#i don’t think there’s churches or nothing like that and definitely no bibles

[maidstew]

jessup diggs - some headcanons

jessup has a decent sized family. he’s the oldest of all his siblings (he’s got 5 of them!) and his mama stays home with all the kids. she makes a little money on the side selling little blankets and other items that she’s able to sew. his daddy works down in the mines.

the rules for the mines were a lot more lax during this era so people were able to go down in the mines when they turned 16. jessup joined his daddy in the mines as soon as he was able to. it worried his mama to death, but with this many mouths to feed there just wasn’t another choice.

jessup’s biggest fear was for his younger brothers to have to drop out of school and join up in the mines. after he was reaped, all he could think about was his brother jed. jed’s a year younger than jessup and would have to go down into the mines once jessup was gone.

jessup had awful night terrors about his brother getting hurt in a mine accident while he was at the zoo. he didn’t tell lucy gray about any of it because he figured she didn’t need more to worry about.

he didn’t know lucy gray personally before they were reaped but of course, 12s a small place so he knew of her- even saw her sing a couple times before. he didn’t dislike lucy gray, but a part of him (that he wasn’t proud of) resented that her family was able to make such an easy living with singing while he had to work himself to the bones in the mines just for his family to still struggle to survive. he never, ever would have voiced that to anybody though. his mama always told him never to judge because you never knew the full story of what someone was going through. that’s also why it was easy for him to take to lysistrata.

i can’t help but think some parts of christianity survived in district 12- at least during this time. his mama is a huge believer in her faith and talked about it all the time. they didn’t have bibles or anything because all that had been long destroyed but they passed down what they could (by katniss’s time, it had died out due to people dying so early and not being able to spread the gospel.)

his daddy wasn’t as attached to the gospel as his mama- but that wouldn’t stop him from grabbing jessup’s hand and praying with him everyday before they went down in the mines. his daddy was sure that prayer would keep any harm from coming to them in the mines.

before the games- jessup asked lysistrata to hold his hand and pray with him.

[ddarker-dreams]

Lock, what DO you love and like so much about Dostoevsky's work? I don't think you've ever talked about that. Please, I want to know !!!

^o^

(christianity mention jump scare below proceed with caution)

i thought this would be an easy to answer but figuring out how to put my feelings into words proved difficult .

the beginning is always a good place to start, so let's go with that. by chance, i happened upon this video on youtube and gave it a watch. about halfway in i decided i had to read notes from underground for myself. i struggled to understand what the narrator was trying to get across. the unique writing style, where the reader is addressed directly, as if in challenge, helped me preserve.

i think part of what makes his work special to me is his depiction of people. and they really do feel like people more than characters, even if some of their characteristics are unique to the era dostoevsky wrote in. everything else about them transcends time. i can see myself in some of them. whether it be the titular idiot, prince myshkin in his naivety; alyosha, who goes from devout to doubting; and ivan, whose bitterness toward religion masks his disappointment at the state of the world. 

that's why the brothers karamazov touched me in particular. for some context, i grew up in a christian household and was heavily involved in the church (american northeast white baptist strand of church). around when i was 11 or so, the introduction of left-wing politics through social media had me undergo a looooong identity crisis. these new ideas felt at odds with what i'd spent my entire life believing. what i grappled with the most relates to ivan's anecdote, the grand inquisitor, where the goodness of god is called into question. the bitterness, the disappointment from crushed expectations, all those sensations resonated strongly with me. reading it as an adult who (supposedly) 'healed' from that time period in my life was like opening pandora's box. i'd never seen my thoughts and struggles so accurately described, or treated with more than a 'his ways are higher than our ways' type platitude. i stuffed these concerns of mine away because they only ever served to make me feel worse.

i won't delve deep into the Depressing Lore. the only reason i mention it is to stress how profound an impact the work had on me. throughout the remainder of TBK (and in most of dostoevsky's discography), the best and worst of humanity is shown. our hypocritical nature, capacity for evil; nothing is shied away from or made more palatable. and yet, throughout it all, our potential for good is shown too. whether it be in the little acts or monumental self-sacrifice. sometimes those acts are honored, or ‘worth it,’ sometimes they aren’t. it’s cheesy but whatever i’ll say it — choosing to love and serve others is my greatest joy. i don’t really need a definitive answer to those problems i struggled with. that’s the takeaway i’ve had from his work. it might not seem like a big deal, but not feeling guilty for having certain doubts or anxious over those doubts never fully being resolved was. very significant for me. and healing (for real this time). 

so that’s the sentimental perspective GJSDLKFJS from my writer’s perspective, i can only describe him as brilliant. his grasp on the human psyche is incredible. he can accurately describe so many emotions, worldviews, and give the context necessary for each one to feel organic and real. it’s vivid, too, in a way i can’t properly get across. everyone’s unfiltered and messy. characters contradict themselves in the same sentence. they’ll murmur, go off on tangents, tell stories, misquote the bible (or many other significant works), and just be overall disasters. aka how people actually are. 

the man’s also funny as hell. the protagonist from crime and punishment has a mental breakdown spanning multiple pages over a sock. yes, there’s context, but that’s still the gist of things. then there’s the issue of the hedgehog in the idiot. hedgehog drama. 

ultimately, his work is so very human. there’s commentary on issues that are prevalent to this day, multiple centuries later. the topics he touches on tend to align with what i care about most. whether i agree or disagree with what i’m reading, there’s always something i glean from it. something meaningful that sits with me long after i close the book. i’ll mull over it and bother people in my vicinity until they mull over it too. no one is safe. whether it be a co-worker or my dad who drives noticeably faster to reach our destination and be free of my many questions.

i could keep going but this ended up being long enough GJSKDF i hope at least something here makes sense?>?? i apologize for the incoherent ramblings. it's what the dude does to me.

[i-hear-a-sound]

Sort of dumb Drakengard and Nier stuff I find really really interesting

this will be long. and dumb. and probably wrong. under the readmore

This is an image of what the Alien’s ship looks like in Automata. And yes, it most definitely looks like a flower. Interesting thing is, aliens coming down in a ship shaped like a flower is something that sounds really familiar to the lore: of how in Drakengard, the Watchers came down with the Flower. (fact check me if that’s wrong though)

This image is faintly in every in-game cutscene in Drakengard. These are implied to be images from the universe’s altered Bible? (Christianity is the main religion in the game, it’s just altered with things like the Goddess the seals etc). Which, means, if you squint…

this image looks like a dragon impaled on a tower. It’s pixelated as fuck but higher quality images do confirm this. If I find one of those I’ll update it. (something something, timeloop is obvious)

These two scenes have been paralleled to death. Yes, the black box scene in Automata does look somewhat moderately kind of if you squint like the scene in which Caim pacts with Angelus, but let’s focus more on the ladder scene because something has always bugged me about it.

Firstly. The souls themselves. Maybe it’s just me… they look like egg cells? Which, no, I’m not going “Caimangelus had sex, good for them” I’m going “If this is the case, what else are referred to as “eggs” in this game?”

In the original version of the game in Japan, the Seeds of Destruction are not referred to as Seeds. They’re called eggs.

another thing. We get to see what happens when a seed is destroyed in ending C. And for a brief second, it looks like this:

Another thing about this scene. Something I also never noticed was that when he pulls out his soul, Caim’s chest does… this?

I’d gif it if i could but atm I cant, but believe me. Angelus just shoots it out from her mouth he just reaches into his chest like it’s liquid. And again, back to the ending C scene:

What does this imply?

…Jack shit lol I just think it’s interesting. Smiley face.

Accord is an incredibly mysterious character in the world of Drakenier. We know nothing of her origins, who created her, why she is at all, and the most we know is:

There is a lot of her. She was created in the “Kingdom of night”. She was created by “something like humans”. She studies singularities. Her goal is to prevent the fall-down. She’s a boob lover.

Something interesting to note is that, the character of Adam kind of somewhat maybe shares a lot of design parallels with Accord. Not even just in terms of the use of white/cream.

Adam has glasses, a black tie, and on one hand has a glove similar to what Accord has. In the anime he gets the same tattoo of the Cult of the Watcher’s Eve had in the game, and Accord is specifically stated to have taken an interest in the branch involving the cult’s creation.

But what’s weird is that Adam… is a machine. And accord isn’t. At least, she’s not supposed to be? Who knows. I have lots so say about Accord but most of it is just theorizing so I’ll leave that for another day.

But I want to talk about the other twin: Eve.

Weirdly enough, Eve and Brother Nier and to an extent, the Shadowlord, share a lot of similarities as well. Sure there’s the white hair, the fact they’re both siblings of someone, etc etc etc, but something I never noticed was how similar their attacks are. Thank the fucking sadfutago church thing for that one lol.

I mean… just the fact that these two not only share the same English VA, but that in the automata DLC for Replicant, the Shadowlord boss music is replaced by Dependent Weakling. (Fact check that for me too, it’s been a while)

Weird parallels all around.

These… doors. Why are they here?

for context, in a Drakengard level you stumble across just this… room with a couple random, red doors. Some of them are open. Some of them are not. I. Don’t. Know. Why. These. Are. Here.

(I mean I do… I very much do, but again. That’s theory.)

Anyways. Doors are actually mentioned in the game, in the final line for ending C. “A pitiful child shall defy the hands of the gods, and a door will close.”

Hmmm?? Thing to note: the “hands of the gods” are dragons. “A pitiful child shall defy the dragons, and a door will close.”

And to end off this post, a fun fact; before becoming the first intoner, Lady Zero had a different name. Rose.

[creature-wizard]

Hello! If this is something that makes you feel uncomfortable, please feel free to ignore this!

DISCLAIMER: This is nothing against Christians! I have no problem with your religion!

Anyways. So I grew up extremely evangelical Christian and now I’m agnostic, I’ve been doing pretty good with dismantling certain ideologies that I was brought up believing, etc, but there’s one thing that I cannot get rid of and that is “rapture anxiety”.

Basically, the way Christianity was/is taught to me and the people of my church is very fear-based. “Be afraid of the devil and going to hell, but also be afraid of God and what’s going to happen to you if you don’t obey his orders” type shit.

And while I don’t usually even regress back to how I was when I was religious, when the Israel/Palestine conflict escalated this week, a bunch of the people in my community and in my family started spreading a shit ton of messages about how “the rapture is coming” and how “modern Israel is the the Nation of Israel in the Bible and the Palestinians are the Canaanites that God is destroying before the rapture”, etc.

And somehow all of this just took me back to my childhood in which I literally couldn’t sleep because I thought God was coming at any time because “no one knows the day or the hour of his coming” and I was going to go to hell if I wasn’t ready and all that anxiety just kept flooding back. Gosh, just typing this sounds so self centred, I feel like I’m making a literal genocide about me.

Have you ever experienced this? It’s so fucking debilitating, I hate that evangelical Christianity is so fear based. Sorry for venting and writing a whole book in your asks.

Hey anon, you're always entitled to talk about and seek support for your religious trauma from appropriate channels. Have you ever heard of ring theory? Ring theory essentially states that the important thing is to seek comfort from those further away from the crisis, and give support to those closer to it. Since I'm not more affected by this crisis than you, you aren't doing anything wrong here.

I haven't personally experienced rapture anxiety since the rapture wasn't part of my parents' belief system, but I know it's extremely common. I'm sorry you have to go through this.

I was, however, brought up with apocalyptic beliefs, and more than once I definitely found myself triggered when the topic - or even adjacent topics - came up. It took years of work to get past that.

If it helps, try to remember that much about this whole situation was actually engineered by Evangelical Christians. They literally want this conflict to happen because they think it'll catalyze the End Times and bring about the Second Coming. I can't imagine that the god who supposedly said that nobody knows the day or the hour of Jesus's second coming would be very amused by people being arrogant enough to think that they can actually set the End Times into motion themselves.

[maschotch]

Random Hotch q for the expert, but do you think he’s especially religious? I can’t recall if it’s been mentioned/touched upon in the show (currently rewatching) but I always envisioned him to not be practicing but maybe subconsciously Christian lol idk what are your thoughts

truthfully im not sure. from his vibes i could definitely see him being a hardcore christian, but considering the amount of american symbolism we see in his office, we definitely would see some sort of evidence if he practiced any kind of religion.

if i was to speculate, id say he’s uninterested in organized religion and spirituality on the whole. he seems more bemused when interacting with overtly religious pushy parents and clinical with abusive parents with a religious front, while morgan has a much more personal reaction, which makes me think hotch isn’t bothered by religion the way morgan is. but i imagine morgan, who grew up in a loving home that was disrupted, felt abandoned by a god he once loved whereas hotch, who grew up in a consistently abusive household, never bought into a benevolent god to begin with.

if we’re talking just my opinion? i think hotch’s childhood was littered with the omnipresent force of southern christianity: there’s a church on every street, sunday church was a weekly occurrence, bibles in every school, prayer during class, crosses in every room, etc. but i think he thought it was a sham. i think of his interactions in natural born killer with the guy who’s dad put up a religious front in public but beat his family in private, or the father in boxed in who would do the same thing. i think of it similar to that; religion was just part of the cover to maintain the appearance of a happy wholesome family. hotch doesnt seem like the type to pray every night for the abuse to stop—it seems more like he would just accept the way life was for him until he takes it into his own hands.

it’s been a while since i’ve seem cm so i don’t remember his house decorations or haley’s jewelry, but nothing stands out in my memory. i don’t think he’s religious but i don’t think he has a particular aversion the way morgan does. that being said, i could understand any religious headcanons for him since he really doesnt talk about it much. he even kinda dodges the question in demonology when morgan asks what he believes in: he believes in behavior and people and things he can understand. there’s no need for him to worry about the rest of it.

[runawaymun]

question that you do not have to answer: are you lgbt? and are there lgbt ppl in your church? i was just wondering how common it is for lgbt ppl to be practicing christians and vice versa

I am bi and genderqueer, yes. Several of my friends are practicing Christian and also queer to some degree (we have like one token straight friend haha) — though we kind of all collected each other through the power of gaydar. The deacon(ess) at our church has been quite open about being queer as well, and the rest of the leadership seems more or less supportive.

It’s hard to say how common or uncommon it is. In my experience, I’d lean on the side of uncommon purely because the church has deeply sinned against its queer members historically, and that’s not a wound which quickly heals — but I grew up baptist. It all very much depends on your location and the denomination of church. I live in a liberal area and the church I go to is ECLA Lutheran, who as a whole are queer affirming and allow queer people to hold leadership. The main pastor at our church isn’t comfortable officiating queer weddings — but has no problem allowing other members of staff to do it. I respect that bc I very much prefer for people to err on the side of following their own conscience. He isn’t hateful or bigoted, but he is definitely more traditional.

As far as how common it is to have practicing queer people in church, I think it’s far more common than people think and much more common than people at church think. We are all just pretty quiet about it unless the church is an affirming one. The climate of each church can vary. We tend to find each other and find allies. People stay at churches for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with how affirming the leadership at that church is.

Quaker and ECLA churches tend to be affirming. The ones I hate the most are the psuedo-nondenominational liberal churches of the likes I attended for years, because they’re bigoted but they aren’t honest about it. It’s very much “love the sinner, hate the sin”, and the general idea is “it’s okay to experience same sex attraction but don’t act on it, and don’t talk about it”. At least the outright conservative churches are upfront.

But I digress. There are many, many queer practicing Christians across the whole spectrum of Christian denominations. I’ve met several at every church I’ve ever attended. The main reason I took so long to find an affirming church is that my top priority when looking is that the church must believe in and uphold the Bible (or else, like, why are we here lol). I know that the Bible itself actually has nothing to say about queer people in consensual relationships, so there is no need to throw out scripture in an attempt to be affirming. Churches that err on one extreme of the spectrum or the other are, in my opinion, intellectually lazy or dishonest.

But the trend is for the better imo. The kids in church these days seem to be much better off, and my hope for them is that they will never be hurt and question God’s love for them like I did for so long.

Oof, digressing more, sorry! I am very passionate about this whole topic. Anyway I hope that answers your question, thank you!

[exvangelicalrage]

I Might Be Wrong

5/31/23

christians use the word "faith" a lot. It's one of the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Unfortunately, I have that list memorized. 

I lived by the fruits of the spirit as a teenager. There were a lot of rules given by the church about who I should be, but fewer rules in the bible, at least ones that made sense. But this was a list I could get behind: character traits I could work on developing that would make me both a good candidate for heaven, and a good wife and mother. 

Gross.

Anyway, in a recent interview I gave, the interviewer asked me to explain my current theological stance, since I had identified myself as an exvangelical. I explained that I prefer "agnostic," although it certainly wouldn't offend me if someone called me atheist. And when he asked me why I had chosen agnostic over atheist, I found myself surprised by my own response. I said something along the lines of, "Well, if you think about it, atheism requires just as much faith as christianity. christians must have unshakeable faith that god exists; atheists have to have just as much faith that god doesn't exist. Neither is provable." 

And then I said, to my own surprise: "Ultimately, I just try to stay as far away from faith as possible."

I was surprised because of how true it was.

If I can't have faith in god, I also can't have faith in no god.

Do I think the christian god exists? Obviously not. But atheism requires the belief that "No god exists," which is also something I can't confidently commit to. Especially when you look at the broad expanse of the word "god." It's been used in so many ways over the millennia. Even the bible says, "you shall have no other gods before me" which implies the presence of other gods—and whether they are actual or made up or metaphorical doesn't really matter. It still falls under the definition of "god." Not to mention, plenty of people use the term "god" to mean something like "universal consciousness" which... isn't impossible, as far as I can see. 

You know how they say that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference? I think the same is true of christianity. The opposite of christianity is not atheism—it's agnosticism.

Ask a christian how they know their god is the True god, as opposed to, for example, Allah or Zeus or Ra, and inevitably they will get around to saying, "I have faith."

Cool. 

I don't. 

I don't have faith. 

That is not a thing I have. 

And I never will have it—not in the christian god, not in the muslim god, not in any of the myriad gods who have risen and fallen throughout history. Nor even in the lack of god. I don't even have faith in physics! Damn physicists keep changing our understanding of the foundational framework of the universe! It's great, don't get me wrong. But definitely worth holding onto a little disbelief, even in things that are supposedly True.

After I said I stayed as far away from faith as possible, the interviewer then said to me, "Well, you must have some faith in something. How else do you ride in airplanes?"

But the thing is, I don't need faith to ride in airplanes. I have my understanding of physics. I have the evidence of mine own eyes. I have a mind that I can use to understand to the best of my ability. It's not perfect. But it is better than nothing, which is all christianity has.

You could make the argument that I must have faith in something, because that's just what it means to be human, and I can't know everything about everything all the time. I wouldn't disagree with you. 

I also wouldn't agree. 

I'd stay solidly somewhere in the bounds of "maybe."

Perhaps some version of faith in something is an inevitable part of life. 

But I definitely don't have to have blind faith. I don't have to have stupid faith. I don't have to have immoral faith.

I do not have to have faith in a god who never deigned to honor me with his presence, nor logic, nor reason, nor answers. 

I do not have to have faith in a god who in one moment condemns entire cities to death, and in the next professes his profound love for humans.

I do not have to have faith in a god who lets children die for no fucking reason, and forces women to bear the children of their rapists, and who would chop a woman into pieces because of the sins of men. 

Who would command a man to kill a child to prove his "faith."

I do not have to have faith. Faith is taught, learned. And it can be unlearned. 

Ultimately, I may never be able to fully reject every modicum of faith. But this isn't about having a black and white answer. It's about an approach to life. Anytime I stumble across a bubble of faith hiding away somewhere in my brain, I beat it with a stick (aka knowledge), until either it disintegrates, or turns into a fuzzy cloud of "I don't know and that's okay."

It's okay to not know. It's okay to be wrong. But I don't have to give in to faith either. Instead, I can accept the gray area. I don't need faith. I simply need to be willing to continually learn, and willing to admit that I might be wrong.

"This is a question I do not have an answer for," I will say. "But I have made this choice anyway. I might be wrong. But it's okay."

[royallyprincesslilly]

Title: Forgive Me, I Am A Sinner  {1}* {Two-Shot}

Title: Forgive Me I Am a Sinner {1}* {Two Shot} 

Someone x Reader

Words: 2.9k

Warning: Play on the church confessional, Cursing, Adult themes, Mild crude language/discussion, Mild NSFW(Toward end), Mistaken Identity

Summary: You have some things to get off your chest and end up walking into a church.

Note: So, this might be mildly taboo for some, if it is for you, don’t read, I’ll understand. While I don’t think I took it too far in someone’s eyes it could be blasphemous. Again, don’t read if you feel it may offend you. Nothing lewd but be warned. Don’t come to me with your complaints. They will fall on deaf ears and be met with a quick delete. I don’t think it’s bad but 🤷🏽‍♀️

  ***NOT EDITED/Proofread***

-You-

“Forgive me lord for I have sinned. It's been...never since my last confession. I've never done this. Yep, I'm a virgin. Well with confessions otherwise I am soooo not a virgin. The things this body has done, these eyes have seen, these hands have touched, and this mouth has had in it...yikes. Not a virgin. Oh god, I probably shouldn't have said that in a church with a priest across from me. Shit. I probably shouldn't have cursed in the house of God either. Oh, fuck."

You facepalmed then sighed already fed up with yourself. You didn’t know what was wrong with you or why your mouth was still moving and allowing words to pass through. Yes, you were nervous and most of it were nervous ramblings you’d always done but now was not the time to be censor free.

 "I'm going to hell, aren't I?”

 Silence. There weren’t even breathing sounds. Either there was no one there or the guy across from her was weighing his options speaking to an actual heathen. You leaned a litter closer to the wooden screen peppered with small holes that was separating the two booths.

 "Uh...priest guy? Padre? Father? Oh, great even God's messenger sees the heathen in me and has run for the hills to tell the lord this sheep has steered far from the flock. Definitely going to hell."

 You hung your head in disappointment.

 "For all the scripture that has been written about the heavenly trio, the father, the son, and the holy spirit, I doubt they would be so quick as to damn one of their flock."

 You could hear the humor in his voice, and it made you pause. Were priests supposed to have a sense of humor? It did sound like a biblical joke so maybe that wasn’t weird.

 "I think you are being too harsh on yourself," the voice on the other side followed up.

 "You do?"

 "Yes. Also, heathen in quite harsh."

 You giggled nervously. However, those nerves were dwindling with every joke he cracked. There was something soothing about his husky voice that sounded like he was half asleep and just awakened from a quick nap.  "That is what I feel like whenever I muster up the courage to speak to him about this."

 "Start from the beginning."

 "Are you sure it's okay for me to be telling you all this in a church nonetheless?"

 Silence. Was he actually thinking if it was okay? You circled your thumbs and waited for him to speak but when he didn’t you leaned closer again.

 "Hello?"

 “You came here because you needed help. You came here looking for answers and acceptance. You will find all 3 here. So, let's begin again. Trust me I've heard it all."

 You sighed relieved by his welcoming words. You then nodded and mustered even more courage. "Okay. Forgive me lord for I have sinned I've never confessed before.

 "What is your sin?"

 "Lust."

 The silence stretched for so long then the person on the other side of the screen cleared their throat.

 "Lust. Go on. How are you lustful?"

 His voice was even deeper than before.

 "I like sex--like I really, really like sex. I know the bible leans more on sex for procreation and marital health, but I am not married, and I have no plans for children. So, for me, sex is something that feels good, better than good, amazing especially if it is done right and the person I am with understands a woman's body and needs."

 The silence returned but only for a few moments. "Ehm, I'm listening."

 "Lately I've been feeling unfulfilled."

 "Sexually?"

 "Yes, mainly. I have a great career, amazing friends, wonderful family, and a life I love but when it comes to sex it's just not cutting it. The guy I've been seeing..."

 "Boyfriend?"

 He sounded disappointed and that made you pause. Why would he sound disappointed? You explained it away deciding that he was disappointed in it not being a husband or fiancé.

 "You mentioned you were not married just trying to get a better understanding," he clarified.

 "Oh. Not really. We see each other whenever we have an--itch."

 "For sex. Understood."

 "You sound very chill about this father."

 "I am simply here to listen and never to judge--my child. This is the house of the lord, and all are welcome to be who they are and lay down their burdens. That is the lord I represent."

 He sounded like the cool youth pastor that was written about in some YA novels. The one who would create raps for G.O.D. You stifled a laugh at the thought.

 "Wow, that's really cool. Anyway, he's very...vanilla. Whenever we meet--. Wait should I explain what vanilla is? Um...well."

 "No need," he quickly interrupted.

 "Really?"

 "Uh...I am what I am now, but I was not born a priest."

 His unexpected answer had you snort loudly before a laugh escaped you. "Well go on then fuck it up, father. Damn no, I didn't mean that."

 He heartily chuckled. "It's alright. Go on"

 "He's vanilla and never really knows what I need and rarely ever do I cum. I mean reach completion."

 "Then why are you wasting your time with someone like that?"

 "Uh...well...ummm...I am very picky with who I spend my time with. When I said that I like sex, it didn't mean I was some chick who sleeps around with anybody with the right body part."

 "Of course not. I didn't mean to imply that. I'm sorry."

 "No, it's cool."

 "For the record, I didn't think that of you anyway."

 "Okay. Thanks. It's just most guys are insensitive assholes who think if a woman likes sex and pleasure then they must be easy and DTF anyone."

 "Guys like that are the ones who should be offed and sent straight to hell."

 "Preach it, father.”

 It took some time for his words to make full impact, but after a few moments, they did. “Wait shouldn't you say they are also God's children and just need to be steered to the righteous path?"

 "You sound well versed in the priesthood."

 "Movies."

 He laughed again and it sounded so welcoming that you laughed with him.

 "Please continue. He doesn't satisfy you."

 "No. I thought I could handle it and finish myself off or something but tonight I couldn't."

 "Did you just have sex tonight?"

 "Yes. I guess that's another sin you have to forgive me for."

 "And you are unfulfilled."

 "Yes. So unfulfilled. My bullet couldn't even take care of this, not even my rabbit, hell not even the usual porn I watch."

 The silence across the way was deafening and you noticed. It was like you’d become hypersensitive to quietness since sitting in this booth. Suddenly he groaned as if in pain.

 "Are you okay father?"

 He groaned again then took a few breaths. Through the tiny holes in the screen, you could only make out a head turned down, everything else was shadows. "Completely.”

 It came out hoarse, strangled. “Ehm...continue.”

 "Uh, so I facetimed him and decided to tell him what I need and even some things I would be into, and he laughed and had the most freaked out look on his face. He said it wasn't normal and I shouldn't tell anyone about it again. Like he made me feel crazy and so--dirty."

 "Uh-huh. For better context. What are these preferences--my child?"

 You twiddled your thumbs then uncrossed your ankles only to cross them again. "I don't know if I should say them now. You might say the same thing."

 "No. I would never. Remember I said my place is not to judge and I am here to help?"

 You took a deep breath and tried to calm those nerves that were beginning to creep up again. After another breath you began.

 "I um...I told him I want to be tied up while he takes all control and completely ruins me. I told him I wanted to try doing it while others watched that him being so gentle is a turn-off and I wouldn't mind some teeth or nail marks on me. I can see myself being into BDSM and get turned on by dominance and submission. I want to be choked a little while he slams so hard into me that I see stars. I want to be weak in the knees unable to walk, sore throat can't talk, eyes full of tears, chin covered in slobber, delirious with pleasure until I squirt and then pass out to do it again. I want him to know my body and what it needs better than I do. I want dirty, nasty, rough, hot passionate sex I'll never forget."

 The silence this time was so heavy so filled with the charge of excitement and arousal. You didn't know why you were slightly turned on finally getting it all out, especially to a priest in a church of all places. Hell, you didn't even know why you had come in here in the first place. The idea of confessional had always creeped you out for some reason. Telling a stranger your secret sin. It felt so vulnerable.

 "Shit. Surely I should burst into flames for all that right? First in line on the locomotive to hell? I shouldn't have said all that."

 "Are you ashamed of these desires? Do you wish to be rid of them?"

 "He made me feel ashamed."

 "Fuck him. Are you ashamed?"

 "Father?"

 "Answer me.”

 His voice was serious, and authoritative now. “Look inside yourself and answer truthfully."

 You did as he said and took some time and truly listened to yourself and everything that was going off inside you right now. Among everything, the uncertainty, the excitement, and the confusion nowhere inside of her did you feel ashamed. Not at all.

 "No. I'm not ashamed."

 "Do you wish to be rid of them?"

 "No," you replied with a little more confidence.

 "Good. You should be unapologetically you. You should not allow others to make you feel small or shameful for who you are, what you want, or what you deserve. You deserve all of that. You deserve to be sexually fulfilled and happy in all avenues of your life. We all only have one to live and restricting ourselves from true happiness is not doing service to someone, it does a disservice to ourselves."

 You sat there thinking over his words and gained confidence from each of them. He sounded as if he spoke from experience.

 "Is this your first day as a priest? I don't think you should tell parishioners to sin more to live a fulfilled life if you truly want to gain access to heaven."

 He snorted. "It is my first day doing this, but I stand by my words."

 You sat there noting your nerves had melted away and your confused state had turned to one of mellowness. You didn’t feel in a war with yourself anymore. Perhaps this was why others did this.

 "Do you feel better?"

 "Yes."

 "Good, then my work is done."

 "Wait shouldn't you give me instructions to repent like a Hail Mary or ten or something?"

 "Will it ensure you do not sin again?"

 Snorting, you replied, "Probably not."

 "Then you are free to step out of here and live your life with one piece of advice."

 "What's that?"

 "Drop that pathetic loser you're seeing. You can do so much better little lamb."

 The doors on the other side opened but you didn't register it until nearly a minute had passed. When you stepped out and looked in the opposite booth from sheer curiosity, it was empty with no priest inside.

 "Little lamb? What kind of priest was that?"

  ~~~~~~~

 -Him-

4 hours later and he was still solid as a brick hard.

 "Fuck!”

 He palmed himself yet again then squeezed hoping to relieve some of the ache there but no luck and no relief. He shoved his hand under his head and stared up through the glass roof of his skylight at the night sky. It was clear without a cloud in sight allowing the stars to really shine.

 "I want to be choked a little while he slams so hard into me that I see stars."

 His cock throbbed so forcefully it could be seen through his now too tight pajama bottoms. Glancing down, he groaned exasperatedly.

 "Come on. It’s not funny anymore."

 He knew he shouldn’t have gone into that confessional. He knew he should have found somewhere else to wait for his manager as he spoke with the priest of the church he was donating a large amount of money to because of his connection to some of the kids he'd encountered the weekend before.

 He'd gone at that time because he was sure it would be empty and there would be no stray photos of him leaked. Donating money was no fun when everyone knew you'd done it. He liked the incognito life. He just wanted somewhere that had zero chance of him bumping into someone. No way did he expect someone to drop into the other side of the confessional and no way did he expect that someone to have that kind of confession.

 He closed his eyes as he recalled the little slivers of her face. Plum painted lips that looked full, a cute nose, skin that looked incredibly soft, and eyes that called to him. From the small perforations in the wood, he would classify you as a fucking goddess.

 Once you began your confession he should have interrupted and set the record straight but there was something about your voice that held him in place, silencing him. He’d picked up the distress in it, the frustration and uncertainty. Then the more he listened he fell under some spell. When she mentioned her definite non virgin status, he was way past curious. Maybe that’s what possessed him to answer her when she asked if he was there.

 "Curiosity," he muttered mulling over it.

 He thought over your entire confession and within seconds his cock throbbed again. Without even realizing it his hand had drifted into his pajama bottoms and was now wrapped around his engorged length.

 "Fuck!"

 "I want to be tied up while he takes all control and completely ruins me. I wanted to try doing it while others watched, that him being so gentle is a turn-off and I wouldn't mind some teeth or nail marks on me. I can see myself being into BDSM and get turned on by dominance and submission. I want to be choked a little while he slams so hard into me that I see stars. I want to be weak in the knees unable to walk, sore throat can't talk, eyes full of tears, chin covered in slobber, delirious with pleasure until I squirt and then pass out to do it again. I want him to know my body and what it needs better than I do. I want dirty, nasty, rough, hot passionate sex I'll never forget."

 "Uggh. Uggh. Uggh. Fuuuuuck."

 His hand moved so fast he was sure it was going faster than the speed of light. It had to have been. His groans, moans and grunts filled the space as he raced toward a finish he imagined would go across her beautiful face or her breasts he couldn’t see but was convinced were equally as gorgeous as her aura. Within seconds, his back angled off the bed as if whatever had possessed him earlier was finally exiting his body and being pulled into the air.

 "Holy fuck!”

 The white spots that decorated his vision made it impossible to see anything and in that moment he didn’t care. He was only focused on the amazing feelings coursing through him. When he finally regained some motion and sense he glanced down and found stream after stream of his release decorating his chest, pelvis, and pajama bottoms.

 "Ah shit. Come on! Haven't had to jerk myself off since I was twenty fucking years old, and one confessional tipped me over the edge? Unfuckinbelievable!”

 Not in a rush to get up and filled with frustration, he looked back to his skylight at the glittering stars and thought of the side profile of her face. Within seconds, he felt himself harden again and it was then he knew his cock was not done. He was in for a long night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ryan Burge

Published: Oct 19, 2023

This post is more of a “me thinking out loud” than anything else, because I get this question a whole lot. It’s about states, specifically what parts of the country are the least religious and which ones are the most religious. That question is posed by potential church planters looking for the most fertile ground to start up a new church. It’s also asked by atheists and agnostics when they are thinking about where would be a good place to move to if they wanted to be around like minded people.

Here’s the thing about that question - it’s not really that easy to answer from a statistical perspective. It seems so tantalizing easy but that’s just not the case. The reason is actually really easy to understand, too. Sample size. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

I don’t think people fully realize how small national surveys used to be. When I was in graduate school, the ceiling was about 3,000 people. Divide that by 50, and you see the problem that I am running in to here. You may get a hundred or more in big states like California or Texas. But you aren’t going to get any real numbers in Vermont or Montana.

I wrote about this in a ton of depth for Religion News Service a couple years ago in post entitled, “How religious is your average 22-year-old? A new golden age of survey data opens a door.” That ‘Golden Age’ has opened the door for folks like me to get a lot closer to the answer about the most religious states and the least religious ones.

The Cooperative Election Study has over 60,000 people in the most recent wave - collected about a year ago. It’s got 129 folks from North Dakota in there! And, 224 from Montana. There are more Californians in the 2022 CES than the entire sample of the General Social Survey in 2021. So, now we can do some state level analysis.

Let’s get right to the maps, then. This is the share of folks who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular in the 2008 and the 2022 version of the Cooperative Election Study. I intentionally kept the bins the same in both years to give folks a clear impression of just how fast the nones have risen.

In the 2008 map at the top, the dark blue tells a pretty clear story - the nones were way more concentrated in the western part of the United States. They were north of 40% in both Washington and Oregon. The only other state that was less religious was Vermont at 42%. There are also big pockets of nones in California, and Arizona, too.

Where weren’t the nones in 2008? The entire mid-section of the country. States like Minnesota and Wisconsin scored really low at 23% and 25% respectively. But of course the Bible belt didn’t have a bunch of nones. Just 23% in Mississippi and 18% in Louisiana. But there were a bunch of states in the low to mid twenties all over the middle section of the country, though.

In 2022, nearly the entire map is a dark shade of blue - meaning at least 35% non-religious. Now there are four states that are more than half non-religious: Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine. But there are also lots of states in the mid-forties, too: Nevada, California, New Mexico, and Colorado to name a few.

Outside the Dakotas, the only part of the country that is not dark blue is the Bible Belt. In most of those states about one third of the population is non-religious. That’s the case in Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina. The nones are basically everywhere now and in large numbers. It’s not just isolated pockets in certain states.

[ Continued... ]

Unfortunately, the rest of the article is behind a paywall, and a cached/archived version doesn't seem to be available at the usual locations.

[phantom-curve]

I just called to love you like we’re gonna die

in which Julie volunteers at a church prayer line and Luke accidentally calls in one night || loosely inspired by the lone star: 911 episode “saving grace”

In the old, drafty basement of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, Julie Molina sits at a small round table in a metal fold out chair staring at the phone in front of her the exact same way she’s been doing every Wednesday night for the last four years, waiting. 

There are six other tables scattered about the room, phones and volunteers stationed at each one. A small kitchenette is tucked on the back wall, a carafe of coffee always hot and waiting, an electric kettle ready for tea at a moment’s notice. It’s comforting and familiar, these sights and sounds that remain unchanged week after week, month after month, year after year. 

Volunteering for the prayer line is routine and expected and one of the only remnants of her life in the Before Time. The time before the sickness and the sadness. The time before being told there was nothing more to do. The time before learning to say goodbye when what she wanted to say is please don’t go. The time before her mom died. The time before Julie’s faith died with her. 

And even though she doesn’t believe anymore, she still comes here every Wednesday. She still sits in her chair at her table, waiting for a call. She still answers and talks and digs deep into her past to offer the words the other person needs to hear. 

Because at the end of the day, Julie needs some things to stay the same. The world never stops, but the prayer line never changes. 

Until today. 

“Blessed Virgin prayer line, how may I help you?”

Laughter explodes from the other end of the phone. Julie pulls the receiver away from her face as the loud guffaws continue on the other line. A few of the other volunteers in the room glance at her, and Julie shrugs in response. She answered the phone the exact way they always do. From the corner of her eye she sees Tía watching her from across the room. Julie gives her a wide grin and firmly reattaches the receiver to her ear. 

“Holy shit — oh I probably shouldn’t say that, sorry — holy crap!” A soft baritone says on the other end. The guy sounds young, his voice smooth, his vowels rounded with a slight accent. 

“I just,” more laughter, and it’s so heartfelt Julie can’t help the way the corners of her lips curve just a bit, “I’m just honestly trying to decide if I’m more impressed or insulted right now.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow?”

Julie keeps her voice kind, the way she’s been trained to when working the prayer line. Usually it’s older folks calling in, either lonely or in poor health. Sometimes it’s a parishioner with an emergency, though ‘emergency’ can stem from a disagreement over a Bible passage to someone in a life or death situation who maybe should have called a different 24/7 phone line. This particular caller doesn’t sound familiar, which isn’t necessarily weird, but he does sound at least a bit confused, which definitely is. 

“Look,” he says after a moment, “I met a girl at a bar last night, and I asked for her number, and this is the number she gave me. I was trying to call her up to see if she wants to go out, but clearly she doesn’t.”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t sound particularly upset about it. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been turned down before, but never by a church prayer line. That’s a new one. Do you think she was trying to send me a message?”

This time, Julie’s the one who can’t help but laugh. 

“What kind of message would making you call a prayer line be?”

“I don’t know, maybe that I need to have a come to Jesus talk? Oh, oh, I know! That I haven’t got a prayer with her! Damn, that’s actually pretty clever,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her she thinks. 

Julie can’t help but be amused at the thought of this girl passing out prayer line numbers, and she finds herself abruptly wondering how badly this guy was flirting. His voice, at least, is fairly charming. And so far he’s been a pretty good sport about the whole thing. Occasionally they’ll get an addict calling in that was given their number by someone claiming it belongs to a dealer in an ill fated attempt to help them get clean. Those callers are never this nice about the bait and switch. 

“Well, in that case, I’ll be sure to include you in our Sunday prayer requests,” Julie vows, just a hint of tease dancing along the edges of her words, slipping through the half curved smile she can’t seem to hold back. 

“Oh man, that’s a real thing? Like, people call you up to request a prayer for ‘Ol Boi in the sky to deliver on?”

Julie swallows the snort that threatens to burst out and forces her voice to remain cheerful and church approved. 

“Well sometimes, yes. Mostly people call in to pray together over the phone, but sometimes they want to be added to the Sunday list. Usually when it’s a really important prayer, or a really big one. Having the support of the congregation makes them feel closer to God.”

She doesn’t really know why she’s explaining this to him. Clearly he isn’t Catholic, and he probably won’t ever call the line again. Plus, despite what others may think, she doesn’t volunteer for the prayer line in an attempt to convert people. 

“Damn, who knew church could be so transactional. Oh shit, sorry, I probably shouldn’t say the d-word. Ya know, I’ve got a buddy that used to go to church, and he never mentioned anything about prayer lines or requests. And we totally coulda used some of those back in the day...”

His tone sounds genuinely bummed, but in a way that tells Julie whatever they would have prayed for back then is something this guy would do anything to obtain. She’s said that kind of prayer before, too. 

“Well, you’re here now. Could be as good a time as any to start. Is there something specific you’d like me to include in your Sunday prayer? You know, other than a plea for better game.”

“Hey now!” The guy laughs, surprised but not upset, “I’ve got plenty of game, thank you very much. Church girls notwithstanding.”

Julie makes a noncommittal noise. She doesn’t know him well enough to offer a comment on this subject matter. He laughs again, the sound carefree and open in a way she almost envies. She doesn’t know the last time she felt an emotion so unrestrained. Her heart has been under lock and key for years at this point, almost everything feels dulled and muted through layers of survival. 

“Okay, okay, how ‘bout this: you can say a prayer for me, but it has to be cool.”

“A cool prayer?” Julie doesn’t quite manage to keep the slight sarcasm from her tone. He chuckles, just two little ha-ha’s, but the sound splits her lips into a grin again. 

“Yeah, dude! Like, pray that I wake up a millionaire or with a sold-out international tour or – oh! Oh! I know!! Pray we cinch our record deal next week! Think you and Sky Daddy can make it happen?”

“You can’t call Him that if you want me to put your prayer in,” Julie says with a mockingly stern voice, ignoring the pulse of pain that rockets through her chest at his mention of touring and record deals. 

“Okay, fair enough, my bad. No disrespect, I promise. We just talk like that around Alex, my friend that went to church, ‘cause, ya know, religious trauma. It helps him when we joke about it.”

He’s slipped into a more casual cadence, his words blurring a little and she thinks, this must be what he sounds like around his friends, and then ignores the way that thought makes her heart jump a little. She has friends. Well, she has Flynn. And Flynn has friends that sometimes Julie also spends time with. Usually because Flynn invited her to something. It’s fine, though. It’s hard to make friends in your twenties, everyone knows that. 

“Oop, sorry, probably shouldn’t bring that kinda stuff up on a prayer line either, eh?”

She can hear the smile in his voice, and she has no way of knowing what it looks like, but she knows it’s kind. She just…knows. It makes the pain from earlier flare back to life. And suddenly Julie is struck with an intense, overwhelming sense of loneliness. Which is why she lets just a little bit of her real self leak out across the line.

“That’s something Alex and I have in common actually, so it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

Silence.

Shit. 

“Forget I said that,” she says in a rush, tone bright and perky the way it should be, foot moving a mile a minute against the linoleum floor. It squeaks in protest and Julie doesn’t even flinch at the sound. Maybe if she moves her legs fast enough her brain will believe she’s outrunning the awkwardness of this situation and she’ll be able to chill the fuck out before her Tía catches on. 

“I’ll put you down for one prayer on Sunday, a record deal special. Thank you for calling the Blessed Virgin prayer line, may the Lord be with you.”

She hangs up the phone before he can get a word in. Not like he was going to anyway. She holds her breath for a long moment, but it doesn’t ring. She exhales in a rush, slumping over the table with her head resting in her hands. A warm hand falls to rest on her shoulder seconds later. 

“Everything okay, sobrina?”

Julie spits hair out of her mouth and sits upright, turning to her aunt with a practiced smile.

“Everything’s fine, Tía. Just a prank call, but I handled it.”

One perfectly sculpted eyebrow raises as hazel eyes sweep her head to toe checking for any signs of distress, and then Victoria nods decisively. 

“We’ll pray for them.”

She squeezes Julie’s shoulder once before releasing her, heels click-clacking across the floor as she turns and makes her way over to where Mr. Martinez is holding his receiver upside down again. 

And that’s that. A weird occurrence at her weekly prayer line volunteering, for sure, but not really anything more than a funny story to share with Flynn over delivery pizza later that night.

Until he calls back two weeks later.

[whiskey-bumblebee]

hotch headcanons

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner/Reader Warnings: College!Hotch, Dad!Hotch, mild angst, Haley and Jack don’t exist, smoking, Christianity A/N: A combination of some thoughts I had just now and my personal headcanons for his character. Mostly college and dad hotch!

-Coming of age in Seattle in the 90s, he was a big fan of the local rock music scene, which included such artists as Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Candlebox, the Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam.... He was definitely into the counter-culture!

-Which would have made him the butt of a lot of loving jokes I think, this guy in law school, normally pretty professional and clean-cut, but by night, he’s in the grungiest, dirtiest bars, singing along to songs like Lithium, wearing band tees and letting his hair grow out a little longer as he gets more into it

-Did a minor in creative writing because he wanted a creative outlet and a break from all of the law/ethics/philosophy/history stuff (and his writing is pretty good! A little stilted at first because he wasn’t used to expressing his emotions, but better over time)

-He smoked pretty heavily during his college years (cigarettes and.... not cigarettes), and to this day, keeps a pack of cigarettes in his desk at work. He lets himself have three or four a year, saving them for occasions when his other coping mechanisms aren’t working.

-He was raised in the church, since he grew up in the South, and his spirituality is still important to him, but he doesn’t attend church regularly because he’s seen a lot of people do terrible things and justify it with their religion, and he finds churches generally aren’t progressive enough, especially in Virginia

-That being said, this man has definitely read most of the Bible, and his favourite chapter is Romans 13 because he feels like it speaks to his life; a career in law enforcement, trying to be righteous and do good, but ultimately, recognizing that love, not vengeance, is the most important way to carry out God’s will 

-On a completely different note, he hasn’t had a lot of close female friendships or relationships in his life, so when you have a daughter, you have to start at square one and teach him everything. What to expect when she grows up, how to talk to her about her body in a positive way, all those important parenting things that he didn’t realize would be different from raising a boy

-There are smaller things you teach him too, like how to do her hair, how to paint her nails, how to pick clothes in colours that work together (because let’s be honest; this man has lived in shades of grey/navy/black for a while now)

-Every single morning, like clockwork, he presses a kiss to the top of her head before he drops her off at daycare, or before he leaves for work and you drop her off, or before he leaves you both for a work trip. The tradition starts as soon as he finishes his paternity leave and goes back to work, and lasts until she moves out of state for college

-He knows she’ll be safe, the two of you have taken every possible measure to ensure that your home is secure, her daycare is safe, the schools she attends are out of harm’s way, and she’s done age-appropriate self-defense training since she could walk. It’s probably overkill, but Hotch would not have it any other way. He’s seen too much carnage in his life to trust the world with his baby girl.

-When Hotch explains one day that he’s not doing it to be clingy, but because he never knows what will happen during his work day, you can’t help but cry. He’s right, nothing is certain, but it breaks your heart nonetheless.

-Maybe a little controversial, but I think Hotch would definitely be pro co-sleeping. Although the first few months are rough, defined by sleepless nights and being woken up by the sound of tiny cries, he sleeps a little bit better knowing that if anything goes wrong, he’s in the room with her, and so are you.

-On the topic of the first few months, while the baby gets hungry several times a night, you realize you’ve married the right man. When you groan softly and start to sit up so you can feed her, Hotch touches your arm gently and whispers “I’ve got it,” and gets up to put some milk in the warmer. You can’t quite fall back asleep, so you watch Hotch in the nursing chair, rocking gently and shushing the baby quietly, stroking her head with his index finger. 

-When he sees you watching him, he smiles. You smile too, watching the man of your dreams rocking the baby you made together back to sleep, the bottle looking so tiny in his hands.

[spurgie-cousin]

I answered that I think they’re a unique cult because they’ve remixed what we know to be biblical history/christian theology. The fact that they have a whole new book that’s got nothing to do with anything we know to be biblical is what does it for me (with the origins of said book including weird interactions with salamanders). Mormon dogma teaches that Jesus somehow made his way to North America post resurrection, which if you have a basic knowledge of history should raise a few flags. They also don’t believe that the bible is the singular word of God, which if you follow the guidelines of fundamentalism seems quite necessary for christians.

There’s a lot more I could say but this is a summary for now 😂

so i guess the way i think about it is, Mormons are not unique when it comes to changing Christian history/altering the bible/creating new religious texts to fit a certain narrative, that is a hallmark of pretty much all of the big Christian cults. they are not even the only sect of Christianity that denies the trinity, just to address a point made in the second ask.

there's definitely an argument to be made that Mormonism is one of the most successful of these types of cults so maybe it deserves its own category for that reason, but then you open up the Pandora's box of defining a "Christian Cult" and a lot of denominations can also end up in that group just based on what you decide that definition is (this is the part of the discussion where everyone gets mad at the dinner table). Like for example if we're just going by who doesn't believe in the holy trinity, United Pentecostals or any Unitarians, in addition to others, would fall under the 'cult' umbrella.

the big ones off the top of my head that are comparable in the sense that they've altered Christian history/written their own religious texts/added to or omitted from the original Bible are Jehovah's Witnesses, Unification Church, Twelve Tribes, the People's Temple and The Family (but that's in no way an exhaustive list). and for example, the Unification Church has a document that could be compared to Mormonism's D&C (basically a book about Joseph Smith's 'revelations') called "Divine Principal", which like the D&C was written by the founder of that religion and is revered almost above the original Bible.

i'm going to stop myself from writing a dissertation but essentially, i think Mormonism seems different from what most people think of when they think about "Christian" cults because it's one of the only cults of this nature to gain the prominence and status it currently has in society. most cults like this either fizzle out or go rogue enough to make their nature more obvious to outsiders, if that makes sense, while Mormonism at this time is considered a completely legitimate international religion. but there are definitely comparable organizations out there that are widely considered to be "Christian" cults.

[faithfromanewperspective]

yk I’ll bitch about purity culture as much as the next person but, it’s kinda pissing me off the way exvangelical and christian atheist spaces seem to centre the white western experience like yes I get shamed when I post a picture in a bikini or am ever intimate—emotionally or physically—with anyone—but for the most part THAT’S BECAUSE MY FAMILY IS FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA. like as much as there are pockets (and I can’t generalise the whole area. there is a lot I love about my cultural mishmash) that really value community and stuff that I love in order to facilitate that it seems, our whole culture is about masking. If you unmask you’re all western and individualist (sorry for just trying to SURVIVE when it’s impossible to connect with anyone like this).

and so no matter how much I see of ‘oh the bible doesn’t actually say don’t have sex before marriage and modesty is about not flaunting wealth’ (both of these things are true btw) it’s not gonna combat the shame that comes from nowhere near Christianity. My mother and I both found liberation in Christianity actually and guess what. we want to call out the church for abusing power too. we would know about that wouldn’t we?? and yet all the relatable stuff about rediscovering your sexuality and whatever just ends up being really culturally insensitive and exclusionary. because we’ve given up so much and yeah we want to give up our shame but not our honour, we want to feel successful in our culture in the ways that honour who we are, and have that be enough to fit in that the ways we don’t don’t matter. we want to share in the liberation we have because of Christ. but now it’s hard to fit into spaces that agree with us on these foundational things because they’re so fucking white.

and I’m ready to blame it on colonialism. this isn’t an ‘oh asians are the worse perpetrators of purity culture’ post—there’s nothing about not tempting men to sin or whatever, it’s the very fact that if you’re a woman you’re expected to be moulded into whatever society wants of you and if you’re a woman of colour it’s even worse. and yet no one wants to talk about that. about how my grandma married my granddad because how could she shame her family name by having anyone THINK that she fucked a guy and led him on and then left him even if 1) that’s how dating works, even in the 60s and 2) their sex life is none of anyones business and definitely not mine. because all these toxic systems of family honour and stuff that we’re rightfully wary of—what else do you have when your homeland is constantly invaded and when you have to work twice as hard to get recognised in the same jobs as white people thus the stereotype of the Asian nerd?? we just all want dignity in one way or another and people of colour are gonna want even more to be seen as proper when we’re already marginalised.

and so if you’re trying to create a more welcoming environment for us, do better. Asian churches tend to have that same shame and honour culture creep in, don’t you think we might want spaces to recover from that?? while holding onto our liberation because of our faith but not losing our identity in our ethnicity?? and also. don’t you think we know how to do better when we have seen the contagious trauma of people having power over our people who then go and try to do the same to each other to try and appease them and convince them we’re good? don’t you think it should be the people on the other side of this white supremacy and colonialism that might have the answers on how to solve it without making it worse?? because we’re seeing the same pattern again and again and we’re fucking sick of it.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bagley : Salt Lake Tribune

* * * *

[Kristof: We're less and less a Christian nation, and I blame some blowhards]

Nicolas Kristoff :: Oct 27, 2019

Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.

Only 49% of millennials consider themselves Christian, compared with 84% of Americans in their mid-70s or older, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center (Religion, Oct. 19).

We don’t have good historical data, and the historians I consulted are wary of definitive historical comparisons. But something significant seems to be happening. The share of American adults who regard themselves as Christian has fallen by 12 percentage points in just the past decade.

“The U.S. is steadily becoming less Christian and less religiously observant,” the Pew study concluded.

Some on the religious right will thunder that this as a result of a secular “war on Christianity.”

“Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared and attacked,” declared an essay on Fox News’ website, plaintively titled, “How Long Will I Be Allowed to Remain a Christian?”

This mockery of Christians is, as I’ve written many times, both real and wrong. But a far bigger threat to the “brand” of Christianity comes, I think, from religious blowhards who have entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. For some young people, Christianity is associated less with love than with hate.

“Pompous right-wing political chest-thumping, and an unwillingness to listen on matters like climate change or racism, has contributed to a perception by millions that Christianity is irrelevant, or worse yet, a threat to progress,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, the leader of a group of self-described “new evangelicals” with moderate views, told me. “That’s a real burden to carry going into the 21st century.”

Cizik, who was fired from the National Association of Evangelicals in 2008 after he expressed support for civil unions for gay people, added that Christianity’s reputation suffers from backward views on women’s issues and from the unwavering support among evangelical hard-liners for President Donald Trump.

“Trump has played them like a fiddle,” he said.

It would be difficult to imagine a president more at odds with Jesus’ message than Trump, a serial philanderer and liar who has persecuted refugees, divided families, exploited the poor and allegedly committed sexual assaults. When Trump in 2016 was asked to name a favorite part of the Bible, he muttered “an eye for an eye” — a reference to an Old Testament passage that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically renounced.

That is the opposite of the Christianity whose heroic side I’ve often praised: A Catholic doctor in Sudan’s Nuba mountains … a missionary doctor in Angola … nuns everywhere. If they were the face of Christianity, its reputation would be golden. Likewise, Christian organizations like International Justice Mission, Mercy Ships, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision labor to make the world a better place. Across America, a crucial safety net comes from churches organizing food pantries and emergency shelters.

Surveys find that religious Americans donate more to charity than secular Americans and are substantially more likely to volunteer. In a Pew survey in 2016, almost two-thirds of highly religious Americans said they had donated time, money or goods to help the poor in the past week.

There’s nothing about faith that necessarily makes it a bastion of conservatives. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other liberal civil rights leaders were shaped by their Christian beliefs, Jim Wallis is a liberal evangelical writer with a large following, and Jimmy Carter is truly the unTrump, at age 95 still building houses for the needy. But today’s prominent evangelical leaders are mostly conservatives.

Pew’s latest report found that nonbelievers are gaining ground fast. “Nones” — those with no particular religion — now account for more than one-quarter of the American population. There are substantially more nones than Catholics.

The decline in religion is particularly evident among young people. Those born between 1928 and 1945 are only 2 percentage points less likely to identify as Christian than they were a decade ago, while millennials are 16 percentage points less likely to call themselves Christians.

“Adults coming of age today are far less religious than their parents and grandparents before them,” said Gregory Smith of the Pew Research Center.

Smith noted that the data seem consistent with the argument made by leading scholars that young adults have turned away from organized religion because they are repulsed by its entanglements with conservative politics. “Nones,” for example, are solidly Democratic.

The upshot is that a majority of white adults now attend church just a few times a year at most. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to attend, although their attendance is dropping, too.

The central issue is that faith is supposed to provide moral guidance — and many moralizing figures on the evangelical right don’t impress young people as moral at all. Sen. Jesse Helms said in 1995 that AIDS funding should be cut because gay men get the disease. The Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson initially suggested that God organized the 9/11 terror attacks to punish feminists, gays and lesbians.

God should have sued Falwell and Robertson for defamation. But, in some sign of karma, a survey found that gays and lesbians have higher public approval than evangelicals do.

[rainbowvamp]

unsent letter: 1794

Author's Note: So… this was 200 words before I went ‘this is too short. how can I spice it up?’ and then made it 1000 words by accident. TW for the discussion of church/religion and use of catholic/religious language in regards to Dream. It’s very heavy handed. It is definitely blasphemous. If that’s something you care about, skip this one.

Summary: Hob is a sinner

---

I know I am a sinner, and I have done the wrong thing more times in my life than I have done the right thing. Even so, I count myself a worse man for my covetous desire of you. I know many men who deny their attraction to other men, but that isn’t what I mean. Firstly, are you even technically a man? But secondly, I feel like a bastard for wanting you when I know your interest is strictly platonic. 

Well, maybe not so strictly. Those looks we shared at the White Horse five years ago didn’t feel platonic at the time, but maybe I’ve poisoned myself, been made delirious with desire and have read expressions on your face that were never there. But the way you flicked your eyes towards me made me think…

It doesn’t matter. It feels wrong to love you like this when I know that isn’t your wish. I don’t want to  drive you away. I don’t want to make you think I’m not a safe person to visit. I know how uncomfortable a relationship can be when one person loves and the other does not return it. I’ve left no too few lives to avoid that very fate. 

I’m a sinner, and I’ve always known it. I only hope you continue to look past that. That your eyes see me with the same compassion they saw me with in 1689. That your words are intended to advise, and never to push away. I covet you like nothing else on this earth, and though I hold no love for the Christian’s idea of a God, I hear about that sin often enough to know it’s hallmarks. 

My nature as a man is to want. I have lived this long because I want so strongly to live. For a time I believed there was nothing I could want stronger.

I see my own error. I want you more strongly. I would die for you, as easily as I have lived for myself. I would kill for you more easily. I didn’t kill Johanna’s men, in 1789, but I could have. Would have. If you’d asked me to I’d have crushed their skulls beneath my heeled shoe and not hesitated for a moment, even as long distanced as I am from such gruesome deaths. 

I would have killed them all, if you’d asked it of me. For my desire. For my love. For whatever facsimile of love I have to offer you. 

Priests think they know so much. I sit through church most Sundays to avoid the gossip that happens when you are new to a place and don’t sit through church each Sunday, and today, this most holy day, the priest stood upon his stone steps before his congregation and preached that love was only pure through the eyes of God, family, and marriage. That love of the body, save for it’s necessity, was a sin to have and a sin to want. 

I am a sinner, then, and I have been for a long while. I am made covetous by the very thought of you. I long to know the taste and touch and smell of you. I yearn for the sound of your breathless voice, made low by want and the heat of your lips made red by kissing.

And just as ardently I covet the words of your lips, in kindness and in friendship. I long to know what your favorite tea is, and how you prefer to take it. I yearn to share a space with you for longer than a scant few hours once every hundred years.

If this love is sin, Stranger, then what point is there to sainthood? Why strive to be sinless if it means I give you any less adoration than you are due? 

I do not adhere to these laws of man. I’ve seen you and I know that if God, devils and angels were the only immortal beings that existed, you would never have stood in front of me. If you belong to some other category, what other things have these Bible beaters gotten wrong? What other lies and half truths live in their churches when I can look upon you and see all the hallmarks of divinity, but cannot call you by any name that they would say is divine. 

You are another divinity, entirely, outside of their understanding, and so I put no stock in it.

Instead, I worship at your alter, and perhaps these letters are my offerings, measly and paltry as they may appear. They are all I have, and even these, I do not think you would accept.

I am a blind worshiper, Stranger, sacrificing my words and my soul to the heart of your hearth, never knowing if I will be seen, but knowing that doing otherwise would never be right. 

We cannot worship only when we believe we will be rewarded for it. That, at least, the church is right about. I will almost certainly never see the fruits of my devotion, but this devotion feels as right as the churning, burning release of orgasm. As right as a well sated body. As right as a full belly and a warm bed. It is my duty to heel at your divine table, and so I do, in letters, and once, every hundred years, I attend a church service and am met by my God, or by the only being I have ever known to resemble one. 

Am I a worse sinner, for loving someone holy in such unholy ways? What does a word like holy matter to someone like you? I only call my love a sin because I know that if you knew it, you would hate me for it, and to go against you is the only sin I can imagine. 

I am hopeless. In this life. Would that I could forget, but in truth I would never wish to. I will endure the rest of my deathless life, loving you no hope it being requited, if only I can continue to see you, same as I always have, and kneel at your alter again, each century, offerings refused, but made because you deserve them, even if you want nothing of them. 

AO3

[lovemesomesurveys]

Have you ever been hurt by a narcissist? Yes. I found out I had been used and played by him the whole time. He used his charm and complete BS to get me interested even though he wasn’t that interested in me. He figured I’d be easy to manipulate and I’d be there for his convenience until he decided he was done. Despite me expressing how I felt, including the hurt, which took a shit ton for me to do, it was clear he didn’t really care. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand what the big deal was. All he thought about was himself and didn’t consider who he was hurting in the process. 

What does forgiveness mean to you? This reminds me of that movie, “Just Friends”, where Anna Farris’ character is a singer and has a song that goes, “forgiveness is more than saying sorry”, and yeah I agree. But as far as me doing the act of forgiving, I tend to forgive and give out many chances. I never forget, though.  

Have you forgiven everyone who's wronged you? No.

What's your favorite thing to do at sunrise? I’m generally asleep. 

How are you celebrating Earth Day this year? I don’t do anything on Earth Day.

What is God teaching you right now? I know He’s been using these past several years, especially this past year, to teach me a lot. I have many things to work on and things I needed my eyes open to. I think He’s also been building our relationship. I admittedly have been distant and fallen off track, but I really want to get back. 

What does Notre Dame Cathedral mean to you, and how has its fire affected you? I don’t have a connection to it. 

Are you prophetic? No.

What is something you miss from your past? So many things. My childhood, especially. 

Are you beating yourself up about a stupid decision you made? Oh hunny, only all the time.  

What's the last dumb decision you made that you beat yourself up over? Ugh, but there’s so many. Definitely the stupid decisions I made and the decisions I never made at all and just ignored instead. 

What's your favorite version of the Bible to read? If applicable, do you underline verses in your Bible? The NIV.

When was the last time you went to church? I haven’t physically been to one since 2016. I had been attending the livestreams, thought, for awhile. I slacked off this past year and I’m actually really upset about it it’s something I need to change soon.

Do you surrender to Christ every morning? I need to start my mornings talking to Jesus. 

What's the last song you listened to on repeat? The new Barbie song with Nicki Minaj. 

Have you ever smoked weed, and if yes, did you like it? Yeah and yes. I stopped doing any of that stuff back In 2013 and only got back into it a few months ago. I wanted to try it and see if it’d help the health related issues I have, especially anxiety. I will say my method of choice is the tablets. 

Do you have any big regrets in your past? I have many big regrets. 

If you've ever talked to a counselor, did it help? Mehhh, a little but honestly not much. I really didn’t feel I gained much from it. Granted, that was my first counselor and I know it can take multiple times to find the right fit for you. Perhaps I should look again. Does your town's hospital have a good reputation? Yeah.

What is your hometown known for? Nothing good. My city is shit.

What is your hometown's symbol? --

Who do you miss from your past? I miss several people from my past.

Are you longing for and missing a toxic person? Not anymore.

What's your greatest longing? Ugh, to get better and be able to get out of this damn bed and actually go somewhere. I need a vacationnnnn.

Have you ever read a Bible verse and thought, "this isn't true"? If so, what do you do when that happens? No.

What are you behind on? Life.

Is there someone who's stolen from you and never got caught? I don’t think so.

Do you wish you could talk about spiritual things with someone? No.

When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone? My mom and I have a lot of those.

How long has it been since you weren't lonely? I’m not physically lonely too much, it’s more so emotionally I guess. Just being stuck in my own damn head all the time.

Have you been lonely for most of your life? I’ve definitely felt that way.

What color is your sleeping bag? I don’t have a sleeping bag.

When was the last time you used a sleeping bag, and what for? I used one we used to have one winter when it was shockingly super duper cold. It was wild and I loved it.

Do you prefer to sleep under the stars or in a tent? I prefer to sleep inside on my bed.

Do you live near the woods? No.

What do you want to be for Halloween this year? List 1-3 ideas. I don’t dress up for Halloween anymore. I stopped doing that years ago.

List five things people have been jealous of you for. Uh, nothing???

List five things you have felt jealous of other people for. I mean, I feel envy for those who appear to be happy and in decent health and are able to take fun trips all the time and have a fun social life. I don’t have any of that and yeah, it’d definitely be nice. 

Do you start to feel jealous of someone after they've hurt you? I don’t think so.

Does your astrological sign match up to your personality? No. I’m so opposite of a Leo.

Which bugs do you hate the most? ALL BUGS.

What is your favorite shade of brown? Coffee brown.

Do people tell you you look sick when you wear a certain color? If yes, what color? No, just based on my overall appearance in general. 

Do you find yourself exhausted much of the time? All of the time.

Do you find that people call you lazy, even though you're always exhausted? I call myself lazy even though I know I have things getting in the way and making it much harder to do things and I don’t have the energy or motivation to do them.

What color is your toilet seat? White

Would you rather live in an apartment or a house? A house.

What's one thing you had growing up that you miss now? I miss being a kid and just playing Barbies for hours and hours, no cares in the world. 

List three ways in which you are a hippie. I’m not.

Do you prefer kale, lettuce, or spinach? Spinach.