DO YOU LOVE WHO YOUR WITH? THEN WHO GIVES A CRAP! YOUR MAKING A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLE HILL! THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU DEVOTE YOUR LIVES TO EACH OTHER IN LOVE. IF THIS IS ABOUT A LITTLE TAX MONEY...WHO CARES, YOU SHOULDNT CARE ABOUT THE DETAILS OF THE LEAGAL.....LOVE IS JUST WHAT IT IS!

Who gives a crap?? The couple, who thought they were legally married were deceived!
As he stated in the article, had anything happened to either of them the ramifications of not being married would have been great.
You pay for a service..service should be rendered.

Ha, ha. They've been having sex outside of marriage all these years!
What would Jesus say?
Living in sin - those heathens!

Yes, the pastor took money illegally, but stuff him.
Stuff the church.
Stuff the government.
They made vows, to each others face, didn't they?

My wife and I had a courthouse wedding, so I guess we should be OK, although we are probaly living in sin according to some Fundis.

And if they never found out, they would be burning in hell, right...

See how stupid this belief system is.

My wife and I also had a courthouse wedding. Just the two of us and him. We wouldn't have gotten married at all if not for the facts of insurance for her pregnancy. They simply would not provide care unless I was married. Even then they only started covering medical AFTER the baby was born since we got married after she was pregnant.

It really is a stupid piece of paper. Unfortunatly there are laws built up around it so not having it makes for legal difficulties. A huge scam, but what's a couple to do?

Oops, sorry for the double post but I couldn't edit. The "him" I was refering to above was the town mayor who married us.

" IF THIS IS ABOUT A LITTLE TAX MONEY...WHO CARES, YOU SHOULDNT CARE ABOUT THE DETAILS OF THE LEAGAL"

A little money can be extremely important to people who don't have enough. Legal marriage serves some practical purposes. Love is important, but it is NOT everything.

Of course, you can be as arrogant and pompous as you choose while hiding behind your shield of anonymity.

They want to be legally married. Why are you guys attacking that? It barely has anything to do with christianity. I really don't see the point of these articles that make wayward pastors look bad. I'm sure you could find an article about an athiest burning down a church in Thailand or something.

LookingGlass: I'm sure you could find an article about an athiest burning down a church in Thailand or something.

I'm sure you can. Post the link...ahh if you had it, it would have been at the end of your silly commentary.

These articles make pastors look bad?

What about the pastors' behavior? I'd think THAT is what makes them look bad, not reporting it.

"...Atheist in Thailand...," yada, yada.

More to the point would be an atheist who leads a group of people, claims to be filled with a magical supernatural holy spirit, and one day turns around and burns down a church. Then, after being caught, has many of his or her faithful followers get upset when he or she is criticized on a public Internet forum.

That's the article I'd like to see.

Y'all are missing the point. No matter what, you're going to find some story of some religious figure somewhere in the world screwing up royally, Christian, Buhddist, Scientologist or otherwise. If it happens to be a christian minister, more than likely you'll hear about it on this site. My point: I don't see how it benefits anyone to stay updated on the latest pastor/bishop/reverend getting arrested. It happens. I get the point.

I'll add that I do admire and respect this site and thank the webmaster very much for providing a forum for ex-christians. :)

Hi LookingGlass,

I generally don't comment on these types of stories for precisely the reason that you cite; absolutely EVERY segment of society, every group, every culture, has its dregs, its whackos, and its undesirables. No question about that. However, these stories do make one point that is germane religion, and Christianity in particular. Christians often claim that *their* particular faith has a special transformational power, presumably due to the indwelling of the "Holy Spirit". Yet, when we look at Christians as a whole, they don't seem appreciably different from any other random group. They still commit crimes, they still makes mistakes, they still fall prey to each and every foible as everyone else, and by any measure that I am aware of, in about the same proportion. One more reason to doubt the fantastic claims of Christianity.

Jim, thanks for your comment. I can see where you're coming from.

Also, in the "spirit" of what Jim Arvo wrote, don't forget to take into consideration that all around the world, every Sunday morning, millions of these people sit in their church pews and are brainwashed into believing atheist/unbelievers are The Evil Ones.

With that, much unwarranted hatred and discrimination is mounted towards atheists and unbelievers.

Nine times out of ten, it is not the atheists causing the commotion and chaos within a society, it's mainly the theists themselves.

So, posting articles such as this is our little way of saying, "Hey, look at the liar(s)! Don't hate us. Hate them!"

dont forget Pagans. christians dont just dscriminate agianst atheists, but non christians as well......

And of course, they have a Right to speak against everyone else since they are the most persecuted people in our society.



*Oh God! That much sarcasm made me puke in my mouth!*

I better be careful next time.

Hmm. Doesn't say anything here about this being a mixed marriage. A marriage license is needed to "make legal" only a mixed marriage, according to Black's Law Dictionary:

"MARRIAGE LICENSE: A license or permission granted by public authority to persons who intend to intermarry, usually addressed to the minister or magistrate who is to perform the ceremony, or, in general terms, to any one authorized to solemnize marriages."

(An "intermarriage" is between members of different races.)

Wonder if maybe this pastor isn't smarter than people are giving him credit for...? Or maybe he isn't a "licensed" minister - just one called by God (imagine that!) - meaning that no statute would apply to him in this matter anyway.

A pastor can't get a marriage license for a couple, anyway; they have to go do that themselves. So their story that he said he would take care of everything, including all their paperwork, doesn't wash.

Maybe there's more "church politics" at play here than meets the eye ...

That's how it looks from here.

For the record, the pastor was NOT paid for the service and even provided the pictures for them out of his pocket. There are more details that you don't know about. Everyone knows that the paper is scrapping for a juicy story but can't be given the full story because it would ruin the litigation. Don't always believe what you read. There's more but I have to wait until later to tell the rest of the story to you. You will see that the pastor is right on and the couple is wacked. Everyone knows that you have to get a license to get married. Pastor's don't do that for them. Just watch what happens.

It seems to be such a strang thing for a couple to do after the pastor was so wonderful? There absolutely apears to be more to the story. People can be so trusting of there pastors, minister, and so on....that they are willing to fully belive in them no matter what they say or even what they preach. I truly feel that not all pastors are as untrusting as this one seems to be.

How would anonymous know the pastor was not paid and that he provided the pictures for them out of his own pocket unless anonymous is that Pastor? Yes there is a lot more to the story. How about the pastor is so anti-government that he will not say the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag and he had the American Flag removed from the church. Or how about all the degrees the pastor says he has, but not one came from an accrediated school. There still is a lot more to the story that will come out in time. Maybe the Pastor isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Just watch what happens.

Oh, is that shocking that this pastor doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance any more? No good American who knows the facts about it would. I don't; here's why:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We all know the words and can say them by heart. We are accustomed to standing and saying them at the start of public meetings, particularly patriotic or political ones, with our right hands placed dutifully over our hearts. But do we ever stop to consider the history and purpose of the Pledge?

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in the late 1800s by Francis Bellamy and published in the then-popular magazine, The Youth’s Companion. Though a Baptist minister, Bellamy was a deist and did not believe the foundational truths of the New Testament, including Christ’s virgin birth, bodily resurrection and physical ascension into heaven. Bellamy was a socialist who believed in complete separation between church and state, an extra-Constitutional and unbiblical doctrine. He was one of the foun-ders of the Society of Christian Socialists, that taught the “fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man,” and economic socialism. It was in preparation for a public school celebration of Columbus Day that Bellamy, chairman of a National Education Association committee of state education superintendents, wrote the Pledge.

Bellamy later said of his Pledge, “It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people... The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the ‘republic for which it stands.’ ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches.”

It is telling that Bellamy focused on the “One Nation” concept as being central to the cause of the “Civil War,” something that is not taught today in the schools that still recite his pledge, but was he correct? Were we, prior to the War of Northern Aggression, “one nation” … or many? Indeed, the outcome of that war dictates that we are, now, “one nation,” and that was, indeed, the reason why we fought that war, but must we who believe that America was changed radically for the worse as a result be forced to suffer again the wrongs of defeat by standing and reciting such tripe? I think not. Better that we should say “One nation under bankers” than “under God.”

Does that flag stand for a “republic” anymore? In historical fact, the American republic died in 1861 when Union president Abraham Lincoln suspended the Constitution and took to himself dictatorial powers, and Constitutional republican government has never been restored since. Republican government is a great ideal, and no doubt the flag that Betsy Ross designed represented a republican government, but it had been long-gone by the time of Bellamy’s Pledge, thanks to the war that he wrote it to celebrate.

The words “under God,” by the way, were added to the Pledge in 1954 at the behest of the Catholic Knights of Columbus.

Many people would be shocked to see photos of Americans reciting the Pledge when it was first instituted, for they stood with their arms held straight out. In 1942, right after Pearl Harbor, because of its obvious similarity in appearance to the Nazi salute – “Seig, Heil!” – Congress changed the salute to the now common hand over the heart.

What of the flag itself? Does it have any significance to most Pledge reciters that quite often the flag that they Pledge towards is not even a valid American flag but a maritime substitute surrounded with a gold fringe, signaling military rule? It should, but those “good citizens,” trained in citizenship by government-run schools by teachers who are required to lead them in a mindless pledge at the start of each day, never have a clue what they are doing.

Now the American flag is regularly used to drape the coffins of military personnel who have “given the last full measure of devotion” for a cause that they have been led to believe is defending our nation from its enemies, but that is just not the case. The crimes of our “leaders” in sending American young men and women off to die in order to build an empire that controls the world’s supplies of petroleum and narcotics are astounding enough, but to wrap it in a flag is downright treasonous.

So, no, I do not recite the Pledge of Allegiance anymore. I cannot, in good conscience. I love America too much to acquiesce thus, blindly, to what Francis Bellamy intended when he wrote those seemingly patriotic words and to what traitorous leaders have come to wrap in our flag.

I know this heratic and the reason that he will not pledge to the flag is because he has defected from the USA and joined a soverign nation, the Little Shell band of the Pambina indians, the same nut group that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols came from. He dosent believe in pledging to the Christian flag either. Why!! Thats simple enough, he is not a real Christian. He has read lots of books and know enough about the Bible to fool a few people into thinking that he is real pastor. He is a liar and so is his family. He had his own son stand up in a church service(the same one that he fired the decons in) and lie about his schools guide book, a book that he got the same day he enrolled in the school, the same book that he and his mother(if that is his mother)showed several people at a church function, the same church that they managed to split. He says that it wasnt his responsability to get the marriage license and I agree, but he told the victims, Russ & Julie, that he WOULD take care of the license, he took on that responsibility and then printed a fake liscense off of his computer..Everything about this guy is fake!!! and sure.. look up the definition of Marriage liscense and see what you find, then look up the definition of criminal, liar, militant, satanic, cult leader, fraud and see whose picture you will find. If he says that the marrige was only avow renewal and not a real marriage then he shouldnt have announced it in a public forum (church service) that it WAS a marriage, he is grasping for straws, he is on video doing the WEDDING and saying "for the first time I present you MR and MRS Fike" not the newly vowed couple, this guy has a handfull of people brainwashed so dont you believe ANYTHING he "anonymously" writes of says

I know this heratic and the reason that he will not pledge to the flag is because he has defected from the USA and joined a soverign nation, the Little Shell band of the Pambina indians, the same nut group that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols came from. He dosent believe in pledging to the Christian flag either. Why!! Thats simple enough, he is not a real Christian. He has read lots of books and know enough about the Bible to fool a few people into thinking that he is real pastor. He is a liar and so is his family. He had his own son stand up in a church service(the same one that he fired the decons in) and lie about his schools guide book, a book that he got the same day he enrolled in the school, the same book that he and his mother(if that is his mother)showed several people at a church function, the same church that they managed to split. He says that it wasnt his responsability to get the marriage license and I agree, but he told the victims, Russ & Julie, that he WOULD take care of the license, he took on that responsibility and then printed a fake liscense off of his computer..Everything about this guy is fake!!! and sure.. look up the definition of Marriage liscense and see what you find, then look up the definition of criminal, liar, militant, satanic, cult leader, fraud and see whose picture you will find. If he says that the marrige was only avow renewal and not a real marriage then he shouldnt have announced it in a public forum (church service) that it WAS a marriage, he is grasping for straws, he is on video doing the WEDDING and saying "for the first time I present you MR and MRS Fike" not the newly vowed couple, this guy has a handfull of people brainwashed so dont you believe ANYTHING he "anonymously" writes of says

“I know this heratic”

Correct spelling: heretic. (By the way, this is not “that pastor” writing…)

and the reason that he will not pledge to the flag is because he has defected from the USA

Sure about that? Do you know the legal definitions of those terms? (“defected” and “USA”?)

and joined a soverign

Correct spelling: sovereign

nation, the Little Shell band of the Pambina

Correct spelling: Pembina

indians, the same nut group

If Pembina is a nut group, how is it that they are a “sovereign nation” by your own admission?

that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols came from.

Are you sure of your facts – that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were part of the Pembina band? Check it out before posting.

He dosent

Correct spelling: “doesn’t”

believe in pledging to the Christian flag either. Why!!

Why would anyone pledge allegiance to anyone but God? Do you know the legal definitions of “pledge” and “allegiance”? I suggest you learn them.

That’s simple enough, he is not a real Christian.

Funny that would be an issue here on an “ex-Christian” blog. How do YOU define “real Christian,” huh?

He has read lots of books and know

Do you mean “knows”?

enough about the Bible to fool a few people into thinking that he is real pastor.

What is a “real pastor?” Can you define it from the Bible?

He is a liar and so is his family.

All men are liars.

He had his own son stand up in a church service(the same one that he fired the decons

Correct spelling: deacons

in) and lie about his schools

Correct spelling: school’s

guide book, a book that he got the same day he enrolled in the school, the same book that he and his mother(if that is his mother)showed several people at a church function, the same church that they managed to split.

What is “a church” as defined in scripture, and how is it even possible to split one (if “church” can be defined as one?)

He says that it wasn’t his responsability

Correct spelling: responsibility

to get the marriage license and I agree, but he told the victims, Russ & Julie, that he WOULD take care of the license, he took on that responsibility

If it is not possible for a minister to get a license for a couple who want to marry, and if it is their legal responsibility to do so themselves, then how can he (the pastor) be held accountable for doing so, even if the couple now claim that he said he’d do it for him? It was not legally possible, and they are the ones legally responsible. (If “legal” is a part they want for their marriage, which they should not in the eyes of God.)

and then printed a fake liscense

Correct spelling: license. Was it a license, or a certificate of marriage? They are legally not the same.

off of his computer..Everything about this guy is fake!!!

Then why are you so excited about him? If everything about him is fake, ignore him! (Most adults don’t get too excited about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny being fake …)

and sure.. look up the definition of Marriage liscense

Correct spelling: license

and see what you find,

Already done for you above …

then look up the definition of criminal, liar, militant, satanic, cult leader, fraud and see whose picture you will find.

Hmm. Sounds dangerously close to slander to me. (Look up that definition, too, along with those for “criminal, liar, militant, satanic, cult leader, fraud…”)

If he says that the marrige

Correct spelling: marriage

as

“was”?

only avow

“a vow”?

renewal and not a real marriage

A ceremony doth not a marriage make. And a wedding needs not a license to be a wedding.

then he shouldnt

Correct spelling: shouldn’t

have announced it in a public forum (church service)

What is a “church service,” according to the Word of God? (Chapter and verse, please.)

that it WAS a marriage, he is grasping for straws, he is on video doing the WEDDING

There we go. Which was it – a “marriage” or a “wedding”?

and saying "for the first time I present you MR and MRS Fike" not the newly vowed couple, this guy has a handfull

Correct spelling: handful

of people brainwashed so dont

Correct spelling: don’t

you believe ANYTHING he "anonymously" writes of says

“or says”?

Buddy, either use spell check or hire a secretary. And get your facts and your legal definitions straight. Then come back here and talk some sense like an adult. Real Christians want to hear the truth, not your slander.

And, no, this is not the guy you are lambasting; I’m just an interested third party observer.

HEY ANONYMOUS, I GUESS WE ALL CAN'T BE AS PERFECT AS YOU. THAT WOULD MAKE FOR A PRETTY DULL WORLD WOULDN'T IT?

Seems "perfection" is being expected of this pastor. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

No, not perfection, just a little integrity, honesty and some compassion thrown in for good measure. That's all I ask of
someone who tell's me how to live my life.

Well, yes, obviously, but what is a "pastor" and what is he to do, anyway - "tell you how to live your life?" No way, but we've all been taught that by "churches" all our lives. But for saying that, one would face the same kind of accusations and epithets as this pastor.