars; Humanist chaplains are barred from serving in our nation’s military; charities regularly reject donations that are offered by secularist organizations. And while secular Americans have never faced the kind of prejudice, hostility, and violence experienced by Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, or homosexuals, there is still no question that atheists, agnostics, secularists, and others who eschew religion are widely disliked.
What gives?
There is no single, universal cause of secularphobia, and the dislike of non-religious people has varying sources in different societies and at different times in history; what caused people to hate the secular in Jerusalem in 300 B.C.E. or in Tegucigalpa in 1799 is certainly different from what causes people to dislike the secular in Rhode Island today.
That said, we can account for the current level of secularphobia in the US by considering these four factors:
1. Americans equate a lack of religiosity in general – or atheism specifically – with immorality.
2. Americans equate a lack of religiosity in general – or atheism specifically – with being un-American and/or unpatriotic.
3. There is no stigma concerning the expressed dislike of the non-religious. While there is a stigma (to varying degrees, depending on one’s social milieu) attached to being racist, or anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic, or homophobic – there has never existed a social or cultural backlash against people who openly express disdain for secular folks. So people simply feel much more comfortable expressing their dislike for atheists than, say, Latinas/os or women.
4. Insecurity on the part of the religious. Faith – believing claims without sufficient evidence, or claiming to know things that you don’t or can’t know – is an increasingly shaky endeavor. And in order for religious faith to survive, it requires a lot of social support: the more people who share it, the easier it is to maintain and reproduce. Thus, anyone who rejects the tenets of your faith, or calls them in to question, is a threat. Atheists lack a faith in God, and thus theists are particularly threatened by the growing presence of such humans, as they call into question the very thing that is ever so shaky to begin with: religious faith.
