There is one joy we did not lose during the pandemic days of our masked and distanced existence. That joy came from our pets! We saw them on Zoom meetings, dozing in the background or jumping on laps and enjoying their moments of fame. In most cases, our animal companions were spared of COVID and […]
Saturday, May 22, representatives of at least fourteen Vermont churches attended a virtual seminar on the subject of Re-Launching as a Hybrid Church. Three volunteers – Eleanor Guare, Rosann Hickey and Hal Gray – joined Rev. Sunday-Winters to learn how our church might emerge stronger after the isolation of COVID-19. Rev. Paul Nickerson of Beverly, […]
“Hal, do you pick the hymns? Does Ed? How does it work? Do you just flip through the hymnal and pick?” I have been asked this several times during our year of virtual services, and I am happy to pull back the curtain on hymn selection. It’s a process. It begins with Ed’s planned scripture […]
As everyone who owns a home is aware, upkeep is never-ending, and thanks to our alert and hard-working Building Committee (Judy Dunnan, Chair, Mike Coffey, Andy Dales and Ken Johnston) our church building, Fellowship Hall and parsonage are being well cared-for in spite of the fact that Covid kept most of us away from our […]
Bronwyn has retired from her role as church secretary, and we pay tribute to her for more than her administrative skills, which were many: managing the office, publishing the worship bulletin and newsletter, keeping up with the comings and goings of the committees and of course, supporting the pastor! We thank her for her dedicated […]
Renowned for her Monday morning “community donuts” handed out to grateful passers-by in Hardwick, Elizabeth Rossano has extended her heart and hands to us. A recent article in the Hardwick Gazette https://hardwickgazette.com/?s=Elizabeth+Rossano tells of her heartwarming story. Recently, she and her husband Griffin made over 120 donuts in our church kitchen and those warm (crusty […]
The Greensboro United Church of Christ is bursting with song. The music of the East Coast Inspirational Singers brings folks to their feet and up to the altar, swinging and clapping to Oh Happy Day. Perhaps this jolt of inspiration was meant to help us through the remaining days of 2020. Many of these days […]
Did you ever think that going to a church supper would mean driving by the church and having someone hand you a quiche to be eaten at home? When did you first imagine that you could experience the sights and sounds of worship at Greensboro United Church of Christ while viewing your computer? Would you […]
In 2015, the members of Greensboro United Church of Christ entered an Open and Affirming Covenant. They did so two years before I came to serve as their pastor. That they had done it was one of the reasons that made me want to be their pastor. After much prayer, discussion, and believing that the […]
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation — a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”
The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”