And they can make that assumption and keep pretending only by continuing to refuse to listen to the testimony of real-life LGBTQ human beings about what we have experienced and keep experiencing at the hands of Christians who cite their faith as a warrant for abusing us.
Looking at you, right-wing Catholic Supreme Court members who control the court now.
"The second most common reason for leaving their former faith group behind was the way some churches mistreat LGBTTQ+ people. 'Every person but one mentioned it,' Schuurman said. 'They said the mistreatment and exclusion has to stop.'"
But the mistreatment, exclusion, and othering of LGBTQ people by churches has not stopped, though many "liberal" churchgoers want to assume or pretend it has.
"The people they interviewed gave seven main reasons for deconstructing. The first was the impact of right-wing evangelicalism in the U.S.
'The support of evangelicals in the U.S. for Trump played a big role,' Bick said. 'They asked themselves, "how can we be on the same team as them?"'"
Kristin Du Mez discusses Angela Bick and Peter Schuurman's book Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada. The book studies why people “not on the margins of their faith communities” are walking away from churches now. The study is focused on Canadian churches.
Du Mez quotes a review of the book by John Longhurst in Winnipeg Free Press:
"One of the most horrific ironies of American Evangelicalism is that the people most obsessed with hell in the afterlife are silent about the hells we create right here on earth."
~ posted by Rev. Harold J. Duarte-Bernhardt
"I’m reminded again of the roots of white evangelical theology in pro-slavery Christianity. How a fixation on the afterlife minimized earthly injustice and the moral failure of true believers and became a way of maintaining control and preserving power.
Things haven’t changed all that much."
Evil is out there and over there. It's not in me. It's not in us, in Christians. We demonstrate our perfection by reminding you that you're evil and preaching to you.
Holly Berkley Fletcher writes about how as the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries, she was trained early on to pressure and cajole others to "get right with God" or risk going to hell.
The point, she says, was not to care about others or listen to them or accept their manifold differences. It was turn them into objects of missionary zeal.
All of this rooted historically, as she says, in pro-slavery theology:
#evangelicals #churches #slavery
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https://hollyberkleyfletcher.substack.com/p/an-exvangelical-missionary-kid-goes
https://www.europesays.com/2095327/ Churches ‘picking up the pieces’ amid Northern Ireland’s public service crisis #Churches #EvangelicalAlliance #ireland #NorthernIreland #NorthernIrelandAffairsCommittee #PublicServices #school #SEN
The fines stem from a 1996 #law that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during #Trump's first term in office, & target the ~1.4M #immigrants who have been ordered deported by an #immigration judge.
The Trump admin withdrew fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars against 9 immigrants who sought #sanctuary in #churches in his first term after a legal challenge, but proceeded w/smaller penalties. Joe #Biden's admin dropped the fines in 2021.
The walls of a 15th-century church collapsed in Portugal: the remains of dozens of bodies were found https://www.byteseu.com/1020649/ #about #Archaeologist #burial #cemetery #centuries #church #churches #discoveries #earlier #expected #grounds #history #incident #place #Portimão #Portugal #Remains #sanitation #Skeletons #unfortunate #walls
St Edmund's, Kingsbridge, Devon
Memorial to 'Bone' Phillip died 1793 fixed over the chancel door.
Saint-Paul Bell Tower
Hyères, French Riviera
#architecture #hyeres #belltower #france #provence #frenchriviera #oldcity #churches #buildings #cypresses #olivetrees #trees
#photography #colorphotography #cityscapes #urbanphotography #architecturephotography #photos
#jlbouzou
"Despite daily news reports from non-U.S. media outlets Palestinians are dying every day from Israeli military actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, most U.S. religious bodies are not protesting Israeli aggression.
I suspect that they also are not praying about it. They are not praying for the unsheltered, starving, defenseless, and occupation-weary Palestinians in Gaza."
"Palestinians are being bombed, shot, poisoned, and starved to death by Israel. U.S. media outlets are strangely silent about it. One seldom sees, hears, or reads news coverage about Israel’s aggression against Palestinians. But the most unsettling silence is from U.S. religious congregations."
~ Wendell Griffen
#Israel #Gaza #children #hospitals #religion #churches
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https://wendellgriffen.substack.com/p/how-is-your-congregation-praying
“It has several hundred #billionaires; dozens of #LawFirms that earn at least a billion dollars a year; more than 1,700 private #universities & #colleges; a vast infrastructure of #churches, #labor #unions, private foundations & #nonprofit organizations; & a well-organized & well-financed opposition party.”
“But civil society must act collectively.
#Religion #Bias #Doctors #Atheist
There are an estimated 350,000 #Christian #churches in the United States, or about 1 church for every 1,000 Americans. And your brand of god is supposed to save lives, but there is zero evidence of that hypothesis.
There are 280,000 primary care physicians in the U.S. And doctors actually save people's lives, and there is a lot of evidence of that fact.
In the US, we have a doctor shortage and not a Christian Bias like the Trump administration insists.
NYT Architecture : Ghana Wanted a Cathedral. It Got an ‘Expensive Hole’ Instead. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/world/africa/ghana-cathedral-christian-corruption-hole.html #MonumentsandMemorials(Structures) #Corruption(Institutional) #ChristiansandChristianity #Churches(Buildings) #Akufo-Addo,Nana #Accra(Ghana) #Architecture #Africa #Ghana
Churches populate the breadth of the U.S. national park system, from the barrier islands of South Carolina to the Pacific Islands of Hawaii, from New England to the American Southwest. Some still house active congregations, while others are of historical interest but no longer used for worship.
#religion #worship #spirituality #NationalParks #NationalParkService #spirituality #nationalparks #CivilRights #churches #synagogues #missions #missionaries #colonialism
https://www.sacredwonderland.us/worshipping-in-national-parks/
Worshippers gather for Easter mass inside the ruins of St George Melkite Catholic church, damaged by Israeli airstrikes, in Dardghaya. #Lebanon
Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP
As Jones' reminder that his own book White Too Long has been censored by the Trump regime calls us to see, there's a huge push to obliterate the real history of the US when it's deeply unflattering — to white supremacists and white Christian nationalists. If you want to delve into that real history vis-a-vis the sordid story of lynching, a valuable resource is the book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.
