Reading Time: 9 minutes SBC-lings like to imagine that their denomination is a loose federation of churches that govern the denomination from the bottom up. Yep, they’re all just big ol’ Jesus-ers who Jesus together — and, coincidentally, pool material resources to convert and control the whole world. The opposite is actually the case, as the EC demonstrated in spades that week.
gaslighting
Posted inReligion
Gaslighting: How Dare We Expect Evangelicals to Fulfill Their Promises!
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, I alluded to the mistreatment evangelicals heap upon people who express disappointment with their experiences in the religion. To be sure, it does happen. It happened to me, in fact! Yes, people join these evangelical groups on the basis of a whole bunch of marketing promises, and then they discover […]
Posted inReligion
‘Christian Love’ as a Tool for Gaslighting
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! We’ve got a quick little segue ahead of us. A recent thread in comments reminded me that we’re coming up on the holiday season. And you know what that means! No, I’m not talking about Christmas trees and blowout Thanksgiving dinners. Instead, I’m talking about the other near-constant around this time of year: […]
Posted inScience
Weaponized Pet Names: Recognize This Control-Grab
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! I find inspiration in the strangest places sometimes. Case in point: this story from Cheat Sheet about a TV show called 90-Day Fiance. In it, an unpopular star repeatedly calls his ex-girlfriend ‘sweetheart’ in one of this show’s ‘tell-alls.’ And the show’s fans exploded in outrage. They were right to take offense at his use […]
Posted inReligion
Why Science- and History-Based Apologetics Fails So Dramatically
Reading Time: 8 minutes Apologists — especially in evangelicalism — love to lean hard on arguments based on science and history. Out of everything they could reach for, these are the silliest possible tactics in their limited arsenal. Today, I’ll show you why.
Posted inUncategorized
Authoritarians’ Roadmaps Don’t Work (And They Don’t Care)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Authoritarian leaders create these instructional roadmaps that simply don’t get followers to their promised destinations. Followers try their best to follow these roadmaps, but they will never reach their Promised Land that way. Today, I’ll show you why that is, and why their leaders offer those roadmaps anyway.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
More Lies: ‘We Welcome Everyone (Except Not Really)’
Reading Time: 8 minutes Evangelicals love to think of themselves as welcoming. But that’s just another one of the many lies they tell themselves.
Posted inReligion
What Conversion Actually Did For the Women of ‘Only God Can’
Reading Time: 8 minutes Even in a movie made by Christians to completely pander to other Christians, Only God Can peddles neat, tidy endings for these converts that don’t even halfway look like reality. Today, we look at their conversions–and where they’d likely end up in the real world.
Posted inReligion
That Oogly-Boogly Feeling (Became My Awakening)
Reading Time: 9 minutes Yesterday, I showed you a scene from This Present Darkness that gave a narrative shape to an old fundagelical concept: spiritual warfare. Today, I want to show you how my old churchmates and ex-husband alike used that narrative–and took it even further to abuse people. And then I want to show you how their house of cards collapsed in on itself for me.
Posted inReligion
Bachelorette: Why Luke Crashed Hannah’s Rose Ceremony
Reading Time: 14 minutes Today, let me show you how an authoritarian, complementarian Christian man collided with the concept of consent–and what happened afterward.