Analyzing Christianity

The Adventures of Thom Rainer and the Strawman

Normally you’d think that inaccuracies in Christians’ perception of others is just their problem. But their cultural flaws have a tendency of creating headaches for other people, too, not just for themselves. While they’re making strawmen about non-Christians and wrestling with their fictional creations, they’re getting an entirely wrong idea of what we’re really like and why we reject their claims and sales attempts. Today I want to talk about why Christians misrepresent us so often.

By Captain Cassidy, ago

Christians and the Law of Conservation of Worship

I’ve been thinking lately about something I’ve noticed about many Christians trying to evangelize non-believers: they try to paint our various worldviews as very similar to their own, only inferior. Sometimes the lengths to which they’ll go to establish this commonality seem downright nonsensical. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, then strap into your seat because today we’ll be talking about the Law of Conservation of Worship.

By Captain Cassidy, ago

Tony Waller and the Cruel Dilemma.

Do you folks remember Anthony Waller? He’s a youth pastor I discussed about a year ago who got caught with a lot of child pornography on his computer. At the time, I considered his story to be yet another entry in the ever-growing list of ways that Christianity is failing its own young people. There are some noteworthy updates to the tale that I want to briefly touch on today.

By Captain Cassidy, ago

The Predators in Plain Sight (in a Broken System)

It seems like there is a never-ending litany of miserable stories about abusers, predators, and scam artists lurking around Christian churches. If I wanted to write one of those blogs that concerned itself chiefly with exposing and discussing these people, I’d have to seriously step up my schedule–because there are that many stories, and each is more nauseating and horrifying than the last. But for some strange reason, Christian churches rarely engage with the problem they’ve created for themselves and perpetuate through their cultural practices and beliefs, and today I’ll touch on why that might be.

By Captain Cassidy, ago

The Handbook: The Magic Christian (Doesn’t Exist).

Christians often pull out the stops when they discover that one of us has left the fold. Everything but the kitchen sink gets thrown at us to read, watch, or listen to. We get invited to “casual dinners” that turn into full-blown interventions. We can’t even visit a friend’s house without discovering a church friend there to try once more to “just talk to us” to “make sure we’ve really thought about this.” And then, once we think we’ve weathered all of it, along comes just one more Christian into the fray, often totally convinced that “God” told him or her to say some particular thing to us.

By Captain Cassidy, ago

We Welcome Ben Carson to the Cult of Before Stories

A long time ago, I wrote a post called “A Cult of “Before” Stories” in which I described what it was like as a young Christian to realize that my then-husband had constructed a testimony full of lies–and how I realized that pretty much all of the really dramatic testimonies I heard from other Christians were largely untrue as well. On the heels of realizing that these stories were untrue, I also began to perceive the unbelievably rich rewards Christians get for concocting and sharing these dramatic testimonies. I began to see my tribe as one that was simply obsessed with these “before” stories–thus, my name for the mindset.

By Captain Cassidy, ago