Well, and it misses the point: the clergy are supposed to cherry-pick the scripture to improve cohesion of the congregation. You follow a clergyman because you like the stuff he picks. Problem is, the congregation that wants those picks has long since given up on your church, as outlined in the article.

Got a buddy. His wife's a pastor at a big charismatic church. He's mad at his community because their donations are drying up. Why? Because they give big to gay conversion therapy and they're in a college town. But that's not all they give money to! Yeah, buddy, but it's part of it, and sticking to your guns on that shit is gonna have a filtering effect. Welcome to the schism.

One of the more passive-aggressive things AP American Lit classes used to do is start you off with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God because it's about the earliest "American" literature you can find. It's also an ironclad example of the brand of extreme religious batshittery that the Pilgrims adhered to - I think the idea is to make the mercantilist slave-drivers of the southern colonies look less terrible, comparatively. It's not like "turn the other cheek" hadn't been written yet, it's that everyone crazy enough to flee Cromwell for turf the Vikings wouldn't bother with wanted Crown-of-Thorns flavor.

And here we are again.