Christianity primed white people to feel guilty when certain Pavlovian bells ring.

Accused? Wrongdoing even subtly implied? Guilt! Shame!

Then, if it's a respected authority doing the implying (be it parent or priest), we're primed to submit.

If we don't respect the authority of the "accuser," well, were primed to see them as the enemy in the all-or-nothing good vs evil war. "My authorities haven't called that a sin so who is this person anyway??" And we lash out. At women, POC, queers, disabled, and often, even ourselves.

What, you're white but never were Christian? Sorry, but you were programmed this way, too. (If you feel mad at me, that's the programming.)

Christianity's way out from guilt and shame is impossible. It doesn't work. It's designed to make you feel forever ashamed and in debt to Jesus — or rather, the religious authorities who represent him. That's how they get you.

We aren't allowed to emotionally mature to know how to handle our own feelings when we've done wrong. We're forever dependent children on the religion. We go to confession, do the penitence, feel a few days of relief, then go back to feeling guilty. No matter how well-meaning any particular clergy, this is by design.

Now suddenly here's these people I don't respect out of unexamined implicit bias dumping more crap on me.

Aren't I bad enough? Haven't I submitted enough? What am I supposed to do about it?

I'm hamstringed. My white brain has been lobotomized wrt how to handle this. But also, I've been told by trusted authorities that I'm not a racist, so I'm not!!! Out comes the Karen.

Colonialism=Christianity=Corporatism

It's all the same system.

Freeing ourselves from this system means freeing those whose oppression we enable.

Because it's all the same thing.

#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #antiracism #antifa

A vent about my former faith.

I want to vent a bit about Christianity, a tree I nursed in my spirit for over 3 decades.

I was an evangelical. I grew up in the church. The church was my family. I was a genuine believer, not just surface level. Granted, I was socially awkward, shy, etc., some of those were components of an Autism I never identified.

I liked church. I helped out at a few of them. I read the whole bible. I was obedient. I embodied the spirit of the Bible and not just the requirements, I lived my life righteous and tried to love others. I believed in Jesus and was "saved". I stayed away from things that were deemed harmful.

1/n

#evangelical #exvangelical #religion #christianity #humanism #deconstruction #exreligious

In Mormon news, BYU tried to make an indigenous student cut his braids. So fuck them.

Thankfully, they responded to pushback and now will not make him do that, but I'm sure they will continue to get away with all of their other attempts to control the hairstyles and harmless behaviors of literally everyone else.

(Which is why this issue is a "white" cause as much as it is anyone else's. My Celtic and Germanic ancestors wore long hair in all sorts of styles, and so did yours. Whiteness restricts all of our freedoms.)

#exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #exvie #exvangelical #antiracism #deconstruction #BYU #LDS #Mormon

Book 18 was Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by Nadia Bolz-Weber.

As pastor in a progressive, affirming church, the author works with parishioners to help them unpack and recover from purity culture. In this book, she provides personal stories paired with biblical theory.

Review: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/c733f530-8154-40e9-8a5c-e8037c88a91a

#bookstodon #exvangelical

I'm watching a horror movie in a purity culture setting called Pure. It's fairly good, really liking how they're handling the themes. I feel like it's personal for the director, who's a woman.

It's not a perfect movie. Feels like the director doesn't have much experience with the horror genre. But there's strong talent, just a little raw on the skills, small things that would have made it better.

I still haven't seen the ending. There are some ways I want this to go, and some ways I really hope it doesn't go.

(Previous twoot is not a direct quote, but sums up a speech the pastor is giving.)

[edit: ok that ending was super powerful. We need what happened there to become a recurring motif.]

[Director is Hannah McPherson. She didn't experience purity culture, but is real mad about it. https://deadline.com/2019/09/pure-director-if-youre-not-pissed-off-you-may-be-a-lost-cause-1202742568/ ]

#movieReview #horror #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #feminism

‘Pure’ Director: If You’re Not “Pissed Off”, You Might Be A “Lost Cause”

Hannah Macpherson and Blumhouse Productions have a provocative new horror film, "Pure," that delves into father-daughter purity proms.

Deadline
Just because it’s happening doesn’t mean it’s normal or right. #deconstruction #exvangelical #currentevents #news #deportation #ice #cbp #shorts #MonteMader
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Yz5aScJ1Cj0
Just because it’s happening doesn’t mean it’s normal or right.

YouTube

👋 @prodigalabroad

You had me at lapsed pentecostal. 😅

Did you happen to find be from one of my #EXvangelical posts?

Further, I recently watched bible scholar Dan McClellan talk about homosexuality in biblical times. It' a subject I have seen him and others talk about before, and I've read about it. (But I am not an expert on ancient history – I'm just repeating.)

Fact: In Roman society and before, when Leviticus was being written, they didn't have any concept of "sexual orientation" the way we do today. They didn't have the concept of consent. They centered sexual mores around the hierarchy of power. Anyone up on the chain was expected to take the penetrative role; anyone below them was expected to take the receptive role. Anyone who violated these hierarchies was sexually immoral.

Free men with status? Top of the chain. Boys or men of low status? Below that. Women, at the very, very bottom, always. The sin was in penetrating someone who was supposed to, themselves, be in the penetrative role.

The Sodom and Gomorrah story was about a people who had been taught to care for strangers who instead wanted to rape a (male) guest to death. Which violated two mores: Hospitality and the chain of status wrt to the penetrative role. That's why it was perfectly ok for Lot to offer his daughters, and why the gang didn't want *girls*. They wanted to demonstrate their power by taking on men of station.

What does this mean in this context? It means that sexual domination has long been a part of how power works in human civilizations, at least in these cultures that descend from that place in those times.

We, here today, with our consent norms and our idea of love and equality in relationships, we're the odd ones. We've bucked the norms. (A tremendous accomplishment that took thousands of years.) And those norms *still exist.* They exist within toxic masculinity, pro-patriarchy religions, and abusive relationships.

It is hard for me to believe that the Epstein Class of today is somehow worse than the Fat Cats of the 1920s, or the aristocracy of the Renaissance, or the lords and monks of the Middle Ages.

We're really not that far descended from Rome. The path to liberation has been carved against these longstanding traditions.

We have only to look at the world billionaires are trying to create, to see what their values and expectations are.

And why they admire Rome so much.

🧵

#ReligiousTrauma
#exmo
#exmormon
#PTSD
#cults
#exvie
#exvangelical
#abuseCulture
#SexualAssault

I've recently commented on Epstein probably not being the first of his kind, that his market for sex victims already existed, and that the sexual abuse of minors and the marginalized as a recreational activity for the rich and powerful likely goes way, way back. And I got a little bit of pushback.

But this is my world, this cult stuff. And if this has been going on in new sex cults like NXIVM, and secretly in old established religions like Catholicism, in Mormonism, in evangelicalism (it is), the why the hell wouldn't the richest, most powerful people in the world have done this going back across time?

Why are we holding dead billionaires to an idealized image? Why are we defending them? Why are we *still* bending over backwards to suspend disbelief that the worst people in the world in every other regard are somehow pure when it comes to sexual abuse?

🧵

#ReligiousTrauma
#exmo
#exmormon
#PTSD
#cults
#exvie
#exvangelical #AbuseCulture #SexualAssault