"My late husband was dying of leukemia, and his religious community made us pay for his 'sin' to save him, and it cost like $5,000."
My parents had a college fund for all the kids in one account. My sister drained the account when she dropped out and left home. I was a sophomore in high school, so my parents started saving money for my college everywhere they could, and so they stopped tithing. They still went to church every weekend.We got a letter from the church saying they noticed we had stopped coming to mass and asked if everything was okay. They didn't actually care that we were still going, just that we had stopped giving them money.I'm tired of hearing that the US and its political landscape are biblical and somehow important in the 'end days.' I'm tired of the theatrical preachers and mega-churches and congregations claiming Democrats are evil. Nothing these churches have said would happen in the past 35 years has ever happened.I worked at a bar in college, and some of those 'good, god-fearing people' were regulars. Also, guess who had sex before marriage? They did. I've also been interested in science and was told it wasn't ladylike. My parents still attend that church, and the new pastor is my age.