Well worth reading.
Interesting quote from the Traitor, Franklin Graham, "Christian nationalism doesn’t exist [it's] just another name to throw at Christians. [..] The left is very good at calling people names.”
The same people who claim "America is a Christian nation" claim "Christian nationalism doesn't exist"
“The greatest ethnic dog whistle the right has ever come up with is ‘Christian,’ because it means ‘people like us,’ it means white.”
--Samuel Perry, sociologist at the University of Oklahoma
More from the Traitor, Franklin Graham, “Was there funny business in this last election? Sure there wa [..] And there’s mountains of evidence.”
Good lord, Franklin Graham disgusts me so much.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez: “Anti-communism [..] was really the crucible in which this sense of ‘us versus them’ and militarism was formed. After 9/11, Islam became the new enemy [..] Now, for some, the enemy has become the forces of secular democracy.”
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First, the concept of "sin" -- a vague & slippery concept which has no meaning outside of a religious context.
Because "sin" is more or less *defined* as an offense against God, while "abuse" is an offense against other people, "crime" is an offense against law, etc.
I think Christians -- especially conservative, purity-culture Christians -- often deliberately use "sin" interchangeably with other descriptions of "bad behavior" & it's done for a deceptive, evil purpose --
Interesting thread here.
I have a few theories about what happened/what's going on, starting with a pop-culture disconnect between "what Trump DID" (crimes, collusion, etc.) and "what Trump will be PUNISHED for" (not a goddamn thing)
I mean... as a middle-aged person whose general level of fitness took a major hit when Covid lockdowns disrupted all my routines, I get the whole "desire to fat-shame self" but the truth is, I'm just a regular-sized dame thinking "I've looked/felt better"
And it's really ironic because most of our "oh no you're out of shape/fat" narratives are structured around pleasure-shaming too, like, you must be out of shape because lazy, fat because you ate too many treats.
This touches on arguments we've been having with Tim Keller & other Christian apologists: they admit hardcore right wing politicization of the church is wrong, but will proclaim with their dying breath the sacred right to shame the innocent pleasures of marginalized groups
Whether it's some "dirtbag leftist" shaming "liberal wine moms" for enjoying brunch, or some "liberal but not TOO liberal" preacher shaming gay people for wanting to get married or trans people for existing --
Nothing gets a certain kind of person more bent than the "wrong" sort of person enjoying something that doesn't hurt anybody.
Reading this thread, sometimes I wonder how the people who raised us in these churches ever got the idea that they were 1. raising functional adults 2. who would remain in the church AS adults
I mean, apparently it never once occurred to them "you know, If we teach a bunch of ridiculous nonsense as crucial to our faith, it gives the impression that our faith is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense"
My own parents didn't go in for this kind of stuff much, especially not my dad, but that just leads to a different problem: "We're raising you in this church where a huge percentage of the people believe in stuff (like creationism) that we don't believe in."
RCSJ: "why do people leave the church
well to hear tell from the people who have left the church it's because the people in the church are such horrible big fat jerks"
This is variant of strawman fallacy that I like to call "haters gonna hate" -- to construe all criticism as coming from a place of irrational "hatred" which therefore does not have to be addressed on substance.