#evangelical harm

[jarredlharris]

Thoughts while listening to a podcast episode critiquing the spiritual warfare movement.

I did a live thread capturing my thoughts as I listened to an episode of the Go Home Bible (You're Drunk) podcast. The following is an aggregated copy of that thread.

I don't listen regularly to @gohomebible (please don't hate me @JustinDGentry), but I occasionally listen to one of their podcasts. The title of their most recent one caught my eye.

Anything about "spiritual warfare" always piques my interest. For a few reasons:

While In college, I got into the spiritual warfare movement. So I have a history.

As a Pagan witch, I'm often a regular villain in the minds of those who practice spiritual warfare.

As a witch, I'm fascinated and amused by how much of the spiritual warfare practices seem to mimic witchcraft and other forms of magic. This is especially amusing in light of #2 in this list. So, this is a livetweet thread of the latest @gohomebible episode.

(Wow, a podcast listen-and-tweet session by me that's not focused on @ThereafterPod? Can everyone handle it.) Anyway, pressing the play button on the episode now.

.@JustinDGentry: "Current debtholder." Seen, Justin. Seen. @gohomebible

.@JustinDGentry and @ToriGlass are talking about how "putting women on a pedestal" is still objectifying them. @gohomebible

Quick! Someone should start a pool taking bets on how many times I tag the wrong podcast in this thread. @gohomebible

I love how all of these podcasts promote each other. Beautiful stuff. @gohomebible

They're talking about "Sound of Freedom" right now. An important conversation. @gohomebible

Discussing (evangelical) men's need to rescuing "things" (particularly women just puts me in mind of the "Damsel in Distress" trope in video games that Anita Sarkeesian covered years ago. Apparently, saving Princess Peach isn't enough for some guys. @gohomebible

.@ToriGlass is talking about how evangelicals seem to implicitly trust other (evangelical) Christians without fact-checking or critical thinking. Excellent point. @gohomebible

About to get to the spiritual warfare discussion. Can't wait! @gohomebible

So apparently the Patreon levels for the podcast are named after church leadership positions? That's kinda funny. @gohomebible

.@JustinDGentry: If you ever had to cast out a demon or learn to do so, you have permission to drink throughout the episode." Guess I should've bought a ton of booze. @gohomebible

They're talking about how much paranoia there is in the spiritual warfare movement. So true. @gohomebible

As an aside, the number is still "zero," but there have been quite a few close calls. @gohomebible

@JarredH: Quick! Someone should start a pool taking bets on how many times I tag the wrong podcast in this thread. @gohomebible

@JustinDGentry is talking about how people in his life attributed sleep paralysis to demons. I'd imagine that'd be pretty unhelpful and harmful. @gohomebible

In my experience, those in the spiritual warfare are extremely skeptical of and hostile to therapy. Probably a huge reason for that. @gohomebible

.@ToriGlass is giving a high level (and probably simplified) explanation of the neurological causes behind sleep paralysis and it's pretty interesting. Would love to learn more. @gohomebible

.@ToriGlass: "We're weirdos." Reminds me of the line from "The Craft." It was a much better line in that movie, though. @gohomebible

.@JustinDGentry is suggesting that ND people might want to take more nuance when talking about how their upbringing impacted them. Probably, but I'd say that's good advice for NT people at way. @gohomebible

Yay! @JustinDGentry mentioned prayer walks! I forget how many of those I and my friends did while in college. @gohomebible

.@ToriGlass mentioned that there are pastors who teach that autism is caused by demons. I realize he's not the only one, but I gotta ask: Are we avoiding mentioning Greg Locke by name? @gohomebible

Kinda waiting for @ToriGlass and @JustinDGentry to say "victim blaming." @gohomebible

Those poor pigs! (You'll have to listen to understand the context.) @gohomebible

.@JustinDGentry: "If I jerk off too much, can I be possessed?" Sadly, I get how someone embedded in the spiritual warfare movement would worry about that. It's so tragic, though. @gohomebible

I'm amused that @JustinDGentry mentioned he "got rid of the devil rather quickly." It's funny to me that leaving the spiritual warfare movement accomplished the goal of the movement far better than the movement itself ever did. @gohomebible

.@ToriGlass calls spiritual warfare a "get out of the work free card" and I think that's a perfect analysis. @gohomebible

Cleaning up the mentions in this thread so that I don't blow up people's personal accounts with even more notifications. @gohomebible

This was an excellent episode that focused on the psychological harms of the spiritual warfare movement. @gohomebible

Now if I can conclude this thread with a little shameless self-promotion. I've covered the spiritual warfare in various threads in the past from a different angle. I often analyze and criticize the movement from a theological and/or magical perspective.

If that's something that would interest you, I'd encourage you to search through my past tweets.

For example, you might be interested in this thread from January where I watched an analyzed a YouTube video by Julia Dee Motycka called "Power, Prayer, and Spiritual Warfare."

[shift-shaping]

very funny when someone who tries to tell you porn addiction is real is already marked with shinigami eyes. like oh really? i never would have guessed a transphobe would buy multiple strains of fundamentalist christian propaganda. anyway

like i cannot stress enough that porn addiction is a fake thing made up by fundamentalists to make you demonize sex. it is not a real thing. you can have all manner of compulsions, sure, but a porn compulsion is no more harmful than a compulsion to doomscrolling or washing your hands or brushing your teeth. which is to say, it's not great to have a compulsion at all, but a compulsion to pornography is not uniquely concerning in and off itself.

research on this subject is very clear that porn and porn consumption itself is not the issue. what causes distress and shame is the culture surrounding porn and the way our society demonizes people for normal sexual feelings.

porn is morally neutral. you are not a bad person for enjoying porn. the real-life porn industry is a shitshow, but there are many ways to enjoy pornography that are entirely harmless. support your favorite independent porn producers.

[trans-cuchulainn]

had a really interesting convo yesterday about ethics and whether intent or results matters (eg if you tried to make an ethical purchasing choice but the business was actually exploitative as hell, does that "count") and very much came to the conclusion that sure, if you're concerned with your personal immortal soul, as a christian might be, then intention counts. but if what you're focused on is your impact on the world, then intention means nothing if the actions have negative results, right? (that doesn't mean you're to blame for them! you didn't know! but you also don't get "ethics points" for trying, you know?)

and this also got me thinking about the whole christian idea that sinful thoughts are as bad as sinful actions because. they're just not imo. maybe for the sake of your Immortal Soul they are points against you, if that's your jam. but in terms of putting good into the world, in terms of your impact on other people, the ONLY thing that matters is what you choose to do with those thoughts. there is no way that "was kind to someone who was pissing me off, for the sake of community harmony" or "helped an acquaintance with a task even though I felt resentful about the time spent doing that" is a Bad Thing for the world

and it made me wonder how much purity culture and thought policing is rooted in (mostly evangelical) cultural christianity and this idea that ethical choices are an individual thing because what matters is the impact of them on YOUR soul and not, you know, things we do because of what we owe the world around us / because of love for others / because a world where people are trying to put good into it is a hell of a lot nicer to live in than one where people are only worried about themselves

i grew up evangelical but like. fairly mild evangelical and even though there wasn't a big focus on hell and stuff, i definitely fixated on imperfect thoughts and behaviours that were putting absolutely no harm into the world, rather than focusing on what i could do to put good into it, and that individualistic vs outward-focused approach to morality has been something i've grappled with a lot as an adult. but i never really thought about it as simply as this and really that's what it boils down to. are you making the ethical choice because you're trying to put good in the world, or because it would make you a "good person" to do so? because the answer to that 100% defines whether it's the thought or the result that counts

[deservedgrace]

i really don't like the "religion is a tool, some people use it for good, some people use it for bad" thing because it's so... passive and individualistic. the problem isn't the religion, it's the Bad People using religion in a Bad Way. it has no accountability for objectively bad structural and systemic issues. it has no empathy or nuance for cult members, who i'm not going to say are all uwu innocent or don't do legitimate harm but are often victims themselves, and a lot of people would do better if they knew better but like you don't just choose to join a cult one day you can't just choose to snap out of one either. like, jehovah's witness is not a neutral thing that some people use for good and some people use for bad. it's a cult. they use cult tactics to keep people trapped and dependent on them. there are doctrinal and structural and systemic issues that are harmful. i hate this idea that it's solely a personal, individual issue if someone gets sucked into a cult or high control religion. i hate the idea that individual people are pulling these beliefs out of thin air because they're Simply Just Bad People and not because some religions have actual systemic issues. of course there are people that just want to hurt others but some people legitimately believe this is the best way to be. and that doesn't absolve them of their harm but if we treat it like it's only an individual issue these cults and high control religions have free reign to continue doing harm.

[cruelsister-moved2]

im sooooo sick of neopagans thinking they invented stuff that literally every religion thats not modern american evangelicalism already has 💀 i dont care if u want to light candles in ur bedroom or whatever, but even when youre swinging at “normie” religions ur still missing like okay catholics LOVE altars. jewish liturgy celebrates moon cycles. whatever youre trying to articulate about an all encompassing divinity of universal love was probably said in verse by a persian muslim centuries ago. your american christian/atheist background is a huge outlier in the global history of religion: it’s not even that you’re missing some niche exception, it’s literally that your entire perspective on “organised religion” is based on an outlier 💀

[alostchord]

Antitheists will come online and say shit like "all religions are bad" mf name one thing all religions share in common

[heir-less]

I think what a lot of people don't understand is that the cultural and societal aspects of religion can still exist in a society that is 100% secular. Most atheists aren't anti-theists, in fact, most of them still take part in many religious customs and celebrations in a secular form. Anti-theism doesn't even mean the eradication of religion, it's typically used to describe the intellectual opposition to belief in a deity,

So, I'm honestly perplexed whenever I see people arguing that the "end goal" of atheism is to eradicate religion, this is something both religious people and ill-informed atheists believe, for some reason. I guess this is what happens when Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are your go-to atheists and you're measuring atheism against the most extreme religious zealots because that's what most people are reactive towards.

What should be completely removed are almost all forms of institutionalized religion and religious power structures. These are the exactual oppressive structures that have used religion as a tool to justify every form of bigotry and crime against humanity. They are also not essential to the practice of the religion or the survival of the religious culture. Your right to practice your religion ends if you're using said religion to advocate for the oppression of Muslims (assuming you're not practicing Islam), atheists, LGBT+ people, and other minorities. You can be a church-going Catholic without advocating for state-sanctioned religion or the rights of others being removed. This evangelical breed of religious extremism has no place in society and is what actually leads to real genocides happening today.

[naradreamscape]

Almost one year of the nightmare, and my opinion on the settlers has fully cascaded from "annoying elitists" to "insufferable scum of the earth". The unbelievable hypocrisy of throwing away every bit of your Judaic identity in favour of living in an Americanized "reconstruction" of Jewish society. The graveyards your ancestors were buried in are languishing alone throughout Europe, overgrown and oft-damaged by xenophobic punks, while you pave over others' graves to build a McDonalds atop them. You have done nothing to restore what we lost during the Shoah; in fact, you've done even more damage and buried what we had left. Shame on you now and forever

[gwensy]

YOU'RE CATHOLIC ?

yeah! sort of i mean i was raised catholic and still find alot of comfort in the religion primarily, i dont really follow the church but im semi-practicing when i can be and highly critical of christianity as a whole, plus im part spanish and from a spanish speaking part of texas so catholicism is also a really big thing culturally here — im also culturally bhuddist in alot of aspects due to being half viet and celebrating most of the traditions that come with that

religion for me is mostly just a personal thing that's influenced by a lot of different things in my life eye dee kay, i was also briefly hyperfixated on the bible like as a book

[im2tired4usernames]

Ugh I was excited for today until I found out I'd have to spend it with people that actively make me hate being alive hate the future and drain me off all energy physically mentally spiritually like a vampire I can't stand to be around her she is the definition of stupidity and even then that's generous as fuck this bitch has filled her brain with so much garbage I watch her brain cells die at alarming rates every single time she uses her vocal cords her giggles make me want to jam a sewing needle into my ear repeatedly so I can never have to hear it again its a friendly reminder that my parents decisions this time my dad's constantly makes me want to die

[justhereforfandomandfriends]

I think I would be a lot less fucked up if I had read less as a child

[ryanthedemiboy]

I need to not send messages when I first get up.

[c0rpseductor]

i think as with many things tumblr.com is not exactly the greatest forum for discussing the issue of religious trauma for like. myriad reasons. one of which being that some of you guys are SO FUCKING INSENSITIVE ABOUT IT!!!! unless it conforms to a very specific narrative.

[gorekiss]

the way a lot of people on this app demonize sex and sexuality is kinda scary honestly

[assemblyofoddities]

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion." No, they're not. They aren't entitled to respect when they take it away from others. No matter what anyone's beliefs may be, if they impose them on another person in a way that harms them, dehumanizes them, or strips them of their dignity, they no longer deserve dignity in return. If someone doesn't treat you will respect and dignity, even in the case of opposing beliefs, they no longer deserve, or should have, your respect and dignity, and vise versa.