#&go to church

[babythegod]

[ectonurites]

9desw8ghb2wq3

^ wisdom from my cat who just stepped across my keyboard while i was trying to make a post

[iscariotapologist]

today in church one of the priests referred to trans people as "those who are growing into the gender they were called to be" and i'm kind of enjoying the idea of like....divinely ordained top surgery

[mikeyfrickinway]

Since I'm almost done working on em here's my demolition lovers costumes so far!

I started this in like mid/late March I believe

This is my first time doing beading ever, I probably should have started with something smaller or even tested on some scrap but I am nothing if not stupidly ambitious.

I wanna say this is roughly 14hours of work so far, I still want to add more to the dress and possibly make some accessories, we will see what I can get done by Saturday lol

[deservedgrace]

The other thing about discussing harmful things about the christian church and getting "that's not what that verse really means/that's not how that doctrine should be applied/that's not actually supported biblically/etc" back is that... at a certain point it doesn't matter. Yes there are varying beliefs within christianity (understatement with 45,000 different denominations lmao), but you don't get to claim that christianity is separate from any harmful beliefs when a lot of harmful beliefs are the majority.

You can say "the bible wasn't ever talking about gay relationships in [xyz] verses" but that doesn't make the average church actually safe and affirming for queer people. You can say "actually hell doesn't have any biblical backing" but that doesn't mean very much when like 75-80% of christians believe in hell. You can say "men and women are equal in the eyes of the Lord" but it doesn't erase the rampant misogyny in christian culture.

If the members make up the church, if members are the church, then at a certain point the cultural beliefs or majority beliefs have precedence over what was intended. You can't say "oh just ignore [belief/doctrine/interpretation/etc]" when that would be dismissing the church's most predominant collective beliefs. You don't get to just disregard harm because that "wasn't the intention". You don't get to look at the result of said harm and decide it doesn't matter because it makes you look bad.

[pomarrillo]

more fe3h goofs

[traaansfem]

Shoutout to my trans friendly but extremely autistic grandmother who refuses to use They/Them pronouns unless someone is plural because she's dead set against "they's" as a possessive term and "they was" as a past tense indicator of an action because it reminds her of the accent of a long dead and deeply beloathed coworker who picked up most of his accent from pittsburg. Notably she's fine with They/Them as long as someone is plural, and is entirely willing to refer to someone by name or with another term- IE "that person/creature/girlthing/nonbinary gremlin" upon request.

She's something else. Wrote out a check to my new name for my last birthday because "I don't know your clothing preferences or sizes, and if someone bought me an ill fitting blouse that I loved the look of, or a perfectly fit blouse I despise, I'd be quite put out, and you're set on everything else I know you like."

Notably she wrote it out to my new name, and even months later, I haven't even updated my name with the bank yet, as the speed of bureaucracy is abysmal, so I can't even cash it.

Love you grandma! :3

[ronehmke]

Cynicism is the death of democracy.

Break the Spell.

[taeiris]

take me to church

churchgate has invaded my brain

[wolfythewitch]

what reason would you give someone for them to convert to christianity? /gen i’m very curious to hear your answer as an atheist(?) going to a catholic school where every chapel boils down to ‘jesus can solve all your problems’. hope this isn’t taken in an offensive way, i’m genuinely curious what reasons people have!

See I don't really want to convert anyone to Christianity? Nor am I looking to. Need to make that clear before I continue.

A lot of people believe in a god because it offers to them a sense of comfort. Some people do it because they genuinely believe in a higher power. Religion is a very personal thing, you can't really boil it down one way or another. That's why any church who tries to tell you why to believe in God, well they might get some people but they won't get all. Believe in Jesus cannot solve all your problems. Or, well. I'm sure he can. But you will still hurt and life is a bitch. You can't reel people in with the promise of a perfect Christian life because then people will be sorely disappointed.

And. That's not even really getting into how corrupt a lot of the churches are out there. Unfortunately the problem with any organized religion is belief in a higher power can only go so far when any institution acting as its mouthpiece is human. The language of the gods tends to get a little mistranslated along the way. And then hypocrisy starts wading into the mix. And people like to use god to excuse their own actions.

And I mean I don't even really know why I'm religious. It could be many things. I've said before my relationship with faith is complicated. It could be guilt making me stay. It could be my parents converting me at a young age. It could be because I do believe there's a higher power out there. It could be because it's easier. Who knows? But my reasons will not be your reasons.

I'm not trying to dissuade you or anything haha but. Well. If you're ever thinking about converting, you can get a second opinion, join a community, go to Sunday church, but you can only ever really ask yourself why

[fischiee]

omega when he’s implanted in tex: you should give into your rage and abandon those you might love to fulfill the urge to find revenge for all those who hurt you. kill your daughter in cold blood while she is incapacitated with agony at even the mention of your name

omega when he’s with the reds and blues: muahahaha 😈😈!!!!1!!! !!! im eevviilllll and im going to blow up the whole! WORLD! !1! 😈😈😈 !!!

[ectonurites]

so can jason stay dead this time or

[dreamaruu]

Hello RvBGTBQ+ community

[balkanradfem]

So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!

So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.

The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.

So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.

Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.

I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.

So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.

For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.

It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.

So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:

How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.

Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!

Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.

For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.

Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.

Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.    

[agentark]

see you around, rvb

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

Site where St. Jeanne d’Arc was martyred, Rouen, FR