Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! I saw a story a while ago that has me kinda sighing and laughing at the same time. Pentecostals are still doing their thing, but they’ve had to branch out into social media — especially now that it’s harder for big huge rowdy get-togethers. Of note, Religion News recently ran a […]
Speaking in Tongues
Posted inReligion
Reconciling Christian Experiences With Deconversion
Reading Time: 7 minutes When people realize that Christianity’s claims aren’t true, often they reassess a lot of their former experiences in the religion. And in many cases, they must. What onetime Christians once considered real live miracles while we believed those claims turn out to be simple exaggerations or misunderstandings–or worse, outright lies or even attempts to con us out of our time and money.
Posted inReligion
The Toronto Blessing: A Leek’s-Eye View of the UK Takeover
Reading Time: 15 minutes Hello and welcome back to our conclusion to the Toronto Blessing series! Today, we enjoy a rare guest: LeekSoup, who hails from the United Kingdom (UK) and very graciously allowed me to pick his brain over the holidays. As a young leek, he experienced the Toronto Blessing (TTB) firsthand as it took over the evangelical […]
Posted inReligion
When Teen Cas Innocently Suggested Testing a Miracle (LSP #73)
Reading Time: 7 minutes I took my religion’s claims seriously. In other words, I expected our claims to stand up to the same basic testing and investigation that any other claim would get. WOW, did that attitude not go over well! So today, Lord Snow Presides over how I got (gently) smacked down for daring to suggest a formal test of one of my church’s biggest miracle claims.
Posted inReligion
A Christmas Miracle: Speaking in Tongues at the Company Party
Reading Time: 9 minutes One of the most dramatic miracle claims that far-right evangelicals make is that of speaking in tongues. Something about it just looks next-level weird. The Christians who do it claim that their baby-babble comes from their god’s touch upon their spirits. But they’re wrong, and I know that truth quite well.
Posted inReligion
What “Jesus” Is Doing Lately Instead of Being Useful
Reading Time: 10 minutes Today, I’ll show you some of the goofier miracles Christians are claiming nowadays. These are the things Christians think their god’s been up to while avoiding serious work–and maybe why they’ve landed on these weird ideas.
Posted inReligion
Jesus Camp’s Moment in Time, Scattered
Reading Time: 10 minutes It’s a chilling look at how young children are preyed upon and brainwashed by the adults they trust. Eleven years later, the children featured in Jesus Camp are a striking sign of Christianity’s future. We’ll meet some of them today–and talk about the flaw in Christian thinking that led to their involvement with the camp in the documentary.
Posted inReligion
SHARONDA RASHANDA. (Speaking in Tongues: A Primer)
Reading Time: 10 minutes One of the weirdest practices you’ll ever encounter among right-wing Christians has to be to be their practice of “speaking in tongues.” I strongly suspect that more people know about snake handling than know about speaking in tongues–and for a reason. Not only have I been asked about it by a few folks lately, but it’s also come up in comments and in social media–so for whatever reason, people are thinking about this topic of late. So let’s plunge in and look at what it is and why some Christians practice it.
Posted inReligion
When Is It Wrong? (Never.)
Reading Time: 13 minutes Hi, y’all! Are you getting ready for my favorite holiday of the entire year? We will be having an open recipe thread on Turkey Day, so feel free to hang out with us and share any recipes you especially love (and if you’re one of those sorts who will take your favorite recipe with you […]
Posted inGaming
Commedia dell’Arte and Performance Christianity
Reading Time: 12 minutes It’s said that within 50 years of our own deaths, every human being who has ever been personally caressed or lashed by our voices will also be dead; while technology can help keep our voices alive a bit longer, it’s not the same as the feel of air currents disturbed by our particular voices coming from our particular throats, is it? People have always craved that direct connection. That’s one of the benefits they get from religion–an instant context in which to perform together and to connect.