The God-forsakin' Blog

Recently, an Evangelical (one of the few left who I still love and respect) told me that they understand why I don't like what Evangelical Christianity has become - agree with me, even, on most points - but hear the things I say about religion generally and Evangelicalism in particular, and worries that I'm in danger of becoming as hateful towards Evangelicals as Evangelicals have become towards everyone else. And I recognize the irony of using the "love the sinner, hate the sin" line of reasoning in this context, but:  I don't hate Evangelicals.  I care about them enough to want them to stop being Evangelicals. Christianity was a river of life to me as I grew up. It was a source of inspiration and hope when I couldn't find those things elsewhere. It was where I went for answers to any important question I had. And even though it wasn't very GOOD at answering questions, it at least claimed to have one: Love. It was even a good answer, for most ethical que...

  Sir Thomas More  :  [in his prison cell]   If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little - even at the risk of being heroes. Margaret More  :  [crying]   But in reason! Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want? Sir Thomas More  :  Well, finally, it isn't a matter of reason. Finally, it's a matter of love. The above exchange takes place in the play "A Man For All Seasons", which is about Sir Thomas More being imprisoned, and eventually executed, for refusing to take a legally required oath to the king that he believed to be against his religious principles. You know, ACTUAL religious persecution, not "Waaah, I'm not allowed to persecute other people and break the law because of my religious beliefs".  I read this pl...

When I was an Evangelical, the church I attended was super wealthy. They had a staff of several pastors, who all had the nicest cars and clothes money could buy, and really nice housing on the church property so they didn't have to pay rent or a mortgage. They had a state of the art sound system, and a sanctuary that was big enough and well-designed enough for professional musicians like Michael W. Smith to hold concerts there.  They had a full orchestra performing every Sunday, and a number of the people in the orchestra were professional musicians being paid for their time.  They had over a thousand people attending every week, many of them doctors and lawyers and almost all of them Republican. The guy who invented MRI was a member. The guy who owned half the McDonald's franchises in the county was a member. LOTS of money and power concentrated in that building each week. And all of it concentrated on selling the idea that abortion was evil and LGBTQ rights were evil because...

  Evangelicals naturally have a hard time believing that growing up in their church could have been, in itself, traumatizing. After all, they think, I  wasn't traumatized by the experience, I ENJOYED it, what's this other person talking about? Sure, some people are abused by clergy and that's horrific, but most clergy aren't raping kids, so why do all these Exvangelicals keep complaining that the place I love most was the source of deep pain for them? Well, here's the quiz that often gets used to measure, in as standardized a way as is currently possible, how much childhood trauma a person experienced:  Take The ACES Quiz - American SPCC The ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) quiz asks ten questions. The more you answer "yes", the more traumatic events you experienced and the higher odds that it's still affecting your mental and physical health today. Now, for those of us who were really COMMITTED to Evangelical Christianity, God was a second (or eve...