#“religion”

[scotianostra]

25th May 1847 saw the birth of John Alexander Dowie, the Scots-born religious leader.

Dowie, a highly controversial but charismatic faith healer, founded the Christian Catholic Church at Zion, Illinois, where around 5,000 followers created a unique community and followed his teaching.

This included a belief in the power of prayer in the healing of disease: Zion existed without any doctors or pharmacists. Smoking, drinking and the eating of pork were banned. Dowie, the self-proclaimed apostle Elijah the Restorer, was expelled from the Church in 1905 after he had become increasingly eccentric, and the community fell into financial ruin. He died a year later.

More info here https://www.james-joyce-music.com/extras/dowie_bio.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0vFNozQQuxkmz3zU8yokyJCNFGppk0GtKjO8OvepnAQ71vLgysXf2CxDE_aem_AabXHtu40JdfxGGMKAdGWBAYrZpwc4QciW6PwPl3CVUXAtELHBgeuXL2pQBr7OtA74KjaBH4ldWTq9AbWIWWkRM4

[moths-and-crows]

google defines a cult as "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object," or "a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister."

so if I made a religion with strange practices that was devoted to a specific thing (I might be confused, but isn't "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object" just... any religion????) that only a small group of people were a part of I could officially call it a cult?

@sabineandcheeseburrito @starcrossedandstupid @3guineapigsinatrenchcoat @parrotxx you have been invited become a founder of my cult

would you like to accept this offer

[coonazz74]

No love like Republican Christian love

[cemeterygrace]

reminders:

if you or someone you know might need it in the next few years, purchase plan b. the shelf life of plan b is 4 years, and we might not be able to access it as easily as we can now in the days ahead.

if you are larger/plus size: go online and purchase ella instead of plan b. plan b is less effective if you aren’t under 160 pounds.

if you can, purchase books that project 2025 is looking to ban.

mass deportations are starting. if you see ice vehicles or agents, yell ice raid and la migra as loud as you can.

if someone asks who you voted for, keep your mouth shut. they’re fishing for traitors.

if anyone, anyone at all asks about your neighbors or their legal status in the us, you know nothing. don’t be the reason that their family is separated.

if anyone asks about your religion or lack thereof, keep it vague. this administration will look for any excuse to persecute you.

your friends are trans or queer? for the next four years they’re not. don’t expose anyone’s status as a trans or queer person to anyone else, even if you think you can trust them.

did someone you know get an abortion? no, they didn’t. they were never pregnant.

in short, don’t be a snitch, and keep to yourself these next four years. we’ll make it through this even if it seems hopeless at times.

we can survive this. we’ve survived before, and we’ll survive again.

[heresylog]

I don’t care if you make fun of Catholicism as long as it’s accurate! The best humour has its roots in the truth.

[prokopetz]

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[noodles-07]

to be fair to Cain if nobody had ever died before and I didn't know it was possible I would probably also hit my brother over the head with a rock if he was being really annoying

[inbabylontheywept]

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

she then told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and go to heaven, and be able to talk to the worms face to face. that i'd be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident, driven only by excessive Love, and that she was positive they would forgive me because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[soup-mother]

still thinking about "decolonising" missionary work.

the way you decolonise missionary work is by not doing missionary work

the way you decolonise missionaries is like this:

[nando161mando]

[onlytiktoks]

[help-me-find-a-name-please-lol]

Hero of the Year 2025

I'm calling it early - I doubt anyone will beat The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde

(I sure hope I've addressed her correctly)

For the most stunning act of bravery, class, integrity, and speaking truth to power that has graced the USA in far too long.

Not a single shake in her voice as she spoke directly to one of the most vengeful, spiteful, and (unfortunately) powerful people on the planet, while also receiving glares of hate and outrage from the despicable VP and his wife.

It's not the first time she's stood up for what is right in defiance of trump's actions, but while many may speak out on it, there have been scarcely any with the backbone to follow through on the opportunity to do it to his face, and especially on live television. She had her moment, and she didn't waste it.

May she be the inspiration we all take forward with us into the turbulent times ahead.

[fuckyeahreligionpigeon]

[politijohn]

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