Things I learned from feminism I wish I'd learned from Christianity

[DarkLight]

One thing I would say is many of us didn’t discover feminism by starting with a bunch of academic reading.

My first encounter with the term “rape culture” was far less “oh here’s a new concept” and far more “oh there’s actually a name for it.” Because it was a thing I lived. It was wondering why my friend could openly talk about being mugged and get sympathy, but I felt ashamed to talk about being assaulted and knew that I’d be judged. Or why I would hear things like, well, you have to admit that men have needs, and you were tempting him. Or that people’s first response would be to try to quiz me to ensure I was a genuine enough victim (I’m probably not for a lot of people). Or to try to poke through my past to figure out how I might have sinned to invite something like that.

 

[Xantippe]

One thing I would say is many of us didn’t discover feminism by starting with a bunch of academic reading.
**
My first encounter with the term “rape culture” was far less “oh here’s a new concept” and far more “oh there’s actually a name for it.” **Because it was a thing I lived. It was wondering why my friend could openly talk about being mugged and get sympathy, but I felt ashamed to talk about being assaulted and knew that I’d be judged. Or why I would hear things like, well, you have to admit that men have needs, and you were tempting him. Or that people’s first response would be to try to quiz me to ensure I was a genuine enough victim (I’m probably not for a lot of people). Or to try to poke through my past to figure out how I might have sinned to invite something like that.

Yeah.

I’d say for myself that as a young conservative single and young conservative bride and mother, nothing that I saw of feminism was particularly compelling. (And I did get an MA in a humanities subject and have sat through both a graduate seminar on Russian women’s writing and a graduate cultural studies seminar.) It was just “meh” through my 20s.

It’s been in my late 30s/early 40s (as I’ve gotten more experienced as a wife and mother) that stuff has clicked and started to make sense to me. I’ve gotten a lot out of the ideas of invisible labor, emotional labor, and enthusiastic consent.

Edited to add: As I’ve said recently, I feel like feminism is wasted on the young.

 

[ThePCWife]

SuperLuigi is on to something though. Bashing a handful of outlier cases in conservative Christian fringe culture to the exclusion of the very real problems of sometimes Christian people in public school and academic settings committing sexual abuse and other forms of abuse is hypocrisy.

It’s fine to criticize the protection of predators in tiny, insular churches. It’s not fine to regularly (and this is a regular thing in these sorts of discussions about liberal whatever) not whatsoever bring up the much more frequent cases among those who happen to actually have power and influence when committing their spiritual and sometimes legal crimes. There’s several times more predators outside the fifty-eight person “weird” conservative Baptist church devoted to Rushdoony and plenty of them consider themselves Christians, often “inclusive” ones.

 

[SuperLuigi]

One thing I would say is many of us didn’t discover feminism by starting with a bunch of academic reading.

My first encounter with the term “rape culture” was far less “oh here’s a new concept” and far more “oh there’s actually a name for it.” Because it was a thing I lived. It was wondering why my friend could openly talk about being mugged and get sympathy, but I felt ashamed to talk about being assaulted and knew that I’d be judged. Or why I would hear things like, well, you have to admit that men have needs, and you were tempting him. Or that people’s first response would be to try to quiz me to ensure I was a genuine enough victim (I’m probably not for a lot of people). Or to try to poke through my past to figure out how I might have sinned to invite something like that.

It is insane to suggest that the way a woman dresses or even if she flirts with a man that it justifies rape.

I would not quiz anyone either.

I remember reading about in the 1920s how a woman in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota was raped after a Church picnic. She got pregnant and basically bit the bullet of people assuming she just had sex out of wedlock for the fun of it and didn’t reveal it until she was much older.

 

[ThePCWife]

That’s what we need to do, fundamentally. But the priorities have to be straight. We can’t be all over conservatives all of the time when they privately hire a prostitute or have an affair when the left dominates all facets of our culture (including teaching our kids) with post-modernists and radical Muslims are ready to storm the gates and have powerful protections in polite society.

Yeah, pretty much. Most Christians, even most conservative Christians are not “unnecessarily shocking their non-Christian neighbors”, but they get tarred by the actions of a tiny few limited to powerless and often poor subcultures, by fellow conservative Christians no less while those same people don’t seem to have as much energy to criticize “sin” among the liberal “Christians” caught in scandal and/or forcing anti-Christian curriculum into public schools. And there’s plenty of both to choose from, not to mention the obvious placing politics above God that is completely standard for liberal and feminist Christians and which is mysteriously not a sin that warrants rebuke in these sorts of conversations.

It’s rank hypocrisy is what it is.

 

[Xantippe]

Yeah, pretty much. Most Christians, even most conservative Christians are not “unnecessarily shocking their non-Christian neighbors”, but they get tarred by the actions of a tiny few limited to powerless and often poor subcultures, by fellow conservative Christians no less while those same people don’t seem to have as much energy to criticize “sin” among the liberal “Christians” caught in scandal and/or forcing anti-Christian curriculum into public schools. And there’s plenty of both to choose from, not to mention the obvious placing politics above God that is completely standard for liberal and feminist Christians and which is mysteriously not a sin that warrants rebuke in these sorts of conversations.

It’s rank hypocrisy is what it is.

Here’s something that is regarding as shocking to modern mores: acting as if children are the property of their parents and that parents can do more or less whatever they wish with their children and nobody better say boo about it.

That position came up over and over again in one of our recent spanking threads, and it looks really bad to a lot of mainstream middle class parents.

Ill-treatment of children is one of the issues that a lot of conservative religious people need to have sharper pains of conscience about, because it comes up over and over again as a problem.

I realize that secular people mistreat children too, blah blah blah–but is that really the standard we all want to live up (or down) to? Shouldn’t conservative religious people be trying to treat children better than their liberal and feminist counterparts?

 

[Xantippe]

Yeah, pretty much. Most Christians, even most conservative Christians are not “unnecessarily shocking their non-Christian neighbors”, but they get tarred by the actions of a tiny few limited to powerless and often poor subcultures, by fellow conservative Christians no less while those same people don’t seem to have as much energy to criticize “sin” among the liberal “Christians” caught in scandal and/or forcing anti-Christian curriculum into public schools. And there’s plenty of both to choose from, not to mention the obvious placing politics above God that is completely standard for liberal and feminist Christians and which is mysteriously not a sin that warrants rebuke in these sorts of conversations.

It’s rank hypocrisy is what it is.

I have to mention something about people who are “powerless and often poor.”

It’s possible to be (in the greater societal sense) “powerless” while at the same time having total control over minor children at home.

My mom was “powerless and often poor,” but she still terrorized me and my sister.

Powerlessness can be purely situational.

 

[ThePCWife]

We, as in bog-standard conservative Christians, do treat children better, overwhelmingly so in fact. That’s my point. We do better overall and it doesn’t matter because motte and bailey reasons.

A lot of “mainstream middle class parents” are ok with porn use by teenagers. They’re also ok with unlimited computer access at preteen ages. They’re also ok with sexting and teenaged sex. They’re also ok with children acting out and physically attacking other children so long as the child has “gender confusion” or is from some other protected class. And there’s more of them, way, way more. Are those norms ok then? All that stuff has real political, social, cultural power, even influencing and pressuring conservative Christian parents. That’s power too, both over an individual and over society.

You’re doing the motte and bailey thing Scott Alexander talks about.

 

[DarkLight]

I’ll reiterate what I said upthread - this kind of talk is aimed at the conservative Christian, not at the world.

And I would have people understand, this is not an attack from the outside. I would not have this discussion with another religion. We have this discussion precisely because we are part of the Church, and because we love her in a way we don’t care about society at large. The Church should be a refuge - if women like me have to go outside the Church for comfort and understanding, then something’s gone wrong. And it’s something that needs to be fixed within the Church.

If nothing else - consider that women like me, women who have been abused, frequently leave the church because they find no support. Many do not come back. And it’s not simply because “some Christians are hypocrites” - it’s because we’re told, over and over, that the Christian position is that we are at fault for being abused and that trying to defend and protect ourselves is wrong.

 

[Xantippe]

I**'ll reiterate what I said upthread - this kind of talk is aimed at the conservative Christian, not at the world.
**
And I would have people understand, this is not an attack from the outside. I would not have this discussion with another religion. We have this discussion precisely because we are part of the Church, and because we love her in a way we don’t care about society at large. The Church should be a refuge - if women like me have to go outside the Church for comfort and understanding, then something’s gone wrong. And it’s something that needs to be fixed within the Church.

If nothing else - consider that women like me, women who have been abused, frequently leave the church because they find no support. Many do not come back. And it’s not simply because “some Christians are hypocrites” - it’s because we’re told, over and over, that the Christian position is that we are at fault for being abused and that trying to defend and protect ourselves is wrong.

Right.

For Catholics specifically, one of the horrors of the abuse scandals circa 2002 was the phenomenon of parishes (or at least significant parts of parishes) making pretty horrible excuses for abusing pastors (it was just the one 15 year old boy, he’s such a nice person, etc.). That happened over and over again.

I think Catholics have (on the whole) gotten a lot more savvy about sex abuse over the last 15 years, especially thanks to the education programs that volunteers now have to sit through. I think (praise God!) that things have gotten a lot less safe and cozy for child molesters than in the past–people are more vigilant.

However, I don’t think there’s the same level of savvy about matters domestic and it’s noticeable on CAF that rank and file conservative Catholics can be very laissez faire about physical punishment of children. Of course, everybody’s admits the possibility of there being such a thing as physical abuse…but it’s always something over there, not something that might be happening under their nose or that somebody they like might be doing or (God forbid!) that they themselves might be doing.

That’s where I think there’s opportunity for growth–realizing that sin is not just something “over there” involving people they don’t know or like, but that it may be right under our noses.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

I’ll reiterate what I said upthread - this kind of talk is aimed at the conservative Christian, not at the world.

And I would have people understand, this is not an attack from the outside. I would not have this discussion with another religion. We have this discussion precisely because we are part of the Church, and because we love her in a way we don’t care about society at large. The Church should be a refuge - if women like me have to go outside the Church for comfort and understanding, then something’s gone wrong. And it’s something that needs to be fixed within the Church.

I think one of the problems about the Culture War mentality is that people start focusing on “defeating” only the kind of evil that is attacking a community from outside. We start to think, “If only we can defeat those evil post-modernists, radfems, secularists, in the field of Politics, then we won’t have to worry about evil and sin anymore. We can save ourselves.” (And on the more “progressive side, if only we can defeat those bigoted right wing haters, we can save ourselves”.)

That is NOT at all a Christian attitude.

As Mother Teresa said, “In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

I am sure that on the Judgement Day, many “liberals” will be shocked to find themselves among the goats and proclaim “But God, I never murdered anyone, I never raped anyone, I never cheated or exploited anyone. I tried as much as I could to defeat the evil right-wingers who spread hate in Your name. Why can’t I sit by Your side?”

And many “conservatives” will be saying, “But God, I never had an abortion, I never rioted in the streets, I never used drugs, I never had sex outside of marriage, I was faithful to the wife of my youth until death parted us, and I certainly never committed the disgusting sin of sodomy. I tried as much as I could to defeat the evil leftists who blasphemed You. Why can’t I sit by Your side?”

Some people seem to think, there is no point to addressing the sins in our own communities, when there are barbarians at the gate who are even worse sinners, we have to defeat them first, THEN we have the luxury of addressing our own sins.

So much for the idea that we have to remove the log in our own eye before removing the speck in our brother’s eye.

I can sadly anticipate the response, though. “But that doesn’t apply to what’s going on now, the evil leftists obviously have giant redwood logs in their eyes that they’d be happy to use as battering rams against us, we HAVE to defeat them first, that takes precedence over removing what I’m sure are skinny sapling logs in our own eyes!”

 

[Xantippe]

Here’s an example of how really bad ideas wind up permeating a relatively normal conservative Protestant community:

calvinistjaneway.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/the-advice-an-abused-woman-received-at-my-church/

“What I’m about to describe to you is real. This is not a hypothetical scenario. This ACTUALLY HAPPENED. LAST THURSDAY. In MY CHURCH. This is a church that’s not known for controlling, legalistic behavior at all.”

“Five women from my church were socializing, eating food, drinking tea, and letting our kids run around in the rare Northern Sunshine.”

"Obviously, Betty was having a bad day.

“She was holding back tears. She wasn’t making eye contact. She was trying really hard to put on a happy face, because she “didn’t want to ruin our day.””

"She broke down into tears.

"Her husband had just told her to “get off her fat [BLEEP] and get a job.”
She has six kids. One of them is autistic.
She runs two businesses from her home.
She homeschools.

“She told us her husband spends whatever he likes, without telling her anything, and expects her to be frugal and make up the difference.
She told us her husband expects everything to be neat and clean all the time. So she keeps it that way.
He calls her *****, whore, and [BLEEP] every day, because something always doesn’t go according to plan.
He was in complete control of the money–including her income–and all of their assets were in his name. House, car, cellphone, everything.
She had no family to turn to.”

Etc.

So, what response do the other nice church ladies give her?

One of the women jumped in and said: “We need to decide right now, as a group, that we’re not going to say anything bad about her husband, and that divorce is not an option.”

“Cathy started talking about how God made marriage to be permanent, how Betty could turn her problems over to God, and trust that He would take care of them. Cathy started talking about Betty developing a habit of praying for her husband, and serving him the way God wanted a wife to serve and submit to a husband. She mentioned that we were all sinners, and Christ transformed us, so Christ could transform her husband too.”

iprefercaptain.com/2014/08/the-advice-my-church-gave-to-an-abused-woman-part-2/

The next time the blogger sees Betty, Betty says, “Well, Amy told me that I just have to trust God for what’s happening in my life right now, that he has a reason for all of this stuff happening, and I need to figure out what He’s trying to teach me.”

Betty continues: "Well, God really showed me this past year that marriage isn’t supposed to make us happy, it’s supposed to make us holy.I mean, we can’t look to the world, and do marriage how the world wants us to do it. God will show you a way. Besides, I don’t know any man that wants to clean house. They expect this of us.”

(That first bit is probably taken from a book called Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? by Gary Thomas, by the way.)

I suspect that this conversation would be somewhat less likely at a Catholic women’s event at a normal parish, but there is the potential for conservative Christians to make things really cozy and comfy for abusive people.

I have bumped into the Catholic counterpart to some of these ideas on CAF, namely “suffering in silence.” This has some unfortunate potential even for marriages with reasonable, loving husbands. There’s the possibility that he may not even realize that things are going very badly at home because his wife is choosing to “suffer in silence,” that being so much more holy than talking to your husband and explaining what’s going on.

Going back to the thread theme, you can see how eeeeevil feminism might be a lot more helpful in these situations than the Christian ™ approach of basically giving a blank check to abusers.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I’ll reiterate what I said upthread - this kind of talk is aimed at the conservative Christian, not at the world.

And I would have people understand, this is not an attack from the outside. I would not have this discussion with another religion. We have this discussion precisely because we are part of the Church, and because we love her in a way we don’t care about society at large. The Church should be a refuge - if women like me have to go outside the Church for comfort and understanding, then something’s gone wrong. And it’s something that needs to be fixed within the Church.

If nothing else - consider that women like me, women who have been abused, frequently leave the church because they find no support. Many do not come back. And it’s not simply because “some Christians are hypocrites” - it’s because we’re told, over and over, that the Christian position is that we are at fault for being abused and that trying to defend and protect ourselves is wrong.

So much this.

I grew up in a pretty extreme Trad church and in a similarly extreme Trad family. I left as soon as I tuned 18 and never looked back. Some years later, I began to process a lot of my experiences there through different eyes, and was horrified both by what had been accepted as normal and the excuses that got made for bad behavior when I tried to discuss this stuff with longtime friends who came from a similar background.

Example 1: a priest who was a family friend had abused several teenage boys for a long time before he was found out. My parents’ reaction was to write him letters of support–and to have us kids write him letters, too!–and attack the bishop for daring to pull him from active ministry. To Father’s credit, the abuse had happened well in the past by then and it seems he hadn’t reoffended after he was moved several states away, but that doesn’t make him the victim in this scenario. The clear implication was “that horrible, evil, liberal bishop is bein meeeean to poor Father because Father likes Latin.”

Example 2: as I’ve mentioned on here before, most of the kids who attended that parish had their educations shamefully neglected due to a number of factors. Homeschooling was the only acceptable option in any circumstance, many of the moms were themselves pretty ignorant and/or overwhelmed, and there was a general culture of “even if Johnny can’t read by the time he turns 10, at least he’s not in school and being indoctrinated by those evil feminazis, so it’s all good.” I didn’t have any sort of schooling from when I was 10 until I turned 13. Then I went to a series of poorly-supervised and undirected homeschool co-ops (Algebra II consisted of our self-reporting if we had done the week’s assignment and then giving ourselves a grade for the class). Suffice to say that this did my future academic performance no great favors.

Example 3: spousal and child abuse was pretty common, and there was a lot of misogyny wrapped up in it. Many of the families engaged in varying degrees of physical abuse in order to keep the kids, and sometimes the wife, “in line.” The worst case I knew of personally was of the family where Dad travelled for work, and the kids’ behavior while Dad was gone determined the severity of the beating-with-a-belt they got when he got home. Not if they got beaten–that was a given, because he had to make sure they knew he was in charge even if he wasn’t there–but how badly. Another really outstanding dad used the buckle end of a belt as his primary potty training tool. Yet another used to give me, age approximately 14, a hard time when Dad didn’t come to church with us sometimes, and then left his wife and seven kids to shack up with a 19-year-old he met online. Which was, per church gossip, the original wife’s fault for not being as hot as the 19-year-old.

When I brought this stuff up with my friends, I ended up losing most of them because I not only wouldn’t pretend it didn’t happen, I refused to accept excuses like “at least they were good Catholics who were open to life,” “it could have been worse, they could have put their kids in a public or private school,” “academics aren’t everything,” “clearly those teenagers wouldn’t have spent much of the co-op time making out if they just hadn’t had publicly-schooled friends,” or, when I mentioned being hurt and angry that my education was so badly neglected or that I had to deal with raging alcoholism at a young age, “you need to stop letting Satan into your life by being angry at your parents–after all, they’re such wonderful Catholics! I’ll pray that you come to understand that.”

The fact that The Other Side ™ does bad things sometimes just plain does NOT excuse spectacularly bad behavior on Our Side ™, and this kind of victim-blaming drives a lot of people away from the Church. It very nearly did me; even after over a decade away from that mess, I still am very tempted to walk away sometimes because of the hurt and rejection I feel.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I think it’s specifically because of an unwillingness to call out and hold their leaders accountable that the right lost the very “culture war” they declared, and in such a short amount of time.

Who wants to be lectured about sexual morality by the likes of Ted Haggard, Josh Duggar, or churches rocked by scandal? Who is really going to believe that conservative Christians know anything about marriage when their rates of divorce, abortion, infidelity, and abuse are no better than the “liberals” they decry? Who really wants to hear about the “destruction of the family” from people who make their living off of shock statements about women and minorities, as some of the bloggers that have been referenced in this thread do?

No thanks. Liberals may be decedent, but they don’t build multi-million dollar empires on the notion of divine moral superiority and the hubris to talk down to those filthy “other sinners”.

You don’t want to call out one of your own for hiring a prostitute? That’s fine. But clearly, the rest of the world is happy to do so for you, and happy to note your silence on sin committed by pre-approved groups and people.

Either you stand by moral principles or you stand blindly by people who just happen to be mad at the same people you are. But you can’t do both.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I think it’s specifically because of an unwillingness to call out and hold their leaders accountable that the right lost the very “culture war” they declared, and in such a short amount of time.

Who wants to be lectured about sexual morality by the likes of Ted Haggard, Josh Duggar, or churches rocked by scandal? Who is really going to believe that conservative Christians know anything about marriage when their rates of divorce, abortion, infidelity, and abuse are no better than the “liberals” they decry? Who really wants to hear about the “destruction of the family” from people who make their living off of shock statements about women and minorities, as some of the bloggers that have been referenced in this thread do?

No thanks. Liberals may be decedent, but they don’t build multi-million dollar empires on the notion of divine moral superiority and the hubris to talk down to those filthy “other sinners”.

You don’t want to call out one of your own for hiring a prostitute? That’s fine. But clearly, the rest of the world is happy to do so for you, and happy to note your silence on sin committed by pre-approved groups and people.

Either you stand by moral principles or you stand blindly by people who just happen to be mad at the same people you are. But you can’t do both.

All of this.

On a far more minor scale, a story from back in my college days…

One of the jobs I had was as a bookseller for a Major Chain Bookstore. I didn’t like to work on Sundays if I didn’t have to, and management/coworkers were generally fine with that because I was willing to work both Friday and Saturday evenings every week. Most of my coworkers weren’t particularly religious, so this worked out well for all of us: my weekend evenings were generally pretty empty, and ditto their Sundays, so, win-win!

Every once in a blue moon, though, I needed to cover a Sunday shift for a coworker, and was reminded again just why it was that many non-Christians despise Christians, and I couldn’t blame 'em in the least.

We would get a pretty good after-church crowd on Sunday mornings, and they were, frankly, the rudest, nastiest, most entitled customers we EVER had, and that includes the book fair we’d run for the 25k/year tuition private school near the store.

My favorite story in that timeframe was when I rang up some books for a woman in standard Church Lady gear–heels, tasteful pearls, nice church outfit, the works. I gave her the total, smiled, and wished her a pleasant day. Her response? “Tsk! Don’t you know you shouldn’t be working on Sundays?!”

Totally oblivious, of course, to the fact that she was shopping on a Sunday, and in doing so, was guaranteeing that I’d need to work…

That kinda thing just ain’t gonna win people to our side.

 

[Sarcelle]

I’ll reiterate what I said upthread - this kind of talk is aimed at the conservative Christian, not at the world.

And I would have people understand, this is not an attack from the outside. I would not have this discussion with another religion. We have this discussion precisely because we are part of the Church, and because we love her in a way we don’t care about society at large. The Church should be a refuge - if women like me have to go outside the Church for comfort and understanding, then something’s gone wrong. And it’s something that needs to be fixed within the Church.

If nothing else - consider that women like me, women who have been abused, frequently leave the church because they find no support. Many do not come back. And it’s not simply because “some Christians are hypocrites” - it’s because we’re told, over and over, that the Christian position is that we are at fault for being abused and that trying to defend and protect ourselves is wrong.

Who is telling you that abuse victims are to blame for their abuse?

It certainly is not official Church doctrine, certainly not with the Catholic Church, and Protestant denominations do not also teach that except for a few.

It would be a shame to separate oneself from the Body of Christ based on a lie.

 

[Xantippe]

Who is telling you that abuse victims are to blame for their abuse?

It certainly is not official Church doctrine, certainly not with the Catholic Church, and Protestant denominations do not also teach that except for a few.

It would be a shame to separate oneself from the Body of Christ based on a lie.

I think what DL is talking about is the tendency of people to want to play armchair detective so they can figure out exactly how guilty you are of your own abuse. Because God forbid they just say, “I’m so sorry!” instead.

 

[Xantippe]

I think it’s specifically because of an unwillingness to call out and hold their leaders accountable that the right lost the very “culture war” they declared, and in such a short amount of time.

Who wants to be lectured about sexual morality by the likes of Ted Haggard, Josh Duggar, or churches rocked by scandal? Who is really going to believe that conservative Christians know anything about marriage when their rates of divorce, abortion, infidelity, and abuse are no better than the “liberals” they decry? Who really wants to hear about the “destruction of the family” from people who make their living off of shock statements about women and minorities, as some of the bloggers that have been referenced in this thread do?

No thanks. Liberals may be decedent, but they don’t build multi-million dollar empires on the notion of divine moral superiority and the hubris to talk down to those filthy “other sinners”.

You don’t want to call out one of your own for hiring a prostitute? That’s fine. But clearly, the rest of the world is happy to do so for you, and happy to note your silence on sin committed by pre-approved groups and people.

Either you stand by moral principles or you stand blindly by people who just happen to be mad at the same people you are. But you can’t do both.

Not in sex, certainly, but it’s not uncommon for major Hollywood or WA DC figures to be big environmentalists–and also have an utterly shocking carbon footprint…plus a hybrid or two. It’s so common that it’s really more the rule than the exception.

Otherwise, yes.

 

[Xantippe]

All of this.

On a far more minor scale, a story from back in my college days…

One of the jobs I had was as a bookseller for a Major Chain Bookstore. I didn’t like to work on Sundays if I didn’t have to, and management/coworkers were generally fine with that because I was willing to work both Friday and Saturday evenings every week. Most of my coworkers weren’t particularly religious, so this worked out well for all of us: my weekend evenings were generally pretty empty, and ditto their Sundays, so, win-win!

Every once in a blue moon, though, I needed to cover a Sunday shift for a coworker, and was reminded again just why it was that many non-Christians despise Christians, and I couldn’t blame 'em in the least.

We would get a pretty good after-church crowd on Sunday mornings, and they were, frankly, the rudest, nastiest, most entitled customers we EVER had, and that includes the book fair we’d run for the 25k/year tuition private school near the store.

My favorite story in that timeframe was when I rang up some books for a woman in standard Church Lady gear–heels, tasteful pearls, nice church outfit, the works. I gave her the total, smiled, and wished her a pleasant day. Her response? “Tsk! Don’t you know you shouldn’t be working on Sundays?!”

Totally oblivious, of course, to the fact that she was shopping on a Sunday, and in doing so, was guaranteeing that I’d need to work…

That kinda thing just ain’t gonna win people to our side.

Wow.

Another exhibit in this category is the tract cleverly disguised as US currency.

businessinsider.com/20-tip-bible-pamphlet-2015-12

 

[Xantippe]

I think it’s specifically because of an unwillingness to call out and hold their leaders accountable that the right lost the very “culture war” they declared, and in such a short amount of time.

Who wants to be lectured about sexual morality by the likes of Ted Haggard, Josh Duggar, or churches rocked by scandal? Who is really going to believe that conservative Christians know anything about marriage when their rates of divorce, abortion, infidelity, and abuse are no better than the “liberals” they decry? Who really wants to hear about the “destruction of the family” from people who make their living off of shock statements about women and minorities, as some of the bloggers that have been referenced in this thread do?

No thanks. Liberals may be decedent, but they don’t build multi-million dollar empires on the notion of divine moral superiority and the hubris to talk down to those filthy “other sinners”.

You don’t want to call out one of your own for hiring a prostitute? That’s fine. But clearly, the rest of the world is happy to do so for you, and happy to note your silence on sin committed by pre-approved groups and people.

Either you stand by moral principles or you stand blindly by people who just happen to be mad at the same people you are. But you can’t do both.

I don’t know why, but there seems to be a very close relationship between having an unappetizing personal life and being a major spokesperson on traditional values.

I find this mystifying, because heaven knows that there are a lot of normal people living wholesome lives who share exactly the same values, but I suppose normal people want to live their wholesome lives and spend time with their families, not jet around talking about it.