#95% of which were evangelical fundamentalism

[ringneckedpheasant]

Hi! I saw your Bible post and if you're interested in doing this, I have a few things you could look into/do which might make the process easier if you have trauma/want to approach it like a set of myths/historical document! I studied theology and religion at uni (particularly queer and eco theology) and came at it from a non-christian angle. Anyway feel free to delete this ask if it's not useful/too much etc. I just thought I'd give some ideas!

Yale has a series of online free lectures on the Old Testament which are super interesting and don't assume any faith! They go into the various myths which inspired the various stories in the bible (such as the flood), and the history of particular parts of the old testament library (they also have one for the new testament but I haven't watched it so don't know how good it is)

Look into apocrypha! The Nag Hammai scriptures, the gospel of Judas etc. Might actually be super interesting to you if you like the myth/history aspect! They're the books which were de-classified as canon (or never were canon), but all were written super early (2nd century) I specifically recommend the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Judas. "Lost scriptures" by Ehrman is a great laymans book explaining the histories/controversies around this and even goes into the controversies surrounding the secret gospel of Mark aka the gospel where Jesus seems to have gay sex. (Ehrman writes a lot of good layman books on the bible which might be worth looking at!)

If you're looking at the NT maybe look at books like Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes or The Crucified God by moltmamn. They're a bit specialised but it is SUPER important to modern historical studies of jesus to situate him as a Jew because that is who he was! Also Moltmamns book is v leftist and not fundamentalist.

"And man created God" by Selina O'Grady goes into detail about all the OTHER religions around during the 1st century (emperor cults etc.) Which is great for context for the gospels and also learning about cool religious traditions around in the 1st century!

Queer theology? Maybe? Might be fun for ya? Queer readings of the Bible are abundant from Ruth, Judas, David and Jonathan and jesus and there's quite a few books on them (I'm not dropping any here because I've read some Intense Theological Ones which Im not sure would appeal but if you Google you will find)

Look into Song of Songs the Official Sex is Good and Holy Book in the bible! (It's also just beautifully written)

Looking at things like "the Muslim Jesus" might also be interesting? Little collections of how Islam has viewed/interpreted Judaism and Christianity and why is always interesting and often another angle on those myths/historical documents

I'm sure other people could give you more ideas/ways to approach! I approached from a non religious angle but my institution was firmly situated in the Christian tradition so is slightly biased that way. But anyway! I just thought I'd give some starting points you could look at on the myth/history angle?

Have a lovely day!

I AM LOOKING??!!?? gd this is EXACTLY what I didn’t know I needed, all of this sounds very up my alley & like it’ll be great for what I’d be trying to get out of it. like. I have gone from “this is a thing I’ve been idly thinking about” to “this is a thing I could reasonably do and where I could start”!

I’ve done a little bit of looking into queer readings of things in the past (particularly david & jonathan) but then I had a years-long period that I technically still haven’t gotten out of where I physically could not bring myself to open a bible so I haven’t tried to actually read those stories myself while keeping a queer perspective in mind. also have had more years of lit classes that I dropped out of halfway through the semester so I have slightly more knowledge of how to dissect and analyze Texts than I used to

[spesalvi]

The Nothing Burger's Tale

One of the pieces of literature that has become the 1984 of the intersectional progressive has been The Handmaid's Tale.

Written in the 80's as a cautionary tale if the Neo Conservatives and Religious Right were ever to have full control over the culture and political institutions.

It imagines a United States, now The Republic of Gilead where it has been taken over by a group of White Supremacist Evangelicals who have established a theocracy in the wake of an ecological and biological disaster which has rendered many women infertile so, now there are Handmaids who also get their legal names stripped from them and replaced with new names(Margret are you trying to say something about Christianity at a fundamental level or at least female religious?), who act as mistresses to the powerful men in Gilead and have a bizarre mating ritual to boot as well.

The book follows a Handmaid named Offred and her attempt to escape the confines of Gilead and make it to Canada (obviously a reference to slaves escaping to Canada in the 19th century before the American Civil War.).

The book ends in a university lecture in the future and questions the validity of the text and if it can be even trusted since, it was written by a woman.

This was a relatively obscure book mainly read and quoted by English majors, activists and the more hardcore feminists out there. However, after the Orange Man got elected it became this rallying cry women's rights and the like because a sex pest was elected president and somehow that meant we were going to rollback a hundred plus years in the struggle for equality for women.

But it never happened, in fact women hold more cultural pull than men and it's been this way for awhile. Women are allowed to get away with things men simply cannot and often are for lack of a better term "cancelled" or called into question. For example, in 2014 Lena Dunham openly admitted that she had molested her sister when they were kids and she still has a lucrative acting career.

Or the fact that for the most part, the entire Me Too movement has been female centric, with the token inclusion of Brendan Fraiser. A movement that got killed in 2020 whenever it became obvious that Joe Biden would be the Democratic frontrunner we just swept the very credible sexual assault allegations under the rug.

Not to mention that organizations like Planned Parenthood has been caught aiding pimps in order to continue prostitution and sexual exploitation. They engaged in intersectional rhetoric in order to get away with this stuff and also hides behind other layers like being pro LGBT (which makes no sense since 95% of their business model focuses on women, biological women who are seeking to destroy/terminate/end the life inside of them). It only makes sense if they want to be beyond the reproach of criticism.

However, what people don't see is that this is mainly a cudgel by one side in order to shut the other down. No one talks about the sexual assaults perpetuated by Bill Clinton (allegedly) or how Ted Kennedy killed his secretary (allegedly) but these are never really given much if any consideration when it comes to the opposition then it's treated as fact from day zero, rarely if ever will there be a retraction.

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for Our Lady of Guadalupe Isaiah 40:1-11; Ps 95; Matthew 18:12-14

preached at The Rosary Shrine in London on the occasion of a Solemn Mass and Blessing of a Guadalupe image by the Apostolic Nuncio

1531. In that year, an English king set about in earnest to dismantle the Church in England. In 1531, Henry VIII declared himself to be Supreme Governor of the English Church, and the clergy were forced into submission. Thus the flock of Christ in these lands were cut off from the universal Shepherd appointed by Christ, namely, the Pope our Holy Father. Within seven years of this cataclysmic event the tearing down of the Church in England is made manifest by the dissolution of the religious houses that once adorned England, and in 1538, Blackfriars in London is closed and eventually demolished.

But the Lord does not allow his sheep to be lost, nor the errant to stray too far. For he goes in search of us, and gathers his struggling little ones into his arms. So history shows us that time and again, Christ reaches out to embrace us and console us, especially through his blessed Mother, whom he gave us from the Cross to be also our Mother.

So in 1531, far away in the New World, in Mexico, a new Christian convert heralds a new dawn of God’s grace. The Lord gives his response to the English king by sending the Queen of Heaven, and as always, she uses the humblest and littlest as her messengers. “Juanito” she called him –  “Juanitito…”, my dearest little Johnny boy. Before dawn on the 9th of December 1531, Juan Diego is on his way to church for some post-baptismal catechesis. Here is one who is journeying out of the darkness, seeking the light of truth. And the light of a new dawn shines upon him in the person of Mary. She appears to him, intercepting his journey as he walks around Tepeyac Hill. The earliest account of this incident recounts that a dazzling light comes from the top of the hill and Juan Diego hears heavenly birdsong. So, echoing the prophecy of Isaiah we’ve just heard, he goes up the “high mountain” and so he becomes the joyful messenger of God’s saving power. Mary’s first words to St Juan Diego reveal God’s response to his people in need, firstly in Mexico, of course, but also, I think, to the crisis unfolding in England and that would engulf the Church in Europe. And her words remain ever relevant to us today.

Firstly, Our Lady tells Juan Diego that she is “the ever Virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the true God, from whom all life has come”. For as a monarch’s lasciviousness has sundered the one flock of Christ, so God sends Mary, Ever a Virgin to bring healing, reconciliation, and comfort. For as revealed truth concerning the Christ-given role of the Papacy is denied, so Mary points to the true God who cannot deceive and whose words, revealed in the Gospels, are truth. And since political power would dare to usurp even revealed truth, so too, in time to come, it would obfuscate the truths of natural law. Thus we find today that the nature of marriage and its purpose which is to bring forth new life is challenged. Similarly, the fundamental right to life of the unborn child is threatened. So Mary states, in contradiction to the culture of death that would come upon us, that “all life” comes from God. From the very beginning, with her “Yes” to the Incarnation, Mary embraces a Pro-Life stance, so to speak, and in 1531 this would have resonated with the deepest longings of Juan Diego’s heart.

For he had lived in a frightening culture of death. The Aztecs who had controlled Mexico until 1521 believed that their gods required human sacrifices in order for the sun to rise daily and for the world to continue in existence. So Mary comes bearing the true light of the world, the One from whom all life comes. Unlike the false Aztec gods, the true God offers himself in sacrifice; he dies and rises from the tomb in order that we might have eternal life. Because of Christ, the sun rises on the eternal Day of heavenly life for you and for me, and that sun never sets. This is the new dawn that Mary proclaims to St Juan Diego that December morning in 1531. And she proclaims hope for the Church in the Old World too.

For she then tells Juan Diego to tell the Franciscan friar who is bishop of Mexico to have a church built at Tepeyac. Mary often does this. She did so at Walsingham in 1061; she tells St Bernadette this in 1858; and so she tells Juan Diego the same in 1531. It seems to me that in doing so Mary directs us to worship God as a community. It’s not enough for Our Lady that we pray at home, or in our hearts, but without coming to church. No. She insists that a church is built so that we can come together for prayer and the Sacred Liturgy.

But there is, I think, another meaning behind her request. In 1531, as Henry VIII dismantles the Church, Our Lady makes this request as a reminder and a promise that God will provide saints, and indeed, friars, who will labour to rebuild his Church. The Lord promises, after all, to seek out the lost, to shepherd the straying, and to console the afflicted. Hence Mary says to St Juan Diego that ”Here I will show myself as a loving Mother to you and to all those born in these lands. And to all those who love me and trust in me, here I will listen to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows”. This is to say that it is here, in the communion of the Church, and indeed through the embrace of Holy Mother Church, that God is at work in our world, bringing light into the darkness, consoling his people, and feeding his flock. Our Lady desires, therefore, to bring all people under the mantle of her protection, into the fold of the Church, and thus to unite all to Christ. Thus Our Lady is called the Star of the New Evangelization for, in the decade after the miracle of Guadalupe, over nine million Mexicans ask to be baptised. To this day, up to twenty million visit the Basilica of Guadalupe annually, with an estimated million going there on this day alone.

What draws them there? When Hillary Clinton visited the Basilica she asked who painted the image of Mary. “God”, said the Rector of the Shrine. For, in all seriousness, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the first ‘selfies’ in history and its miraculous nature tells us about God’s desire to seek out the lost. For, like every selfie, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe says, “I am here”. This image, which was imprinted miraculously on the tilma or cape of St Juan Diego on this day, 12th December in 1531, is a true image of Mary’s face. In it we see, as it were, a photograph of Our Lady when she appeared to St Juan Diego and the bishop 486 years ago in Mexico. And through the years, the image has been miraculously preserved so that Mary remains with us; it declares that Mary is here to give us God’s comfort and love. It isn’t just that the image is still there, beautifully preserved. In addition, the fragile cactus-fibre cloth that it is printed on has miraculously survived the centuries. These cloths typically last forty years, but the sacred tilma remains intact despite age, fire, chemical spills, and a bomb attack. It truly is an enduring sign of Mary’s desire to be with us, to be a mother to us, and to lead souls back to Christ her Son.

So, today, in 2017, this replica of the sacred tilma has come to find a home in London’s Rosary Shrine, in this, the fourth Blackfriars of London, and in your hearts. Like the original miraculous image in Mexico City, to which this replica was touched so that it can be regarded as a “relic image”, this image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is to be a sign to all that Mary is here: this is her Rosary Shrine, her house in London. And even as God worked wonders for Mexico and the Americas through Our Lady of Guadalupe, so he desires to do the same for us here in England. For God does not will that his little ones be lost nor go astray. Hence Christ sends his mother here, to this newest of English Marian Shrines, so as to inspire new messengers of salvation, new evangelisers, new saints, and indeed, friars, too, who will work to build the Civilisation of love in our land. He sends his mother to proclaim the Gospel of Life, and so to unite all peoples of good will. And, above all, Mary is here to console and embrace God’s people, to bring light into the darkness.  

Hence, as we receive Holy Communion today, we will hear being sung these words that Our Lady gave to St Juan Diego on this day in 1531:

“Listen, put it into your heart, most little of my sons:
Let nothing frighten or grieve you,
let not your heart be disturbed,
do not fear any sickness or anguish.
Am I not here, who am your Mother?
Are you not under my protection?
Am I not your health and salvation?
Are you not happily within the folds of my mantle,
held safely in my arms?
Do you need anything more?
Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”

May these words resound in our hearts, for they are the anthem of a new dawn, the bright promise of salvation in Christ, for every one who hears them.