#and exvangelical stuff about Christianity

[cookinguptales]

didn't realize how much I was gonna be delving into Childhood Trauma today and trying to explain how weird and insular it is to grow up evangelical but like.

I guess I'll just bury my feelings in paprikash lmao

[in-sufficientdata]

Depression is not "ooh wah wah, I feel so bad for myself, I am sad" and also thinking that praying and 'name it and claim it' gospel will do any damn thing to help is magical thinking

Depression is literally your brain chemicals ganging up on you to lie to you about how much it is worth living or trying anything

You cannot 'power of positive thinking' your way out of that

Take it from me, a person who literally had nearly zero will to live, and therefore very low quality of life, between ages 20-33 & who only remained here because doing otherwise was sinful

This religious nonsense led directly to my children having emotional trauma around their parentification bc I spent their childhoods p much just asleep

Now I'm bedridden and my daughter cries bc helping me gives her c-ptsd flashbacks!!

I feel guilty and awful in so many ways that I was religious until she was 13 and now I'm almost being physically punished for it

So yes, fuck your thoughts and prayers. Give me some Wellbutrin.

Like look at how bad these are look how people have this so fucked up

I believed and acted on these beliefs for fifteen years of my life and it was a complete waste

This teaching kills people or kills their quality of life which is almost just as bad

[sadieshavingsex]

OH MY GOD IVE FOUND AN OLD JOURNAL WHERE I WROTE IN THE FORMAT OF

what I’m saying:

what I hear god saying:

AND GOD SOMETIMES IS JUST SO FUCKING ABUSIVE ITS SO TERRIFYING BUT ALSO HORRIBLY FUNNY BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO LAUGH OR YOULL CRY LOL.

Like it’s literally just me/my “conscience”/“God”/whatever you want to call it using abusive language to myself to try to convince myself to be a better Christian like. Holy shit it’s terrifying. I might start posting some excerpts like. This is what a kid who goes to church all the time and is constantly steeped in the Bible is actually fucking thinking. This is how a teenager who already has mental health issues is interpreting your scripture to give themself even more lol

[roundearthsociety]

This is going to be a tad personal but how do you manage to be trans and catholic? Some of the biggest anti trans voices like Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles and Desantis base their views off that religion. Many trans people on here, Reddit and IRL have nothing but disdain for Catholicism because of the Vatican’s statements and how they’ve been treated. Likewise, a lot of Catholics I’ve seen on tumblr, Reddit and various forums view it as a sin, mental illness or pedophilia and oppose affirming care as well as IVF.

I’m an American exvangelical, who does have some conservative Catholic family members, and I’m trying to broaden my perspective a bit rather than writing Catholicism off as an irredeemable, hateful colonizer ideology and viewing paganism and Reform Judaism as the only valid religions like most Tumblr users do. How do you put up with it when many refuse to affirm it, including the pope who’s still very conservative? I’m not asking to attack your beliefs but are simply curious whether there’s more nuance than people will claim.

This is something that's a bit hard to answer, as someone who's not that good a theologian nor that good at theory. Plus, I'm not side A, so I wouldn't be all that good at discussing Catholicism While Queer with you I suspect. Anyway I will be assuming you, the reader, have got some level of legitimate Christian faith. Because otherwise I'm not sure how to like. Give you that.

So let me preface all of this by recommending you look into queer Catholic organizations such as New Ways Ministry, or especially DignityUSA which I've heard good things about. There are also some Tumblr bloggers on the more affirming side of things, most of them aren't really doing all that much advocacy work either but you might find it interesting to scroll through, idk, and-her-saints or shoutsofmybones's blogs for example, and take a look.

Also: you don't have to give up on Christianity entirely if you can't / would rather not be Catholic! Even if the specific ritual and community aspect is especially important to you, the Episcopal Church is probably decently well implanted where you live and is worth looking into, especially since it doesn't have the embedded political elements that the US Catholic Church tends to have.

As for my own personal answer below - please don't bother to get mad at me for this, it's like 4AM and I'm not too interested in writing a thesis here.

Gender-wise it's honestly pretty straightforward. I know I function better being generally recognized as another sex than I was assigned at birth, with characteristics to match; everything else in terms of gender roles names etc is really just getting a lil silly with it ngl. This is neither especially uncommon nor especially new, and the generally recognized way to deal with this has long been to just let people do their thing. While there are issues with the way that's being done (hey! you should freeze your gametes if that's available to you! don't count on never wanting kids, especially if you're a teenager! trust me on this one.), a lot of the modern discourse around it boils down to "this is disgusting to me so it must be morally wrong". And like, I'm a biologist, I can't really find it in myself to be grossed out by this stuff anymore.

Anyway the Church is far from a monolith. Even at the institutional level there's plenty of tolerance; my home diocese is based in a large and ancient Mediterranean city so God knows it's had ages to get used to the weird shit, not counting the handful of trad strongholds. My understanding of the situation in the US is that it's Kind Of Really Not That though, so I'd strongly recommend heavily looking into your local Catholic diocese and parishes before making any moves, because Catholic faith and practice are a very community-bound thing and it's not really something you can do at a distance. Thankfully though, once you start avoiding the political activists trying to use faith as a means to an end (as is the case for most of the people you cite in your ask), you'll find that it's relatively more chill than you'd think. Let me elaborate.

My own case is complicated enough that I can't reasonably apply any of the details to this, but ultimately what's important to note here is that Christianity is functionally about how everyone is flawed, and everyone fucks up, and sure you'll be forgiven but you've got to own up to it first. The members of the Church, even the Pope, even (most of) the Saints in their earthly lives, are no exception. They can be misguided, fearful, or just plain hateful; in such circumstances, it's on them to do better, not on you to adapt to their flaws, and they know this if they're honest to themselves. This, in turn, must apply just as much to you and me; as a Christian, you (generic) have everything you need to do better, and to know anything that prevents you from loving other people is probably not the way to go.

But anyway yeah. I'm trans and Catholic because both of those are just kinda who I am, and I don't intend to stop being either because I'm not interested in replacing myself with the cop in my head. So the Church can have fun with that.

[ardent-apostasy]

i just want to say, as an exvangelical, i'm sorry:

to everyone i made uncomfortable by preaching my "one true god" (whether we were friends or you were a random stranger)

to everyone to whom i was a self-righteous asshole (whether because i was a Born Again Christian, or because i thought i was more Enlightened, or because i was trying to mimic a Wrathful God)

to everyone i condemned as too much of a "sinner" (lgbtq+, women, divorcees, any other religion, etc.)

to everyone i fought with about how evolution must be false, without proof other than my stubbornness (and to everyone i thought stupid for believing in evolution)

to everyone i dragged into watching god's not dead (what a goddamn mess that was)

to everyone i judged for loving the world (for loving people; for participating in pop culture; for caring)

to everyone whose life i made harder by refusing to participate in any Ungodly Stuff (halloween, costumes, pokemon, harry potter, percy jackson, lord of the rings, any and all pop music, the list goes on and on)

to everyone who had to read my bible-inspired writing and book reports on christian books and just, all that terrible shit

to everyone else i've hurt (because i know i'm missing things, because this list could go on)

many of the people i've hurt are no longer in my life -- whether that's because we never knew each other (and they were one of the 5 strangers i was assigned to evangelize at), because we grew apart (due to faith or other reasons), or because i was an asshole (and i'm sorry for how i behaved). and an apology from a stranger into the void doesn't really mean anything.

but. i just want to put it out there. i'm sorry, for all the times and all the ways i've hurt the world.

(and i promise, i will try to do better.)

[deservedgrace]

about this blog

this is a religious trauma/ex cult blog, so general trigger warning for religious trauma, cult trauma, child abuse, etc

i'm exvangelical (ex non denominational specifically) and anything i write will always be from that perspective. that said, anyone is free to engage/talk about their experience, and i hope you know you're not alone even if our specific backgrounds aren't identical

i appreciate how many people are considerate of this, but if a post is rebloggable, you can assume it's okay to reblog. i can and will turn off reblogs if i really don't want that type of engagement for whatever reason

i try to tag things but sometimes i just stick them in my queue and don't get to them until after they're posted since no one has asked for anything specific tagged. i'm happy to tag anything though, just ask. i tag things not related to religious trauma as #non religion

blog runs mostly on a queue. i have a variable sleep schedule & i'm online at variable times

i can't control who engages with my content but i block liberally when it comes to terfs, other bigots, and christians that can't manage to be respectful

this is not a space that caters to christians, and christians that have not deconstructed and/or are not currently in the process of deconstructing or questioning will probably be very uncomfortable. so christians, engage at your own risk, and i don't owe you a debate or my justifications for leaving. i don't go into your spaces and harass you about your beliefs, please grant me the same respect

along the same lines, you cannot proselytize to me in a way that i haven't heard or in a way that i will listen to. i am the person matthew 10:14 is referring to; don't bother wasting your energy

about me

you can call me tig

late 20's

agnostic atheist, apostate

i'm queer (non binary ace lesbian) and use they/them pronouns

i'm chronically ill and complain about it sometimes, posts about that are tagged #health stuff & #mental health stuff if you don't want to see them (totally fine ♡)

thank you for reading and please remember you are allowed to prioritize your own happiness and peace 💛

[pouroverpaloma]

yellow and white!! :)

Hey thanks, this was fun!

💛 Yellow: Do you ever alter, highlight, or de-emphasize certain canonical traits in a character? If so, why and describe how.

Oh, god yeah. I feel like I give SO much energy and space to Gale’s trauma—it’s something only touched on in the game that I wanted to see explored narratively, and I felt like I could do it well.

I grew up in a pretty intense, charismatic kind of Christianity that was focused on experiencing the divine as a two-way personal relationship. Gale’s relationship with Mystra reflected a lot of the anxieties and fears I had growing up as an evangelical teenager—what if I was so good, that God chose me for something important? What if it was awful? What if God is cruel, actually, and I don’t find out until it’s too late? How could I escape someone omnipresent and omnipotent? Idk, his story hit me VERY hard as an exvangelical, and I feel like that heavily colors the way I write him. I just want to make him a spicy margarita and play him Ethel Cain’s entire catalog; it would fix him.

Also, I think anyone who’s read my stuff, especially this beauty that pleases too well, has probably guessed that the way I portray his survival of intimate partner violence is born from experience—but this is a tumblr post about a fictional wizard, so I’ll leave it there, except to say that I got my happy ending and it brings me a lot of joy to do that for him too.

Also also: his crow’s feet. If I’m writing him, you WILL see and appreciate the eye crinkles.

🩷 Pink: Do you find a certain character (or characters) easy to write? More difficult -- and if so, do you avoid writing that character (or those characters) when possible?

Shadowheart is so difficult to get right!! Done well, she’s dry and haughty but secretly having a great time fucking with you. It’s so easy to steer too hard into the skid and make her either boring or so snarky she’s unlikeable. You have to write her well enough to get her timing. She’s too much fun to leave out entirely, though, so I’m working on it.

I find Gale extraordinarily easy to write, probably because we’re both terminal nerds who overtalk to fill time. It’s like confronting my fucking Jungian shadow self, but in a horny way that I am in no way prepared to unpack.

I like writing Astarion, but I just never feel like I make him enough of a bitch. He deserves to be full bitch. The height of his powers. I can, should, must, and will find a way to let him be an emotional terrorist (affectionate) moving forward.

[decomposingpoet]

Hey, there! Welcome to my blog ^_^

she/her - wlw - slavic-american - exvangelical atheist - over 18

I mostly post about being ex-religious and queer plus a bunch of random stuff I like

DNI: Conservative Christians (this includes "love the sinner hate the sin" mfs) (nothing personal, let's just go our separate ways 😊)

Progressive Christians you can stay but you are on thin ice 😒. JK as long as you're chilling and you don't try to convert, we're good 👍

[scarletspider-lily]

slight update ramble

man, life's been weird. told someone at church i'm an atheist because we're likely ending up in the same uni and i did not want them to expect me to engage with them about christianity and join christian groups. got the typical ill pray for you response but they expressed they still care about me. obviously it was good intentions and all, but it just left me feeling hollow. that i wont know anyone entering this space but them, and ill need to make more friends. socializing can be exhausting though on top of that perhaps i vented to my sibling a bit too much and was about to passionately go into the topic of childrens rights and parental abuse, which we disagree with. they did not want to argue with me. a lot of people in my life don't seem to have the same opinion as me when it comes to childrens rights, which is unfortunate and rather concerning to me. expect some posting about that along with exvangelical stuff as per usual. if someone has resources about childrens rights, problems with the traditional family structure, etc. let me know please!

[wandering-free-and-queer]

Going through the exvangelical tag on here was very therapeutic today. When I was getting my tattoo my artist and I were sharing tragic backstories (like you do lol) and seeing so many others going through the same emotional turmoil I did when I left Christianity made me feel so much better.

I was in deep. Like really deep. At one point I was the only teenager in a devotional class designed for adults. I went to all the camps and retreats and did all the "right" stuff. I was one of the favorites among the church crowd, the one they'd go to for babysitting or housesitting gigs, I was so trustworthy and helpful and I was always so good with all the kids. They wanted me to teach and share and I taught and share.

And then I tried to come out. I was sick of being in the closet and I wanted to start a physical transition. Immediately all of their attitudes toward me shifted. I was no longer asked to help, I was offered a job doing set design for VBS instead of being a teacher like I was the previous year. I was shunned almost immediately.

It was at that point I knew I had no family in the church. Their messages of unconditional love fell on deaf ears and no one even cared that this person who they "loved" since 13 years old was hurting from it. Mass rejection is unbearable. I felt like I did something wrong by coming out, and it was enough to force me back into the closet, where taking testosterone felt like a sin. I still took it, because I knew if I didn't, I wasn't going to survive. But once the changes became too noticeable, I stopped going. Back then I told myself, I'll go back once I'm further in my transition, once I'm stealth, and no one will know the difference because I'll be at a different building with different people.

So I stopped going to church and I started picking up shifts earlier and earlier on Sundays, using that as my excuse to miss church, something that was almost as bad as being queer. My boss noticed my change in schedule and she wondered what was going on. I told her I needed the money, and I can afford to miss church. I can't really afford to miss overtime pay. And then it all clicked. Going to church was a chore to me, one that I dreaded because I knew I didn't actually fit in there. I was loved because I was useful. I said yes to all the volunteer projects and cleanup days and leaf raking and everything else because I didn't know how to say no. I was discouraged from saying no. Of course, everyone else in my life was able to get away with saying no because they had sports, or plays, or other activities. But I wasn't doing anything else, so of course my time should be spent helping the church.

It's so freeing to have your time be your own again. To be able to express yourself how you want to, not forcing yourself to do things or say things or wear things that aren't you.

I'm proud of who I am now, and honestly pretty damn ashamed of who I was as a kid. Sure, I didn't know any better, because I spent my entire childhood to age 21 in the church. But I was a dick. I made it a point to proselytize, to tell people they were broken if they didn't accept Jesus. I was that asshole who couldn't go to the mall with my friends because they went on Sundays and Sunday was for church. I was that kid who bragged about going on retreat weekends because it meant I could leave school early on Friday, or better yet not come in at all. I told everyone how great my summer camp was. I told everyone about the nationwide retreat held every three years, and how I was lucky because I was one of the teenagers who could have gone twice, because I was just the right age bracket. I thought I was better than everyone else because I was a Christian, one of God's chosen people, one of his favorites because I was doing Christianity the right way while everyone else was either doing it the wrong way or not doing it at all, the ultimate sin.

Fuck it. I'm a sinner. I'm a queer stoner pagan witch. I have more peace now following my goddess Nyx than I ever did following Jesus. She doesn't make me fearful of her power, she doesn't tell me I need to share the Good News with everyone. She just asks me to look at the moon and think of her. All I have to do is enjoy the nighttime, and that's come easy to me ever since I was a kid.

I healed myself. I didn't need God to do it for me.

[follower-of-odin]

Guilt. It's not something I'm supposed to put any real religious stock in, as a Heathen.

On the other hand, Heathenry isn't what I was raised with. I was raised a Mormon, a member of a high-control religious group that uses guilt as a tool of control.

I was raised to believe guilt is necessary for any good person to have. A person without guilt would have no qualms hurting innocent people. A person without guilt would persecute Jesus Christ, himself, as he hung on the cross for all men's sins (sexist wording intentional; Mormons believe women sin, too, but they still roll with the "say 'men' when we mean 'humans/humanity/humankind'" business). Therefore, guilt is necessary to keep me on the straight and narrow; if I ever feel guilty about something, then, it must surely be because I am doing something I already know is wrong. The possibilities that the guilt is simply peer pressure; latent, ingrained social conservatism previously unaddressed; or simply trauma eating at me; any of which three would not mean I am doing something wrong, simply feeling pain even while I might actually be right; are possibilities which are not even entertained, let alone addressed.

Dealing with guilt, consequently, is not my strong suit. 10 years since I stopped believing in that cult, and about 6 since I officially left, I still can't deal well with guilt. Being a Heathen for 10 years hasn't freed me; but, then, I'm not a member of a Heathen community here, because I'm currently jobless and still living in a Mormon, if unorthodox and somewhat tolerant Mormon, household.

You know, that's probably why I have such a hard time with the whole white guilt thing. There's this feeling that I need the guilt to prevent myself from falling into racist, white pride bullshit; which seems twice as bad to my anti-racist-but-raised-Mormon self, because it's at once white supremacist, which is bad for obvious reasons, but also because it is pride, and pride is the enemy of humility, which is essentially another word for beating yourself up with guilt. That's probably what a lot of other exvangelical/ex-Christian/exmo anti-racists with white guilt are dealing with, too, if I were to conjecture; they have to be the opposite of who they once were, or who their former coreligionists/fellow cultists wanted them to be, yet they - we - also feel we have to supersede them, be better Christians than they were. We have to defeat their racist pride with racial humility, we think - racial guilt - but while racist pride is obviously harmful, racist guilt still keeps things all about ourselves, and not the people we think we're helping with our self-flagellation.

I really need to toss this guilt away. It's deep-set, though, but that doesn't mean I don't have to toss it away. It means I have all the more reason to do it.

Once things in this household achieve some semblance of stability again, I'll have to schedule another appointment or so with my counselor to talk about this. Haven't talked since we had a good scare about a month and a half or so ago. Just as well, because we're pretty close to losing everything. Best not spend too much time thinking about colonialism and stuff when I'm about to become homeless. My guilt isn't gonna help anything, especially if I become a beggar on the street.

On to business, then.

[kelyon]

Jesus Christ Superstar and Rent for the musical asks!

Going for the heavy hitters on this ask meme!

Jesus Christ Superstar: What are your thoughts on religion?

I'm an American exvangelical, so my thoughts on religion are many and varied! It's tough, because if I live by my mother's version of holiness, I will be miserable and will blame myself for being miserable and will reject so many of the things that I know make me happy (like my wife!) that I... won't be able to live like that.

But at the same time, I don't want to believe in nothing? Like, if life on earth is all there is then what is even the point? The concept of God is most relevant to me when thinking about the extremes of existence--like the beginning and ending of the universe. Or the extremes of human emotion. When things go wrong, I want to believe that there is a higher power that can either help or at least comfort. On the rare occasion things are good, I want to think that there's a reason for joy.

I liked that brief period when I was going to a mainline denomination Christian church. It was a nice sort of "pleasantly warm" religious atmosphere. Like, you can believe the Bible, but maybe some teachings are more nuanced than they might seem at first. You should seek out God, but you're not disappointing Him if you're not thinking about Him every second of every day. I like a religion where goodness is actually measured in kindness and trying to make the world a better place, and not just in getting angry and condemning unrighteousness wherever you see it.

Rent: How would you react if you were told you only have a few months to live?

My first thought would be to make sure my wife will be okay. We've been together for 10 years now, we don't really exist apart from each other. We joke that the only way out of this relationship is murder/suicide--but if I get a serious illness, I'd really like that possibility to be off the table.

(I'm assuming this scenario is 100% certain, like a time traveler comes and tells me that I'll get hit by a car sometime in December. I won't have to spend time and resources on trying to recover from an illness or anything.)

In general, I'd like to think that my concerns would be less with myself and more with the people I'm going to leave behind. I'd sort of put out an open invitation for anyone I know who wants to say something to me, "Now's your chance." I'd reach out to my birth daughter and her family. I'd try to convey to my little sister and my cousins just how much I love them. I don't know what I'd do about my parents, if I would want to talk or just listen. I'd finish the Wheel of Time books with my wife, because I don't know if she would finish the series without me and I want her to finish the series.

I'd switch over my passwords, tell my student loans to go fuck themselves. I'd plan my funeral. I'd reconsider my relationship with God.

Cheery stuff!

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

not sure why I haven’t mentioned this before--well, no, I do know, it’s because this was always either going to be a very short post or a very long one, and I guess we’ll see. (spoiler, it’s long)

anyway--found out Monday that my grandma has covid. she’d had a mild fever for a few days before that but I guess nobody was too concerned until she started having some stroke-like symptoms, and everything checked out okay at first but then her blood oxygen got so low they took her to the hospital in an ambulance aaaaaand it was covid. she’s still in the hospital and she’s on oxygen, but so far her symptoms have been relatively mild in general and mostly they’re keeping her there because of her age (and, I can only assume, because that hospital isn’t overwhelmed with worse cases right now) and will likely release her in a few days if she doesn’t get worse. nobody’s allowed in the covid wing, even my vaccinated aunt, so no shit my unvaccinated grandpa can’t see her either.

as you might imagine I’m having, uh, a lot of feelings about this and I’ve mostly been dealing with them by not thinking about it too much, which is the other reason I haven’t mentioned it. it’s scary, obviously, because they’re both old (my grandpa wasn’t tested for some reason but was told to isolate for 10 days, but obviously he was around her for several days when she was contagious), and my medically fragile uncle--who hasn’t been vaccinated, at his doctor’s advice--might have been exposed too. and I haven’t seen them since summer 2016, which is something I could have made the effort to do but didn’t because to be totally honest I wouldn’t feel comfortable visiting any of the still-very-conservative parts of my extended family without at least one other reasonable person around. in particular I haven’t wanted to visit my grandparents by myself or maybe with just my dad, because I don’t know if they would corner me about political things, or sit me down and solemnly say that they love me very much but they’re grieved by the ways I’ve changed over the past several years and God is super grieved too because I’ve clearly allowed Satan to deceive me and in conclusion they can’t have anything to do with me unless I stop being queer and liberal...but I think there’s a nonzero chance they might. and I really don’t want to know that they would, but at the very least I don’t want to spend a significant amount of my own money, effort, and vacation time for that, you know?

and also to be honest I am fucking furious. I’ve been fucking furious all along at the absolute shitstains who turned masks and vaccines into a divisive political issue, and now I’m more personally furious because it’s closer. I’m pissed at my grandparents for not getting vaccinated when they were definitely healthy enough for that, and going to an unmasked church, which is where my grandma most likely caught it. I’m pissed at them for believing the shit I’m sure they get on Fox News. I’m particularly pissed at my grandpa, who has a fucking doctorate and was a Democratic state legislator decades ago before switching parties, although considering that didn’t happen until my dad was at least a teenager and my dad has always been extremely fucking conservative, my grandpa had to have been extremely fucking conservative too even before he became a Republican. I’m pissed because I have almost nothing but good memories of my grandparents and I know the way they raised my dad is responsible for a lot of the dysfunction that has fucked me up and the way I was basically indoctrinated in conservative evangelical bullshit to believe all kinds of cruel bigotry while being told it was love and I swallowed it all because I was a fucking child who literally never got to hear differing opinions unless they were filtered through shit about not falling for the devil’s lies or whatever. I am incandescently furious at their church, and really the vast majority of the American church, for managing to be even more awful during the past year by jumping into the whole bullshit masking debate with both feet and screaming about religious freedom every time some sensible person wanted to limit gatherings or mandate masks to keep people from fucking dying, because “the Bible says we are to obey God rather than man” and “the Bible says we should trust in God’s protection instead of living in fear” when like--bitch, if you really actually believe in God, maybe consider using the brain he gave you??

and, you know, I’m pissed at the whole poisonous system that’s gotten me to this point, where I haven’t seen my grandparents in five years and now my grandma has covid and she will probably get better but of course there’s a chance she won’t and I still don’t think I’ve been wrong to be afraid of rejection.

so it’s, you know, a lot.

[riotouseaterofflesh]

Exvangelical, metatheist, postthodox atheist here.

So far i'm into year 2.5 of basically being forced to stay in that spiritual nihilism that i was desperate to get out of that caused me to try Orthodoxy for the better part of a decade in the first place, and wondering about this question myself and finding nothing that satisfies.

Most pagan stuff has no appeal to me at all - intellectually yes-ish(?kinda?) but nothing close to that visceral impact free of me "trying to like something because it's good for me" (but see also "I didn't know how to go about it without believing wholeheartedly in some kind of deity" from that other reblog to this post); meanwhile i've been burned as much by fundamentalist toxic garbage about "nature" at least as much as by Christian theology (in my particular context the Venn diagram is nearly circular) so "connecting to nature" was absolutely out of the question.

That said, though, this came very, very, very close.

I tried to reconstruct a theocosmology of my own based on what scraps i could still believe of the story that had any appeal to me at all but that's as far i've ever gotten - no ritual, no worship, nothing beyond something i just made up.

(Don't mind me, i just found this post after randomly getting curious after all this time where you personally were coming from with your comment on this thread which i pretty much re-queue every time i see it)

For those who were once fully-devoted and later left organized Christianity, what ways have you found to meet your spiritual needs now?

[yardsards]

i think one of the most evil aspects of fundamentalist evangelical christianity is how it (and the general culture of those who follow it) encourages parents to treat children

first off, it treats having children as something EVERYONE should do, regardless of if they actually want and are capable of raising said children. in more extreme cases you get shit like the quiverfull movement, wherein couples are encouraged to have as many children as physically possible

and then, those children are referred to like they're their parents possessions, like they are just objects their parents were "gifted" with by god. they're not treated like their own human beings.

AND a core tenet of their religion is that humans are born inherently sinful. they think newborns, who can't even fully control their bodily functions yet, are automatically full of sin. an infant's crying for its basic needs to be met is seen as a sign of their inherent selfishness

a parents' main goal is supposed to be to "purify" that child's soul by any means necessary, the child's actual wellbeing is secondary to "saving their soul"

and, of course, free thought is discouraged in favour of obedience. they believe in a hierarchy: child < wife < husband < god. if you are to disobey the one above you, then you are considered to be disobeying god himself- even if the thing your parent or husband is commanding you not to do is not a sin in of itself. "honor thy father and thy mother"

and again, parents are taught that the best trait for a child to have is *obedience*. obedient to their parents and obedient to the church and scripture

parents are taught to force that obedience by corporal punishment. physical abuse (and yes. "spanking" is abuse. if you disagree then, well, i'm sorry that someone convinced you that raising a hand against someone so much smaller and weaker than you is anything short of abusive) is ENCOURAGED

in fact, if you DON'T hit your kids, you are seen as A BAD PARENT, who is failing to properly "train" their child, and who is dooming their child to a life of wickedness, sin, and suffering ("he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." or, put more simply, "spare the rod spoil the child")

parents are told to ignore their own despair and revulsion towards the idea of harming their child, and to hit them anyway. hit the kid and ignore the voice in your head that says hitting kids is wrong. remind yourself that this is for the child's own good. remind yourself that this is god's will.

you're also supposed to remind the child that you are hurting them for their own good, because god commands it. teach them that people hurting them is a good thing.

and many suggest that after you beat them, give your child comfort (comfort from the distress caused by being beaten by you, who is supposed to protect them from harm) and to give them affection (to drive home the point that hurting them is how you show love). which, if you know about the cycle of abusive relationships (tension, violent incident, reconciliation, calm) then you can see how this is pretty much a mirror image of that

it's fucking evil

look up the book "to train up a child" if you want to see this taken to the extreme. even many fundamentalists thing the methodology is too extreme, but they generally agree with the ideology/principles behind it

[sadieshavingsex]

It sucks being raised in an evangelical setting because I feel like sex has so much weight to it.

Even not having it doesn’t feel like something I can just do on a whim, because “I don’t feel like having sex right now” usually actually means something more like “I’m mentally exhausted and don’t feel like unpacking all that trauma today.”

Everything to do with sex just feels like such a big decision, such a non-decision (a reaction, really!), because of the baggage attached to it. Like, sex is rarely just fun—it feels like such a life changing event, dealing with it entails so much emotional and physical and psychological labor, and not doing it isn’t often really a choice either… it’s just a fear thing, a strategy for avoiding that immense difficulty and all the work needed just to get to a basic healthy relationship with the idea & act of sex.