Tumgik
#reconstructing Christianity
the-queerium · 1 year
Text
i come across a lot of posts about people discussing their experiences with other religions in contrast with christianity, and often they talk about how christianity is focused on fear and a tense relationship with God and not questioning etc etc. and i just want to say that yes, those things are present in an overwhelming and discouraging number of churches, but christianity itself is not unable to have those elements. christianity can be a place of learning and peace and guidance and love and a place where you’re encouraged to dig into things and question and wonder without being condemned. it can be and many times it is. it can be.
65 notes · View notes
presentjoy · 2 years
Text
Veiling
My thoughts on Veiling are complex, so I want to start Journaling is out here.
1 Corinthians 11:1-16 - Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
I was always taught growing up in my Southern Baptist church that the laws from the Old Testiment were fulfilled by the Sacrifice of the Cross and no longer had to be followed, but the New Testiment rules were what Christians were to follow.
1 Corinthians is FIRMLY in the New Testiment, so why don't we follow this?
Excuses I've heard so far are:
It no longer applies to culture
We no longer see hair as a promiscuous thing (why the Christians were taught to cover, to look different than the prostitutes of the time)
Jesus says come as you are (uh, where??)
It would make Christians look weird
What?? What I'm hearing is we aren't going to follow direct orders to cover our head (at least in prayer and worship) because it's an outdated practice and we no longer need to be separated from those of the world...
Something sounds SO wrong about that.
Based on that alone, here are my current reasons TO cover:
Give Glory where Glory is due
We are called to stand out from the World
It's a New Testiment command
Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15)
I have other, more personal reasons as well...but for now, these are the basics.
Tumblr media
3 notes · View notes
qtr-life-crisis · 2 years
Text
Pretty much all of my posts up until this point have been about my trauma with teaching. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the other issues I've been wrestling with during this time. As much as teaching ruined me, it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened while I was experiencing a huge faith transition, lost some of the closest relationships I had, began to wrestle with the trauma of my past, and started to own my sexuality. Today's post, which I'm writing as I skip church, is about my faith transition.
Right now, I would still identify as a Christian but with more of a focus on my internal spiritual connection with God and myself rather than the church. I currently attend the episcopal church in my town, and have been for about a year now. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention, so this was a huge transition for me and has taken a bit of adjusting. I connected a lot with God through music and even thought about going to seminary because of how much I loved studying the Bible, so how did I end up here where I have a hard time just going to church most Sundays?
I started to read more literature on women and their role in the church, abuse, roles of men and women, and how men and women are supposed to relate to one another. The more I learned the more convicted I felt in my own wonderings. "Why do only men get to teach when we all have the same Holy Spirit? Why do we only hear from men on Sundays? If all of this abuse is happening by men in the church, why do they continue to be the ones who get to lead? Why do we keep hiding shit that happens in the church? Why don't we label abuse and rape in the Bible?" Asking those questions almost felt like opening Pandora's box because my heart knew the answers, but I was scared to actually see them.
Before I go further, I want to say this. While my faith in the institutional church has wavered, I have not stopped trusting that God is good. Instead of believing that the only God I can know is the one given to me by the patriarchal male teachers in my church, I can trust that the God revealed to me in my heart -- the one I've been fighting against because of what I've been taught -- is trustworthy.
Back to what I was saying though, as I learned more, I started to see how men have misinterpreted and translated the Bible to fit an agenda. How am I supposed to trust scripture when it has been twisted? When I read the Bible, I don't want to have to wonder if what I'm reading is trustworthy and true. I know God is, but how do I know this book is anymore when I know people have made purposeful translations to minimize women's place in Biblical history to fit their patriarchal narrative and keep women in a place of submission to men.
I don't believe in a God who says women are less than men, can't lead, can't teach, must submit to their husbands in all things, turns an eye to racism and abuse, supports war, and is more of an authoritarian than they are loving. Yes, I just used "they/them" pronouns to describe God because while Christ was a man, God created men and women and therefore were imaged by them. You can take this as some leftist propaganda, but I know God lives in me. We can disagree and still be siblings in Christ. We can be siblings in Christ and have boundaries where we keep our distance. Just like two kids don't experience their parents in the same way, who says all Christians have to experience God the same way?
You might be thinking, "Another woman who fell on the slippery slope." Whatever. The truth is that the more I studied God's word and learned from other Christians on the internet outside of my conservative circle, the more I found people who sounded like me with convictions that I felt I had to hide in my heart for years. Instead, I found a God who has unconditional love for me, made me the way I am, and has never left me. I can't say the same for the church.
Some people when they have a faith crisis with the church, they ending up leaving their faith in the process. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but I refuse to fit God in a box where the walls were built by a bunch of cis white men who haven't experienced what women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrants, disabled, and chronically ill Christians have experienced.They don't get to tell me who God is. In the mean time, I will take as many Sundays as I need to away from church so I can spend my time reflecting, connecting with God, nature, and myself, as well as learning from other voices.
I now know I don't have meet God in the church. I can meet them the sweet & sour sip of my lemonade that nourishes my body. I can meet them in the books I read that help me feel less alone in my story. I can meet them in the summer breeze and sunlight that fill my soul on a Sunday afternoon in July. I can meet God in the everyday experiences I have that remind me of the divine living in me and the world around me. That feels more real to me anyway.
1 note · View note
Text
Tumblr media
Modern Digital Reconstruction of Constantine the Great.
Constantine the Great, born in 272 AD, rose to prominence as a Roman Emperor.
His reign, beginning in 306 AD, marked a transformative period in Roman history.
Constantine is renowned for embracing Christianity, a shift that played a role in ending the persecution of Christians with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.
While Constantine did not specifically establish Christmas, his influence on Christianization of the Roman Empire laid the groundwork.
The exact origins of Christmas on December 25th are complex and not directly attributed to Constantine.
The date may have been chosen to coincide with existing pagan festivals or to integrate Christian celebrations with the Roman solar festival of Sol Invictus.
Constantine's role in promoting Christianity, however, contributed to the broader cultural shift that influenced the eventual establishment of Christmas as a Christian holiday, emphasizing the significance of his reign in the development of Christian traditions.
📷: ©King Chronicles
16 notes · View notes
egharcourt · 2 months
Text
Hot take for queer christians or affirming christian allies, but focusing on picking apart mistranslations in the clobber verses as the means to address homophobia, transphobia, or queerphobia in the church community is literally not gonna take us anywhere further. Okay, now we've disproved that Lev 18:22 doesn't imply whatever the English translation means. Oh and Deut 22:5 applies to a certain context. And then what. Do we just acquiesce in the fact that, after providing a rebuttal to some points raised by exclusionists, we still gotta sit in this unwelcoming and often spiritually stifling environment that they created.
I think what's fundamentally imperative is understanding what the core tenets of the Christian religion stand for (aka the Great Commandment). The second commandment, "love your neighbor as yourself" already makes it clear that there's no room for prejudice and bigotry. Bring up the verses and stories where the laws change to empower women, sexual minorities and outsiders in social systems that initially deny their rights (the daughters of Zelophehad, Isaiah 56:3-6, Acts 10:9-16). Stories about people who were underdogs, or from such communities, praised, promoted, and occupying an important position in the narrative.
The Bible's a big book and any argument can be extracted out of it to befit one's agenda. With so much hateful and intolerant rhetoric being thrown around, it's way better to highlight the passages that reaffirm marginalized people are blessed and cherished and deserve a place in faith, ESPECIALLY for vulnerable queer folk within the religious community that are told they can't belong. That's all I'm saying.
11 notes · View notes
mamaangiwine · 8 months
Note
hi! i noticed in your pinned post that you said you try to include your hungarian heritage when it comes to your craft. may i ask for some recommendations regaring this? i'm hungarian myself but everything is about catholicism these days and i couldn't really find good books about the old ways.
thank you in advance, hope you have a wonderful day!
Oof. Idk if I can really provide recommendations tbh- at least not comfortably.
This is a tricky question as I am someone who supplements much of her craft with academic literature and research. Things like anthropological studies, folkloric studies, historical papers, etc.
However, there has in fact been an ongoing reframing of history in main-stream Hungary since the 1970s, influenced by nationalist rhetoric and spurred by a romanticized view of that history started by academics as early as the late 1800s .
These academics, inspired by the current European Romantic ideology of the time, sought to uncover the "true" history of Hungary that would illuminate the pre-conquest ethnic and cultural practices of ancient Hungarians. Though there are many notable academics we can trace back to the foundation of this reframing, one of the most well known is Vilmos Diószegi.
Diószegi worked incredibly hard to prove that Hungary's spiritual history was tied to a mysterious historical figure called a 'Taltos'. It was Diószegi's belief that the 'Taltos' was a Finno-Urgic-based, Turkic style 'shaman' who assisted in priestly duties in their respective communities and used a drum to enter an ecsatcy induced trance. Diószegi would even go on to theorize what the Taltos 'shamanistic world view' would have entailed. However, many scholars, including Éva Pócs, doubt these theories and have pointed to inconsistencies in Diószegi's research and reconstruction. Though there was undoubtedly Turkic influence, these scholars suggest that the Taltos has more in common with pre-christian Balkan, Bulgarian and Southern Slavic traditions.
Now, overall there wouldn't usually be a problem with that. Disagreements happen in academia all the time. The issue is that Diószegi's work is treated as absolute, and is the basis for most modern Hungarian paganism and reconstruction due to the unique ethnic and cultural identity it can provide. A cultural identity Hungarian Nationalists love to hold up on a pedestal and point to as evidence of a glorious and mystical past that existed before Christianity and, of course, Jewish People.
Therefore, when studying Hungarian paganism and folk practices one has to be discerning. Despite Diószegi's influence on Hungarian Academia as a whole, it doesn't mean it's all without merit (it doesn't necessarily mean all of Diószegi's work is completely without merit either, just that it shouldn't be treated as gospel especially with the inconsistencies surrounding it and the romantic european foundation it was already working from). For instance Mihály Hoppál's work has been known to research not only "modern" (60's and 70's) Hungarian folk practices, but source them by region. I've learned much from his detailing of Hungarian folk practices- I just don't take everything he has to say as fact. I question it and compare it with other research- rigorously.
As for the Catholic element of Hungarian practices, my personal take is this: Embrace it. That isn't to say that you should become a Christian or even agree with Christianity. Despite the fact that I, myself, am not Christian, I personally just find it unrealistic to separate the two. Christianity has been established in Hungary since the year 1000. Over that time the 'old ways' and Christian practices have undoubtedly been syncretized past the point of being able to concretely tell them apart. This is the fundamental problem I have with reconstruction as a whole, because much of it tries to simply omit Christain concepts from folk traditions without, ironically, realizing that in doing so we may be equally erasing pre-christain approaches and philosophies. They're just too entwined. My closest ancestors were catholic as opposed to pagan. Granted, weird catholics who saw things and knew things, but catholics none the less. Their history and traditions are just as valid, and are also just as important as the pre-christian beliefs that undoubtedly found themselves braided into that same history and those same traditions.
I'm sorry if this doesn't really answer your question, but regardless I hope you found it helpful.
8 notes · View notes
laikawriter · 1 month
Text
Religious deconstruction has been hard, but a lot easier for me than you'd think (for. me.)... Why, I think is because of being a nerd and also spite. It's the reconstruction that's been fucking impossibly difficult. I have a strong list of non-negotiables ie anti-theocracy, anti nationalism, anti-racist, anti abelism, anti purity culture, pro choice, anti misogyny, pro ordination of women and queer and trans people, anti homophobia, anti transphobia, and pro same gender marriage. I have also concluded that there's got to be ritual, music, and community. I've learned a lot of things about Judaism that I love, and a few things about Islam that has made me deeply curious and excited to learn further. Learning about both Judaism and Islam has really helped me evolve past the anthropomorphic conception of the nature of God I was taught as a child as well.
It's the Jesus question / the nature of Jesus where I am horribly horribly stuck. Intellectually, BigBrain™ I can completely agree that Jesus was a historical person, I can agree that he was a religious teacher and maybe even a prophet. But the whole divinity thing and the resurrection thing I really struggle with.
Emotionally, I still feel some kind of way about Jesus and can't let go of it all and say that Jesus's divinity is something that I don't believe in. How much of it is that my conceptual framework for Jesus never evolved past the preschool version like my conception of God and the Holy Spirit did and maybe that's part of the struggle and then I'd have a better answer for whether I believed in Jesus, or didn't and therefore Judaism or Islam was probably a better spiritual fit for me.
So in light of the heart still having some feelings and the head not knowing what to have faith in, I reached out to a Episcopal Reverend and I'm giving Organized Christianity another try.
P.S. I hope any of that made sense- it feels like I'm rambling at this point. In summary, hit another speed bump in reconstructing after deconstructing my religious faith and realized I still have some feelz about Jesus even though intellectually I struggle with "buying in", so rather than continuing to try to find a Judaism 101 conversion class and Rabbi I'm giving Christianity another try and am talking to an Episcopal Reverend. All while reminding myself to give myself grace because I didn't somehow "do this wrong" and frankly figuring out that "actually I do still have feelings about the whole Jesus thing even though the more intellectual half of my brain isn't invested (if that's even the word I'm looking for)" now and not further into the inversion process and then have to mentally wrestle with not feeling like I wasted mine the Rabbi's time because my brain often likes to be a dick to me.
2 notes · View notes
Note
Well, all we know is it's the ancestor of all languages and originated in the Middle East, so maaaaaybe it sounded like Middle Eastern languages. I think it'd be fun to attempt to reconstruct it, even though that'd probably fall short for obvious reasons.
But it’s not the ancestor of all languages. That’s the thing. It was a language, and then God created entirely new languages so unrelated to one another that the speakers could not communicate with each other.
Even in distantly related languages, speakers can pick up bits and pieces of meaning; heck, even German has some Arabic words in it.
I simply don’t think it resembled anything in the ancient world, much less anything we speak today.
5 notes · View notes
roseverdict · 3 months
Text
.
#EDIT: moved organizational tags up so they actually work#rosie rambles#in the tags#hellscape in palestine#thinking about the whole. yknow. war crime situation in palestine#and it might just be my brain connecting unconnected dots#but wasn't there something going around a while back about how to pronounce gaza and palestine#(bc europeans/americans/whoever are claiming palestinians can't even pronounce 'palestine' correctly#except they're calling the localized 'palestine' the 'correct' pronunciation which is. so incredibly wrong)#bc it's been rattling around in my head for a while now. it's more of a falasteen than a pal-ah-stein. falasteen. philistine.#PHILISTINE. AS IN. THE FUCKING. PEOPLE WHO LIVED THERE ALREADY BY THE TIME MOSES AND THE ISRAELITES SHOWED UP.#THERE WAS AN ENTIRE SUNDAY-SCHOOL-FAVORITE STORY IN THERE ABOUT IT#VEGGIETALES MADE AN ADAPTATION OF ONE OF THE FIGHTS#look. i am very much way too goy and way too sleepy to consider myself an authority on any of this.#but palestinians were (seemingly) there first.#then israel (the original nation not the reconstruction we have nowadays) dropped in and was there for a good long while.#then other nations conquered and un-conquered and conquered some more for a while#then modern israel came into being. and like. ok. i'm Christian. this is a known fact abt me. but i'm pretty sure our holy book told us we#won't know the day or the hour of the end of days. and yet there's this push to send Good Jewish People back to israel that's spesrheaded#by…alleged Christians. who believe that jewish people need to return to israel to signal the end of days.#which. again. won't be predictable.#idk where i'm going with this#i just. i think i'm just getting way too jaded from hearing people irl cheerfully support genocide and being unable to convince them#that it's Fucking Genocide. or in one specific case#that it's Fucking Genocide. And That Is BAD#i think i just needed to straighten out my thoughts a bit before i go to sleep#just. if we were going to just look at the ancient past. both nations have existed in that plot of land. and peace would be nice.#however.#it is Very Clear that one side's definition of 'peace' is 'peace and quiet. because the Others are all dead :)' which is. Not Great!#augh.
6 notes · View notes
ancientorigins · 2 years
Text
Whithorn Priory is one of Scotland’s earliest Christian sites. Through deep research the whole site is coming alive, and this young medieval woman, who was buried in its cemetery, has become the face of the project (along with the slightly less comely Bishop Walter).
31 notes · View notes
iheartvelma · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
2 notes · View notes
Text
no because one of the assumption asks i got recently is still on my mind so i wanted to make a longer post about it.
i was raised in nondenominational (btw: that’s really just “evangelical” but with a fancier label) churches from 0 to 17. (my bio mom, with whom i have not had a relationship [by my choice] since i was 13, and her family are catholic, so i got the most basic catholic things drilled in my head early too, but that’s neither here nor there.)
i learned all the basics and i quickly became very legalistic about religion, to the point that when my first grade teacher said that cherries were tempting or something like that, i refused to eat cherries for several years because i thought that satan would get inside me if i did. (i also thought for a long time that if you committed crimes/got put in jail, you wouldn’t go to heaven, which was a separate issue.)
for a while in 2012, i was even in talks for baptism.
but starting around late 2012/early 2013, i started questioning whether god even existed at all. and i was terrified out of my mind. i didn’t tell anyone about it, but i did tell people that i didn’t want to get baptized right away anymore.
i went back and forth on the issue for a while. i searched for the divine connection that everyone around me in church and at christian summer camp seemed to have except me, and i didn’t find it. not there.
because i could no longer believe in that church, this evangelical way of living that perpetuated so much hatred and that made people feel horrible for who they were and who they loved and that supported hateful people and ideas.
and then a bunch of personal and worldwide shit that i’d honesty rather not get into happened between 2018 and 2020 and i was left asking “why??? god, why???”
so i left it altogether. or rather, i deconstructed it.
and at the same time, i missed the divine. in spite of everything, there was a part of me deep inside that still believed there was a god who was in everything, a god of supreme goodness and love who loved everyone and someday would make everything make sense and make everyone happy forever. i believed the whole world had a divine current running through it, and i—fucked-up as i was—was somehow a part of it. i still prayed under my breath and never abandoned the most core tenets of the faith in which i was raised.
i’ve been struggling to find my way back, to find my place, a place that would take me as i was: fucked-up, questioning, unconventional, wanting to go deep, living on simple love and scraps of faith and wanting to do something good for my fellow travelers of all kinds on this earth.
to love with the greatest love and to realize that everything is a miracle, that everything has a spark of god in it.
i recently found a church community very different from what i knew growing up, an episcopal community, and i instantly fell absolutely in love with it. for the first time i’ve felt truly welcomed and loved and connected in a religious community. i’ve been encouraged to ask all the questions i could ask, and been comforted that questioning and not knowing all the answers doesn’t mean i’m a bad person or bad at faith. i’ve felt close to god here. it feels like a family and i look forward to being there.
it’s incredibly inclusive: the church has a rainbow-colored sign in the lobby that has a list like “all colors, all genders, all sexualities, all abilities, all ages” and on and on are welcome there. i’ve watched them not just talk the talk but walk the walk. i went to a meeting recently where outreach efforts were being discussed, and several minutes were spent discussing details about how to plan and schedule a fundraising dinner for supporting afghan refugees so a muslim speaker wouldn’t miss their prayers. some of my best friends to this day are muslim, and even something seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things like that means a lot of me. and that’s one example, and not even the only one from that meeting.
i’m still unpacking my trauma and questions, and that will take a long LONG time, and i know there are some questions i have that i probably will never have answers for. but i’m slowly piecing together faith again. i’m healing. and i’m excited about what’s to come.
12 notes · View notes
vikingsong · 1 year
Text
It’s Holy Week, so in lieu of WIP Wednesday, I thought I’d share a poem I wrote on Ash Wednesday (2/22/23). Maybe it’ll be even a little bit as cathartic/encouraging for someone to read as it was for me to write.
Valley of Dry Bones
In this valley of dry bones I lie
Losing faith in the living
Losing faith like decomposition
One small decay at a time.
Deconstructing each breath
from skin
from sinew
from substance
until nothing is left
but a heap of bones,
broken and weary.
Did You really say…?
Are You still just if…?
Why would You…?
My trust is a hollow, dessicated thing.
Speak, Lord,
and tell these bones to live again!
Restore to me the breath of life
Strengthen the shriveled sinews of my trust
Remind me that Your body was broken
to make mine whole again.
5 notes · View notes
beelzebufo · 9 months
Text
Folks didn't lie. Once you get one tattoo amd see how easy it is, it's as if The Seal had been torn asunder. I am burning, vibrating with desire for both a bat collar tat just below my collarbone, and to commission a coyote companion for my lynx tat. It's been like a month and I think about it constantly.
I need body animal art that will impress the other prehistoric druids at the moot. I need to roll up and they're like 'shit you got that 200 BCE drip'. I need in all ways but the physical to be crouched in front of a late summer bonfire (era is not important bonfires is bonfires) with the firelight flickering and making my tats look alive with movement.
3 notes · View notes
wasp-princess · 2 years
Text
Where, Wolf?
As a child
You warned me
Of wolves in sheep's clothing
Of wolves in sheep's clothing
Of wolves in sheep's clothing
Coming to take me away
 and devour
And I listened to you
My shepherd
.
Injured sheep abounded
A wounded flock
Of some limping
Of some bloody
Of some buckling under the weight 
Of the wool that you prized
And you said
 there must be wolves in our midst
wolves in our midst
wolves in our midst
.
I kept watch
And cried wolf
And cried wolf
And cried wolf
To sheep soaked with blood
And you praised me for it
My observant gaze
Helping find predators in the flock
.
When the sheep soaked in blood 
soaked in blood
soaked in blood
disappeared
Your stomach was always full days after
And you praised God
 for always providing a meal
I didn't know why your breath smelled of iron
.
Our bodies began to break
Stumbling through the dangerous path 
You set us on
My body cut and bleeding
Soaking red
And you take me aside, crying wolf
crying wolf
crying wolf
At the sight of blood
.
And now I see you
Your actions Hidden in the night
But now exposed,
Reflected by the light of the moon
Both beast and human
Eager to feast either way.
To break me down
To break me down
To break me down
And suck the marrow from my bones
.
I cry wolf
And cry wolf
And I hear distantly the flock murmur
That the shepherd will take care of it
The shepherd always
always
always
Takes care of it
And if not then was there ever a problem?
.
There were always warnings
Of wolves in sheep's clothing
But never
That the shepherd 
the shepherd
My shepherd
could be one. 
43 notes · View notes
nostalgia-tblr · 1 year
Text
torn between "letting fandom have it's fun however it wants" and posting something like "the only reason we know so much about the Norse gods in the first place is that nobody was celebrating Christmas while they were writing that stuff down."
8 notes · View notes