Losing one’s faith can feel a lot like mourning the passing of a loved one. There’s so much emotion bound up in a deconversion that it can be hard to unpack exactly what’s happening. I’ve been thinking about the topic lately because we’ve been touching on the topic in comments here and there. Strangely, it was an old song that really crystallized and solidified some of my thoughts.
When we look at the balance of news coming out about Christianity, one fact seems absolutely inescapable: the religion in general is starting to lose its privileged position in American culture. But for some reason, many Christians still act like they’re totally astonished and blindsided when they are confronted with this fact. Today I want to examine this tendency–because it shows us something important about what’s going on in right-wing Christian culture.
Even the most optimistic, chirpy Christians have started noticing that something is definitely wrong.
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.