Reading Time: 3 minutes What do reproductive rights, marriage equality, and gender-affirming care have in common? We know that they are freedoms that conservatives are trying to strip from everyone, but there is one crucial thread tying them all together. They are all under threat because of a group pushing for Christian supremacy to advance their own interests: Christian […]
Freedom of religion
Posted inSatire
Exciting 50-yard line religious rituals for the upcoming football season
Reading Time: < 1 minute The Chambri scarification ritual of ripping skin open in beautiful decorative patterns with sharp knives and flints. Sticking hands into gloves containing thousands of venomous ants, a Satere-Mawe ritual. The Jewish ritual of Kaparot that involves twirling a live chicken around your head three times, then killing it and giving it to the local poor […]
Posted inReligion
How (Not) to Fix Everything: School Prayer Edition.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Often we see Christians offer suggestions that don’t actually help the problems they see. Those suggestions almost always center around giving them back the dominance they have lost and letting them try to recreate the Good Ole Days they think existed back before liberals and feminists wrecked everything. And they don’t usually understand that their suggestions not only don’t work but also highlight endemic issues with their religion.
Posted inReligion
Possibly the Worst Reaction Christians Could Have to the Churn in Their Churches.
Reading Time: 10 minutes Christianity is a business, and like most businesses nowadays, its leaders are concerned about the acquisition and retention of customers. Today we’ll be talking about one of the most pressing concerns Christianity faces as its business falters–their churn rate.
Posted inReligion
We Welcome Ben Carson to the Cult of “Before” Stories.
Reading Time: 10 minutes A long time ago, I wrote a post called “A Cult of “Before” Stories” in which I described what it was like as a young Christian to realize that my then-husband had constructed a testimony full of lies–and how I realized that pretty much all of the really dramatic testimonies I heard from other Christians were largely untrue as well. On the heels of realizing that these stories were untrue, I also began to perceive the unbelievably rich rewards Christians get for concocting and sharing these dramatic testimonies. I began to see my tribe as one that was simply obsessed with these “before” stories–thus, my name for the mindset.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Priorities, Priorities: Freedom 2015
Reading Time: 10 minutes Sometimes when people can’t possibly achieve a goal, they start setting some downright odd priorities to make themselves feel like they’re getting something done. Lately we’re seeing some of that behavior out of Christians–and it’s another sign that things are getting better (for the rest of us). Misplaced priorities are just part of the dying pains of a major movement. This time it’s not quite as comical–or as harmless–as their apparent war over how brightly-lit their churches should be during services. This time they’re attacking tolerance itself.
Posted inReligion
Kim Davis: Right-Wing Theocrats Are Actually Right About One Thing.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Really, the only redeeming feature of these numerous and increasingly-disturbed-sounding predictions is that not only are they not going to happen, but that the people making them are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they made them–because their flocks may be very good indeed at forgetting false predictions, having had lots of practice by now, but the internet never forgets. We’re going to remember these wild-eyed, finger-pointing, spittle-flecked false predictions for a long time to come. And we’re going to be amused to realize something else.
Posted inReligion
A New Twist on the Old Story of Christian Bigots Turning Out to Be Hypocrites.
Reading Time: 7 minutes We’ve got a full post planned for tomorrow, but for now, I saw this and my eyes almost popped out of my head because this goes way way way past the normal bizarre WTFery one sees out of the Christian Right. Yes, it managed to shock me.
Posted inReligion
A Choose Your Own Adventure About What “Free Speech” Actually Means.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Free speech is the new favorite rallying cry used by Christians whenever they are not allowed to trample over others or are reined in in any way whatsoever. We’re going to talk briefly here about what it is, and why misunderstanding it is going to hasten the decline of a religion that deserves to decline.
Posted inReligion
Freedom.
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’m an American, if anybody hadn’t caught that yet. Today is very special to me because I love my country very much. And I love my country very much because of its guiding principle of individual freedom. Unfortunately, not everyone in my country cherishes that principle.