American fundamentalists especially, since I've heard that there are some absolutely wild beliefs getting passed around in those circles. Would love to hear from other folks though as well, since I've only had an outsider's view on this. I've heard that some of them believe that anyone who isn't religious is incapable of empathy, and of course all the Israel death cult stuff, but I'd like to know more.
Not necessarily dunking on Christianity as a whole here, even if I have some grave misgivings with how proselytization and child induction works in religion in general, this is specifically about borderline cultish stuff.
Grew up Southern Baptist, which is one of the worst denominations of Protestantism. Had to go to church 2 times a week, and went to a small Christian private school Mon.-Friday. I'm going to include both since they claimed to be, "the left and right hands of God."
School:
- School was founded the year after segregation ended in my home state.
- Claimed prayer was illegal in public school and the Headmaster led prayer three times a day
- School was forced to attend a motivational speaker for a whole week, once a year, whose message was literally: "You are evil and will burn in hell. Maybe you'll eat a baby along the way."
- More coaches teaching than actual teachers, and the "teachers" came from churches.
- Talking about evolution was actually banned, let alone not taught in science class.
- Two senior trips included visiting the maximum security prison in my state and a trip to the National Guard to take the ASVAB. I thought the latter was required across the country, lol.
Church:
- They warned of an "imminent Muslim invasion" after 9/11. Asked for volunteers to join the military to, "Fight for God." That's why they took us to the National Guard at school.
- Typical God Vs. Liberals/Gays/Abortionists/Anyone against GWB stuff too.
- Ran a, "Pray the Gay Away" Concentration Camp
- One good guy, our Youth Pastor, was fired because his wife cheated on him ("how could he let her do that!?") Probably the actual reason was he watched out for us and tried to let us be kids. He felt bad about us being involved in this cult.
- Luckily, our church was about a block away from my house, so I could easily duck out and go home without notice.
- Was finally told, "Find salvation elsewhere," by a new youth pastor (who said his biggest sin in life was watching Seinfeld) after I asked, "How do you know the bible is correct?" Best thing that could have happened, actually. Went to live with Grandma, who was a real teacher and surprisingly normal.
Haven't attended anything religious since graduating from high school. Parent's will still ask me, "What's your problem with the church?"
:screm-a:
:solidarity:
Stay strong comrade and do what you need to for your mental health.
:meow-hug:
Damn, hope the good youth pastor is doing ok these days.
And you ofc :af-heart:
Thanks, Comrade! I am doing much better now. Mental scars will always be there, but I've gained peace knowing their movement is dead. I caught up with the Youth Pastor some years later, and turns out he led a class action lawsuit that forced the church to close and the school to be reformed. I had the best sleep in my life the night he told me, and could never thank him enough for giving me that peace of mind. Sometimes, you can still get a win in Hell World.
I went to a Catholic church attended by 99% Mexicans and Sermons were in Spanish. 7/10 pretty reasonable experience, boring as hell though
I remember interacting with Protestant white kids and I thought they were all fucking crazy and brainwashed as well as enormous hypocrites so I guess there's your anecdote. They would piss on the walls outside my apartments and kick soccer balls into our windows so hard they would flex and then make fun of us for being "dumb Catholics". They started a mini race war with like the three black kids also living in my apartments. I distinctly remember standing between them thinking "damn these dudes really going at it w/the racial animosity", they were just hurling black trash and white trash at each other. I just stood there thinking "I'm Mexican..." and even in my little fucked up 4th-5th grade brain I was like "wow this is some bullshit" went inside and realized I never wanted to deal with Americans ever again
Once had a youth pastor give a sermon about how you should put God before all else. The example he gave was that once he had such a good plate of buffalo wings he was savoring it, which is apparently a sin worthy of damnation because in that moment he wasn't literally thinking of God. Messed me up for a while.
Since I'm a food philosophy nerd I'm fascinated by the relationship between food, fasting and Christianity. There's some wild shit there.
The only thing that really comes to mind is one of my CCD teachers telling me my dead dog won’t go to heaven
theres an episcopal church near where i live and until quite recently every time i walked by i would read the sign as "espanol church" and wondered if there were even enough spanish speakers in my tiny mayo town to fill a church.
i may be undiagnosed dyslexic
Grew up Catholic. I never really believed most of what they were saying, I just remember mass being the most boring, painful ordeal ever. Every Sunday we wasted a full hour that felt like a year listening to some pointless bullshit. Every Sunday for 17 years.
you're lucky, I had to do a full 2 and a half hours and I was a server. The only time I ever got to leave early was when I passed out at the altar from the incense burning and because I'd pulled two all nighters in a row preparing for an exam after not paying any attention at all. I also got sent a card once saying I was allowed to not come to serving because I'd been hit by a car and was in hospital
Grew up catholic but my childhood parish was relatively ok all things considered. We had younger more conservative priests take over from the aging Jesuit priests at one point and things got a lot more sexist and political and stuff, but could have been worse
My cousins on the other hand are super fundamentalist Catholics and oo boy. TW: suicide, my oldest cousin killed himself so the family blamed public schools and secular life and started homeschooling all the kids and pulling further in to full on prepper communities. They don't have a weapons stockpile that we know of but they have friends with bunkers full of them so.. My one cousin has 13 kids at this point because she's trying to produce and raise as many good worshippers as possible. All the women in that family purposefully take on jobs that are more "women's work" like teacher or librarian or stay at home mom even though some of them apparently are geniuses (which ya IQ stuff is bullshit but still). They can't read/watch anything with magic/vampires/etc... since that's satanic (we snuck our "rebellious" cousin to watch Harry Potter once and I'm pretty sure that started his full on leaving the family ideals and just becoming a stoner- which is so much better I love that for him)
younger more conservative priests take over from the aging Jesuit priests
Tale as old as time. You can really tell some of those dipshits haven't done anything besides going to seminary because they're so far up their self-righteous ass. The priests who have been in contact with vulnerable communities the longest often were the ones with the coolest ideas, and who kinda pushed me in the direction of liberation theology.
When i was a kid, my mother started taking me to a super small local pentecostal church. I think she mostly just went because she liked the close, personal community there. Later we moved to a different city and we ended up going to a big pentecostal megachurch.
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One of the main pentecostal things is regularly "speaking in tongues." Every service they would have a period where the whole church would raise their arms and loudly shout complete jibberish while swaying back and forth. They insisted that it wasn't complete jibberish but actual foreign languages.
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They were young earth creationists, so they believed the earth was 6000 years old and evolution was a lie.
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There's a bible passage which says something about women always keeping their head covered and it being shameful for men to cover their heads. They interpreted this as "women must have long hair, men must have short hair."
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They also believed things like makeup, jewelry, and tattoos were worldly sins
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They believed catholics were idolaters who worshipped images and statues of the Virgin Mary.
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There was a gift shop inside that sold chick tracks and bible paraphernalia. I always thought this was ironic considering how often they told the story of Jesus destroying the temple market.
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They were very insistent that you donate at least 10% of your income to the church as a tithe.
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The guy who owned the megachurch owned a bunch of them and he lived in a different state.
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They believed we're living in the end times. The guy who owned the church said he did the math and the world would end before 2014. They were also devote Zionists because rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem was one of the signs of the end times.
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They also thought Obama was the actual antichrist.
Wtf, even as a super-lapsed Catholic this still makes me mad, this is the kind of garbage heathen protestants do, I'm going to snitch to the Pope and try and get this guy burned at the stake for heresy.
Same. This shit makes my lapsed ass suddenly defensive. Nothing like American Protestantism to make your inner Catholic righteously angry
I'm sure racism was part of it, but it was because they thought he was anti-war and charismatic.
Essentially, they believe everyone is either an agent of god furthering their fundementalist beliefs, or they're an agent of satan. They believe the anti-christ will preach "peace, prosperity, and kindness" and overall seem like a good, upstanding guy. Except he will lead people away from the true will of God. Only good, true Christians would see who he really was.
ah right.
the way the right vilifies obama fucking infuriates me so much, there's so many entirely valid reasons to hate him and yet they automatically make a beeline for just screaming the n word or some other dumb shit about eating babies and worshipping satan. Because apparently the only reason that killing children is bad is if they're white and you eat them.
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Definitely got a lot of the "you have to hate yourself or you're a sinner" sort of thing. Was told that cumming in my sleep due to not masturbating as a horny-ass 14 year old was only ok if I wasn't dreaming of women. Tried to dream of Jesus to cum instead of sex. Still can't get horny thinking of Jesus, only demand-side Jesus does it for me
Had a pastor talk about how he didn't let his (at the time adult) sons close their bedroom doors at night [so they don't cum obv]
One of them eventually got married at 30 to someone he knew for 6 months.
My pastor kept preaching about Christianity’s war with Islam. It was 2006 so there definitely was a
wargenocide going on but he had us also believing there was also a war happening on a spiritual plane and that if we didn’t tithe enough or whatever we’d lose that war.My middle school had a pastor as a substitute teacher and whenever he taught science class he'd preach young earth creationism.
Edgy teen atheists get a lot of shit, and having once been one I admit that much of it is deserved, but reading some of these stories (and recalling my own exposure to religion growing up) I think it's easy to see how someone could wind up there.
I grew up Catholic, left the church because I didn't really see a connection between what was taught and the overall neoliberal/centre-right milleu that I lived in and absorbed the values of at the time (like lots of Iraq War supporters in that congregation). I'm agnostic now, but I guess one of the things that turned me leftward was realizing most of the stuff that was taught to me about caring for the poor, everyone being equal, etc. was in fact good.
