#cultural christianity

[dynamicity-keysmash]

'Tis the season to unpack some stuff about Christmas from a minority perspective:

Christmas is a Christian holiday. The fact that many celebrate it in an irreligious way (which is valid!) does not change its origins, connotations, symbolism, nor what it has historically meant for religious minorities.

The idea that Christmas is "secular" (read: neutral) is a product of Christian hegemony and the blindness of many in Christian countries to the permeation of Christianity as "default" culture.

When someone says they don't celebrate Christmas since it's a Christian holiday, it is not actually reassuring or helpful to say something along the lines of "oh well it's just a secular day of family & presents for everyone! So you can celebrate it too!"

Though the above statement is usually well-intentioned, it is often distressing to hear because it is untrue and is erasing our lived experiences. The reflexive effort to make Christmas universal is a cultural reverberation of the millennia-old evangelizing effort to make Christianity universal, and as such, can be very uncomfortable for religious minorities.

[koshercosplay]

alrighty folks buckle up for the fifth year of menorabilia ratings! I've scoured the internet (and my eyeballs) so get ready for the best and worst chanukah merchandise of the year

okay first I just need to get these fuckin gnomes out of the way. ideally permanently. this guy's hat has so much going on I don't know where to begin. the menorah? not kosher. also wrong. the dreidels? certainly have,,, something written on them. everyone knows reindeer love chanukah, the lighting fires holiday. 5/10 at least it's got SOMEWHAT of a cuteness factor

turning old CDs into fake sufganiyot is certainly creative bc that's the only explanation for those monstrosities that I'll accept. please don't spin your spontaneous combustion menorahs on top of your dreidels. it won't bring the next season any faster. 4/10 I'll put up with a lot if you're offering to pay for my netflix account

they are Setting That Torah On Fire. is that why there's an oil jug next to a candle menorah. 6/10 the פ instead of a ש‎ on the dreidel is because the miracle is just the torah not bursting into flames

this really puts the messy in messianic. it's got the wrong amount of branches. why is the shamash just two stacked cups. the cross looks like an airplane. oh god it also has the jesus fish. -76162802492/10 never knew a single image could contain so much No.

some of these menorahs are kosher and some are not which really spices things up. what a fun little game of I spy for me. I enjoy the addition of various happy animals celebrating chanukah but were the santa hats really necessary? 7/10 that bottom dreidel has two נ‎s. none dreidel with left coins.

I can acknowledge that it's an attempt to jewish-ize a christmas thing but tinsel is, unfortunately, occasionally, pretty. weird choice to have all the menorahs have נ‎s but sure. what's that? those are dreidels? wrong. take a look at the helpful next image of this item.

do you see it yet? here let me help.

clearly those are menorahs. we light them on fire and spin them as fast as we can. first one to die loses. 5/10 google is your friend

move over fiddler on the roof chassidim with bottle balancing skills, here come some cats with impressive candle dexterity. this may not be a kosher menorah but their TAILS are the BRANCHES. 7/10 I am easily won over by the presence of cats okay

canon jewish representation, a spinning dreidel, a kosher menorah, some chocolate gelt, and they're eating fresh latkes. I needed these yesterday. 10/10 rugrats my beloved never lets me down

(previous years 1, 2, 3, 4)

[chroniclesofajewishteen]

Just because your church was a cult it doesn’t mean my synagogue is one

[magnetothemagnificent]

Perpetually pissed off that when people say "religious imagery" in regards to art and media they're just saying "Christian imagery".

Because stained glass, kneeling with your hands clasped, crosses, an old man in a beard in the sky...... that's all *Christian imagery*.

And it leads to like....an environment where non-Christian art with no Christian undertones gets mislabeled as Christian because they associate a nursing mother or a spire or a choir singing in operatic tones as Christian. It also leads to religious art that isn't Christian not being recognized as religious and its meaningful symbols and motifs unappreciated.

When I and other Jews make art involving fire, water, and trees- that's religious imagery. But this cultural Christian sphere doesn't recognize as such because they think religious = Christian.

[jessicalprice]

I’m not saying anything new here, but I’m still going to say it:

If you want an example of how powerful Christian hegemony is, just look at how uncomfortable-to-downright-angry a lot of people who aren’t practicing Christians (one sees this a lot with atheists and neopagans) get if you float the idea that maybe Jesus was not particularly nice or wise, that the New Testament’s teachings aren’t particularly compassionate, etc.

[sag-dab-sar]

Dear pagans, polytheists, and witches:

It is okay to celebrate Christmas.

Its okay to celebrating it as a non-Christian.

But you HAVE to accept and admit that it is a culturally Christian holiday.

In many culturally Christian countries you have to be cognizant of how Christmas is elevated above other religion's holidays.

Stop claiming every aspect of it is something stolen from ancient societies: bringing in trees, decorating with lights, gift giving— or whatever else you attribute to the "paganness" of Christmas with no legitimate sources.

Christmas was not stolen from the ancients and you cannot "reclaim it" by spreading pseudo-historical bullshit.

Just admit you will celebrate a culturally Christian holiday— its okay to admit that and move on.

[Edit: see my reblog of this for some basic sources to begin with]

[Edit 2: More info]

[Edit 3: I wrote a post about why you should accept/admit it as Culturally Christian and now that its Dec 25 I'mma just shut off reblogs for this, if you celebrated Christmas I hope you enjoyed it.]

[newnitz]

I don't really see people talking about how cultural Christianity is applied to Jews.

In Christianity, Jews are the people who rejected and betrayed Jesus and are punished with statelessness and destitution, whose only redemption is accepting the Messiah and the Son of God. This is the basis of several antisemitic tropes, most prominently deception, religious supercessionism and the Wandering Jew.

In cultural Christianity, these tropes are considered tenants of Judaism rather than Christianity, as Judaism is considered Christianity without Jesus.

Christians see themselves as tortured saints, persecuted for spreading the truth of Jesus and God across the globe. Missionaries who go to non-Christian lands to try and get the people to convert by fearmongering with damnation to Hell see themselves as victims when they're rebuffed and asked to stop.

Cultural Christian non-Christians are usually atheists and adherents of folk religion revivalist movements who have suffered religious abuse, as many sects of Christianity normalize emotional abuse by instilling inherent guilt in the Original Sin and even physical abuse in "Spare the rod; spoil the child". These cultural Christians see the millennia of antisemitism and roll their eyes, to them we're just another sect of delusional religious people with a persecution complex.

To become a Christian all you need to do is accept the Father Son and Holy Spirit, to affirm your beliefs and confess your sins. To become a Jew you are either born a Jew, or you learn the Jewish culture and religion for months on end and must live half a year under the strictest restrictions of the Jewish lifestyle to show commitment. That is the difference between a universal religion and an ethnoreligion.

In a Culturally Christian world there is no room for ethnoreligions, and they do not exist. All religions are about your faith and which God(s) you believe in. So in a Cultural Christian's eyes, a country of Jews is a country that holds one faith supreme above all others and conditions rights with conversion, as that's how Christian countries have historically been.

Christianity's common ground with Jews comes from the Roman Empire appropriating the religion from the Cult of Jesus, and making it more appealing to the masses by introducing Greco-Roman and Germanic folk religion aspects into it. Xmas is Yule but with Jesus, Easter is a fertility holiday but with Jesus and so on. In the eyes of the Cultural Christian, Christianity and Judaism are two once-antagonistic sects of the same religion, no different than Catholics and Protestants.

Cultural Christianity erases and appropriates Judaism and is as inherently hateful of Jews as religious Christianity.

Now, when it comes to the elephant in the room: Islam.

Islam, like Christianity, is a universal religion. You must believe in Allah and accept the prophets, which include both Jesus and Muhammad. It is no more inherently violent than Christianity, though it's no less. In the Christian's eyes, Islam is the competitor, the enemy. The Muslims conquered Christian lands and converted them, and they've fought holy wars against one another throughout the Middle Ages.

To become a Muslim the Cultural Christian doesn't need to unlearn any of the core tenets of their culture. They can simply apply it to Islam.

Which is why many Cultural Christians, damaged by Christianity, are sympathetic to Islam. And since Muslims and Jews are no longer on good terms, they use this sympathy to give themselves a free pass to be antisemitic. Whether Muslims check their converts for bigotry, allow it or are powerless to stop them, that's another issue.

Jews are not diet Christians. We have less in common with you than you have with Muslims. Unlearn Christian cultural appropriation.

And no, I don't care that it's "offensive" to associate you with Christianity due to the religious abuse you endured. You still see the world through a Christian lens.

[magical-musings-of-morgan]

my most autistic trait is probably that, as someone raised by christian nationalists, I cannot STAND the cheap flimsy potshots antitheists fire at christianity. you guys are Doing It Wrong. you dont even know about the council of nicaea OR christianity's long history of antisemitism. get off the stage you're embarrassing yourself.

[britcision]

So I’ve been thinking about cultural Christianity lately and how people tend to get very upset about it without really understanding what it is, so here is a primer

Cultural Christianity is not a choice you make. It does not mean you are Christian, or even that you remotely like Christianity; a lot of people who vehemently hate the religion do so because of their own cultural Christianity

It is not a shortcoming, or a moral failing, or a sin. It just means that the culture you were raised in was predominantly Christian.

Note: I did not say “majority Christian”. Christians don’t need to be a majority to have a dominant cultural influence

Cultural Christianity means you inherently understand and probably use swearwords like “damn”, “hell”, or a variation on the name “Jesus Christ”

It means when I say cultural Christianity is not a sin, you understand exactly what I mean without needing to have it explained - and you probably know the phrase “original sin” or “seven deadly sins”, even if not in full detail

It means hearing about Hades, god of the dead, wealth, and volcanoes, and assuming he’s the bad guy of Greek mythology… y’know, like Satan

(EVERYONE went to Hades when they died. The Elysian Fields, where the best heroes went, was in Hades’ underworld. The Eleusinian mysteries, a cult to Demeter and Persephone, was basically about asking them to tell Hades to give you a cool afterlife

And he would cuz he drank his “respect wife” juice if not all of his “respect women” juice. Did still kidnap her. But she is a major feature and often makes the decision herself or influences his when they’re mentioned together

Meanwhile, people try and cast Zeus as a good parent)

It means having to have a dreidel, a menorah, or a kinara explained to you at a time when you already knew about Christmas trees and Santa

(Yes, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, major host of the Mass of Christ, is culturally Christian. Even though Coke invented his aesthetic - that’s the “cultural” part)

It’s when you go to make up a new non-religious or pan religious winter celebration… that is centred around a day with family and gifts which is obviously the 25 of December. Maybe counting down 12 days before

It’s defaulting to calling a place of worship you don’t know the name of a “church”

Cultural Christianity is not something people have a choice in; you don’t pick where you’re born, and there are so many other cultures in places like Canada, America, and Britain that are culturally Christian out the ass! But… you will catch Contact Christianity in any of these places

It’s damn near impossible to consume any American or most Western media without brushing across it; cross imagery is everywhere, Christian demons and devils sneak into media all around the world

Western (and some other) Gothic fashion leans heavily on gothic architecture and, yeah, heavily Catholic imagery

Now, brushing across the media in other parts of the world does not impart the same level of cultural Christianity as growing up in a city with four churches on a single block and a Santa Claus parade

And you can grow up heavily in an entirely different culture even in the Bible Belt (but you know what Bible Belt means); you don’t have to abandon all other culture just because Christianity has a chokehold on your home

But when December (or fucking November these days) hits and you hear Mariah Carey in 3/6 stores, yes, you probably have some cultural Christianity

You sure as hell don’t need to be able to name half the denominations (can you name more than 4?), you may never set foot in a Christian church in your life, and still have a cultural Christian influence

If your street names have “saint” in them

If there are crosses or angels on more than half the graves in a cemetery

If you know how to cross yourself but aren’t really sure when you learned; you didn’t look it up or do research to find out

Now note: none of these have an inherent moral judgement attached to them

It’s just about what the culture you live in has taught you about the world, and there’s no culture that is magically the Right One or better than the others

There’s no reason to expect even specifically Christian culture to be the same around the world; it isn’t. It has the same root, but what flowers from the soil is another matter entirely

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that you have culturally Christian influences and biases; being human is 90% absorbing information from the world around us and half processing it at best - there’s just too much input, and intentionally filtering out Everything Christian Ever?

Well unless you started at 2 years old, odds are pretty good it’s not really a personal choice kinda thing

And you cannot compensate for these influences unless you acknowledge that they exist, that you did not choose to form them, and that you do get to choose how they affect your actions going forward

Christmas stuffed a bunch of other religious traditions into a single package to make itself popular, but if you learned them as Christmas traditions first… do I even need to say it?

[chroniclesofajewishteen]

Can we stop treating crosses like they’re non-denomination? Yes, even if it’s emo or goth. It’s still a religious symbol. You are culturally christian. That’s not a bad thing, but when you treat your culture like it’s everyone’s culture it does make people uncomfortable. I’m pretty goth sometimes. I get really uncomfortable when I look up goth stuff on pinterest and it’s all crosses. You can wear them, but when you’re an atheist with a pin that saying “fuck religions” it’s pretty fucking weird that you’re wearing cross earrings.

[crazycatsiren]

Seriously too many white witches are just doing white cultural Christianity with a witchcraft label and it's damn obnoxious and also damn funny at the same time.

They be denying three times they ain't Christian and then turn right around to sound exactly like some sanctimonious Protestant preacher, like, girl, for reals.

"But you can't be a Catholic and a witch! You're Catholic so you can't practice witchcraft! You just can't! It's against the rules!" My sibling in Christ do you even hear yourself right now, girl.

[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.

[fromgoy2joy]

i get so angered when ex christians take stories from the "Old Testament' share them without context and say "how can this be a loving G-D?! Checkmate!' When what they should have vexations with is the conditional salvation of the New Testament, not the tales of the Jewish people.

Also, what you were taught about New Testament G-D vs the Old Testament G-D is highly dependent on the christian belief that Jesus redeemed the world. Where through supersessionism teachings, old G-D was a big old meanie and now He's nice and fluffy for us Christians who've accepted him. By mindlessly reiterating this point, you contribute to virile antisemitism, delegitimize the relationship Jewish people have with Hashem, by shaping this around yourself and your own angst.

I say this as a person who no longer practices christianity and whose entire viewpoint collapsed the day I realized I had no faith in the church- deconstruct your faith in a way relevant to the structure you grew up with. Not what you see as witty one liners and in the ridicule of religious texts that belong to a 5,000 year old tribe.

(Heavily inspired by a convo with @daughterofstories. )

[jewishboricua]

nobody can convince me that cultural christianity in western culture, particularly the USA, doesn't exist when i specifically remember one time me and my family used to go to this plant based restaurant a few years back, and i remember that the owner was openly Buddhist and had put Buddha as part of the logo for her restaurant, and then I had watched a show that had a segment about Buddha, which I found really cool, so I proceeded to tell my conservative Christian mother about what I learned, then she told me "that's nice honey, but I go here for the food, NOT the politics." with a passive aggressive tone, and i'm not gonna lie, i think it's FUCKED UP that being a part of a religion that isn't Christianity or even being atheist/agnostic is "too political" and is even considered "pandering to an agenda"

[artist-issues]

yes I'm a Christian writer. Yes I'm a Christian artist. Yes I'm a Christian whatever--I'm so tired of people being like "I'm not a Christian ___, I'm actually a ______ who is Christian" what?!? No! Say the "Christian" part of my identification louder, it's the only part that matters.

I have been crucified with Christ, therefore it is no longer I who live! No longer I who put pen to paper! No longer I who type! No longer I who thinks and plans and practices and works and communicates--it's Christ who lives in me! He must increase! I must decrease!

If you're a Christian, knock that bogus worldly self-centered crap about "no I'm not part of the 'Christian genre' so I'm not a 'Christian whatever,' because I want to be taken seriously," off. Knock it off, shut up, get out of here with that.

Who cares if you're taken seriously? Who are you doing this for? For others? For Christ? Or just for you and your own credit and your own status? Get away from me with that. Ugh.

Anything you do in your life is supposed to be for Christ. You died. You said He was in charge of you from now on--You said He was the sum total of your identity, from now on. Did you mean it? Or did you mean, "everything except my special interests and career?" Of course not.

Anything you do in your life is supposed to be for Christ. That includes your art, your music, your hobby, your writing, your job. You should be so fortunate, so favored, to be called a "Christian" anything. You're not identifying with the "Christian genre," you're identifying with Christ. The word Christian doesn't mean "little Skillet" or "little Frank Peretti" or "little Dallas Jenkins." The word Christian means "little Christ."

You should be so fortunate to be called "Christian" anything, like the disciples were beside themselves with joy to be called "Christian" prisoners and "Christian" slaves. Because they got to be associated with Christ.

Get out of here. Honestly.

[spacelazarwolf]

btw you can’t hate “organized religion” without hating the people who they originated with. you cannot hate judaism without hating jews. you cannot hate islam without hating muslims. you cannot hate buddhism without hating buddhists. you cannot hate sikhi without hating sikhs. you cannot hate minority religions without hating the minorities who practice them or whose culture is tied to them. so if you tell me “i don’t hate jews I just hate organized religion” all i hear is “i hate jews i just know it’s not politically correct to say that and i need a way to give myself plausible deniability.”