This says it all right here, folks.

[wnylib]

59. I would have responded to your post sooner, but

on the day of your post I was busy preparing for a meeting at a local church where a woman who had just returned from Ukranian relief work in Poland and Ukraine was scheduled to speak about her ecperiences.

This was not at a Ukrainian church in the US. It was an Anglican church. She did not go to Ukraine and Poland to convert the people. She did not go to establish any political authority there. She went to take food, medicine, and protective equipment. She established a base in Poland, but went into Ukraine to deliver supplies to Ukrainian groups that could disperse them to where they are needed. While in Ukraine she picked up refugees to take back with her to Poland.

She was back in the States last week to touch base with her husband and daughter (her son went with her to Poland), and to raise funds and develop a network of local people to act as couriers and handle logistics from the US. She returned to Poland on Sunday with more supplies and will be going into a Ukrainian city where she once lived as a Peace Corps volunteer.

When asked if she was afraid going into Ukraine, she said that of course it is risky, but less so for a woman in her 60s than for a young man. But she felt that, with her foreign aid experience, she was obligated by her faith to volunteer. It would be worth the risk to try to make a difference in the world.

She has experience with aid work abroad in places like Ethiopia and the Middle East, as well as her stint in Ukraine with the Peace Corps. So she started raising funds for Ukraine on Facebook through her foreign contacts. When her Ukrainian contacts told her about their immediate, urgent need for protective vests for civilians turned fighters, she bought them out of her own money and arranged a flight to go in person. But by then she lacked cash to take with her. The church gave her a few thousand out of their relief funds. Relief funds come from the donations of church members, not to make the church rich, but to aid people in need.

Besides the Anglican church, other churches sending aid to Ukraine are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist and several more. Besides Christian aid, there are Jewish and Islamic aid groups. Once there, they cooperate with each other. A Baptist group reimbursed this woman for the aid she had bought out of pocket.

Since last Thursday, I have been contacting various local people regarding fund raising and establishing a local backup team to support this woman's work. So I have not responded to your post until now.

I have read on this thread and others such nonsense as claims that churches only require people to believe something but not to do anything. I have read silly claims that churches exist only to make their members or leaders rich. There are some evangelical churches like that, but only lack of knowledge let's people apply that claim to all churches. In fact, I am often amazed at the authoritative statements about churches coming from people who do not know how they function or what they do. Or, who ascribe nefarious conspiracy theories to the motives of church sponsored aid.

Yet, those same people, if they ever did belong to a church (or other religious group) usually left it in their youth because they could not accept the beliefs and stories that religions are founded on. So they were not around long enough for them to speak with any real knowledge today of what else the churches do besides having weekly services. Rejecting personal belief in religious stories and theology is everyone's right. There are many religious people who reject the stories on a literal basis, too, but find enough meaning in religious spirituality to continue with their religion. But I see and hear people reject religious mythology as too unreal and then construct their own unreal myths about church activities and motives.

For example, you said that Jewish self government killed Jesus, not the Romans. How absurd. Jews did not use crucifixion. Only Romans did. If Jews turned Jesus over to the Romans, it was because they feared the activities of messianic leaders would bring Rome down on all the Jews - which, in fact, did happen later. As for no record of Jesus' execution in his lifetime, that's not at all unusual or surprising. How many other of the thousands of Roman executions do we have records for? Is it really even conceivable that every single record of every execution or other activity of Rome and its provinces would still be intact today?

If you actually do have any genuine interest in a historical, secular view of Jesus and how Christianity got established, I recommend an old PBS documentary titled "From Jesus to Christ." It takes a neutral, factual approach. It gives good historical background on Judea and Rome, tells what early Christians reported that they believed about Jesus, but also points out discrepancies in Gospel accounts and how early Christians dealt with their initial beliefs versus the real world realities of their lives. It ends with Constantine's conversion and the establishment of Christianity as the official Roman religion. If you are going to make claims about something, it is a good idea to know something about it first.