Real Life Fundie Encounters - Part 3

[Divemaster01]

Hi everyone, I have a fundie vehicle sighting. Stickers on the back window. I was lol!

[JermajestyDuggar]

Why would you use your car to advertise what your baby shits in? Should I put a sticker on the back of my car that one of my children is potty trained but still wears pull ups at night? Wtf?

[FeministShrew]

Mr. Shrew & I went to the local zoo today & saw a fundie family of some sort. Mr. Shrew was fascinated as he had no idea fundies existed before we met. 
Dad looked really young, like early twenties, but with a JimBoob haircut, khaki pants that were too big (looked like he had no ass), and a polo shirt buttoned all the way. Mom looked middle-aged from a distance, because of her hair, make-up, and clothes, so we thought she was the grandma at first, but up close she looked early-20s too. She was wearing brown polyester culottes, a brown-patterned polyester long sleeve top (which I really liked, but not to wear to the zoo on a hot day), and old-lady gold loafers. Her hair was shoulder-length & sort of back-combed, but it had drooped in the heat. She had full makeup and shaved, drawn-on eyebrows. Old-lady type gold jewellry.
They had two preschool boys, both in long khaki shorts, buttoned up polos, & the same JB haircuts, and a small baby dressed the same way. 
I was wearing shorts & a tank top & she kept eyeing me disapprovingly, lol. 
I don't know what brand of fundie, possibly Mormon, but more likely what I call "mainstream IFB," meaning they belong to a BJU-affiliated church rather than one of the stricter ones that says BJU is too liberal. The Mainsream IFBs dress like that, allow little boys to wear shorts, & women can wear culottes & cut their hair. (When I was attending one, they let the teenage girls wear culottes to Carowinds for a youth trip instead of regular skirts.)
Dad was wearing the baby most of the time, I will give them that.
Mr. Shrew was more interested in them than the animals, lol.
 

To clarify: by "old lady" I mean clothing, jewellry, hair, & makeup you typically see on conservative senior citizens in the South, sort of heavy, clunky stuff, that looks really dated.

[Jana814]

Hard to believe that their would be anyone who think BJU is too liberal. 

[EowynW]

8 minutes ago, Jana814 said:

Hard to believe that their would be anyone who think BJU is too liberal. 

Oh there are. My former IFB circle thought so. 

 

So ive spent the past two days (including our anniversary) stuck with fundie inlaws. Many entertaining things have been said but my favorite was my father in law saying that the the practice of the church in Acts selling their possessions in order to give money to their members who needed help, was a socialistic practice. 

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, FeministShrew said:

The Mainsream IFBs dress like that,

That's a sweeping statement...We belong to an IFB and well...I'm sitting here in bike shorts and a tank top (no bra). One of my best friends from church regularly wears jeans and tops to church. Some of us smoke, drink, dance, watch TV and listen to "the devil's music". 

[Scribber]

It's possible for men of certain religions to practice their faith and not be rude. There are several Muslim engineers and architects on our various projects. They work with women every day and manage to talk to us. (It's actually nice to have a work conversation with a man who looks me in the eye, rather than constantly glancing at my breasts.)
The only thing they don't do is shake hands, hug, or sit right next to a woman (they leave a chair between if there's no other way, but usually everyone is used to it & makes sure they sit between other men). Maybe I'm just lucky & they're nice guys. I imagine some fundie Christian men take it to the extreme, too. (Steve Maxell cough cough)
A couple of them are Middle Eastern, a couple are Indian or Pakistani. 

One of the fundies I work with (Christian) is pretty extreme. If he is in an office/room with females, he always has another male with him. And he won't sit down in the presence of women. Makes for our lunchtime staff meetings to be awkward.

It really pisses me off. If I need something from him during the day, I have to go find another male to go into his office with me. **eye roll** (because two men and one female is totally not shady. But two females and a male? Oh the temptation!!)

[FeministShrew]

@feministxtian that's interesting to me. 
No offense intended. I should have stated the ones I have experience with, here in Upstate SC. Maybe they are a bit more hardcore down here. I personally have heard several mainstream IFB pastors tell women that they were going to hell for wearing pants (not culottes, which are somehow ok), and while I know many IFB women who wear pants anyway (including my sister) none of them wear them to church. I once saw a deacon tell the husband of a visiting couple that they had to leave because the wife was in pants.

As for music, here they still won't allow the use of recorded soundtracks, and hymns written after a certain time period are only allowed if they are by approved composers.

I guess in any denomination there are stricter churches & more liberal churches, and always people who do what they want, anyway. (I never stopped wearing pants, outside of church, but I did try to follow the rules about no "satanic" music. I missed a lot of good songs & bands in the late 80s-early 90s.

Edited May 30, 2017 by FeministShrew
Add a few words.

[feministxtian]

2 hours ago, FeministShrew said:

As for music, here they still won't allow the use of recorded soundtracks, and hymns written after a certain time period are only allowed if they are by approved composers.

Yeah, we get crap from other churches because we use recorded soundtracks. I'd have to say we're on the VERY liberal end of the spectrum. Now, since I sing in the choir, I am expected to dress a certain way...skirts or dresses below the knee, Sleeveless is ok, but not tank tops. But again, I'm up front (and very visible) so we are expected to dress and act a certain way in church (not fake, just respectful) since we are representing the church. Although I admit that singing for 4 services a week gets crazy (2 on Sunday morning, 1 on Sunday night and 1 on Wednesday night)...fortunately, I have enough dressy clothes to do it. And, honestly, I'm pretty much skirts/dresses only anymore. The reason behind it is due to a skin condition I have (which is GROSS) and skirts/dresses keep it under much better control than pants or shorts. 

There are some ULTRA Conservative IFB churches out there...there's only 3 IFB churches that I know of here in LV...there's one that is ULTRA LIBERAL for an IFB church...and our pastor's son is the one who started it (it's on the other end of the city), our church which is a little more moderate and another one that is more conservative. The ones in the south are probably MUCH more conservative than any here. 

 

[warriorblade8857]

@EowynW @FeministShrew

Why is it that:

"yard work, fix-it, and  overextending one's finances to buy a McMansion = adulting",

But:

"excelling at one's career such that one has enough extraneous income to pay for manual labor and the ability to relocate at whim = OMG-you-fail-at-adulting"?

Seems to me like the latter are the ones that have life figured out....

 

Edited June 2, 2017 by warriorblade8857

[EowynW]

17 hours ago, warriorblade8857 said:

@EowynW @FeministShrew

Why is it that:

"yard work, fix-it, and  overextending one's finances to buy a McMansion = adulting",

But:

"excelling at one's career such that one has enough extraneous income to pay for manual labor and the ability to relocate at whim = OMG-you-fail-at-adulting"?

Seems to me like the latter are the ones that have life figured out....

 

We want to buy more than anything. It's just not working out right now. We are country to the core and miss having space. We have a rental with a yard and we are turning into a beautiful place with lots of flowers and a garden for the next renters. So we are being quite responsible. I had no idea there was such a stigma against renting until we had to rent! 

[catlady]

we felt that stigma too.  we rented for 13 years before we bought our house, and it would have been longer if the property managers hadn't decided to kick everyone out and convert to off-campus dormitories.  it was a great unit with big bedrooms and nice floors and plaster walls (i'm one of five people on the planet who gets my soul sucked out by sheetrock), windows in three directions and tons of light, close to both our jobs and an overall good location.  my in-laws were constantly after us to buy something (anything!) regardless of whether we could really afford it or whether we wanted it.  a house in the suburbs was all that mattered to them; kind of like, "screw your needs and personalities, just get the status symbol already."

once, i was talking about the one drawback of that apartment--the shortage of kitchen counterspace, and my coworker said, "you need to buy a house."  and why?  because she had recently bought a condo, so everyone else should be a homeowner, too.  but the irony was that her kitchen was no bigger than mine, yet it was somehow better because she owned it.   

we bought when we had to move, and property taxes are ridiculously high in our region. i don't hate my house, but life got a little harder after we bought it.

[EowynW]

Yes my FIL is always riding us to buy. Especially now that there are three empty houses on their street 

[feministxtian]

I refuse to buy another house...EVER! We had "the American Dream"...nice house in a great neighborhood, 2 nice cars in the driveway, And, in the blink of an eye it was all gone. Renting is great...get tired of the place? Wait until the lease is up and move. Like the place? Keep signing on the dotted line! The AC craps out? Landlord has to fix/replace w/in 24 hours (State Law) or put us up in alternate accommodations until it's fixed. Water heater craps out? Replaced! No cash out of my pocket. 

Our new apartment is pretty cool...the neighbors suck though. 

 

[Jellybean]

Being pressured to buy a house on the same street as my parents would make me want to scream and move half way across the world! 

Renting may seem like 'throwing good money away' but if you're renting well within your means so you can save money, and you don't have to throw lots of money at aging boilers or fridges, electrics or plumbing, that seems like a good enough arrangement to me. 

[ak1188]

I would love to buy a home, but to do it we would need to put together a down payment that would buy a house outright in other parts of the country. And then once we bought it Mr. AK and I would have to keep working 60 hour weeks to stay in it. No thanks!

[feministxtian]

9 hours ago, Jellybean said:

Renting may seem like 'throwing good money away' but if you're renting well within your means so you can save money, and you don't have to throw lots of money at aging boilers or fridges, electrics or plumbing, that seems like a good enough arrangement to me. 

I don't see it as throwing money away...we lucked into one helluva deal with this apartment. It's surprisingly nice, a bit run down but nothing a little elbow grease won't fix. And...the whole maintenance, yard work thing...no thanks...

[catlady]

It's not throwing money away as long as it's within your budget. We were first-time buyers, and we kept hearing how the mortgage waould be no more than our rent but now we'd have EQUITY!!  My god, the equity!!  Well, yes, our mortgage by itself is comparable to our rent, but in addition to all the maintenance issues mentioned above, during our buying process, no one ever did more than gloss over the goddamn taxes. When I write the check to the bank every month or mortgage and tax escrow, I kid you not when I say that 40%, yes forty fucking percent, of that check is taxes.  We live in one of the most heavily-taxed counties of one of the most heavily-taxed states in the country. 

[feministxtian]

@catlady yeah, every year when the damn taxes and insurance would go up we'd end up screwed on the escrow account. What started at just under 1200 a month ended at just over 1500 a month by the time we sold it. We won't discuss the hideous amounts of money we put into the house...

We now live in a vintage 1980's multi-family 4 plex...3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, nice sized living room, dining area and kitchen. 2 balconies. Not deluxe but absolutely awesome for 750 a month. I just need to get the freelance shit up and going again pronto!

[JermajestyDuggar]

I think people tend to buy homes that are too big or too expensive for them too often in America. So home ownership tends to be very overrated because of that. When people rent, it seems they rent dwellings that are more practical for their lives. Of course that's not always the case, but I've seen it enough to seem like a common occurance. 

[feministxtian]

Our house was reasonable given we had my mother living with us, a couple of teenaged boys, and my granddaughters. So, there were 7 people in the house. A 2200 square foot, 4 bedroom house was reasonable. Now that it's just the two of us, we recently "upsized" from a very small 1 bedroom apartment (aka "the overgrown closet") to a comfortably sized 3 bedroom apartment. 

[EowynW]

44 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I think people tend to buy homes that are too big or too expensive for them too often in America. So home ownership tends to be very overrated because of that. When people rent, it seems they rent dwellings that are more practical for their lives. Of course that's not always the case, but I've seen it enough to seem like a common occurance. 

Rent is high here. Atleast they say it is. We are first time renters. The cheapest we could find that wasn't in a hell hole was $700 a month. But we love our place. We are hoping to one day buy or build something very very simple on a few acres of land.  We mostly want the land we are homsteading country bumpkins.  

[clueliss]

Dedicated apartment renter here.  I tried owning a mobile home for a while and was thrilled seven years ago to return to apartment renting.  I've been in the sa,e place since because I like it here and it is convenient to my 30 commute to a small town that I work in.  No desire to live in said small town. Limited rental opportunities there.  I hate mowing lawns, raking leaves and shoveling snow.  When crap breaks, a call or an online maintenance firm filled out takes care of the problem.  I'm about to renew my lease for another year.  Over building and declining enrollment means that this renewal isn't only my second rent increase in the seven years I've been here.  

[Justmurrayed]

Dedicated apartment renter here. I've said it before and will say it until I'm blue in the face. I won't own a home. I will never be able to buy a house outright(2 to 4 million here) AND I refuse to give more money to the banks, so I refuse to have a mortgage. . Also, we aren't handy people and sure you can say we could learn to fix things but I prefer to let the experts do that, and it doesn't cost me anything in an apartment.  I can't wait to have an awesome retirement home though, since that's what we're saving for. 

[Jana814]

In my area because the schools are some of the best in NJ people around me are trying to rent rather then buy. I had a client that do to a divorce she downsized to a smaller rental home in our town because she wanted her kids to stay in the same school.