#was raised southern baptist but got sent to a Catholic school

[ephiesoul]

a pastor is protestant and a priest is catholic :) that is the difference!

Wha really? I don’t know why I always just assumed it was a regional word difference instead of an actual difference in religion. Thank you for explaining 💜

[squinch-depraved]

priest schlatt I beg

we're not gonna talk about how long this took me to get to

happy national clergy appreciation day (in the u.s.) !! sorry if this sucks i was raised southern baptist and even then i sucked at christianity there's a reason i practice witchcraft now lol

hanging your head low as you ducked into the confessional wouldn't save you. sure, there was no one around to see you, but knowing that god had witnessed what you had done was reason enough to try and hide from the world as much as you could. but still you tucked yourself away into the corner of the booth, clutching your purse in your trembling hands.

religion was a something of a sore spot for you; growing up in a hyper-christian family was one way to ensure you didn't feel comfortable in a house of worship. you had always viewed god as an inevitable outcome, a fact that awaited you whenever you happened to reach the end of your journey here on earth. once you graduated high school and locked yourself into a four year program at a catholic college one state over, you came to realize that the reason you couldn't stand your religion wasn't because of overbearing relatives. no, it was the very idea of god himself. you found him sadistic, an egotistical prick who had nothing better to do than let horrible things happen to his creations. maybe it was true that most of the teachings you had heard were lost on you, that you didn't even make an effort to understand the lessons passed down for thousands of years. but so what? nobody had ever made an effort to understand you or what you were going through, why should you waste your energy extending that courtesy to a church that obviously didn't care about you?

but you know who did make you feel understood? the guys you had dated in the three years since you arrived at this prison. at least, for a few weeks, in the beginning. the first one was fine. he was the one who convinced you virginity was an outdated concept- which you still agreed with to this day, you decided. he was surprisingly "woke" about the whole religion thing, which was what drew you to him in the first place.

"my parents made me study here too," he sympathized. "i totally wish i could've gone on a mission trip instead of getting a degree. like, college will be here in a few years! those impoverished people might not, y'know? i just feel like god is totally calling me to go serve. like, 'troy, man, go feed those guys! tell them how cool i am!'" he stopped tossing a miniature foam basketball against your bedroom wall for a moment to look at you.

you smiled weakly at his sentiments and glanced up from your laptop to nod. "totally, troy."

turns out, (unsurprisingly) troy was a fucking douche. he stayed around just long enough to get into your pants a couple times, but then you caught him with the girl who lived in the dorm across from you, so he had to go. nobody ever found out who stole his clothes from the men's showers, but the videos of him streaking down the hallways while he ran to his room were sent around campus for months after that.

guys two and three were more painful than troy; you had actually grown attached to them. guy two lasted almost a year, and three was only a few months, but he felt special. and the half dozen guys you slept with while trying to get over them just added to the tally of sins you were keeping subconsciously.

so when your grades started to slip from depression in the winter of your junior year, and your counselor called you to her office for an appointment, it was no surprise that her words got under your skin as easily as they did. how could they not? getting students to go to church was part of her job. she was concerned that your grades were slipping because she hadn't seen you at mass in a long time, and the absence of the lord will do that to a young girl, you know.

so later that night, after drinking by yourself at a bar a few miles from the school, you stumbled into the church on campus and slunk into the confessional. realizing that the wooden box was incredibly uncomfortable, you winced and pulled off your heels, rubbing your feet gently as you waited to be listened to.

you shrieked quietly when a small lattice window on the wall next to you slid open. "oh, fuck... sorry! um, it's my turn, right?... yeah, i think so. okay, so, um. bless me father for i have... sinned? it's been, like," you paused as you counted back the time on your fingers. "almost two years since my last confession. oh, jeez, that makes me sound awful." you were hiccupping as you rambled, and you could have sworn you heard the faintest exhale of amusement if you weren't plastered.

"whatever, it's too late to stop now," you sighed, crossing your legs. "i let some guys sleep with me and now i'm all unpure and like. i'm supposed to show up here a couple times every week now but i don't wanna, i don't care enough about this whole god thing to waste the rest of my college life becoming a nun. i'm already worried i wasted three years coming here instead of a school where i could have felt like myself," you trailed off.

it was quiet for a moment before a gruff voice with a new york accent asked, "how many guys?"

you snorted. "9, i think," you said with a smirk, rolling your eyes.

the man on the other side of the panel felt his face heat up as he mumbled, "jesus." you couldn't hold in your laugh at how absurd this was. this was what you deserved for coming to confess at 2 in the morning.

"i know it's been a while since i've been here and all, but i'm pretty sure that's not what you're supposed to say," you giggled.

a chuckle was heard before he answered, "sorry. you're right, it's not. tell me more, what led you to sleeping with them?" at least now he was trying.

the two of you talked for about an hour, until it no longer felt like a confession and you were sure you had fallen for this priest you couldn't even see. eventually, he tried to dismiss you without giving you your penance, but something in your gut drove you to bring it up yourself.

he stepped out of the booth first, and you hesitated for a second before following him, freezing when you saw what he looked like. tall, scary, with gorgeous brown eyes framed by aviator glasses and fluffy chops adorning his cheeks. by some miracle, he also felt immobilized by his view of you hopping out of the wooden compartment- dress disheveled, fishnets ripped, heels in one hand and your purse slung over one shoulder. you were his worst nightmare, a temptation he simply could not resist. god had just placed a vulnerable young lamb like you in his midst; who was he to deny himself of the simple pleasures his lord had provided for him?

"father? father, my penance," you waved your hand in front of his face (after a bit of trying to get his attention), which had just gone dark. his eyes now looked hungry and cold.

"hmm?" he blinked and tilted his head towards you slightly. "oh. uhm," he let out a deep exhale, as if contemplating something. "y-y'know what? just come with me," he spoke gently, taking your hand and leading you to a back room with some spare furniture scattered about.

a part of you knew what was coming, and a different part of you never could have guessed the situation you were about to find yourself in. once you were alone in the room together, he pulled you close and pressed you against a wall, letting his hot breath waft over your neck as he bent down to whisper in your ear.

"god's telling me we should make it 10 men you've been with," he murmured, voice velvet smooth as it coated your eardrums. "so you can say at least one of them was a real man of the lord, hmm, doll?"

your breath, caught in your throat, sped up as he slowly, gently, tenderly took your wrists in one of his hands, bringing them to rest above your head. "father..."

"schlatt. my name's schlatt. but that's just a courtesy, hm? stick to callin' me father." you felt him smirk against your skin as he sunk his teeth into the flesh of your neck, drawing out a frantic moan from you.

"careful with your noises, angel, there's two other guys here tonight, and if we get caught, i'm gonna have to share you," schlatt warned. he used his other free hand to pull down the top of your dress, smiling greedily at the sight of your exposed breasts. "no bra?"

"i-it didn't go with the outfit," you tried to defend yourself, but he just shushed you and fondled your chest lovingly, like he really was just appreciating one of god's creations. pathetic noises spilled from your lips as you watched him admire you, a hypnotized look on your face.

"you're so beautiful, doll. wha's your name?" he asked, glancing up at your face to meet your gaze.

you stammered out your response and he repeated it, running over the name in his mind.

"pretty," he said simply. "i'm gonna make you feel good now, okay?" it was more of a statement than a question, and you nodded with a gulp as he knelt down and slid his head under your dress. you felt your pupils dilate as you leaned your head back against the wall and let your eyes fall closed. schlatt ripped a bigger hole into your fishnets and pulled your skimpy panties to the side, licking a long stripe up your folds and tracing circles with his tongue on your clit. it was hard to keep your whorish noises contained, but clamping your hand over your mouth did a good enough job.

he ate you until you were frantically scratching at his head through the fabric of your dress as you came all over his face, sobbing from how good you felt. you didn't even know it was possible to feel this euphoric, but here this priest was to show you how. once he was satisfied, he pulled away from your cunt and rose to tower over you again. he reached into his robes and opened them enough so that his crotch was visible. you watched as he pulled out his length, stunned at the size of it, and let him pick you up and position you around his waist.

"father, i'm scared, i don't know if it's gonna fit," you admitted guiltily. schlatt locked eyes with you while he replied.

"it's okay to be scared. but you have to do it anyways." with that, he slid into you, stretching you out more than you ever had been before. you bit onto him in an effort to keep quiet; his robes did a good job of muffling the sound. after a generous amount of time to let you get used to him, he started moving.

he was gentle at first, but gradually got rougher and rougher. there wasn't a moment where he wasn't focused on making you feel good. his eyes pierced through you as he rammed into you at a relentless pace, and the attention he was giving you didn't make you feel objectified like it did when the other guys fucked you. it made you feel divine, ethereal almost.

grunts and pants, along with the occasional squeal, were all that could be heard as he rolled his hips into you time and time again. he coaxed another orgasm out of you just with his cock, and once he felt like he had pleasured you enough, he sped up, now thrusting at a frenzied pace.

"when i tell you, you're gonna get on your knees and take me in your mouth, okay angel?" he instructed, out of breath. you nodded, eager to please.

"yes, father," you gasped as he reached deeper and deeper inside you with every thrust. schlatt's eyes rolled back slightly at the title and he went impossibly faster for a few seconds before speaking.

"n-now! now!" he ordered desperately. he set you down hurriedly and you slammed down onto your knees to take him in your mouth, letting him burrow deep into your throat before he finished with a loud groan and grabbed your hair roughly.

he remained in your throat for a moment while he caught his breath, sliding out once his chest had stopped heaving.

"there's your penance, doll. i better see you here for a 2 a.m. confession next monday as well, yeah? i think that's what the lord's callin' me to do," schlatt said as he buttoned his robes. you straightened your clothes as much as you could and looked up at him sheepishly.

"looking forward to it. but, uh, is there a back door i could leave through? because i do not want to walk through the church like this." you gestured to your outfit, tattered and wrinkled, and winced.

he chuckled and nodded. "yeah, i'll show you to it. maybe it could be our secret entrance," he joked.

"oh, of course. i'll knock three times whenever i need to be let in," you retort with a grin.

maybe coming to church wouldn't be so bad, after all.

[cosmictulips]

1 and 19 for the polytheist asks :D

1. Were you born into your faith? If not, how did you discover it?

I was born into a heavy catholic family but was raised southern baptist.

just let that sink in lmao.

My struggle began with literally not understanding the bible lmaooo. I was so interested in the book of... revelations I think it's called that I didn't care for the rest haha.

but as I got older and started doing something called Christian Science, I just got more interested in other religions. to be fair, I never felt good at a church. I never felt like I could connect to God. and I always wondered how Priests would connect to god.

I remember something so fucking stupid that got me on the path to wicca haha. my friend was talking to me in art class and i had drawn like.. the four elements and she was like, oh so you're wiccan and I was like ??? what?

so I started googling it a bit and I found wicca. from there I learned about native american shamanism and for awhile I was like, yea I guess I'm wiccan.

but stranger shit started occuring like seeing spirits and having some funky ass dreams and i was like, wicca isn't answering everything. so I started this witchblog. wasn't good for much of anything it was just holding all the information I was interested in.

I have an older sister who is into chakras and that stuff and by this time I was becoming aware of what closed practices were, how the west ... uses those practices and so I wanted something that was very... cut and dry so to speak. which, I know now I would have to figure out on my own lmao.

but essentially, she ended up giving me my first tarot deck. and I hated tarot. and I was like, okay so I'm not a diviner but perhaps I could write to some sort of god.

so someone... Noonymoon or something, she was giving out these deity readings. and this was backkkk in the og days of witchblr haha. and I was like, I do want to worship a god. but, given my connection to nature I didn't want to be monotheistic. it never and still doesn't seem right to me that one powerful being...rules everything.

and that's when I discovered which gods wanted to work with me. I purposely stuck to Greek because I know their myths well and i love their culture and history.

in hindsight I probably should've chosen celtic LOL. but, it's fine. from there, I just started working out my kinks. like I found a tarot deck I really connected with. I found pendulums I like, and I suddenly didn't feel in pressure -and this is where we cut to the second question-

but yea, I discovered it through some people essentially. through my grandmother mentioning shamanism, my sister telling me to go into anthropology, my old friends telling me about wicca, my older sister who despises but gave me my first pendulum and tarot deck.

and then from old witchblrs who got me thinking haha.

19. How have your Gods affected your life?

well, that's also a funny story.

I asked aphrodite to send me the love of my life. she sent me two men. one didn't care enough and left within a few months. the other used me for two years to cheat on his wife.

and then every man who has sense come in has not been good enough for me. and I wouldn't even have to say it, they did . each and every one of them has told me that I'm above their league. that I'm too good for them and they want me to find me someone in my level.

I asked athena for guidance with school and I would proceed to flunk every fucking semester until I forced myself into a major that is risky but I know I would excel in.

since then I have found so many like minded peers. I don't feel so strange in what I'm doing, and I have basically gotten over my social anxiety.

I ask Hermes ... well. I don't ask hermes, I just ask him to get me to where I need to be safely, and along the way he sends me so many dogs! so many fucking dogs. I love them. I have to scream hermes every time.

I ask Eirene and Soteria to feel safe and at peace with my own body and I feel good about who I am. I ask Enyo and Ares to help me get over my anger issues and not only have I learned to control my anger for the most part but I'm not longer ashamed that I have it. I am proud to be aggressive when I have to be. I am proud to be the protector of my friend group and of what little family I call...family.

they have taught my what it is exactly that I've been feeling for so long. and they taught me to honor my rage but to also let it go.

and I guess in a way, they have all taught me many things. Aphrodite taught me to trust my intutiion and to demand more out of romance. Athena taught me to stop settling for things that don't sit right with me. Artemis has taught me to get out more. to enjoy the nature around me and to just... breathe to put it simply.

Then there's zeus.

he is my father figure to say the least. he... is still very intimidating to me lol and I try to make him proud. he wants me to be sure of who I am before I approach him. and it's funny cause right now I am sure of who I am. I am ALWAYS sure of what makes me me.

but then we talk. and he asks me who I am. he tells me not to be so hard on myself and is there to comfort me when shit gets rough. and suddenly it's like i don't know who I am.

and I think he's the reason why I've been getting into therapy. I've found some great exercises on youtube when it comes to that stuff because I can't afford a therapist right now.

he's made me grounded.

also quick shoutout to apollo for showing me so much classical music. my GODS i love the french horn haha

but yea. for better and for worse the gods are there helping me. and I try to honor them everyday.

[automatismoateo]

Falling out with a Christian friend via /r/atheism

Falling out with a Christian friend

I recently had a pretty brutal falling out with a friend over her religion, my lack of it, and what people of her faith are doing to our country. We've been friends for a few years and though she's an active Christian (goes to Church and Bible study), she's generally pro-women's rights, LGBTQ rights, pro-Science, is one of those Christians that believes in good deeds, so I have mostly let it go. In fact, after being raised Southern Baptist, she almost had me believing that maybe my experiences with organized religion were not, in-fact indicative of the entire community.

But then I went to her wedding in January of this year, and it was so conservative. I get itchy just being in a Church, but I really expected something about love and commitment and building a life together. Instead, it was from the Book of Common Prayer and was about marriage being between a man, a woman, and God for the purpose of making new baby Christians, and a woman's place, and honestly made me feel sick. Our mutual friend was a teacher at a Catholic school and it was too conservative for him. I thought about bringing it up, but since I didn't see her for a couple of months, by that time I decided that it wasn't really my place.

But then Dobb's happened. And my home state tried to force a 10-year-old to give birth and she defended it and other heartbeat bills.

Our discussion got heated. I told her this was the fomentation of a right-wing conspiracy that thinks religious freedom only protects what flavor of Christianity you want to practice. She called that a religious statement. I called her faith "living her life based on a 2000-year-old fairy tale" before I left. (She is one of those Christians that believes her Bible is the real truth and everything everyone else has ever believed is mythology and fairy tales, which drives me nuts.)

I feel bad about losing my temper for which I apologized when I cooled down but she sent me a list of grievances in our friendship going back (funnily enough) to when she started dating her now husband and told me that I am behind him and God and herself and her family and her best friend and the milkman on her list of priorities and how she has been purposefully distancing herself from me which is funny because earlier when we were walking to dinner, we talked about a condo for sale and how cool it would be to live that close to each other.

Not really sure what I'm expecting here other than maybe a sympathetic ear. At this point, I'm feeling the friendship is not worth salvaging even if I could for reasons beyond this. We have incompatible religious beliefs. I've tried to be less militant in my atheism as I've gotten older, but at the end of the day, the amount of suffering on this planet that occurs every day in the name of someone's god is so heartbreaking to me.

Submitted November 07, 2022 at 05:35PM by forrealz42 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/DqCmVcJ)

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Billy Graham, the famous preacher who reached millions of people around the world through his Christian ministry, died on Wednesday at 99. Over the course of more than six decades, he reshaped the landscape of evangelism, sharing the gospel from North Carolina to North Korea and developing innovative ways to communicate the message of the Bible. He influenced generations of pastors and developed friendships with presidents, prime ministers, and royalty around the world. His death marks the end of an era for evangelicalism, and poses a fundamental question: Will his legacy of bipartisan, ecumenical outreach be carried forward?

Graham came up as a preacher during the post-war era, a time when American Christianity was being radically remade. “When Billy came on the scene, fundamentalism, as it’s called, was really prevalent,” said Greg Laurie, the pastor of the California megachurch Harvest Christian Fellowship and member of the board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in an interview. “Billy wanted to broaden the base and reach more people.”

During this era, Christianity was becoming tightly twined with American nationalism—a shift helped along by Graham, who sent President Eisenhower regular updates on his crusades and corresponded about theology, according to one of Graham’s biographers, William Martin. Technology was also facilitating new ways of reaching audiences in America and abroad, and Graham was one of first pastors to use television and radio, along with books and a newspaper column, to build huge audiences across geographic lines.

Although the term “evangelical” is now commonly used to refer to Christians who focus on personal salvation and outreach about the gospel, it wasn’t always so common. “Billy was sort of the original evangelical,” argued Jack Graham, the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, who serves with Laurie on President Trump’s unofficial evangelical advisory council. (He’s not related to Billy Graham.) The North Carolina preacher was focused on evangelism, or sharing the good news of the gospel. As he grew more popular, he became the face of the movement to many around the United States and the world.

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1918, he was ordained as a pastor in Florida in 1939 and got his degree at Wheaton College in Illinois, an elite Christian school which now hosts an outreach and training center named for its famous alumnus. “We have an entire section devoted to the life and ministry of Rev. Graham,” wrote Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist pastor who runs the center, in Christianity Today—the magazine founded by Graham in 1956. “Billy Graham was beloved by both Christians and non-Christians, admired by those who love Jesus and those who have rejected Him. And with his passing today, we are at a loss for words in many ways.”

As Graham’s ministry developed, he focused on outreach—often crossing lines of partisanship and doctrinal alignment. Graham was an admirer of Pope John XXIII, according to Martin, and visited Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. He would bring Catholic priests and liberal pastors on stage with him at crusades, said Laurie, sometimes causing a scandal among his fellow Southern Baptist pastors.

He was also firmly committed to remaining bipartisan, proudly claiming that he provided spiritual counsel to 12 sitting presidents and participated in events surrounding nine inauguration ceremonies. “Billy had great influence on people from every side of the aisle, politically,” said Jack Graham. “To me, he reminds us always that more important than partisan politics, more important than the political divisions that we have today, that Christ can unite us.” Even President Trump met Graham, before he won the White House: Laurie said the now-president sat with the preacher at Graham’s 95th birthday party.

Especially early in his ministry, however, Graham was sometimes hesitant to cross political lines, particularly over issues of race. Initially, he held segregated meetings where it was the local custom, wrote Martin in his biography of Graham, A Prophet With Honor, and he repudiated Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech: “Only when Christ comes again,” Graham said, “will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” He also critiqued the techniques of civil-rights leaders: “Jim Crow must go,” he said in 1962, according to Martin, ��but I am convinced that some extreme Negro leaders are going too far and too fast.”

King later hit back in an article for the Saturday Evening Post: “America is fortunate that the strength and militancy of Negro protest have been tempered by a sense of responsibility,” he wrote. “This advantage can be dissipated if some current myths are not eliminated. The first such myth is that the Negro is going ahead too far, too fast.”

Still, Graham was far more sympathetic towards civil rights than many other white Christian pastors of his generation, and he pushed for non-segregated crusades early in the 1950s. That legacy left him beloved across different groups of American Christians. “Our generation owes this giant of the Christian faith a debt of gratitude for paving the way for sharing the Gospel with the world with humility, graciousness, and integrity,” wrote Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, in a statement on Wednesday.

Indeed, many of today’s most prominent evangelical pastors count him as an influence. Jack Graham remembered seeing him as a child during a revival in his town and listening to him preach as a teen. “There was truly something that set him apart as a pastor to the pastors and a leader to the leaders,” said Paula White, the senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Florida and one of Trump’s evangelical advisers. “My first meeting with Dr. Billy Graham, I literally felt like I was in the presence of God.”

When Laurie met Graham in 1995, he said, “I felt like he was the closest person I’d ever met to Jesus Christ.” Graham was famous for his strict personal codes of conduct—including the so-called Billy Graham rule, which prohibited him and the men working in his ministry from being alone with women who weren’t their wives. Laurie said this integrity came through in private meetings. “It was not a disappointment to know him privately,” he said. “It was actually way more thrilling to see: He’s the real deal.”

Today, evangelical Christianity is on the rise in regions including Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and many leaders in these communities would likely credit Graham as an inspiration.

Yet in America, Graham’s legacy of outreach across lines of race, class, and political party doesn’t seem as resonant in contemporary evangelicalism. “There’s always been divisions, politically, but it seems like they’re greater today,” said Laurie. “The genius of Billy Graham is that he was able to rise above that. And I would hope and wish that we could still have that today.” His son Franklin, who leads his father’s evangelistic association and the charity Samaritan’s Purse, has become a controversial figure, and many of the evangelical leaders who serve as advisers to Trump have been criticized for not holding the president to a higher standard of conduct.

There won’t be another Billy Graham, said Laurie, but he hopes that subsequent generations of evangelical leaders will follow his model. “It’s just an incredible story of God’s love,” Jack Graham added. “How God can take a lanky North Carolina farm boy, really out of nowhere, and raise him up to be a preacher to the generations.”

from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2EJuKT0