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Today, and probably for the last few months, God hates Holland a little more. What is the point of a Church that does not tell the Eternal Truth of the Gospel: that Jesus was born after God impregnated a virgin, that he walked on water, raised the dead, send a legion of demon into a herd of suicidal pigs, died and came back from the dead?
What is the point of a church that does not say that all those evil atheists and catholics will burn for ever and ever in the fires of Hell as you sit with your mint julep on a cloud with Jesus? Just what is the point? Why would anyone go to a church like that just to be told that it's best to like people and be reasonable?
I tell you this will not work! This is not the road to Salvation which is by faith alone and that faith must reside in a living god whose Son was killed and did not die!
Anyway, enough of stating the blindingly obvious - on with the story. If you visit the link at the end, there's a video interview with the atheist preacher - it is truly evil. Imagine being stuck on a desert island with the pope, and then multiply by 1000!
Read more blasphemy HERE
What is the point of a church that does not say that all those evil atheists and catholics will burn for ever and ever in the fires of Hell as you sit with your mint julep on a cloud with Jesus? Just what is the point? Why would anyone go to a church like that just to be told that it's best to like people and be reasonable?
I tell you this will not work! This is not the road to Salvation which is by faith alone and that faith must reside in a living god whose Son was killed and did not die!
Anyway, enough of stating the blindingly obvious - on with the story. If you visit the link at the end, there's a video interview with the atheist preacher - it is truly evil. Imagine being stuck on a desert island with the pope, and then multiply by 1000!
Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world
The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill. An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.
It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".
"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death." Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing. "When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience." Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.
His book "Believing in a Non-Existent God" led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.
A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.
The Rev Kirsten Slettenaar, Exodus Church's regular priest, also rejects the idea - widely considered central to Christianity - that Jesus was divine as well as human. "I think 'Son of God' is a kind of title," she says. "I don't think he was a god or a half god. I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found inside himself." Mrs Slettenaar acknowledges that she's changing what the Church has said, but, she insists, not the "real meaning of Christianity". She says that there "is not only one answer" and complains that "a lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more".
Dienie van Wijngaarden, who's been going to Exodus Church for 20 years, is among lay people attracted to such free thinking. "I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."
Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."
Professor Hijme Stoffels of the VU University Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion. "In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far. Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion. To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.
The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill. An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.
It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".
"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death." Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing. "When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience." Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.
His book "Believing in a Non-Existent God" led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.
A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.
The Rev Kirsten Slettenaar, Exodus Church's regular priest, also rejects the idea - widely considered central to Christianity - that Jesus was divine as well as human. "I think 'Son of God' is a kind of title," she says. "I don't think he was a god or a half god. I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found inside himself." Mrs Slettenaar acknowledges that she's changing what the Church has said, but, she insists, not the "real meaning of Christianity". She says that there "is not only one answer" and complains that "a lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more".
Dienie van Wijngaarden, who's been going to Exodus Church for 20 years, is among lay people attracted to such free thinking. "I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."
Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."
Professor Hijme Stoffels of the VU University Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion. "In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far. Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion. To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.
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