It’s weird to me that nonbelievers consistently seem convinced that the discovery of alien life would be some earth shattering revelation that would break the minds of Christians. We already believe in angels and demons, why would alien life be so flabbergasting?
My only deal, I don't think I've ever gotten a answer on, but also haven't looked would be.
In the different "Marvel" worlds where someone like Thor shows up how does one that doesn't go with the Norse pantheon as anything but a myth deal.
And what are the atheists™ gonna be doing when he's out tossing his hammer round, not like they can deny the existence of god(s) now can they.
Aliens are nothing tho, Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent creator obviously there's gonna be more out there.
I actually pondered the idea at one point of "What if the greeks and the norse had interactions with angels and demons and labeled them as gods and goddesses etc, and that's how we ended up with the different pantheons. But because they were not understood to be beings second only to god himself, "What" they were was misunderstood.
Not saying it's a perfect idea, but it's certainly AN idea.
Julie Bigler was baptized, had her confirmation and got married at Salem United Church of Christ in Columbia.
Julie Bigler was baptized, had her confirmation and got married at Salem United Church of Christ in Columbia.
Bigler, 62, has attended the church all her life, along with her sister Hilary Smith, 55.
But soon, the sisters will have to worship elsewhere. The Historic Salem UCC at 324 Walnut St. will close its doors after 220 years later this month due to declining membership and attendance.
“We know we can worship God anywhere, but not worshipping at Salem will be a big change,” Bigler said. “It will leave a void in our heart.”
The sisters are just two of the thousands of congregants who have worshipped at what is said to be the oldest church in Columbia — also known as “Mother Church” — having been started by German immigrants just after the turn of the 19th century on land donated by one of the town’s founders.
Friends of the church and its community are invited to attend an alumni homecoming event Sunday and its final service May 24.
The Rev. Mark Harris, the church’s pastor, has led the flock for the past nine years and lives in a parsonage next to the church with his family.
Currently, the congregation — the “congregational polity” — owns all of the church property. The bylaws dictate that the historic brick church and the parsonage, which is attached to the church, will transfer to the Keystone Conference UCC after it closes, Harris said. They will decide next steps for the building, like selling it to an interested party or passing it along to a nonprofit.
Harris says that the congregation is welcome to join the Trinity Reformed United Church of Christ in Mountville, at 450 W. Main St., about 10 minutes away, and make “one healthy church.”
Bigler has met with people from Trinity and said “they seem like a friendly bunch.”
“I’ll miss the people the most, but maybe not if they come to Trinity,” Smith said.
CLOSING EVENTS
Sunday, May 17: Past and present congregants and friends of Salem UCC are invited to an alumni homecoming at the church. The Sunday service will kick things off at 10:15 a.m. followed by refreshments and fellowship. Guests can browse historical documents and photos, parish records — including those written in flowing German script — and local family histories to learn about the history of the church.
Sunday, May 24: The Rev. Mark Harris will conduct a celebratory closing service. It is Pentecost Sunday, which, fittingly, symbolizes new beginnings.
Declining attendance
Harris said church attendance has been in decline for several years nationally, with the exception of a resurgence in the Catholic church. Though a recent Hartford Institute for Religion Research study of more than 7,500 U.S. congregations showed a slight increase in average attendance since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the median congregation is still half the size it was in 2000.
That downward trend in membership and attendance led to Salem closing.
“In its heyday, back in the 1970s and ’80s, Salem was full most Sundays — like 75 to 100 people,” Harris said in an email. “That has slowly declined, along with the general decline in church attendance nationwide.” These days, there are 15 to 20 attendees on Sundays.
As attendance dwindled over the years, Smith said, things gradually changed. She remembers when the church had a choir, and several Sunday school classes, and a weeklong vacation Bible school. Those days are long past.
“If it had just stopped suddenly, it would be more emotional,” she says of the impending closure. “It kind of felt like it was time.”
Open and Affirming
Like Salem, Trinity Reformed — where its members are welcome to worship next — is Open and Affirming, meaning it welcomes LGBTQ+ members.
Salem became Open and Affirming, an official designation within the UCC church, well before Harris arrived as pastor; the warm welcome to people of all genders and sexual orientation was a plus for Harris. He says it’s important to “protect their rights and advocate for them.”
One of Salem’s covenants is to foster “an environment that strives to welcome and include all into the full life of the church, without limitation or boundaries, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, economic condition or mental or physical ability.”
Harris says the current climate of “anti-wokeness” and “demonizing the other side” has impacted congregations.
“People want to develop closer ties in their community, and joining a church is one way to do that,” Harris said. Salem just didn’t have the numbers to remain open.
He said that people have told him that they never felt comfortable in any church but this one.
Harris believes he was “ordained to a call at Salem,” and said he and his family are looking at churches now to figure out where he may go next.
“This process is much more about a good fit, and less about what specific region or state the church is in, so we could end up in a wide range of places,” he said.
But wherever he goes next, his experience at Salem will stay with him.
“We will carry with us our love of tradition and history coupled with progressive world views and inclusivity, which is rare in churches today,” Harris said.
Community impact
Salem has served the community in countless ways. For instance, when Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were halted earlier this year, the church offered a small no-barrier food distribution post. Though that program closed at Salem, Harris said there are still two food banks in Columbia — The Columbia Food Bank and the Columbia Dream Center food pantry, both in the 300 block of Locust Street.
The church has been utilized by outside organizations that serve the community, like Jeremiah’s Cupboard serving up free dinners three times a month, yoga classes, Rivertown Pride Center, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, COBYS Family Services, Homes of Hope, Alpha Club and 12-step program groups.
The church has been “deeply meaningful for the people of Columbia in day-to-day ways and a real lifeline to them,” Harris said.
“It will be missed more than people realize they are going to miss it,” added Smith.
SALEM UCC HISTORY
In the early 1800s, when German settlers arrived in what was then called Wright’s Ferry, located on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, worshippers gathered in peoples’ homes. Samuel Wright — who is credited with renaming the town Columbia as an homage to Christopher Columbus, to help sway the U.S. Congress into making it the nation’s capital — donated several parcels of land to the town, including the lot where the Salem United Church of Christ currently stands. By 1806, the Salem Church building was completed. Storms and weather took a toll on the building and it was rebuilt in 1860, as the current cornerstone indicates. “The construction progressed as fast as the congregation could raise or borrow money,” states an Old Salem document.
Milestones include:
1860: The congregation approved a resolution to raze the old building and build a new one on the same lot.
1882: Salem secured assistance from Eden Seminary to encourage pastors to stay in their post longer than a year or two; it joined the Evangelical Synod of North America.
1910: The English language grew in popularity, usurping the previous German language dominance; the last monthly sermon in German was in 1939.
1929: A two-story section was added to the back of the church for Sunday school and choir facilities.
1943: The property next door was dedicated as a parsonage, having been bequeathed to Salem.
1981: The stained-glass windows of the church were re-leaded and refurbished. They still look vibrant.
1998: Salem installs its first female pastor, the Rev. Susan Sokolowski.
2000s: During the Rev. Elizabeth Nocheck’s tenure, Salem becomes Open and Affirming.
2026: Salem United Church of Christ in Columbia closes its doors.
TIME CAPSULE
Recently, Scott Bollinger, co-chair on Salem United Church of Christ’s council, discovered a 1985 program that described items placed in the church’s cornerstone that was laid in 1860. Salem was then known as the German Lutheran Church, so the articles were related to the Lutheran faith and mostly written in German. Tucked inside are a Bible, symbolic writings of the Lutheran church, a hymn book, periodicals and other documents.
Also, just gonna say it: most Western atheists are like those people whose entire life was Harry Potter, and now their entire life is hating JK Rowling.
The Lord Who Stands Now in Risen Glory is None Other than the Crucified One, by Christ Powers
Our life in Christ is the risen life. We live in the life of the One who has overcome death, who has come back from the dead and laid hold of the world again with wounded hands, who has taken hold of its soil with rounded feet and loved it with the heart which it has already betrayed and broken and pierced.
Caryll Houselander (The Passion of the Infant Christ, pages 35-36)
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.
12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.
13 They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him."
14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."
16 Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned and said to him in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).
17 Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"-and that he had said these things to her. (John 20:11-18, ESV)
If Christian churches can do their bells, moslems can do their call to prayer, just need to follow the same noise ordinances as everyone else, which means the 5AM one is not allowed.
In December, Hindu factory worker Dipu Das was lynched in Bangladesh, igniting global outrage.
The morning before he died, Dipu Chandra Das left home at first light, stepping out of his tin-sheet house in Bangladesh's Mymensingh city, overlooking a warren of lanes off the highway from Dhaka.
The 28-year-old woke up his father, said goodbye to his wife, cradled his 18-month-old daughter. Then he boarded a bus for the 60km (37-mile) journey to the garment factory where he worked as a junior quality inspector, checking sweaters bound for global high-street brands such as H&M and Next.
His family would not see him again.
Warning: Some readers may find the details below disturbing
Twenty-four hours later, on 18 December, Das, a Hindu, was dead - lynched and burned by a mob after being accused of blasphemy.
Accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, he was dragged from his workplace, beaten, hauled more than a kilometre through crowded streets, tied to a tree on a busy highway and set alight before hundreds of onlookers.
The killing sparked global outrage, particularly across the border in India, reviving fears about the safety of minorities since then prime minister Sheikh Hasina was toppled in student-led protests in 2024. About 9% of Bangladesh's 174 million people belong to religious minorities - mostly Hindus. Relations with the Muslim majority have long been marked by periodic tension and insecurity.
Fifty days on, the outrage has ebbed, but grief hangs over the home Das left behind - a single dark room with a beaten-earth floor and tin roof, where the family has lived for nearly 15 years.
It is a house with little furniture or belongings: a plastic table and chairs, beds, sacks of rice, a teddy bear, clothes hanging from a single rail. A refrigerator and a small television - both bought by Dipu on instalments - stand out, quiet markers of a future he was still trying to build.
His mother, Shefali Rani Das, breaks down as soon as visitors enter.
"Oh Dipu, where is my Dipu?" she cries, collapsing into a mournful lament.
Dipu was the eldest son of Rabi Das, a 54-year-old labourer who has spent his life hauling sacks of rice, wheat and vegetables at a nearby market for 400 to 500 taka ($3- $4) a day.
Years of hard work have left him weather-beaten and broken. Dipu wanted him to stop.
"Now I am working," he would tell his father often. "You rest."
Dipu would hand over his salary to the family. He talked constantly about building a proper house, one that would lift the family out of mud and tin for good.
Born at home and raised in a mixed Hindu-Muslim neighbourhood shaped by quiet hardship, Dipu was, by all accounts, a private man with few friends. He left college during the pandemic as lockdowns crushed the family's finances.
By 2024, he was working at a sweater factory, sending money home, and returning from his dorm with chocolates for his infant daughter, spending evenings watching cartoons on TV.
The eldest of three sons, his ambition, his mother said, was to see his younger brothers, Apu, 22, and Rithick, 16, "settled".
Dipu was a small cog in Bangladesh's garment export machine, working for the past 14 months at the Pioneer Knitwear factory. The unit employs about 8,500 workers and is one of nine factories in a group with a workforce of 47,000.
Its sweaters, stitched on long production lines, retail in shops across the US and Europe. Dipu, earning 13,500 taka ($110; £80) a month, checked stitches and seams on one of the factory's hundred production lines. He was one of 868 Hindu workers there.
It was an ordinary life, lived carefully - a young man trying to pull his family out of poverty.
Then came the fateful December evening. A rumour swept through his workplace and outside that he had uttered a 'katukti' - Bengali for an insulting remark - against Prophet Muhammad.
What happened next, in the hours between the allegation and his death, is now the subject of a police investigation.
On the evening in question, a casual chat about weekend plans among three female co-workers near closing time took an uncomfortable turn when Dipu joined in and allegedly made a remark later deemed offensive to the Prophet, according to Mohammed Abdullah Al-Mamun, the additional superintendent of police in Mymensingh, citing accounts from at least three witnesses.
Factory CCTV footage shows Dipu clocking out about 30 minutes after this conversation. He later returned to the floor - footage from two hours later shows him roaming the area, according to Uday Hossain, a senior factory manager.
Why Dipu went back after checking out remains unclear.
Outside a mob had begun to collect as word spread that a factory worker had committed blasphemy. (Bangladesh has no formal blasphemy law, but it criminalises acts "intended to outrage religious feelings".)
As workers poured out at the end of the day, the rumour travelled fast in a busy neighbourhood. By about 6pm, tension had hardened both inside the factory and on the street.
"What followed went far beyond the law," said Al-Mamun.
A mob that began as several hundred at the factory gates demanding Dipu be handed over quickly swelled to more than a thousand, drawing in onlookers from nearby areas. CCTV footage shows men trying to force the gates and hurling ropes over them to climb inside.
At around 20.42 local time, Hossain says, the crowd used shovels to prise open a smaller side gate, poured into the factory, and "carried Dipu away like a wave".
Hossain said the factory had alerted police at least 45 minutes earlier. Yet even as industrial police and officers in plain clothes arrived at the site, they were unable to extract him from the mob, he added.
Police, however, offer a slightly different account of how Dipu ended up in the mob's hands.
They say the crowd threatened to break down the gates if he was not handed over. Faced with that ultimatum, factory workers opened the gate and released him, according to Al-Mamun.
Investigators believe Dipu was beaten to death outside the factory before his body was dragged to a nearby highway, tied with a rope to a tree, and set on fire. "By the time I arrived, he was already dead," Al-Mamun said.
So far, 22 people have been arrested in connection with the incident. Half of those held were Dipu's co-workers at the factory, including two managers of the floor where he worked. An imam of a local mosque has also been arrested.
Most of the suspects are aged between 22 and 30. Police estimate that around 150 people were directly involved in the attack, with many more present as onlookers, while others are still being sought by police.
Few of those arrested, Al-Mamun said, appeared "particularly religious".
"Some are students, some are passersby, some are locals. Everyone was beating Dipu, so they beat him too. But we are treating this as a hate crime."
Since the student uprising of 2024, the scale and nature of attacks on minorities - mainly Hindus - have become a fiercely contested question in Bangladesh.
The outgoing interim government says that between January and December 2025, police records show 645 incidents involving minorities but insists that nearly nine in 10 were not communal.
Officials say that most cases involved ordinary criminality - land disputes, theft, extortion, or personal feuds - that were later framed as religious violence. By its count, only 71 incidents had a clear communal element, including 38 cases of temple vandalism, eight attacks on temples, and one killing.
Human-rights groups paint a darker picture.
Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) records 42 incidents of violence against Hindus in 2025, including dozens of attacks on homes and arson, leaving one dead and 15 injured - numbers that broadly overlap with, but are narrower than, the government's tally.
The biggest divergence comes from the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, which says violence spiked dramatically after August 2024.
Mainly drawing on media reports, the group says it has documented 2,711 attacks on minorities since August 2024 - including at least 92 killings, 133 attacks on temples and 47 cases of land grabbing - figures far higher than official estimates.
"Minorities in Bangladesh have faced attacks by religious extremists for more than half a century. Governments of all stripes share responsibility. Our numbers have steadily shrunk as many have fled or migrated," Manindra Kumar Nath of the Council told the BBC.
India, meanwhile, says independent sources have documented more than 2,900 incidents of violence against minorities - including killings, arson and land grabs - during the interim government's tenure.
Nobel laureate and outgoing interim government chief Muhammad Yunus has said, "there's no anti-Hindu violence", dismissing such reports as "fake news" by the Indian media. Separately, he has said the attacks were "political, not religious".
Yet, all is not lost. Dipu's killing sparked protests in Dhaka; his employers have cleared his dues and promised to build the house he dreamed of. The outgoing government has pledged $35,000 toward the new home and additional compensation for his family.
"What happened was barbaric, deplorable and shameful. We want the strictest punishment for those responsible," said Badshah Mian, managing director of Pioneer Knitwear. "If this can happen outside a factory, none of us is safe."
That note of solidarity has persisted despite wider tensions.
After Hasina fled the country in 2024, Hindu minorities - often seen as aligned with her secular Awami League in an Islamic state - were attacked by rivals, even as some young Muslim groups moved to protect Hindu homes and shrines.
And ahead of the recently concluded election, Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) pledged: "We want to build a Bangladesh together - the kind of Bangladesh a mother dreams of," reaching out to people of all religions.
Back at Dipu's home, the night of the killing is recalled in fragments.
A phone call around eight in the evening. A visit to the police station. A father stumbling home to deliver news that shattered the household.
His parents had collapsed. For hours, they were unconscious, neighbours later said - revived with water, then saline injections as the house filled with people and cries.
Nearly two months on, Dipu's mother still breaks down every day. His father has not returned to work. Sleep has vanished. So has appetite, routine, peace.
"Our life has stalled. Nothing is moving anymore," says Rabi Das.
i just want to say something to non-jewish allies. yes. it is shocking and terrifying to see this rise in antisemitism in real time, to finally understand how people turned on jews. i really appreciate that you understand that now.
however, i want you to think about it in this sort of perspective: i grew up hearing about how my great grandparents had to escape the pogroms as refugees. i grew up knowing what the shoah was. and i truly thought, yes, here in modern day america, i would be safe and people wouldn't abandon me for being a jew. but still. in the back of my head i knew.
in high school, all my friends knew i was jewish. my bullies also knew i was jewish. i graduated a few months before the october 7th attack. i remember that day very well. it was so fucking shocking and i couldnt stop looking. i had grown up knowing people did these things to us, and yet. it fundamentally changed me as a person. it felt like i had seen this before. it felt like i was seeing exactly what my great grandfather saw before he hid away in a wagon and escaped to america. i felt like i was reliving my ancestors memories. because it was so fucking familiar. it was traumatic for me, even here in america. (i do not say this to take away from people who actually experienced the attack.)
and then there was the silence. the fact that nobody even reached out to my family to see if we were okay. the fact that not one of my friends from high school even CONSIDERED asking me if i was okay. the fact i was expected to go on with my life. and i did. i took a gap year, worked a minimum wage retail job, read books and thought a lot about life. but i still think about it every day. i think about the fact that not even 12 hours after the attack began, there were people in my home state organizing protests in support of the group who just murdered 1200 of my people.
how are you supposed to go on like that? knowing that people CELEBRATE when your family members are slaughtered and kidnapped?
the violence was expected. the support of it was not. it was jarring and terrible. and yet it felt so familiar to me. ive been here before. ive seen this before. these memories are embedded in me.
i want you to think about what its like to read through over a thousand names to make sure none of them are people you know. and i want you to know, i felt zero relief knowing none of my family was killed. because it felt like every one of those names was my family. these people were my family. my tribe. my people. some of them were the friends or parents or cousins of people i grew up with, of extended family. but it doesnt matter. we feel these things as a community.
the pure loneliness and helplessness i felt was crushing. not just because people were celebrating the deaths of my people. not just because they were murdering and assaulting jews all over the world. but because i knew that this was not new. i have been here before. we have been here before. it was not just hatred and isolation and fear. this was my very real life-long fears, my parents' very real life-long fears, their parents', and then their parents' parents' lived experiences.
this was getting to experience the thing i feared. i knew they would turn on me and they did. i cry about it a lot.
we want to feel safe in this world, and yet, we don't. we're told to go back to where we came from, but when we do, we're told to leave, to go back to poland, where they killed 90% of their jews. we're told that we deserve to be massacred because we want safety. because we want to finally be free from oppressive and horrific treatment in nearly every place we go. we are villainized for wanting to be seen as real people rather than poor, helpless little political tokens. they universalize our tragedies and then say we are overreacting about said tragedies. our pain is not real to them. it is simply a metaphor. they excuse all the horrific, violent, humiliating, isolating, treatment towards us. they always find a reason to say we deserve it. they say we should learn a lesson from it.
and god forbid we tell them that we're sick of it.
so to the start of this post. non-jewish allies, i really, truly appreciate you and the fact you are willing to stand with us, despite us being a tiny minority. you are brave to put yourself out there. to even associate with us. but we are so tired, so, so tired. this is what we experience every single generation. these are things we are hypervigilant about. we tell people what's happening when we start to see the signs. i want more people to listen.
please, check in on the jewish people in your life when terrible things are happening. work to root out antisemitism in your community. educate people in your life who spread misinformation. we cannot stop this hatred alone.
sorry if this is lame and incoherent i hope it makes sense. im just. so exhausted.
Tolkien's post-Lord of the Rings musings on reconciling the idea of inherently evil people with Christian ethics may not have reached any satisfactory conclusions, but I have to confess that the idea of goblins as unfathomably wise and ancient creatures who were old when the Sun and Moon were young who simply choose to be awful little gremlins has a certain zip to it.
Goblins after witnessing the last three thousand years of bullshit go down in Middle Earth: “I wish there was a name for the type of mode I’m about to go, but I just can’t think of one”
Do you consider Catholicism a type of Christianity?
(To explain that previous poll, some believe Catholicism shouldn't count because the pope gets between the individual and God like a False Idol. Some also believe a title like God's Voice in the Mortal World can't be determined by humans doing an election and we gotta wait for the proper Second Coming and End Times and what have you. It's mostly pentacostals from what I've seen.)
Do you consider Catholicism a type of Christianity?
This is our Genesis project we are trying to make come alive one day, either by a process we're currently going through ,OR crowdfunding if it doesn't work out with the first option! Please give our concept animatics a watch! If you want a mature, bible animated project one day, let it be known in the video comments! No pressure of course! Hah! But God willing, we'd like to pursue this in any way! Share with those who like stuff like this!
GENESIS is a bold, stylized animated epic that pushes the boundaries of Biblical storytelling for a Teen to Adult audience.
Follow our Kickstarter page to be notified when this project goes LIVE May 5! This will help us fund an animated proof of concept to pitch around! Thank you!
why do edgy atheists who say they hate all religions seem to exclusively hate on christians and muslims, but never direct that sort of hatred towards other religions like, say, hinduism or judaism
-bc those are the only two religions they know
-bc those religions caused more harm (???)
-they're indians overworked in an israeli bot farm
-bc they fetishize non-abrahamic religions
-bc they're afraid of getting called antisemitic
-they're stupid. that's it op. don't overthink it.
why do edgy atheists who say they hate all religions seem to exclusively hate on christians and muslims, but never direct that sort of hatred towards other religions like, say, hinduism or judaism
This is wrong though because atheists DO hate Judaism and Hinduism, in fact they hate them more than they hate Christianity or Islam because most of them grew up abrahamic so hatred of ethnoreligion is already baked in their upbringing. 
If the atheist DID grow up Hindu or Jewish, they have the opposite problem. They’ll bash ethnoreligion until the cows come home but have all gushing praise for Islam or Christianity. Because that kind of atheism usually comes from a Christian education and so they were taught to hate themselves.
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
