#anti-oppressive christianity

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

LGBTQ Christians, like a lot of Christians, value their feelings and comfort over the very real harm caused by Christianity and the people who've been harmed by it. Good for you that your denomination is affirming and you have every right to practice the religion of your choice but how fucking dare you try to dictate how people should feel about a god and religion that has been used as a tool to oppress the very community you're a part of.

[haggishlyhagging]

Mary is wife, mother, and child to the same male power-figure. She is utterly meek, abject, passive. In her, the ancient power of the Goddess is captured, chained, used, cannibalized — "metaphysically cannibalized," in Ti-Grace Atkinson's critical phrase — domesticated and tranquilized. It is no accident that Mary is portrayed as giving birth in tranquility and bliss, as a reward for her asexuality and total submission (thus "redeeming" the crime of Eve)—while Christ, her son, takes on the suffering and dramatic childbearing role of the Mother. For he twists on the cross in labor, to give birth to a redeemed human race. Pierced by a soldier's sword, blood and water pour from his body—exactly as from a woman in childbirth. The figure displayed on the crucifix in Catholic churches particularly is a male parody of the female experience—of menstrual bleeding, of childbirth, of ontological physical suffering for the human race. But while Christ coopts this female experience into his own power and glory—women, who really do these things, have been forced to hide the signs of our bleeding and childbed "crucifixions" as unclean processes, and badges of corruption, inferiority, and shame. The deified male martyr flaunts his "sacrifice" everywhere, and we are supposed to bow down to it. Women, the real thing, are required by "decency" to hide our messiness out of sight.

-Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth.

[q8qwertyuiop8p]

I was blown away by this post and need to talk about it, or I will never sleep lol. I wish I could show you our entire conversation but the OP deleted all my comments so I couldn't screenshot anything.

https://whereserpentswalk.tumblr.com/post/747399887511060481/the-nazis-that-you-see-in-movies-are-as-much-a

"Nazis weren’t atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons."

The nazis, including Hitler, were absolutely not supporters of Christianity, you don't even need to be a Christian to see why this is so problematic. The main idea of Christianity is that Jesus is the Messiah, the one and only Son who loved the world so much he sacrificed his life to pay the debt of our sins.

Jesus isn't just not Aryan, or not white. He is a Jew. Christians literally worship him, seeing him as both fully human and fully divine.

Hitler taught that Jews were inferior, the scum of the Earth, deserving of inhumane treatment and death. Why would he support a religion that worships a Jewish man as the Messiah?

Furthermore, the gospel teaches that ALL people, regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, etc. We're made equal in the eyes of God, and that we all came from the same two people.

Hitler taught that the Aryans were the superior race, and preached the inferiority of anyone else. Why would he support a religion that so blatantly contradicts his teachings?

But wait- if Hitler and the Nazis were against Christianity, why did they employ Christian rhetoric in speeches? Why did they negotiate a treaty with the Vatican?

If you are a psychopath vying for support and leadership in an overwhelmingly Christian nation, are you really going to talk about how useless you see Christianity, or how it is a threat to your rule? Of course not. Hitler was a demagogue. He wanted to appeal to the common 1930s German citizen, which meant he would need to appeal to Christians.

It wasn't until he had secured power that he could finally show his true colors, breaking his promise to the Vatican to not interfere with the rights of the church. Among the many groups persecuted in the holocaust were Christians, especially Roman Catholics. Clergy in Germany and other territories were closely supervised to make sure they didn't contradict the Nazi teachings, Catholic organizations were shut down, and many prominent Christians were sent to camps for forced labor and execution.

I pointed out some of these the the OP, to which they responded

How stating that the Nazis weren't supporters of Christians and that Christianity cannot coexist with Nazism makes me a holocaust denier, I don't know. I'm not the one denying that a certain group was persecuted by the Nazis (the OP stated in a comment of theirs that the Christians put into camps were only attacked for their ethnicity, not their religion) and trying to make it look like the Nazis actually loved and cared about that group.

I also don't understand how Christianity is inherently antisemitic. I asked the OP what about it was antisemitic, so after deleting all my comments, they blocked me. If you have the answer, let me know, I am genuinely curious.

It makes me sad to see that people actually believe this kind of propaganda. Also, if you're going to make a post about the evils of Nazism, you probably shouldn't use misinformation to villianize and scapegoat a group, or censor people who speak out against said misinformation. Just saying.

[balkanradfem]

Holy practices and tradition that are okay and universally good:

making trees, forests, mountains, rivers, seas and springs holy places

protecting them and going there for special occasions

planting holy trees as a religious practice

making animals sacred and protected

promoting the communal instinct to help others who need help

solving the housing and starvation crisis

promoting peace

promoting the freedom of choice, human rights, healthy boundaries, freedom of thought, and survival resources and safety for everyone

meeting up to listen to stories and legends of the past, which come with wisdom and promote healthy morals and community

meeting up to sing together

celebrating life, freedom and happiness

creating art in celebration of life and happiness

connecting with cycles in nature, celebrating natural occurrences

acknowledging that women are the source of human life and that they have the sole right to make decisions over that sphere

rituals and decorations to cheer people up when the seasonal depression is up due to the lack of sunlight

Holy practices and traditions that are absolutely unacceptable:

promoting suffering, subservience, poverty, starvation, sacrifice and endless servitude as the only ‘correct’ and moral way to exist

rituals where everyone has to listen to a man speaking for an hour or longer

repeating stories where the moral is to submit, to give away your personality, identity, even friends and family, in order to serve ‘the greater good’, promotion of ‘don’t think, don’t doubt, don’t ask questions’, or, stories talking about the horrors that would happen to non-believers, where the goal is to terrorize children who ‘don’t believe enough’

promoting the depictions, statues and art, of suffering, body harm, slow and torturous death, glorifying such images as ‘holy’, celebrating torture and death in essence

promoting an idea that the only humans who are ‘pure and saint’ earned their sainthood by being brutally murdered or tortured

limiting what women can and cannot do, punishing and shaming women’s bodily functions, or telling them that certain body functions must be used for the sake of ‘god’ or cannot be intervened with because of ‘god’

shaming women’s normal and healthy feelings, emotions, urges, desires, sexuality and appearance

telling women that their rightful place is to be ‘property’ or ‘servants’ to the other half of population

suppressing women’s freedom of thought, women’s freedom of mind, women’s bodily autonomy, and the important decisions of her life

joining a man and a woman to live in an isolated private space where the man is in control of all major decisions, and the path of her life, while she gets to be in control of nothing

putting women’s sexuality under men’s control, allowing men to violate it or ignore it at their own will

telling women they’re responsible for male’s predatory and perverse urges, telling women to take steps to ‘prevent it’, in which the goal is to make men not accountable for their own actions, and women ashamed for being unable to control something beyond their control

making rape of women mandatory, or normal, or acceptable, or permitted or something that should in any world be going on

threatening women and children that god can ‘hear their thoughts’ and that they are to be punished if it goes against god’s ideals

encouraging people to bond and communicate with an imaginary ‘father figure’ who takes credit for the creation of human population (which women actually did), who then argues that women should suppress themselves and be convenient and pleasing to men if they want to reach the imaginary afterlife

promoting the beliefs of any book that men wrote

claiming to promote peace while having a history of religious wars and spreading the idea that people of all other religions are ‘less’ or ‘sinful’ or ‘needing to be saved (converted)’

putting men in charge of anything

equating male desires to god’s desires while female desires are condemned and punished

equating purity, innocence and value in women with inexperience with physical intimacy

punishing and shaming women both for accepting and refusing physical intimacy (if they accept they lose value and are seen as tainted, if they refuse they displeased the man who wanted it, she doesn’t get any agency and whether she wants it or not is irrelevant to religion, except if she does she’s sinful)

failing to promote well-being, satisfaction, health, freedom, human rights, bodily autonomy, natural rights to administrate or refuse to administrate a human life, and overall safety and happiness of women

[canwediscuss]

When Christianity is gone, nature will heal. Honestly though, the cognitive dissonance required to be devoted to a slave religion death cult really makes me understand why every historical society had some kind of class/ caste system. These people are incapable of critical thought and only survive because the billionaire oligarchs want them to

[solsthiems]

Leftists get comfortable with religion and religious people. No shut up do it.

[alurite-l]

I can't trust white people (white queers, white feminists, white atheists, white punks) to criticize Islam because they get real racist real fast

[snekdood]

im not gonna act like its as severe as hindutvas make it out to be but if you deny hinduphobia exists you're just a dumbass i think

[healingwgabs]

Predeterminism and religion go hand in hand for most religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism included (the idea of God having a "plan" for you and that "everything happens for a reason") and this is especially harmful to trauma survivors, esp when that "plan" involved experiencing torment, in many cases, unfathomable. Love isn't abuse and that includes God. I'm not sure how this differs from someone abusing you and then calling it love, a lesson, or an opportunity for growth..

[crowtwink]

I has been 0 days since the last incident of batfandom antis being uncomfortably and conservatively Christian on main

[haggishlyhagging]

Such was the condition of women during eighteen hundred years of Christianity: legislated for as slaves; imprisoned for crimes that, if committed by a man were only punished by branding the hand; buried alive for other crimes that committed by men were atoned for by the payment of a fine; denied a share in the government of the family or the church; their very sex deemed a curse. The twentieth century is now about to open, showing no truly enlightened nation upon the face of the earth. From the barbarism of inhumanity, the world is slowly awakening to the fact that every human being stands upon the plane of equal natural rights. The church has not taught the world this great truth. The state has not conceded it. Its acknowledgment thus far has been due to the teachings of individual men and women that self-constituted authority over others is a crime against humanity.

-Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State

[passionfruitmango]

LOL can't say I've ever seen someone say "dni if you're anti christian" but it took all my might not to be a shithead before hitting that block button

How you gonna be Christian and engage in something 90% of your religion looks down upon? Look inward.

[sephiroths-stuff]

Is anyone else getting random posts showing up on their dash from random Christian people on Tumblr I'm Jewish and I am not happy about this no I am not stop it get some help especially you Tumblr

To clarify my tags what I am saying is I do not believe there is such a thing as a good christian. All Christians who claim the title of Christian in the USA benefit from the fact that in the United States laws are literally made to cater towards the beliefs of the Conservative Christian majority in the government who seek to eliminate the rights of people like me. Until you, the quote unquote silent majority of quote unquote good Christians who don't actually believe in this stuff or so you say, speak up on behalf of those of us you can't and reach your really crappy awful terrible quote unquote brothers and siblings otherwise in Christ you're also the bad ones and I don't want any of you on my page.

[arcenciel-par-une-larme]

Oh! So now, cancel culture is not a "right-wing conspiracy" anymore! Now it's happening, and it's a "GOOD THING ACKCHUALLY"!

Yeah, OP, go and spout your self-righteous balderdash to Zamii or to the Covingtongate kids if ya dare. Or any of the other cases you will find here.

Or better yet, how about I consider the fact that I found the original post reblogged, without any addition or nuance, from someone whom I consider a bible-believing sister in Christ. And this is already the second time that this sort of thing has happened within the past fortnight.

You know, by the way, fellas, that the Lord does not look favourably upon slander of the brethren? In other words, repent.

[haggishlyhagging]

Women were burned with remarkable lack of compunction throughout the Middle Ages. If statistics were kept they have been very successfully concealed; but evidence indicates that the proportion of women to men who were burned alive from about 800 to 1800 was as much as ten thousand to one. Men were sometimes burned as heretics after having been mercifully strangled to death. But women were burned alive on countless pretexts: for threatening their husbands, for talking back to or refusing a priest, for stealing, for prostitution, for adultery, for bearing a child out of wedlock, for permitting sodomy, even though the priest or husband who committed the sodomy was forgiven, for masturbating, for lesbianism, for child-neglect, for scolding and nagging, and even for miscarrying, even though the miscarriage was caused by a kick or a blow from the husband. We read in the old chronicles of women in the last weeks of pregnancy being burned until the heat burst their bellies and propelled the fetus outward beyond the flames. The infant was then picked up and flung back into the fire at its mother's feet. We read of the little daughters of burnt women being forced to dance with bare feet one hundred times around the smoldering stake, through their mothers' ashes and through the still glowing embers in order to "impress upon them the memory of their mothers' sins." And all of this in an age when the only law of the land was the law of the church, when civil courts were merely the agents of the Christian hierarchy.

-Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex