#christian fundies

[mamaangiwine]

With the way evangelical and fundamentalist Tik-Tok throw around the word "demon" it's very obvious how they want you to feel when confronted with that word- Vulnerable. Helpless. Afraid.

Now I've already touched on the origin of the word "demon" on this blog but today, in terms of any and all malefic entities, I'd like to tell you something-

You are not helpless.

It's true. A malefic entity can be worrying, and bothersome, as well as inconvenient but one thing I've learned in my practice is this- malefic entities are like bears. To scare one off you simply have to convince it that you are the biggest, baddest mother fucker in the woods.

Sometimes you can do this on your own. You can throw down a circle. You can carry some iron, or silver. You can find a holy word that keeps the darkness at bay.

You can do it with help. You can call upon a god. You can summon an angel. You can even make arrangements with another demon.

If you want, you can even pray to the Saints. To the Mother Mary. To Jesus and, yes, even to God- though it certainly doesn't have to be their version.

Helpless?

Please. So many cultures haven't been practicing warding and banishment for centuries, from the mau olhado to Appalachian face jugs, just for some milk-toast, Christian influencer with a Stanley cup to tell their people they are messing with "forces beyond their understanding".

[mbrainspaz]

whoop had another childhood church friend come out as a transphobic white supremacist. ding ding ding. It really sucks because she did the whole 'I hate the way going woke has changed you, you're so bitter now' thing and GIRL

yeah I probably would be less bitter now if I hadn't been forced into a gender role and repressed sexuality that never fit me under threat of losing my entire community and support network and then realized the whole damn country I live in has been hamstrung by a hateful agenda of racial discrimination for its entire history.

imagine!

Also we literally had a song and it was 'Hey, Soul Sister.'

idk but that doesn't sound like straight shit to me.

[escaping-amish]

I love how he finds the words to describe the concepts that float around my head daily ❤️❤️❤️❤️ love him!

[dirtyheathencommie]

DEAR EDUCATIONALLY NEGLECTED HOMESCHOOLERS

I’ve gathered some resources and tips and tricks on self-educating after educational neglect. This is only what I did and what I know helped me. I’m about to graduate college with honors after having no education past the age of 9. I wouldn’t be here without the following. Everything is free, and at/well above the standard for education in the US.

The holy grail: Khan Academy. Nearly every course you could take is available here, in order and by grade level. Their open-source free courses rival some of the college classes I’ve taken. This is your most solid resource.

For inattentive types: Crash Course offers a variety of courses that are snappy, entertaining, and extremely rewarding. They work for my ADHD brain. They also have college prep advice, which is essential if you’re looking to go to higher education with no classroom experience.

To catch up on your reading: There are certain books that you may have read had you gone to school that you’ve missed out on. This list is the most well-rounded and can fill you in on both children’s books and classic novels that are essential or at least extremely helpful to be familiar with. You can find a majority of these easily at a local library (and some for free in PDF form online low key). There are a few higher level classics in here that I’d highly recommend. If it doesn’t work for you, I’d always recommend asking your local librarian.

*BE AWARE* The book list I recommend suggests you read Harry Potter books, and given their transphobic author you may or may not want to read them. If you choose to, I’d highly recommend buying the books secondhand or borrowing from a library to avoid financially supporting a living author with dangerous and damaging views.

TEST, TEST, TEST: Again, Khan Academy is your go-to for this. I don’t personally like standardized testing, but going through SAT and ACT courses was the best way I found to really reveal my gaps so that I could supplement.

Finally: As much as you can, enjoy the process. Education can be thrilling and teach you so much about yourself, and help shape your view of the world. It can get frustrating, but I’d like to encourage you that everyone can learn. No pace is the perfect pace, and your learning style is the right learning style for you. In teaching yourself, be patient, be kind, and indulge in the subjects you really enjoy without neglecting others. You are your teacher. Give yourself what others chose not to.

[seraphimfall]

i’ve read so much tradcath bullshit the last two years. i can confidently say tradcath men fit into one of two categories:

“protestant-raised and converted to catholicism because of his crippling porn addiction and racist tendencies. reposts crusader and conquistador memes. is hated in his local parish.” tradcath

“catholic-raised band kid who ate his lunches with the religion teacher. smells like mildew. cut off all his friends that came out as gay after high school. now larps as an aquinian scholar and cries after jerking off.” tradcath

[fire-to-fire]

Actually, ex-Christians have earned the right to make fun of Christianity. It comes free with the religious trauma.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I do realize this is a real niche post but I cannot tell you how many damn times over the past 10 months I've seen gentiles tell Jews some version of, "Your own holy book SAYS God doesn't want you to have a country yet!"

And it's such an incredibly blatant and weirdly specific tell that they're not part of something that grew from progressive grassroots, but something based on right-wing astroturfing.

1. Staying in your own lane is a pretty huge progressive principle.

Telling people in another group that their deity said they couldn't do X is, I think, as far as you can get from your own lane.

2. It's also very clearly Not In Your Own Lane because I've never seen anyone actually be able to EITHER quote the passage they're thinking of, OR cite where it is.

It's purely, "I saw somebody else say this, and it seemed like it would make me win the debate I wasn't invited to."

3. It betrays a complete ignorance of Jewish culture and history.

Seriously? You don't know what you're referencing, its context, or even what it specifically says, but you're... coming to a community that reads and often discusses the entire Torah together each year, at weekly services... who have massive books holding generations of debate about it that it takes 7 years to read, at one page per day....

And saying, "YOUR book told you not to!"

I've been to services where we discussed just one word from the reading the whole time. The etymology. The connotations. The use of it in this passage versus in other passages.

And then there is the famous saying, "Ask two Jews, get three opinions." There is a culture of questioning and discussion and debate throughout Judaism.

You think maybe, in the decades and decades of public discussion about whether to buy land in Eretz Yisrael and move back there; whether it should keep being an individual thing, or keep shifting to intentional community projects; what the risks were; whether it should really be in Argentina or Canada or someplace instead; how this would be received by the Jews and gentiles already there, how to respect their boundaries, how to work with them before and during; and whether ending up with a fuckton of Jews in one place might not be exactly as dangerous for them as it had always been everywhere else....

You think NOBODY brought up anything scriptural? Nobody looked through the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Ketuvim, or the Talmud for any thoughts about any of this?? It took 200 years and some rando in the comments to blow everyone's minds???

4. It relies on an unspoken assumption that people can and should take very literal readings of religious texts and use them to control others.

And a sense of ownership and power over those texts, even without any accompanying knowledge about what they say.

It's kind of a supercessionist know-it-all vibe. It reads like, "I know what you should be doing. Because even if I'm not personally part of a fundamentalist branch of a related religion, the culture I'm rooted in is."

Bonus version I found when I was looking for an example. NOBODY should do this:

There are a lot of people who pull weird historical claims like "It SAYS Abraham came from Chaldea! That's Iraq!"

Like, first of all, a group is indigenous to a land if it arose as a people and culture there, before (not because of) colonization.

People aren't spontaneously spawning in groups, like "Boom! A new indigenous people just spawned!!"

People come from places. They go places. Sometimes, they gel as a new community and culture. Sometimes, they bop around for a while and eventually assimilate into another group.

Second: THE TORAH IS NOT A HISTORY TEXTBOOK OMFG.

It's an oral history, largely written centuries after the fact.

There is a TON of historical and archaeological research on when and where the Jewish culture originated, how it developed over time, etc. It's extremely well-established.

Nobody has to try to pull what they remember from Sunday school for this argument.

[theshoesofatiredman]

It's really fucked up how Christianity teaches that some people can only be reached for Christ when they hit rock bottom. Christians will pray for people to endure tremendous suffering simply so that the non-believers can hear the voice of god. Truly an abysmal failure in imagining a loving god.

"he's so loving because he caused me to experience the greatest pain of my life so that I could finally listen to him"

Absolutely insane move on the part of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving deity. You're telling me the ONLY WAY was the road of agony? Unrelenting love, kindness, and divine revelation weren't options?

[ardent-apostasy]

forceful reminder as we come up to easter weekend that you were not born bad. that it is good that you are alive. that you were not born to be evil, or born to die for the cause, or born to be broken.

[chelledoggo]

so i just found out about that "the devil can scrap, but the Lord has won" trend on tiktok.

basically people post old photos of themselves when they were openly queer, wore alt fashion, did cosplay, etc... captioned "the devil can scrap," followed by current pictures of them wearing the most basic, milquetoast clothes ever captioned "but the Lord has won"

it's basically giving the message that you have to give up your identity and individuality completely in order to truly be a Christian.

this honestly breaks my heart. like... i'm not exaggerating.

as someone who's always been a bit of an outcast, and is a nerdy, progressive, queer Christian, i don't believe people should have to surrender what makes them unique or happy in order to "please God."

did we forget that Jesus was the ultimate outcast? did we forget how he hung out with the "undesirables" of society?

if you're a queer, nerdy, alt-fashion, etc. person of faith, and you're wondering whether or not your identity is pleasing to God... please erase any doubts from your mind right now.

God knows your heart, and God loves you as you are. please continue to be the wonderful and unique individual that God made you to be. 💖

[magnetothemagnificent]

Something ex-Evangelical Christians, ex-Mormons, ex-any-flavour-of-fundementalist-Christianity etc. need to understand is that while yes, you were a victim of those communities, you were also the perpetrator of immense violence towards marginalized communities, particularly towards Jews and Indigineous people.

Yes, mission trips were traumatizing for you, but you were also either consciously or unconsciously taking part in Christo-colonialist efforts and ruining the lives of countless people. Yes, sermons about fire and brimstone were traumatizing for you, but the sermons you absorbed either consciously or subconsciously were laced with racist and antisemitic messages.

So when you call yourself an ex-Fundie, that doesn't absolve you of needing to deconstruct all the harmful ideas you learned and practice.

Because too often I've encountered people who may have *physically* left these spiritual systems (and I'm happy for them that they've gotten out of those abusive environments, don't get me wrong), but their belief systems still harbor the same antisemitic and colonialist ideas that they were taught in those environments, and they are still perpetuating the same harm they were conditioned to do.

[daemonicdasein]

Bible Belt hoes really out here confusing Herod the Great and Pontius Pilate.

[decomposingpoet]

Yeah yeah religious trauma and internalized homophobia suck but sometimes I get these moments of overwhelming joy at the fact that I am queer and proud I am not religious anymore I have a life ahead of me where I can celebrate pleasure and love and intellectual freedom without constraint like fuck yeah this is what I'm sticking around for!!!!!!!

[hulahoopsoupgroup]

the seven deadly sins are such bullshit fear tactics. if youve left the church, embrace them.

be proud of who you are. be happy when you look in the mirror and see how hot you are. yeah i see you flexing in the mirror after a workout. nice progress btw honey you look nice today.

dont worry about getting seconds, or thirds even, at dinner. dont worry about eating what society says is "too much" or "too little". eat until youre full. set aside what you cant finish for later so you dont waste food.

its okay to be greedy. its okay to want things for yourself. sometimes we see things that people have and we're like "dude i wish i had that." thats just human. envy and greed on that level are normal.

take a rest day. dont bother going to church this sunday. take a shower, read a book, drink some tea, eat some good food, pet a cat or dog. take care of yourself; its not lazy.

be angry with those who wronged you. punch a punching bag, write about how much you hate them, go work out aggressively and take care of your emotions in a way that doesnt hurt yourself or others. its okay to not forgive the people who hurt you. you arent doing anything wrong, babe.

embrace your sexuality (or, if it applies, asexuality, cause yall need love too). stop feeling shame for wanting pleasure. go read or watch something that turns you on. explore your body. ask your partner to try something new. if youre asexual, then fucking step on the people who say you need to have sexual attraction to be human. you dont. you dont need to be allosexual (or alloromantic) to "qualify as a human." we all experience life in different ways. find your way to experience it.

thought crime isnt real

do no harm but take no shit

[seraphimfall]

i’m sorry but even if your personal version of mormonism excludes all the “if you’re a good mormon your skin will turn white when you die, no matter your race” and “dark skin is a sign of the devil” bs, your religion is still racist.

the idea that israelites sailed across the atlantic ocean and formed a population in north america that could be attributed to native americans is racist.

the idea that jesus christ appeared to native americans and converted them to christianity pre-colonial times is racist.

the idea that the arrival of christianity to north america with european colonialism was a prophesied “reintroduction” of christianity is racist.

the foundations of your religion are racist.

the foundations of your religion are historical negationism.

the foundations of your religion justify american colonialism as the will of god.

try as hard as you want, it’s impossible to remove racism from mormonism. it’s racist by nature.

[whats-a-human]

shoutout to everyone forced to go to church, church events and/or interacting with people you don't want to.

you are not "failing to stand up for yourself" if you can't say no. I know how terrible it is to balance the harm of going to church, etc, and the backlash if you don't.

you are not a failure if you are an adult living with a toxic family. Not at 18, not at 19, nor 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 + !!

you are not a failure if you are an adult living on your own but can't go non-contact yet

you are not a failure if you are a minor and are not as "brave" as you wished to be, or believe you won't be able to move out at 18

you are not a failure if you moved out and had to go back. No matter the reason!

whatever your situation is

you are not a failure

don't victim-blame yourself

❤