Thread by @SGodseyNemeth

A thread. My evangelical MIL is over here telling me all her opinions about how she thinks every high school senior should take a short-term mission trip to help them learn how good they have it here in America and I JUST DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START

FIRST OF ALL, TWO THINGS
1) Impoverished people need real solutions, not high school seniors.
2) Impoverished people don’t exist so we can experience gratitude for our excess.

And then there’s the other side of the coin. The spiritual trauma I’m recovering from is directly related to short-term missions, not from what I witnessed, but from how the leaders treated and indoctrinated us. #exvangelical

We were drilled to be able to defend Christianity against any religion, made to feel as if only we had the answers and the eternal fate of other souls were literally in our hands, that this was how to “deny ourselves and take up the cross for Christ”

– that that is what Christ somehow needed from us, too, in order to be allowed into the kingdom of heaven; all while reinforcing strict evangelical ideas about gender roles/purity/sexuality. #exvangelical

The militant environment of this experience would be one of dozens ways that evangelical culture prevented me from considering other viewpoints, stunted my sexual development and my ability to think critically for myself, #exvangelical

and entrenched me in restrictive doctrine for almost two decades. #exvangelical

Did any of this actually help someone in need? I know plenty of people who want to think that it did. I know because I was one of them for a long time. I really wanted to do good. But it really didn’t. We were gone after a few weeks. How is that helpful?

Did the experience make me more grateful for my privileged life? It fucking traumatized me. I seriously have found zero evidence – anecdotal or otherwise – that supports the idea that short-term missions for teenagers is doing any lasting good for anyone, other than feeding egos.

Happy to be proven wrong. This is where I'm at today. #exvangelical

I think I threaded these all together right the second time around. My bad, kids. I'm new here. The patriarchy dropped me on my head when I was little. I'm slow, but I'll catch on. #exvangelical