#but i'm pretty sure she thinks of herself as evangelical

[christianity-crucible]

Here is "progressive evangelical" Kristin Du Mez's "clear as mud" statement about her relationship to evangelical LGBTQphobia.

She is a very good writer. That I am not able to discern what her own evangelical conception of LGBTQ people's status should be within and outside "the Church" is probably intentional on her part.

I post this because this is completely typical of "progressive evangelicals". They describe some other evangelicals as homophobic, but don't say what they themselves think about the "clobber passages" in the Bible.

"Progressive evangelicals" are a new thing since I came out and was involved in gay activism decades ago. Back in the day, they were all straight up homophobes. There was not this current "nuance"/evasiveness.

I have more feelings and hopefully more to say about these people.

[creature-wizard]

That one ex-vangelical anon who talked about proselytizing to their friends reminded me of something that happened to me:

My church wasn't as extreme as some others, but when I was in high school my parents still encouraged me to help my atheist friends get "saved." Most of 'em, if I invited them to church, politely declined, and I understood -- but one time one of my good friends agreed to come with me. I was stoked! Maybe I was going to make a measurable difference in my friend's life!!

When the pastor asked who she was, she introduced herself as my lesbian lover (she was not, although we did find out I was bi a few years later :P) and he got this "I have no idea what to do with this information" look on his face and walked away. To this day, I'm pretty sure he thinks she was serious. I got the point and didn't evangelize again.

I don't recommend doing this to your evangelical friends as it could wind up being very dangerous for them, but in this specific scenario it was pretty funny imo.

Pfffffffffffffft, that is pretty funny. 🤣

[slickshoesareyoucrazy]

Treating Illusions As Real in "Friendship"

Since there are only like 10 people here who I feel like I can definitely trust (at least as far as letting them read the shit I'm thinking about for real on a Still Mostly Anonymous Platform), I think I'm going to use the blog for a bit as a therapy journal. I'm working on coming to terms with how many 'friendships' I've had and nurtured and poured time and effort and love into in my life that weren't real.

The girl I'm going to write about today, I don't think it's necessarily fair of me to call her friendship fake, because I think she's lived a lot of life that makes her so damaged and hungry for a sense of belonging herself that she's been drawn into some shady things and bad decisions from peer pressure.

I befriended R in first grade. She lived in my neighborhood (well...my grandparents' neighborhood) and went to my church and was in my class at school. As an elementary school kid, we weren't fully formed people yet, and all of us just wanted to belong and make friends, so I didn't notice any difference in R than I did any other kid I knew. But in middle school, when I changed schools, the differences became pretty clear. R was the only real contact I had with my past in 7th grade, because she still went to the church my family attended. The nostalgia and desperation I had to maintain any connection to that piece of myself I'm sure is what fed the closeness I tried to build (and thought for years I had actually built) with her. Her parents kept her really sheltered and naive to the point of being in the dark entirely. She wasn't allowed to participate in normal teenage life like dances or sports events or competing on school teams or dating. She wasn't even allowed to watch PG-13 movies in high school. When we graduated from college, and moved into our own respective places on our own, I remember having movie nights with her a couple of times where we watched like...The Breakfast Club and Ghostbusters...movies she'd never seen because she wasn't allowed to. She was a 24 year old college graduate and homeowner, just like me, but unlike me, she had no social life experiences or shared cultural frame of reference with her peers. Like...I'm a pathological introvert who is probably undiagnosed on the spectrum, but at least when someone talks about Michael Jordan or Nirvana or Back to the Future, I know what the fuck they're saying.

Because of this lack of socializing with peers and even having the same reference points, as a young adult, she was behind, and desperate to catch up and find a place she could fit into. We grew up Catholic, which is already a fairly restrictive, guilt-laden religion to be raised inside, but my friend left the Catholic church for the built in social life that came with evangelical Christianity. While it comes with a lot of social outlet included, it's also MORE socially restraining than the Catholicism I grew up with (no one got upset if you drank or gambled a little...shit, that's a church festival; you were allowed to read and watch movies and listen to music and dance to it if you wanted...you were allowed to date, at least in a hetero way...) And she got involved with multiple MLMs. And CrossFit. She made the dating mistakes the rest of my friends, and even borderline totally asexual me made in middle and high school in her mid-20s. We remained (I thought at the time at least) friends through all of this. I invited her to my wedding (she didn't come; along with most of the other 'friends' I invited to my wedding, except for the folks I saw at work every day, and they probably only came for free beer and so they could still look me in the eye when I got back to work from our honeymoon). She made some very unsound financial decisions (out of character for her) driven by desperation for social connection, and J and I tried to help her with budgeting; J even did some repair and electrical work for her for free to help her out when our son was small.

And then, even through 30ish years of knowing each other, and dabbling in a lot of groups that have some cultish traits, and her not showing up for me on some pretty big occasions (wedding, new house, baby...), but showing up to things where she could try and book MLM parties or mingle with other people who felt like Being Christian or Going To The Gym was their identity, she's the friend who called J at work when I left BookFace, to ask why I'd 'gone off the deep end.' She's one of many people who became instantly distanced from me once the effortless (and I don't mean that in the good way) connection of social media was gone. But when my son was in third grade, right after I broke my leg, she called me on the phone (which I hate, honestly, and I'd think after 30ish years of knowing me, she'd know that) and straight up tried to recruit me in her latest group. It emphasized how wrong homosexuality and sex outside heterosexual marriage were (she was still not married at the time and blamed homosexuality and porn for this somehow). And she told me that I needed to 'literally embrace' racists and sexists to show them I believed they were valuable people with something to contribute, and that would magically make them no longer hateful. That was early in 2017, and I haven't spoken to her since. I legit wonder if she's in an actual cult now; I'm pretty sure she was trying to actually recruit me to one on that last phone call.

But then social anxiety tells me all I ever was to her was someone to use...her parents would let her connect to me because of church when we were young; I supplied those movies she never saw and music she never got to hear; I bought makeup I didn't wear from her and helped her when she was in trouble. But when I left social media, I definitely wasn't worth any more effort than passively staring at her phone to maintain the connection, and when a group told her if I didn't join them with her, I was permanently expendable from her life...she cut me loose.

So often in my life, 'friends' disappear once I set a boundary. One boundary. Any boundary. This one was I'm not going to hug racists and join your purity cult. But other ones have been I'm not going to reblog your stuff as soon as you post it. I'm not going to dogsit for you over Thanksgiving weekend. I don't want to come to a party with this person you know has hurt me. I'm not going to emotionally abuse or abandon this other person because you want me to. I don't want to constantly talk about what drives your anxiety when you claim you can't talk about anything else at all to alleviate mine. I asked you for some time before we talked about this if I could talk about it at all and you continued to pressure me to talk about it so I told you that hurt me.

I mean...i feel like most people in my life don't let me have boundaries. Whenever I set one, they bail. We're good as long as I'm effortless and undemanding and willing to cater to them, but I'm talking ONE boundary...and they're out. Or at least twice, they've done something sadistic and cruel to me first. It makes me wary to set them inside most connections, but it makes me even more wary to try to make connections with other people at all. I often feel like the same little shy girl who's always felt different, because I feel used a lot for whatever gifts I can offer another person, and then they don't stay if I can't keep giving whenever they want. That hurts. And not the first friend up there ^^^, or so many others who have left, but the last two really painful exits were also full of lies. That hurts worse.

I always latch onto pieces of fiction and songs that express my feelings for me when my own words are failing, and there's this quote from Markus Zusak's The Book Thief that has stuck with me since the first time I read it:

"***A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY*** Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children."

I think I've always been seeking trust and love in a childlike way, because all I really want is someone to not leave. I have one friend who only left once, for a little while. And I have J, who's never left since he showed up the first time, not even once. So far, everyone else has. Or maybe most of them were never even there.

[weaver-z]

Ranking famous slashers (based on how likely they are to be cool with trans people)

(Disclaimer: this is a very silly ironic post for pride month).

Chucky (Child's Play)

In what can only be described as an "absolute hum-dinger" of an opening entry, we have Chucky, the only slasher who has (and explicitly supports) a transgender child. Sure. You know what? Good for him.

2. Ash Williams (The Evil Dead franchise)

"Uhh this guy isn't a slasher!" He has a chainsaw for a hand. He's killed 65+ deadites over the course of four movies and a goofy tv show with said grisly chainsaw hand. I will die on the hill that Ash is a good-aligned slasher. Anyway, Ash would also be happy to learn that trans women being more widely-accepted means there are More Women. He wouldn't even have to have being trans explained to him, he'd get it. He's dealt with so much weird shit, someone wanting to transition is nothing. Hail to the king, baby.

3. Herbert West (Re-Animator)

Herbert West looks so much like one of my trans guy friends in real life that I'm just going to decide that he's trans. My guy was synthesizing HRT in his wacky little lab long before he was filling vials with glowing green goo to raise the dead. He's still ranked lower than Ash, though, because he's kind of cringe in general. Sorry, Herbie baby

4. Bubba Sawyer (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Bubba definitely doesn't care about anyone's gender. He's killing them with chainsaws. That being said, the exceptions to this would occur within his own family. If one of Bubba's brothers came out as trans and you decided to be transphobic, Bubba would definitely cut you into even grislier, gorier little pieces than usual, because he's a bro like that.

5. Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

Jason is a conceptually hilarious character at this point, and between all of the deaths and resurrections and visits to Hell and more deaths and resurrections, he's probably had time enough to come to terms with trans people. He just wants to kill everyone at Crystal Lake, for god's sakes. Let him be. (Also, he fought a transphobe--I will explain this remark later in this post.)

6. Daniel Robitaille (Candyman)

Daniel's been dead for quite a while, so that might be a minor roadblock to his understanding of trans people. That being said, he seemed to navigate the modern world pretty deftly in the original Candyman. You might have to explain transitioning to him a bit, but he'd get the concept pretty quickly. He might still kill you with his hook, though. Sorry.

7. Carrie White (Carrie)

Carrie is in a complicated place, because yes, she was raised in a very sheltered, evangelical environment, but we must consider that she is a girlboss and a girlbeast. My verdict? After an initial period of "not getting it," Carrie would throw herself whole hog into being a trans ally. If you are trans, Carrie will be there to light transphobic people on fire. This is not an offer, it is a statement of intent. Be ready for her arrival.

8. Michael Myers (Halloween)

I think that Michael forgot what gender is a while back.

9. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs + other movies)

Uuugh... see, I think that Hannibal would absolutely use the right pronouns and name for a trans person, but he'd definitely ask those really annoying "tell me, Will" style questions about your gender over a plate of definitely-not-human liver and fava beans. "Do you feel as though you are step in step with God Himself when you take your estrogen pills, as though your are joining in the act of divine creation?" No, Hannibal, she is just transitioning. Please chill.

11. Billy Lenz (Black Christmas)

Diversity win and loss: Billy Lenz is the world's first trans-inclusive radical misogynist! :/

12. Billy Loomis and Stu Macher (Scream)

Ghostface fans, I am so sorry, but these are two misogynistic teenage boys from the 90's. I do not have high hopes for them.

13. Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street)

This guy is the transphobe Jason fought. Booooo. Tomatoes. I'm throwing tomatoes!

[soc-characters-as-songs]

Phoebe bridgers?

ivy: garden song ("and when I grow up, I'm gonna look up/from my phone and see my life/and it's gonna be just like my recurring dream/I'm at the movies, I don't remember what I'm seeing/the screen turns into a tidal wave/then it's a dorm room, like a hedge maze/and when I find you/you touch my leg, and I insist/but I wake up before we do it/I don't know how, but I'm taller/it must be something in the water/everything's growing in our garden/you don't have to know that it's haunted")

meredith: graceland too ("no longer a danger to herself or others/she made up her mind and laced up her shoes/yelled down the hall but nobody answered/so she walked outside without an excuse/she could do anything she wants to/she could do whatever she wants to do/she could go home, but she's not going to")

diana: you missed my heart ("broke into her house, saw her sitting there/drinking coke and whiskey in her bra and underwear/saw him in the kitchen hanging up the phone/I asked him nicely once to pack his things and go/he gave her a reassuring look, said he wouldn't leave/but I asked him one more time, this time pulled out my sheath/stuck him in the back and I pulled it out slow/and I watch him fall down as the morning sun rose/he looked at me/he said "You missed my heart")

alassie: savior complex ("for sure, wake up and start a big fire/in our one room apartment/but I'm too tired/to have a pissing contest/all the bad dreams that you hide/show me yours, I'll show you mine/call me when you land/I'll drive around again/one hand on the wheel/one in your mouth/turn me on and turn me down")

ramona: motion sickness ("I'm on the outside looking through/you're throwing rocks around your room/and while you're bleeding on your back in the glass/I'll be glad that I made it out and sorry that it all went down like it did/I have emotional motion sickness/somebody roll the windows down/there are no words in the english language/I could scream to drown you out")

rhea: funeral ("I have a friend I call/when I've bored myself to tears/and we talk until we think we might just kill ourselves/but then we laugh until it disappears/and last night I blacked out in my car/and I woke up in my childhood bed/wishing I was someone else, feeling sorry for myself/when I remembered someone's kid is dead")

cornelia: chelsea ("you are somebody's baby/some mother held you near/no, it's not important/they're just pretty words, my dear/there is no distraction/that can make me disappear/no, there's nothin' that won't remind you/I will always be right here")

kaden: chinese satellite ("you were screaming at the evangelicals/they were screaming right back from what I remember/when you said I will never be your vegetable/because I think when you're gone it's forever/but you know I'd stand on the corner/embarrassed with a picket sign/if it meant I would see you/when I die")

andreia: moon song ("now I'm dreaming/and you're singing at my birthday/I've never seen you smiling so big/it's nautical themed/and there's something I'm supposed to say/but can't for the life of me remember what it is/and if I could give you the moon/I would give you the moon")

suzy: punisher ("the drugstores are open all night/the only real reason I moved to the east side/I love a good place to hide in plain sight/what if I told you I feel like I know you/but we never met?/and here everyone knows you're the way to my heart/hear so many stories of you at the bar/most times alone, and some looking your worst/but never not sweet to the trust funds and punishers")

samuel: killer ("but I can't sleep next to a body/even harmless in death/plus I'm pretty sure I'd miss you/and faking sleep to count your breath/can the killer in me/tame the fire in you?/oh, is there nothing left to do for us?/I am sick of the chase/but I'm hungry for blood/and there's nothing I can do")

bianca: scott street ("walking scott street, feeling like a stranger/with an open heart, open container/I've got a stack of mail and a tall can/it's a shower beer, it's a payment plan/there's helicopters over my head/every night when I go to bed/spending money and I earned it/when I'm lonely, that's when I'll burn it")

archibald: icu ("I've been playing dead/my whole life/and I get this feeling/whenever I feel good/it'll be the last time/but I feel something/when I see you now/I feel something/when I see you/if you're a work of art/I'm standing too close/I can see the brush strokes")

raphael: halloween ("I hate living by the hospital/the sirens go all night/I used to joke that if they woke you up/somebody better be dying/sick of the questions I keep asking you/they make you live in the past/but I can count on you to tell me the truth")

[silverislander]

askin: 6,13, 24

6. what kind of music would you listen to if you could only choose one?

oh man this is tough bc i kind of listen to a mix of stuff... is it cheating if i say indie?? bc technically that can cover a bunch of different types of music lol, and i'm really not a modern pop person

13. talk about an au or story you came up with.

thought i'd get this question for sure lol. still kinda thinkin abt that role swap au i mentioned last week...

probably would take place a couple years after dina arriving in town, so they'd be about the same age as in canon

dina just showed up in town one day with her sister, and she's... kinda weird. nervous all the time, refuses to bring up her past, mostly keeps to herself and talia and nobody's actually seen her arms, what's up w that huh??

she's less angry and more sad/scared than ellie in canon tho just bc their personalities are different and i think that's more how she would react to the same circumstances ellie was put through

ellie has been living in jackson for years now with her adopted family! she's very different in some ways and completely the same in others. she's grown to be confident, friendly, impulsive and p flirty when she wants to be, but she's still a goofball and a nerd who loves a bad joke lol

she's been friends with jesse for years now and together they are jackson's most disastrous eligible bachelors lmao

same romantic confusion happened at first- dina still dated jesse for a while, ellie still dated cat, but they possibly got their shit figured out faster??  not sure abt this yet, my mental timeline for this is still fucky

long story short, while they’re both single again, dina is trying to figure her shit out abt what happened w the fireflies + her sister and ellie is just completely throwing her off (by being a huge flirt) and why is she DOING that leave her alone :( she probably doesn’t even like dina anyways... unless

one specific scene that’s stuck in my head is the idea of them having a movie night which is totally normal for them, except ellie keeps??  acting all weird??  and she’s looking at dina when she thinks she doesn’t notice and put her arm around her and,, is this flirting,, is that what this is.  send help.  dina has bigger things to worry abt than ellie and this gigantic stupid crush she has on her best friend goddamnit.  they’re probably gonna almost-kiss but it might ACTUALLY happen here idk yet (knowing me it will lol)

i wish i could do a whole long fic for this concept but there's no way, i just really don't have that kind of attention span and commitment 😔 it's one of those ideas where i wish i could just READ it magically without having to write it you know??

24. what is your favourite thing to learn about?

anything psychology related is really fascinating to me! i like knowing how things work (and don't work) up there, lol. usually it's true crime/fiction related, but i'll pretty much get into whatever. rn i'm looking into the psychology of religion a lot and it is SUPER interesting especially as someone who was raised in a pretty strict christian household.  there are a lot of common indoctrination tactics used by christianity, in particular evangelical christians, that are actually v harmful without anyone really realizing it!

[viduamor-moved]

do u have any headcanons abt natasha's religion? i'm always interested how marvel chara muns tie in their muse's religion w/ the myth based nature of the marvel universe, and with natasha's cultural background it's especially interesting! xoxo

OF  LOVE  /  OF  DEATH.     thank you  SO MUCH  for sending this in !!!      & in fact,     i do !!     i’ve been meaning to write about it for … more than a year,   honestly but just never got around to it.      but that’s changing   ————     SHORT  ANSWER  :   I  SEE  NATASHA  AS  AGNOSTIC,      with a tendency towards belief in some kind of higher power.     whether that be  GOD  or  FATE,      she has yet to decide.

but i’m sure you’re here for the long answer.      IT’S  IMPORTANT  TO  REMEMBER  THAT  SOVIET  RUSSIA  WAS  MILITANTLY  ATHEIST.     the government seized land & property that was owned by the orthodox church,     persecuted & publicly ridiculed or arrested religious followers,     & did all that it could to erase orthodoxy  ( or even pagan superstitions that were both separate from or intwined with orthodox beliefs   —–   this marriage between superstition & christian orthodoxy was one of the biggest contributing factors to pre - soviet russia’s rich culture )  from the face of russia.     natasha was born about six years after the soviet union was established,      & was raised by a soviet soldier for the first ten years of her life before she was put into a soviet orphanage / training facility for about three years   ( after which she returned to ivan’s care ).      needless to say,     natasha grew up without religion.     & whatever tidbits of religion she did encounter were heavily implied to be foolish little habits,      or archaic beliefs that nostalgic laymen who were useless to the soviet stubbornly clung to.     but that would be an oversimplification,     i think.     there were still people who had not yet reached their middle age when nat was reaching her adolescence,      who were born before the bolshevik revolution,      who still held to orthodoxy or tradition in some way,      who found it hard to let go no matter how much they tried to in public.     in reading  DEATHLESS  by catherynne m valente,      i found a small passage that i think perfectly sums up these people born before the revolution,     still holding to their traditions:

IVAN  HISSED  THROUGH  HIS  TEETH  &  MADE  THE  SIGN  OF  THE  CROSS.      IT  WAS  A  BAD  HABIT,     CROSSING  YOURSELF,     BUT  LIKE  BITING  FINGERNAILS,      HARD  TO  BREAK.       catherynne valente   -   deathless,     chapter 14.

no matter what the people soviet or the government did,     they could never truly erase religion from russia.     still,     they tried their best,      & their best meant a generation born into the USSR that found itself to be atheist.      NATASHA  WAS  AMONG  THEM.     in her prime,     she became a member of russia’s  ELITE,      married to the premiere test pilot,      previously trained under  THE  WINTER  SOLDIER  himself,      becoming the  BLACK  WIDOW in the early  1960′s.      the concept of  ‘ GOD ‘  was never on her mind.      the only  higher power  she looked to was  THE  STATE,     MOTHER  RUSSIA,     &  THE  PEOPLE  SHE  SERVED.      but that changed when she defected in the late 60′s.

it is nothing less than understandable that once natasha defected from the USSR to the west,     she underwent a major shift in thinking.     she doubted her identity,     she doubted her homeland,     she doubted everything they made her believe,     & when she finished doubting,     she started  BELIEVING.

I  GAVE  UP  ONE  COUNTRY  FOR  ANOTHER.      ONE  COUNTRY  FOR  AN  IDEAL.     I  DIDN’T  THINK  OF  IT  THAT  WAY  AT  THE  TIME.      CALL  ME  CRAZY.     BUT  I  JUST  WANTED  TO  BE  FREE.        natasha romanova,     name of the rose (2010),     #1

& free she became.     free to love,     free to choose,     free to  THINK  &  BELIEVE  in what she wanted,      how she wanted.      the atheism she was raised with,      she looked upon the same way as everything else the soviets tried to make her believe.     she looked at herself critically,      & she made herself someone new.      but in terms of direct beliefs,      natasha did not rethink them immediately.      i’d say it was a slow process,      via exposure rather than searching.

during the 60′s - 70′s,      america was still a very protestant / evangelical nation,     & belief in God was pretty commonplace,      & natasha definitely picked up on this.      her first real,     substantial interaction with a devout believer was  MATT MURDOCK,      her on/off boyfriend for nearly a decade,      her fwb ever since,      who as we all know is fundamentally catholic.      though never addressed on - panel in the 70′s daredevil run,     i’d say that natasha was shifting from atheism to agnosticism during their relationship.       however,     religiously,     things got a little more complicated when natasha began a relationship with  HERCULES.      yes,     that hercules.      ancient greek god,     heracles,     son of zeus,     figure of myth.      of course,     we cannot forget that natasha also had a teammate in  THOR  when she joined the avengers.       as someone who was not exposed to the concept of a god for the first thirty or so years of her life,      this was no doubt somewhat of a shock,      even if she never showed it.      assimilating into a nation that believed freely,      being close to a devout catholic,     knowing two separate gods from two separate pagan religions   …   it threw her for a loop.      but it also opened up a whole new world for her in terms of how people actually view their religions.

as a christian myself,     God is a being that is so intrinsic to my life    ——    i literally do not know how i could live without Him.      & i think that through the people she was around,     especially matthew,      natasha saw this.       & through interacting with hercules & thor,      natasha realized that all these ancient beliefs,     these religions,      could have some truth in them since their deities actually  EXISTED.      but still,     there remains a distinction between how natasha views pagan religions whose figures she personally knows,     & how she views a God that she cannot see.     she knows hercules exists,     she knows thor exists.     she has been to mount olympus & conversed with the pantheon,      she has seen odin,      fought alongside brunnhilde,      against loki   ——–   she knows without a doubt that these deities exist.     but she does not pray to them,      she does not devote her life to them,      she merely acknowledges that they are there.      & frankly,      if we’re just talking about hercules,      she’d much rather tell him what to do in a team setting,    & sleep with him,     than offer him prayers & supplication.

but if there were a God that natasha would believe in,      if there were a God that would define natasha’s agnosticism,      it would be the abrahamic God.      she knows the pagan gods exist,      but from what she sees of them,       their power is limited.     they fight,     they make the worst of humans,      & are far too hot headed & proud for her taste.       what she has heard of the abrahamic God,     however,     is that he is good,    merciful,    perhaps omnipotent,      & grants salvation even to those who do not deserve it.      AS  SOMEONE  WHO  HAS  DONE  SO  MUCH  WRONG  IN  HER  LIFE,      is steeped in sin,     kills like it is nothing,      & hides so many secrets within her heart,      this God,     this concept of a higher power is one that is attractive to her.      but for a person this complex,      it’s not that simple.      as someone described above,      she is also a person who has  SEEN  so much evil in this world.     she has seen men fight,     millions of people die in war & of starvation,      & it is extremely difficult for her to reconcile such a world with a creator that lets it fester like it does.      but she also believes that without a higher power,      without anything watching over the world,     she & everyone else is practically screwed.      in terms of her own belief & how it applies to her,      she also can’t quite  …  wrap her head around sin,      & how her own sins can be forgiven.     in  MARVEL  KNIGHTS  vol. 1,     natasha visits a church & goes to confession.     the first time in a very long time,     she admits,     & what she says is quite telling.

BEGIN  WITH  THE  LEAST  OF  YOUR  SINS.AREN’T  ALL  SINS  EQUAL ?      DOESN’T  EACH  ONE  OF  THEM  CONDEMN  US  TO  THE  SAME  FATE ?     IS  THERE  REALLY  A  DEGREE  TO  SIN,     FATHER ?      AM  I  EXCUSED  BECAUSE  THE  SINS  I  COMMITTED  WERE  IN  THE  CAUSE  OF  GOOD ?      CAN  HE  SEE  THAT  THE  DEED  IS  SOMETIMES  ISOLATED  FROM  THE  SOUL ?      DOES  GOD  SOMETIMES  LOOK  AWAY ?        natasha romanova,     marvel knights vol. 1,    #1

these are not the words of a woman who does not entertain the belief in a higher power.     NOR  are these the words of a woman who believes with clarity that this higher power can be defined.     & at the end of the day,      though she may mull over what she believes about God when she drifts to sleep,      she does not have the time nor energy to devote herself to a higher power,      especially when her life is already given to helping people herself.

though she does not yet know where she stands,      she does have a high respect for those who do practice religion,     or even just for the concept of a God.      & it has seemed to me that she thinks it is a concept that  SHOULD  be respected,     & untouched by those who would seek to taint it.      there are two instances that come to mind  ( both from black widow vol. 5 ),      the first when natasha is fighting against a man who calls himself  the  HAMMER  OF  GOD.      natasha thinks this is ridiculous,      insane,     & tells him that she thinks that somehow,    God cannot hear his prayers over his machine gun.     the other instance is when the  ‘ translator ‘  of  CHAOS / the PROPHET,    is offering natasha a part in their new movement to rid the world of evil,     through means that natasha does not support.      she ridicules him by saying that he cannot pretend to be jesus,     that he does not have the right to be the final arbiter of good nor to take away people’s will.      both of these instances are never explained in terms of natasha’s beliefs,     & i think are left there to be interpreted as one wishes,     but to me in context of natasha’s entire history,      they are indicators of a leaning towards belief,      of an acknowledgment of a God,     a higher power,     but nothing further.

ALL  OF  THAT  SAID,     i return to my short answer:     natasha considers herself agnostic,     & perhaps with a side of deism that she can’t quite put a finger on.     to me,    she is definitely  NOT  atheist,     which is what fanon / fandom so loves to pigeonhole her as.     but it’s not that simple,     & there’s ample evidence sprinkled across her canon that says otherwise,     much of which i probably haven’t even touched on here.     i hope this answers your question,     & i’m sorry if this was messy or complicated   ——-   there’s just so much to consider.      religion is never something easy,     because it isn’t just a set of frivolous beliefs,     it’s a way of life.     this is no different for natasha.     & since she herself is so complex,     so multi - faceted,     it only makes sense that her own beliefs are the same.