#my religious upbringing still affects me in ways I didn't even realize and this will probably get reblogged like tumblr poetry but for me?

[gxlden-angels]

Poetry isn't real and ripped scriptures mean nothing. Fuck you

#Not gonna put this one in the main tags #Artisitic Vision/Intent/Interpretation whatever do your thing tumblr this will probably go further than it's meant to #something something death of the author okay I'm gonna give you the answer now #I say the answer and not *an* answer because poetry isn't real and words have to have meaning or they don't #anyways I want to write poetry or do spoken word or something about my religious trauma because I express myself thru art #I like seeing colors and words and going 'that's me. I'm that.' even abstractly because I'm abstract #even as you're reading this you're abstractly assigning me a voice and image even if it's just your own or the default one you use #I think okay I'm going to do black out poetry but I think about it too much. I think too much about making it pretty and meaningful #it's not me making art about my religious trauma anymore. it's about me making art about my trauma instead #I rip the bible to shreds and look at it and it mocks me. This is a form of art. But it means nothing to anyone but me. It's my anger #so I go back to making pretty poems about ripping up the bible and it doesn't mean anything I'm writing about making art again #so I make my art in the midst of my anger and all it says is 'Fuck you' #So now I have a pile of bible pieces and 'Fuck you' and I'm less angry but now I have nothing to show #ripped bible pieces and 'fuck you' look just like every other pile of words from any other book. You could make a new book with the words #I pick up a few pieces and make something new and that's a metaphor for something probably but what makes that so? #I am angry and I decide what's art and what's poetry and I put it out there for you to see and feel something and I've been taught for so #so so long that my purpose is to please others and be perfect that I forget I also have to feel something when I make art #my religious upbringing still affects me in ways I didn't even realize and this will probably get reblogged like tumblr poetry but for me? #for me it's saying you can just be now. not a future bride. not a preacher. not a mother. nothing. You can be nothing. That's fine #You weren't put on this planet to perform #You aren't being watched and judged by an all seeing force. #Be nothing sometimes. Fuck you

[nothorses]

You weren't fuckin kidding man. Someone saw that ask I sent you about how people assume I'm culturally Christian because I'm white and live in the US and they decided that actually I'm a stupid idiot who had "an explicitly Christian upbringing" and is just too dumb to realize that I'm part of the "oppressor class." It's not that I didn't believe you when you said how bad it was, I had just never personally experienced it before because I don't talk about religion except on very rare occasions. But these people are fucking unhinged!! Apparently the bar for being culturally Christian is as low as "has interacted with or been affected by Christianity at some point." This shit is wild!

Now I feel like I have to avoid anything that might be taken and misconstrued as me being "culturally Christian." Like I feel like I can't say omg anymore because it has "god" in it.

Oh yeah, it is absolutely wild lmao.

I think there are two pretty dominant ways of looking at cultural christianity right now:

You either Are A Cultural Christian or you are not, or;

Cultural Christianity is something that impacts an entire society, and that anyone within it can express.

Under the first one, they have to actually define who is culturally Christian, and what the bar for that is; which means we get different conflicting models of how to decide who Counts as a cultural Christian. So then we get "you're culturally Christian if you..."

Are a Christian

Were at any point a Christian

Were raised by Christian family

Live in a Christian-dominated society and were not raised under any other (non-Christian) religion

Live in a Christian-dominated society but "come from a Christian background"

Live in a Christian-dominated society but are not religious

Participate in any aspect of Christianity, even in a non-religious sense.

Or some combination thereof.

Each of which kind of falls short of capturing the full picture or being much of a useful term. Obviously Christians are Christian; we don't really need another term for that. But ex-Christians can convert, can't they? So is it just ex-Christian atheists, or are, for example, Jewish converts "still culturally Christian"? So can people who were raised by Christian family; again, does this only apply to atheists? What kind of atheists does it actually apply to?

And the last groups consists of a huge variety of people: again, atheists can raise atheists or have been raised by atheists, often going back multiple generations (I'm part of the third generation of atheists in my family- on both sides).

Is the deciding factor here whiteness? I absolutely agree that white people are more likely to be hostile toward other cultures and the religions generally associated with them; but that's not because white people are Christian (Black Americans, for example, have a long, complicated history with Christianity; from forced conversion to a modern unique relationship with their own Christian beliefs and practices, all of which should be defined by them). That is, imo, an extension of racism & white supremacy- which is itself very tied into Christianity.

And as for people who participate in Christianity- what about cultural conversion/erasure? What about mixed religion families; half-Jewish and half-Christian families that celebrate both sets of holidays, for example? What about people who "celebrate" only because family does? What about people who are forced by their families, or others, to participate?

Again, is "cultural Christianity" just something that applies to atheists? And if so, why?

Either we need a perfect definition and delineation that can adequately, respectfully categorize everyone from every complex experience and background and acknowledge that people change categories entirely, often by their own choice; or our entire culture is influenced by Christianity, in which case anyone can theoretically be influenced by it regardless of background, and atheists are not "more Christian" than anyone else by default.

It needs to be a broad and fluid umbrella, or we need a different one entirely.

I've seen @cleverthylacine suggest that we should talk about it like "passing", which I can honestly get behind; people who "pass" as Christian aren't necessarily gaining privilege, but depending on how congruent that external perception is with their internal reality, it can be a much smoother experience than those who are openly antagonistic, or inherently oppositional to Christianity are.

i.e. a Jewish person who asks for their holidays off is not passing, and is challenging Christianity in a way that is going to lead to experiences of antisemitism, specifically.

An atheist who celebrates Jewish holidays and asks for them off from work will likely experience some, or all, of the same.

An atheist who happily celebrates Christian holidays isn't going to face much hardship at all- or likely even notice that they'd be subject to opposition if they didn't.

An atheist who quietly avoids celebrating Christian holidays is going to have some internal struggles and awkward, uncomfortable interactions with Christians who want them to do otherwise.

An atheist who openly, vocally resists celebrating Christian holidays- and even goes as far as to advocate against their workplace holding celebrations for them- is going to face a lot of open opposition and bigotry from Christians in their workplace.

It's based more on action, personal relationship to the religion, and individual choices/situations/experiences, and avoids treating the "passing" experience as if it's inherently a privilege- or inherent to a specific group. And it allows a lot of room for those conversations around who exactly is Presumed Christian (white people, mostly), what that means, without assuming everyone from a certain category is going to have the exact same experience forever.

#religion