#culturally Christian

[green-snek-god]

The replies on this post may actually be some of the best examples of lack of reading comprehension I have ever seen 💀

As a person who celebrates Christmas for nonreligious reasons (I think I would be called an agnostic cultural Christian? Idk words are hard), I still acknowledge that it's a religious holiday.

Yes, many of the traditions are stolen from pagan holidays ( @dynamicity-keysmash if you strangle me for reblogging this with the word pagan you can't have any of my horrifying baked goods). That does not mean that CHRISTMAS ITSELF is a pagan holiday. I regularly steal things from @dynamicity-keysmash, that doesn't mean that I'm him. You are not required to be a Christian to celebrate it, but it IS a Christian holiday, and insisting that other people view your religion or culture as the neutral default is unreasonable and disrespectful. If you aren't a member of a minority group, please don't talk over them when they talk about their experiences. Listen, be respectful, and remember that everyone's experiences are different.

And for anyone who is still saying "it's a secular holiday", I challenge you to find another secular holiday where one of the most common decorations is depictions of the birth of Jesus and where one of the most common traditions is going to church.

Happy Holidays, whatever you celebrate ❤️

'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.

[chanaleah]

It's interesting to me that growing up Jewish seems to have given me a fundamentally different understanding of religion from my Christian friends. For me, I think that your religion (or ethnicity, since Judaism is an ethnicity) is not something you can get rid of. You can convert to another religion, but I never understood friends of mine who said that they weren't Christian, but Atheist.

"But you celebrate Christmas, right?" I asked them.

"Well, yeah," they said, "but we don't celebrate Christian Christmas. I'm atheist."

That didn't make any sense to me. Sure, maybe the version of Christmas they celebrated in their house looked more like treats and presents and less like nativity scenes and prayers, but it was still the same holiday.

So, I came up with the concept of the difference between "Not Christian" and "non-Christian". Which of course my "not christian" friends didn't understand. But my idea was that there are people who are "not christian" - mainly culturally christian atheists - and people who are "non-christian", like Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or others.

Because while both groups generally don't identify as Christian, we have different experiences. As a Jew, my experience as a religious minority is not the same as that of a culturally Christian atheist. They're not Christian, and I'm not Christian, but in different ways.

note (11/27/23)— I don’t entirely stand by the contents of this post anymore, specifically the part where I said that religion isn’t something you can get rid of. I have changed my mind and as of now do believe that atheism fully separate from Christianity is something that can be achieved, and while I’m not apologizing to many of those in my notes who despite their avowed atheism have continued to uphold Christian hegemony— I do apologize to atheists who have taken steps to distance themselves from Christianity and be careful not to uphold Christian hegemony.

[you-need-not-apply]

Being a decent human being isn’t inherently any faith. It’s being, and get this, a decent human being.

[jessicalprice]

Today in truths culturally Christian atheists who get really angry when you point out that everyone who lives in Christian hegemony is shaped by it to some degree aren’t going to like:

To actually deconstruct the ways Christianity has shaped how you think, you need to study Christianity. From the outside. When you no longer believe it.

You can’t deconstruct what you can’t recognize, and recognizing ideology and worldviews usually requires studying them from an exterior perspective.

[a-s-fischer]

The atheists who hate the terms "culturally Christian" or "Christianized" atheist/atheism, need to come to a reckoning with the fact that most of the people talking about the phenomenon of Christian cultural practices and default assumptions remaining present in atheist communities in historically Christian and Christianized parts of the world, are in fact also atheists.

Jewish atheists, and other atheists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds latched on to "culturally Christian" as a term to describe the ways in which atheist communities dominated by people from majority Christian, or majority Christianized, countries, are hostile to us and don't recognize our forms of atheism and secularism as legitimate, in spite of the fact that we also don't believe in any deity. it also became a convenient term to talk about the ways in which atheists from culturally Christian backgrounds frequently insist that to be properly secular, properly an atheist, you have to assimilate into a specific set of cultural practices viewed by these particular atheists as culturally and religiously neutral, AKA secular. "Culturally Christian" is a convenient term used to point out that these are not in fact culturally neutral practices, and that there are forms of atheism that do not include them, and include other cultural practices, and that atheists from other cultural backgrounds should not have to assimilate into another culture, for our atheism to be considered valid.

So like, the fact that the response to the term culturally Christian is to paint the non culturally Christian people using it, as religious people going after atheists as atheists, is both an example of a culturally Christian phenomenon, and also really obnoxious and ironic, given that the people who are making this argument are usually making it from within the atheist community. We are also atheists, which is why this phenomenon actually matters to us. This is an intra-community discussion, and trying to frame it as the mean religious people going after the atheists, erases our atheism, and is really annoying, and the only thing it serves to do, is to protect the people using this framing, from having to confront what those of us talking about the phenomenon are actually saying.

[jewishvitya]

Something really annoying about culturally Christian atheists, and especially antitheists, is that they'll talk about atheists like we're a whole category they can speak for.

You're not speaking as an atheist, you're speaking as an atheist with a Christian background. You don't speak for me. I don't believe in a god, I lost a lot over this, but I'm Jewish and nothing you say about atheists applies to me. You act like you're the default human. That's why we use the term "culturally Christian." You're not the default, your background and culture don't get erased when you stop believing in the religion.

And often you don't believe in their god, but you kept their mindset - especially the persecution complex.

[hindahoney]

I've seen the cultural Xtianity discourse for so long so often I'm sick of seeing it. Because it's the same thing over and over. Jews being like "hey recognize that some atheists are still culturally christian and this still harms us" and atheists being like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW DARE YOU CALL ME BY MY OPPRESSORS I HATE ALL RELIGIONS AND JUST FOR YOU SAYING THAT I HATE JEWS NOW"

[thejewitches]

The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was one of 20th-century America’s greatest political inventions.

Read the Article

[blunt-force-therapy]

I really don't get why people think atheists participating in religious events is some sort of gotcha. Christmas, for an example: it's really important to my family, I have free time on that day that I'm most likely not using for anything else, and there's two dinners. Why wouldn't I participate?

I've seen plenty of religious people participate in religious events that have nothing to do with their religion, and no one claims that they're actually secretly not that religion or whatever. Why the extra scrutiny on atheists?

[atheostic]

I find it utterly enraging when Jewish people on this site act like their experience with genocide is the only one that's valid and that matters.

When they brush aside other people's trauma as if it's less valid than their own.

As if it's some kind of competition and SURELY no one's ever had it as bad as them.

The Christian genocide of Indigenous people in the Americas (which is STILL HAPPENING, btw) had killed 10% of the entire global population as of the mid-1600s (about 56 million people).

Yet I, an Indigenous woman, get told that not only is my people's equally traumatizing history irrelevant, I'm required to be "culturally Christian" by virtue of being born in Latin America.

Because apparently Latin Americans are a homogenous group with a hive mind.

[chanaleah]

please stop saying holiday when you mean Christmas

Changing the names of concerts and parties and vacation times and the season and decorations and pretty much everything doesn’t mean anything when the content of these things doesn’t change.

“Holiday concerts” be so fr there are 15 Christmas songs and one refrain of maoz tzur or dreidl

“Holiday aesthetic” I see red and green and white

“Holiday/winter break” it’s Christmas break. It happens around Christmas. Stores and restaurants and companies and schools close for Christmas.

“Holiday movies” you’re watching home alone.

“Happy holidays” appreciated from a cashier but that card has a Christmas tree

“Holiday spirit” joy and grace and peace? How about the spirit of fighting back against colonialist empires that try to force their culture on us?

I appreciate that this is generally a well meaning attempt to create inclusivity, but I think the populace should be doing more. In practice this often feels like a way people make themselves feel better about the fact that Christmas and Christian is so embedded into American culture in such a way that makes the months of November and December unbearable for many members of religious minorities.

[you-need-not-apply]

No no I’ll say it: calling someone “culturally Christian” to invalidate their argument is disgusting.

If you don’t know what that is it’s where someone holds morals and beliefs similar to Christians but is not Christian.

Basically “how dare you care about this issue, I’m not Christian and I don’t care about it therefore you must be Christian and if you aren’t then well you still are”

I have been called culturally Christian for saying that rich people should feel guilty about being able to afford greener solutions but not using them. I have also been called culturally Christian for supporting Palestine. (Seperate occasions)

For some reason, this term has really blown up and I despise it. I am not, nor will ever be, Christian. I don’t believe in any similar gods either or Jesus (to me, he was probably just some guy asking everyone to stop stabbing each other) I’m a pagan focusing worship on the Greek pantheon.

If I started calling every homophobe “culturally muslim” that would not be acceptable. If I started calling everyone who supported Israel “culturally Jewish” that wouldn’t be acceptable.

So FFS stop using “culturally Christian” to ignore arguments. Stop using that term all together. Caring about people isn’t “culturally anything”. It’s basic human decency.

[boreal-sea]

there are literally laws on the books in some states that atheists can't hold office but whatever dude

Yeah, and you can't kill Bigfoot in Washington. A weird law is meaningless if it's not enforced, and those laws are not enforced, because guess what?

Atheists are not systemically oppressed in the USA.

Meanwhile, lemme count up the number of Islamophobic hate crimes in the USA since 9/11...

(And yes - I'm atheist too, I'm just not a whiny baby desperate to feel oppressed for some reason)

[welcome-to-the-indulgence-phase]

I FIGURED OUT THE DISCOURSE GUYS!

Cultural christianity, Christian atheism / antitheism etc. were originally terms to describe a (mostly hypothetical) state enforcement to rid the society of any form of religion or spiritual practice, making it, ironically, a theocracy.

But then the term started to broaden into "People raised Christian who are anti religion." Then to "Any atheist who was raised Christian" to "Any non Christian who lives in a Christian hegemony." To finally "If you ever went to a Christmas party without bursting into flames."

By the time it got to where laypeople were hearing about this discourse, it was already in the aforementioned late stages, so you get people genuinely trying to heal from religious trauma being told that they'll never truly leave the Church because they got Sundays off at their job.

[samwisethewitch]

Let's Talk About Religious Appropriation and Christianity

In my previous post, I talked about why religious appropriation matters and why it genuinely impacts pagan communities when culturally Christian authors take our gods out of context. Now I wanna talk about why it doesn't go the other way.

Religious appropriation is when someone from a dominant religious group misuses symbols or practices from a marginalized religion. (Reminder: marginalized means an identity or group is treated as insignificant or pushed to the periphery.) There is an element of power imbalance to appropriation.

In the United States, where I live, Christianity is the dominant religious group. Even Americans who are not practicing Christians themselves are culturally Christian -- they were raised in a culture where Christianity is assumed to be the default. In other parts of the world, the dominant religion may be another faith like Buddhism, Islam, or something else. I will be talking about Christianity in this post because that's my experience, but just remember that this isn't about theology so much as social influence.

Someone living in a culturally Christian society might use Christian symbols or elements in their art for a lot of different reasons. It might be a sincere expression of faith because the artist is a Christian (see: C.S. Lewis). The artist might use Christian symbols because they are widely known and will be easily recognized by their audience (see: It's a Wonderful Life). The artist might use Christian symbols outside of their original context or in a subversion of that context to create comedy (see: Dogma by Kevin Smith) or horror (see: Rosemary's Baby). And finally, they might use those symbols as a critique or satire of organized Christianity (see: Children of the Corn).

In any of those cases, it's highly unlikely that the depiction in this media property is going to overshadow actual Christian practices. Christianity is one of the most widely practiced religions in the world. There are over 2 billion Christians globally. 63% of Americans identify as Christians. (And that number is at an all time low! In older generations, it's higher!) And because of the built-in hierarchy of Christianity, there are designated spokespeople who can speak up to set the record straight.

For a real life example of this, let's think about The Da Vinci Code. For those who don't know, The Da Vinci Code is a thriller novel written by Dan Brown. A major plot point in the story is the reveal that Jesus Christ had sex and fathered children with Mary Magdalene, which is considered a heresy by most Christians. The Catholic Church specifically had a huge negative reaction to Dan Brown writing about them spending 2,000+ years intentionally covering up the fact that Jesus fucked.

And The Da Vinci Code had a HUGE impact on pop culture. The book has sold over 80 million copies in 44 languages. The movie stars huge actors like Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellan and was the second-highest grossing film of 2006. The massive protests drew even more media attention. This story was a very big deal for a couple of years.

And yet, most people in America and other culturally Christian countries still know that, in Christian lore, Jesus died without marrying or fathering children. Even people who have read The Da Vinci Code or seen the movie can usually recognize that the whole Mary Magdalene thing is fiction. Even if someone did come away thinking Jesus getting it on with Mary Magdalene was historical fact, they're likely to encounter other media at some point that will depict Jesus as unmarried.

More people do not believe Jesus fucked because of The Da Vinci Code. It has not significantly changed popular perceptions of Christianity, or even of Catholicism. This is because Christianity, and specifically the Catholic Church, are huge institutions with both the power and the platform to set the record straight.

Marginalized religions do not have that kind of power or platform, which is why religious appropriation is a much bigger deal for us. In general, you can't appropriate something from a dominant cultural group.

[sapphiconoclast]

I still don't really "get" the discourse around the term "culturally christian". like I don't understand what the term adds to the conversation about christianity and other religions. call me crazy but I feel like it's possible to say "many aspects of western life have been sculpted by christianity, and you, as a product of western society, have been heavily influenced in how you think and feel about the world around you by christianity" without using such a loaded term. I thought "don't use labels for people they're not comfortable with" was something we understood around here