"This misuse of religion is, sadly, an American tradition. Colonists who cheated Native Americans out of land and forced enslaved Africans to build a new nation worshiped a God whose demand for justice troubled their conscience." - @RevDrBarber /1 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
One of the things I love most about the #PoorPeoplesCampaign is its willingness to appropriately and bluntly name the stark hypocrisy that has always been present in broad swaths of American religious life. /2
It's something media needs to do a much better job contextualizing in their reporting on evangelical support for Trump.
So many stories act as if this Christian hypocrisy is a new development, or that—by simply pointing out the contradiction—it will shame folks into changing. /3
The marriage of God and white nationalism has always been a feature of #SlaveholderReligion—not a bug. It's provided means for white people to oppress and exploit while simultaneously occupying—in their own minds—a place of moral superiority. /4
Stories about evangelical pastors endorsing Trump should draw a straight line between these charlatans and Christians who upheld native genocide, slavery and segregation.
Doing so isn't adding spin to reporting—it's simply telling the whole truth. /5
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When I say, “God is queer,” I don’t mean that God has a queer sexual orientation or gender identity.
God is God. God does not have a sexual orientation or gender identity.
I mean God defies tidy definitions, shatters supposedly fixed borders, exposes the lie of simple binaries.
Queerness isn’t just about who we’re attracted to, or the genders we know in our bodies. It’s also a truth about the world: The simple categories we are so frequently offered as truth are, fundamentally, lies.
Someone told me we should shut down public libraries so churches could run them.
I asked, “What about people who don’t want to go in a church to read?” He told me it was a great opportunity for them to learn about Jesus.
The violence of taking away a public good for evangelism.
But it’s also the underlying reason so many people prefer charity to just policy: Because it gives power to the people who do the giving.
So you can make people sit through a sermon for a meal or place to sleep.
Or “help folks meet Jesus” for a book.
And it’s why theologies of evangelism that override other people’s agency will always embrace shifting public services from the state to churches—because it deepens the power differential that has *always* been at the heart of “conversion.”
Emotional tears have higher protein concentration than irritant tears, which makes them fall down your cheeks more slowly—increasing the chance they’ll be seen and solicit care.
In literal ways, your body is built for community.
Anyhow, if you think this is a beautiful as I do, I have a book all about crying coming out in May!
But you can preorder it now (and be a huge help to a first time author trying to push a queer and tender little book into the world.) broadleafbooks.com/store/product/…
For all the folks asking about sourcing, I promise my book provides it!
But please, it would mean the world if you supported the time and love I spent researching and pouring myself into the pages by ordering a copy instead of my listing it all out here ❤️
@rabbimarkiz Absolutely! In the beginning I was so emotionally numb that I had to do really extreme things like picturing my parents dying, imagining what I’d say to them.
Or I’d watch videos of refugees talking about what they endured; their hopes for the future.
@rabbimarkiz Gradually, though, (and this is the part that fascinates me!) my entire threshold for crying got lower and lower.
So, soon, I would cry when I was watching internet videos of owners reunited with their pets, or someone performing an unexpected act of kindness.
@rabbimarkiz While it started as me literally sitting down and saying to myself “Okay, it’s time to cry, let’s do this,” it only took a few months for it to begin to rewire my emotional response.
Ultimately, it became something I no longer think about—I’m just a person who cries easily.
We talk a lot about how toxic theology harms queer folx—how false teaching about God creates shame, depression, can even lead to suicide.
But people like myself don't talk enough about how growing up in an affirming faith community helped us—so I want to share some of my story.
It's an incredible privilege for which I am overwhelmingly grateful. And it wasn't something I chose—any more than I chose to be bisexual.
But @BedfordChurch made me proud of who God created me to be. And it built the bedrock of faith that still sustains me.
I was taught that God loved me completely. I was taught that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, that who I was attracted to or fell in love with had no bearing on God's delight in my joy.
1. I’ll never forget sitting in the cafeteria with my friends, anxiously waiting for their parents to call from the city. That day, and those that followed, were horrifying and traumatic. Some kids I knew never got that call.
These past months are worse.
2. 9/11 was a discrete calamity—bounded in time. It tore my 11 year-old world at its seams, but afterwards we were able to mourn. We came together as a community, participated in the rituals of grief. I began to heal.
3. COVID is an unbounded tragedy, it haunts in past, present and future tense. That moment of waiting by the cafeteria phone has been protracted over months—and shared with far too many people.