Thread by @Ford_Ebling

There’s a direct line between Christian #purityculture and the racist Atlanta shooter. Purity culture is not conducive to a healthy sexual ethic. Men raised in it are taught to view women with suspicion, as objects whose purpose is to draw them into sin.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

You’re also taught that your sexual urges are completely uncomfortable, that it’s only a matter of time until you hurt someone. In my Sunday school, they taught us that having sexual thoughts was akin to “raping a woman in your mind.”
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

Combine all of that with an intense “warrior for God” philosophy, a desensitization to violence as well as emotion, and the racism baked into American Christianity, then physically violent action is sure to follow.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

Let me break it down this way:

In Ken Burns Vietnam documentary, one vet described how he only killed one person in the field. The rest he killed were “commies,” “targets” and all the racial slurs they used over there.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

He called this “Racism 101.” Reduce the people you hate to abstractions.

This is how men are taught to view women. They’re either “jezebels/temptations” or “prizes for a virtuous man of God.” Women are not viewed as people in American Christianity.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Last week there was a ridiculous debate on Twitter where a lot of Christian pastors argued that empathy is a sin. And I can tell you from personal experience that just leads to you reducing everyone to inhuman objects/abstracts.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

How many women have had Christian men try to pick the up by saying, “I believe God wants us to be together.”? The woman’s thoughts on the matter don’t factor into the equation.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

How many Christian marriage books are there telling wives they should have sex with their husbands whenever they want it, cause the husband is entitled to having his urges satisfied? That he’ll go somewhere else if you don’t give it to him?
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Christianity primes men to believe they are inherently aggressive in every aspect of their lives, but especially in regards to sex, and millions of boys are raised with this horseshit until we believe it.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

But we’re also taught to believe this aggression is virtuous when used to combat sin. So for many Christian men, in the quiet spaces where they’d never say it out loud, they’re going to be nodding along with what the Atlanta shooter did.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

Cause they’re all sitting there thinking, “That could be me but for the grace of God.,” and not, “I have developed violent anti-social attitudes towards people and/or an extremely harmful sexual ethic?”
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

I know we’re going to seen dozens of articles in Christian spaces talking about how #purityculture could have stopped this. It won’t. It was part of why it happened. And it’s why it will happen again.
#EmptyThePews #churchtoo

To end this, I’ll remind everyone not to kid themselves, #purityculture was only a part of the Atlanta shooter’s motivation. It was a racist hate crime. He literally shouted, “You’ll pay for COVID!” before he killed people.
#EmptyThePews

Violent misogyny, racism, and Christianity are all intertwined in American Christianity, and it cannot be ignored how it created the Atlanta shooter.
#EmptyThePews