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Last time, I uncovered some interesting links between the National Day of Prayer (NDP) and the Red Scare manufactured by the Religious Right in the 1950s. Today I want to touch on how the “holiday” is practiced in the modern day. This manufactured holiday–such as it is–is nothing less than a perfect symptom of the coming downfall of the religion that its biggest proponents seek to protect and enshrine into power.

I have a quick aside. With a thankful h/t to Hemant Mehta, enjoy an awesome video Samantha Bee and Patton Oswalt just put out about those fake “abortion clinics” that deceive women. I wanted to mention something about it that hit me personally.

As I dug into the history of the National Day of Prayer, I remembered that old saying about how religion’s a lot like sausage-making in that you don’t ever want to view too closely the making of either one. This “holiday” was concocted in a perfect storm of Christian entitlement, persecution fantasizing, control-lust, naked opportunism, and desperation. There is absolutely nothing noble, loving, or (if I may be permitted to use the term) Christlike about how the National Day of Prayer came about, nor about how it is practiced today.

As the religion becomes more and more extremist and polarized, we’ll be seeing more and more people damaged by it. Christianity–especially the right-wing versions of it–has managed to press into its adherents’ lives one of the cruelest and most heartless deceptions imaginable, and those adherents’ innocent children are the ones paying the price.

Today we’ll be talking about the increasingly-frantic attempts fundagelicals are making to understand and address the ever-increasing defections of young people from their ranks, and why those attempts are doomed to fail.

Unfortunately, they’re trying to address it in possibly the worst way they could. And a lot of the reason for this bizarre reaction has to do with their idolatry around their religion’s message. Today we’ll talk about evangelicalism’s message, the idolatry around it, and why so many Christians can’t seem to respond to people’s rejection of their idolized message in any way that seems constructive or helpful to their stated goals.

Christianity is a business, and like most businesses nowadays, its leaders are concerned about the acquisition and retention of customers. Today we’ll be talking about one of the most pressing concerns Christianity faces as its business falters–their churn rate.

Today I want to look at one group that right-wing Christians routinely ignore when pursuing their agenda of stoking fear and increasing distrust of innocent people. This ignorance reveals much about exactly why they are persecuting trans people. But as we’ll see, their incomplete crusade will still have devastating results if it’s not stopped.

Because I’m enormously helpful, I thought I’d help all those Christian bigots-for-Jesus understand why their current “bathroom panic” over transgender people is so ridiculous. Namely, I’m going to let them know what they really should be afraid of, and what the rest of us are actually afraid of when it comes to public restrooms. And I’ll give specific examples of what I’m talking about, unlike anything they can do.