In an art show in SF.
Made entirely of painted metal.
Tony Matelli.
Link to his gallery
I recommend looking through the rest of the gallery as well, some really fun stuff!
Keni
will byers stan first human second
Misplaced Lens Cap
dirt enthusiast

oozey mess
🪼
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
RMH
One Nice Bug Per Day
AnasAbdin
almost home
art blog(derogatory)

blake kathryn
taylor price
noise dept.

Kiana Khansmith
No title available
Jules of Nature
Acquired Stardust
Peter Solarz

seen from United States

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@excerptsoflife
In an art show in SF.
Made entirely of painted metal.
Tony Matelli.
Link to his gallery
I recommend looking through the rest of the gallery as well, some really fun stuff!
you should be able to wash your hair and it stays washed. what do you mean i have to do it again
the thing about mental illness is there's the horrors and stuff but it's also really annoying and inconvenient to have. And people focus on the horrors for obvious reasons but it really is very annoying and very inconvenient
can’t drink any water without my cat rushing over for a sniff. she does a full inspection before going on with her business
i started watching revenge and like how have i never heard of this show before!?!?! its so good im loving the mystery aspect
i just finished ep 1 and i have so many questions!!!
is victoria amandas mom???? cuz its implied she was the one who betrayed her dad and the woman he loved but then that wouldn't make sense as to how shes with that one guy now and also the queen bee of the hamptons. or was it more of an affair? idkkkkk
also the way amanda just outs lydia for having an affair with victoria's husband is just so ahhhhhh
AND the way victoria handles that publicly was so satisfying too
i left my apartment 15 minutes late and made it to class only 5 minutes late and that’s the power of The Gay Walk
im not even joking rn this fucking painting made me start uncontrollably sobbing. Do you know how long it took to paint? How expensive it was? The cat was content for hours and so loved that the girl held him there and paid for him to be painted with her. Imagine having such a bond… imagine being so loved and loving so much back…
Apparently this is almost a genre of painting. Its human nature to love and cradle cats …. And the bond these cats and their people have. To sit together for hours to get a painting to attempt to immortalize the love you two shared
Let me show you these charming paintings by a French artist Léon Comerre! I like to think these ladies were like "me and my kitty look so cute together, we must get a portrait made of us so that everyone knows how we love each other" 💕
(Also, having matching ribbons with your cat is the loveliest idea ever 🎀)
Meanwhile, I'm a fan of this Gainsborough, where, if you squint, you can see the outline of a furious cat who was not about to be in this portrait:
No one needs to say it but we all know what it is
FUCKEN
Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*
My cat: Father is...evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.
The spiritual successor to Miette
Might I also add
May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit
Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children
I am so incredibly glad we finally moved on from "i can has". Cats are clearly smart enough for advanced sentence structure and dumb enough to draw entirely incorrect conclusions about what they're talking about.
My cat, banging the cabnet door over and over and over: bang bang bang
Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.
My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang
Me: ksst!
My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!
Me: ok
My cat, after waiting about 3 minutes: bang bang bang
Can haz snackytreat
(source)
Source
You're not embarrassed being an old woman and being in tumblr? I would rather die that my grannies have an actual account on tumblr for celebrities rho
Why would I be embarrassed for having interests I enjoy? My guess is that you’re really, really young. And that maybe you don’t actually have solid relationships with adults who have lives outside of parenting or work. But I hope for you that when you’re my age you have hobbies that bring you happiness. And that by that point you realize that trying to shame someone for being an adult only makes you look too immature to be in adult spaces, which Tumblr is.
When I was 20, I loved music, making art, writing and reading good stories, fashion, talking about popular culture, making friends, going to concerts… You’d be surprised how little changes when you’re my age. I just have way more money and time to enjoy those things now. I’m only 55. I’m not dead. I’m also not a “granny”, but even if I was, I’d probably still like all of those things.
Ageism isn’t cute, love. And I sure don’t ever see people telling men they shouldn’t go to football games or have their little “fantasy football leagues” or wear their favorite player’s merch. For every comment you guys like to say is misogynistic (but isn’t), this is one that really reeks of it.
What she said. ^^^ I am well over 60, I have been in fandom since I was 12, one way or another, and I ain’t leaving. And misogyny is never attractive.
I’ll be 60 soon and ha ha ha I’m in fandom forever.
(Enjoy your time with other children anon. And I promise you, they’re not creating all the content you love.)
Just turned 70 this last May.
I am a fan. I’ve been a fan of one or another book series, TV show or comic since I was eight. I’ve been in organized, convention-going and print-based fandoms since I was old enough to vote. My generation invented online fandoms, and I’ve been in them from almost the very beginning of online. I’ve been on CompuServe and AOL and LiveJournal and the other earliest platforms where fandom congregated: Tumblr’s merely one of the newer ones.
If some adorable, entitled, wet-behind-the-ears wee nonny thinks they’re going to roll up and have a little self-righteous fun shaming some senior Tumblrina into buggering off of here because she’s An Old—and should therefore (by their way of thinking) be embarrassed for enjoying the manifestation of her continuing passion for the best in media along with others, in long-standing community— Well, they’ve got another think coming.
…And oh yeah: You don’t like it? Then just get off our lawn, sweetiecakes. We were here long before you were, and (if you’re so easily embarrassed) we’ll still be here long after you’re gone. :)
(waves) (And hey, hi there, Atlin!)
I’m 43, been a fannish nerd since the 80s. Grew up reading @dduane’s Star Trek novels, among others.
Fandom’s old, and old fans can still have fun.
I understand if you want to ignore this ask or block me for it, but I hope you see it as a good faith question. You expressed disdain toward Christians who observe Jewish festivals. Like we are stealing something from you, from your culture, desecrating it. I defiantly agree in regard to those who do it as a fad, without striving for deep understanding. In your opinion, is it possible for those of other religions to observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy?
In your opinion, is it possible for those of other religions to observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy?
Yes. By accepting invitations by Jews to be guests at our festivals when we celebrate them. Period.
Any other method is stealing our culture and desecrating it. Period.
To paraphrase a quote I’ve seen elsewhere, my heritage is not a sandbox for outsiders to play in, not after the number of bodies that you’ve buried in it.
So, @ifitistobeitisuptous, the wording of this ask has gotten stuck in my brain like a popcorn shell stuck between your teeth, and I want to treat it as good faith, but I need to address a few things.
To begin with, there’s a rhetorical trap here that I want to address. I don’t “express disdain towards Christians who observe Jewish festivals”. But “disdain” is an interesting choice of words, and I need to dissect it. Because first off, it’s fairly mild, as such words go, describing a feeling of contempt, dislike, disgust… but also carries with it the implication that I consider myself superior to those I “disdain”.
That is not the case, and this is part of why this ask was so hard to treat as being asked in good faith. Saying that I “express disdain” conveys the implication that I’m somehow the person on top, looking down with scorn at these poor Christians who just want to “observe the Jewish festivals”! And that ties into antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish supremacists (i.e. “only Jews are good enough,” “Jews are the Chosen People,” etc) and that’s a game I don’t want to play.
So, no, I don’t “express disdain”, because I don’t hold myself as superior. I just want my minority culture to be treated with respect and allowed to exist without having to justify it in a Christian context.
Now, with that being said, no, I do not hold them in “disdain”, because, as noted, that word is fairly mild as far as communicating dislike goes. So let me be clear to communicate the depth of emotion here. I express boiling outrage and furious loathing for these people. I loathe them on a level I can barely express without dipping into superlatives. I have ‘disdain’ for inconsiderate smokers. I have dislike for “civility over substance, and promoting false balance” journalists. I have disgust for anti-maskers. I loathe Christians who “observe Jewish festivals”.
Because “like we are stealing something from you, from your culture”, desecrating it” is in fact completely accurate–and the fact that you include yourself in that number does not do you any favors, which is why this was so hard to treat as a good faith ask.
I’ll be blunt: Christianity has an entitlement problem when it comes to other people’s cultures, and always had. In fact, as non-Christians are so frequently reminded at this time of year, “Christmas” started as a pagan holiday. So did Halloween. So did any number of other holidays that were made Christian. So there’s the whole “learn from history” thing there, where I, and other Jews, would very much like it if our festivals didn’t end up becoming Christianized over the next few centuries. Because we’ve learned from all of the other religions that Christianity has wiped out and paved over. That’s the first point.
The second point is that the reason we have our own festivals is that we inherited them from our ancestors and maintained them despite persecution. And very often, that persecution was from Christians. In Christian Europe, the Jewish people were marginalized, tortured, forced to do the horrible work, repeatedly expelled from our homes, legally discriminated against, made scapegoats of, and massacred. European Christians hated Jews so much that one of the rationales given to legitimize the Irish conquest by England was that they were “Judaizers”! And that legacy hasn’t gone away. So after over a thousand years of brutality and violence, Christians don’t get to just “observe the Jewish festivals” as they see fit–because that’s just a continuation of that history of violence. Just now, instead of expelling the Jews from their homes and taking those homes, like Christians used to do, this mindset is expelling the Jews from our own culture and taking it for yourselves.
And third, if you want to talk Christians stealing our culture and desecrating it…
Let’s talk about “Messianics”.
Fifty years ago, a bunch of Christians who were dismayed that they were not having much success with converting Jews, which they believe is required in order to bring about the Second Coming, created a fake religion called “Messianic Judaism”–which is literally taking all of the festivals, rituals, and trappings of Judaism and profaning them by making them all about Jesus. Jewish ritual objects are desecrated with the name of a Christian god. Our prayer shawls are embroidered with Christian symbols. Our Torah scrolls are handled by bare hands. Even our foods are reinterpreted in light of Jesus. And this was all with the goal of tricking Jews into worshiping Jesus and thus wiping out Judaism, as per point one.
And that’s not even counting the fetish Christians have for Jewish paraphernalia. The Green family (the ones behind Hobby Lobby) have a museum full of Torah scrolls acquired under… questionable circumstances. Far-Right Christians love blowing Jewish shofars for some reason. Buying Jewish prayer shawls by Christians is typical. And on and on and on…
And there’s also the simple fact that, in their interpretation of Christianity–an interpretation that is common enough to be a plot point in those “Left Behind” stories–in order for the Second Coming to come about, all of the Jews must be gathered in Israel, the Gospel preached at us, and then we all die. And those of us who accept the Gospels (supposedly exactly 144,000) will ascend to Heaven to escort down Jesus, while the remainder go to Hell.
So our purpose in their worldview is for us to die as a sacrifice to bring back your god.
So for any Christian that wants to “observe the Jewish festivals with respect, with empathy”… yeah. You have all of that baggage, and the only way to achieve that respect is to come in as a guest.
So, as a followup to this older post, this crossed my dash the other day:
“These Jewish holidays where Christians used to massacre Jews for not accepting Jesus are now Christian holidays! They’re not “Jewish” anymore!“
Look at this post from @xenanichols , who presents themselves as a nice person, posting “things that make me happy”–which apparently includes taking Jewish holy days and shoving the Christian god on them.
Can this be done with respect? I’d say no.
And the thing is… these are Jewish things. The early Christians said so at the early ecumenical councils of the 3rd and 4th centuries, where they banned Christians from celebrating these holidays.
And if people want to go against those councils–the authoritative decisions of all of the world’s Christians at the time–so that they can celebrate these Jewish holidays, then you also have to give up everything else decided on at those councils.
Things like…
The Trinity. The Holy Spirit. The Divinity of Jesus. Jesus as Messiah.
All of it.
So I had my own post cross my dash, just a few after the “humans love rituals; if you take their rituals away, they’ll make up new ones” post.
And I realized something as a result, a synthesis of history and cultural backgrounds and all of that stuff.
So the people most responsible for this wholesale appropriation of Jewish culture for their own aggrandizement are American Christian Evangelicals and others in their immediate cultural orbit.
The thing is, Evangelicals are culturally descended from the iconoclastic Protestants (iconoclasm is “destruction of icons”, such as religious art); in short, during the Protestant Reformation, the Catholics went for religious iconography and art, and the Protestants went for academics and intellectualism as a way of distinguishing themselves from each other.
Later, much of American Protestantism–especially the Protestant-derived groups in the American slave states–proceeded to throw out most of their intellectual traditions in favor of institutionalized White Supremacy; there’s an excellent article on that here. So what you have left of “Christianity” at that point isn’t much–no art, no sacred objects, very little ritual. Mostly what they’ve got is totemic devotion to the idea of “Jesus”, but–thanks to the anti-intellectualism–very little familiarity with the man’s actual teachings. So it’s this very stripped down faith that is basically designed to operate entirely on appeals to emotion.
Thing is… humans crave rituals and venerated concepts, and the Christianity of the Evangelicals–where they’ve “chiseled God down to fit in a box”–doesn’t offer much of any of that.
But they can’t take back the sacred objects and rites of the Catholics, even though that’s part of their distant cultural heritage–that would be tantamount to admitting that the Catholics were right, and these people hate Catholics. However…
Their religion just doesn’t offer fulfillment on any level–not spiritually, not emotionally, not culturally. Because their own faith is so starved of anything that can give them a sense of meaning.
But they need to find something with emotional substance to it, because they’ve got nothing. Like, the precursor to this post started with me trying to think of something that was a sacred object to American Protestants, and irritably commenting to my sarcastic thoughts that, no, an AR-15 is not a sacred object! But that sarcasm was revealing, because I literally cannot think of anything that is sacred or venerable to Evangelicals that isn’t either a weapon or stolen from somebody else.
And that’s the thing.
They need to steal those bits of culture from someplace else–and the closest source that they can rationalize to themselves as acceptable and legitimate are the rites and sacred objects of Rabbinic Judaism.
#antisemitism#jewish things#i have a lot of feelings about that last post#cause that hits the nail on the head perfectly#but to address it would be throwing christian opinion on a jewish discussion#which is a shit thing to do#but just#that’s exactly right about the reduction and stripping of christian ceremonies to make a palatable religion for those in power#not even taking into account other historical and modern abuses#which are more numerous than stars in the sky
@robinasnyder, please, consider the floor opened. I want to hear your opinions on this analysis of mine, and any other relevant comments you have on this topic.
Here’s where I’m coming from: preacher’s kid, still attends, have parents who give a damn about church history and traditions. I’m a methodist (aka: about as close as it gets to catholic without being catholic). I can also say that this is based on experience and knowledge, but I could be wrong. And if I run head first into anything that is stupid, painful, harmful, it’s not my intention and I’ll try to fix it asap.
Okay, so here’s the situation. Catholicism has these 7 sacraments. To describe it reductively, they’re the things you have to do to get into heaven. Essentially, baptism, confession, confirmation, marriage or nun/priesthood (which is considered a marriage to God), communion and last rites. These go hand in hand with the ornate chapels, the traditional mass, and the “smells and bells” as I’ve heard it called.
Hypothetically, Protestantism doesn’t need all that. But a lot of those sacraments are still somewhat a thing within the traditions of the church and the different denominations. There’s no confession, just encouragement to tell your pastor/pray. There’s no last rites. I can’t speak for every denomination, but there are traditional hymns and books for worship and traditions which are supposed to be followed. There are sacraments, but I can only think of two which are treated with any importance: baptism and communion (and a lot of squabbling about how/when/where you do these things has lead to many different denominations). But these sacraments are often treated as… not sacred and kind of annoying.
In white churches, there are almost always *less* people on communion sunday. Confirmation and baptism are either treated like that annoying thing you have to sit through before you can leave church, or an occasion where you get free cake. Also, most protestants don’t do a proper bread and wine, but grape juice. (This is a longer theological debate that I’m not getting into.)
And all of this reductions are in full force just in denominations where the traditions are closer to catholicism/orthodoxy. The further you get from traditions, the wilder it can get.
Considering that basically since the 80s, the church has been bleeding members due to (in large part) alienation caused by the religious right, increased ties to the NRA and the commodification of faith, protestants have been desperately trying to appeal to younger people by way of being more “hip” and “cool”. Rather than doing this by being accepting, helping the poor, supporting reform, making any real internal change, the church has chosen to do this by throwing aside traditions in favor of “modern Christian music” (which is basically shit on a stick, but that’s a passionate rant for a different time), having a “praise band” and basically removing even fundamental things from worship like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. There’s now coffeeshops instead of outreach. It’s very rich/middle class and in many ways even more combative toward anyone who is poor or non-white, non-christian, or queer. All of this is also wrapped in a very smug bow.
So basically, even American Protestant denominations which are more steeped in tradition and ceremony have being struggling to find an identity when there’s a general thought that “young people find the traditional stuff borring”. So, when you’ve literally ripped out your identity rather than support any type of change, in a shitty half hearted attempt to appeal to “outsiders” while also still serving the conservative members who pay your bills, suddenly you don’t have an identity. Even our holidays are fucked up. Christmas is honestly nice, but not truly important. Easter is actually important. Like really important. Both are treated as spectacle, pagents, gore-porn, modesty-porn and all ton of other things. But they aren’t ceremonies anymore. Not really.
So, there’s no emphasis on sacrament, ceremony, history, the actual sacred texts or traditions. And those things can’t be re-added because they’re seen as unappealing. (They are also reminders that hypothetically you should be helping other people, not supporting guns, which those loudest/in power don’t want you to remember.) So what are they doing? Appearantly claiming traditions that aren’t ours.
It doesn’t help that so much thought/literature is antisemitic, to the point that I know so many kind, loving people who are just casually antisemitic in the “oh, they don’t know better” way. I’ve taught Vacation Bible School (a week long jesus-themed summer babysitting situation, tbh) a few times. These are basically prefabricayed materials churches can buy and use, and everyone basically does the same one every year because they all buy frlm the same company. I specifically remember one year I was supposed to read (from the script) something that was just so casually antisemitic that I’ve literally changed the whole lesson to avoid using anything written. I’m still haunted by it bc while I could change it, I didn’t know how many thousands of people just read the script as is, or what any of those kids remember.
So, to try and sum up: American Protestants have stripped away their religious identity to either worship at the altar of Republicanism, or to try and draw in younger generations while refusing to move on anything actually important. The antisemitism can be so baked in that even without being openly hostile, there’s a lot of infantilization. As such, the church feels more than happy and welcome to go all grabby hands for “new ideas”, the new ideas being Jewish religious traditions in this case. Because celebrating these holidays is “new” and “exciting” and can both be presented as being more open to diversity (it isn’t), and being more traditional (it also isn’t).
Aaaand that’s about it. I hope this makes sense.
This completely matches a lot of what I’ve heard from other American Christians; one of them commented that they’ve cut down the services and the requirements to the point that they’re basically playing a numbers game in terms of “warm bodies in seats”. My question is pretty much “do you feel that this is a more recent shift or a more historic shift that’s been accelerating over time?” Because a lot of my knowledge on these cultural shifts is focused more on historical eras.
(Also, I have a second question, but one that you don’t have to answer, because it’s purely bile fascination for me, like looking at a car accident on the road: what was that bit that was casually antisemitic from the script? I can tell you if I’ve encountered it “in the wild”, so to speak, from the other side)
I want to add to this, because it’s part of my deconstruction process (former Wesleyan pastor, now…..agnostic I guess? - so this is my experience with Wesleyan/Arminian traditions especially, where it’s possible to “lose salvation”, so this would be Wesleyan, Methodist, Presbyterian I think?, some baptists, probably others. Calvinists tend not to have that issue in the same way)
To add to what’s been said, there’s also two other mindsets that feed into this: 1 - “We don’t need this” - a superiority thing that’s mostly been covered above (rejecting Catholocism and iconography), but further than that, the whole “we have the Spirit and that’s a direct link to God and any ritual is unnecessary “going through motions” mentality runs deep. They genuinely do not see their own rituals (the ways they pray/worship/sing/celebrate/study etc.) as the same thing as the spiritual rites they look down on. The specifics of what is allowed and what is looked down on changes with individual groups. 2 - “This could be demonic” - because of the possibility of losing salvation, there is a lot of fear of “backsliding”, “spiritual influence” and other forms of “opening yourself up to demonic forces”. This is why yoga is bad and praying to the saints is bad and anything that might be occult is bad. If you’re doing an unsanctioned spiritual practice (be it speaking in tongues, meditating, or what have you) then it’s possible whatever is happening is actually from the devil and you’re at risk of losing your ticket to heaven.
So for these people especially, there is a certain appeal to Jewish traditions, because they are less likely to be looked down on as dangerous, and with the built in antisemitism, there’s a sense of ownership/superiority - they will honestly think they’re celebrating “right” and the Jewish way is “wrong” (because there’s no Jesus). It fills the gap that a lot of people are looking for with regards to tradition and ritual with a side bonus of feeding the ego. (as a side note, realizing it is impossible for me to untangle antisemitism, colonialism and white supremacy from the doctrines I had been taught was one of the key reasons I gave up on Christianity. It took me a long time to see these things for what they were, because everything I was taught (as a parishioner and in my pastoral training) reinforced that we (the tradition I was part of) were doing things the “right” way and any resistance to that was the devil, actually, and should be ignored on that basis alone. This is not to excuse it at all, just to point out one of the reasons it is SO HARD to get western evangelicals to actually think about and listen to things like this, because there is genuine fear they will lose their place in eternity. Christianity can really mess people up)
So for these people especially, there is a certain appeal to Jewish traditions, because they are less likely to be looked down on as dangerous, and with the built in antisemitism, there’s a sense of ownership/superiority - they will honestly think they’re celebrating “right” and the Jewish way is “wrong” (because there’s no Jesus). It fills the gap that a lot of people are looking for with regards to tradition and ritual with a side bonus of feeding the ego.
That explains a lot of why they have to treat our rituals like how Immortan Joe treats his property–emblazoned with Jesus on everything.
Like, seriously, I’ve seen them try to explain why matzo is perforated as being symbolic of Jesus… when it’s actually just done that way so it doesn’t bubble up into a balloon when it’s baked. The Hamantashen’s triangular shape is because of the Trinity.
Honestly, part of the prelude thought process that went into this post was me trying to think of something that was sacred to these people that I could compare to get across the degree of violation that comes with their profanation of our cultural objects and traditions.
But I couldn’t think of anything, and now I’ve realized why–because they have nothing.
I feel like this is why it’s easier to explain to Catholics what the issue with Christian seders is.
If I were to say to anyone affiliated with Catholicism, however vaguely, “oh, that communion thing looked cool, and I like the whole thing, so I started doing it, but I took my own spin on it -I used my diva cup as a shot glass to incorporate real blood in celebration of the divine nature of the human body,” they would get it. Immediately. I don’t think I’d need to go quite that far to make my point; that was just chosen for shock value. I could talk about trashing a crucifix or something -my point is that Catholics understand the concept of sacred. Evangelicals, IME, don’t.
Those pamphlets they throw all over the place with bible verses? The ones they’re expecting people to trash or step on or rip up or deface? I find the carelessness they have for their own holy word distressing. I’m Jewish. Our holy texts as used in ritual are hand-scribed calligraphic art pieces that we ornament. Our holy texts as used in study don’t get placed on the floor, get kissed if dropped, get buried when they can no longer be used. That someone cares so little for what they consider to be holy that they pass it out to be garbage is… disturbing.
And that people trade their own cultural identity for that emptiness? If it weren’t so scary, it’d be pitiable. And that’s before looking at the megachurches that can’t even provide a sense of community. If you don’t have tradition and you don’t have symbols and you don’t have scholarship and you don’t have ritual and you don’t have community, why have religion? Especially if you also want to strip festivals and music out. What could possibly be worthwhile about that to someone?
This completely matches a lot of what I’ve heard from other American Christians; one of them commented that they’ve cut down the services and the requirements to the point that they’re basically playing a numbers game in terms of “warm bodies in seats”. My question is pretty much “do you feel that this is a more recent shift or a more historic shift that’s been accelerating over time?” Because a lot of my knowledge on these cultural shifts is focused more on historical eras.
I am a Lutheran minister, and I have some thoughts on this.
(Also, on an unrelated note, I laughed out loud at the Wesleyan calling themselves “the closest you can get to Catholic without being Catholic” because no. That would be the Anglicans/Episcopalians or the Lutherans. Wesleyans, being descended from Anglicans/Episcopalians, are closer than say the Baptists or Pentecostals, but got rid of the Catholic elements that Anglicans and Lutherans kept. While there are theological differences, the structure of worship is the same in Lutheran and Catholic churches.)
First, the “ritual vs. intellectual” divide when Catholicism and Protestantism first split apart was very real. Martin Luther, the one who kicked open the process of the Reformation, was a university professor; for the first few centuries, most of the major Protestant leaders were very highly educated (many of them being university professors themselves). This is not to say that there weren’t a lot of deeply intellectual and smart Catholic theologians and leaders; but that was largely in support of the existing ritual/mystical/theological edifice, not seeing if they could work Christian theology out from first principles, the Bible, and their (very wrong) understanding of the Bible’s formation and the history and culture surrounding it.
A lot of Catholic ritual and mysticism was good and awesome; some of it was predatory. Consider indulgences, the thing that Martin Luther first broke with Catholicism over: they were basically selling the hope of heaven in order to raise money to pay back a loan that was taken out so that a church official could bribe the Pope to give him a better job. What started as “this specific practice is a problem, and also is not in the Bible so you can’t defend it that way” became “anything not directly commanded in the Bible is unnecessary.” And through schismogenesis (where people define themselves as Different From Those Other Guys and react by making themselves as different as possible) most Protestant groups got rid of everything. (Anglicans and Lutherans took a middle way of only getting rid of stuff we specifically had objections to instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.)
Which left intellectual study as the thing Protestants rallied around. It’s all about having the right understanding, being able to correctly interpret the Bible. There are two main problems with this. One is that humans need ritual on the deepest level, and (aside from Lutheran and Anglican churches) there wasn’t much left (and even most Lutherans and Anglicans had a lot less than Catholics had).
The other problem is that it’s inherently exclusionary. Anyone can have a mystical experience; any member of the church can participate in the Sacraments. Anyone can take comfort in beautiful art and music in the worship service. But not everyone can go to seminary and get a theological degree! Most people can’t!
So starting in the 17th Century you get all these Protestant lay (i.e. not led by clergy) movements that are all about piety and emotion, because they need something. The academic debates of the great scholars at the universities, while interesting on an intellectual level, don’t really fill the spiritual hole that’s been left. There’s a lot of mutual antipathy between the clergy and the lay movements because the clergy are offended at not being in control, and also there are lots of theological “problems” in many of these lay movements (i.e. stuff that contradicts the doctrines being promulgated by the university theologians). The lay people who are members of these movements are offended by the clergy trying to control them and denigrating their heartfelt spirituality. There’s a lot of class conflict involved, because the vast majority of university-trained ministers aren’t peasants, let’s just say. And in most places, the clergy (professional, upper-middle-class, agents of the social hierarchy and sometimes actual government employees) can call on the local social and governmental forces to try and clamp down on and harass these lay movements.
So then you add the American colonies into the mix. Some of the people most likely to go are these lay movements that are being harassed, and they’re hostile to the university-trained theology for very good reasons. One, they find it spiritually sterile, and two, the educated clergy have been using their education as a club to beat them with. You did get a lot of people who were loyal to the standard religious hierarchy and doctrine coming over to settle “America,” too! They were the majority, in fact! … what you didn’t get were many of the university-trained professional clergy who knew the intellectual underpinnings of their brand of Christianity. Because the university-trained professional clergy were middle class people with good jobs, why should they want to move to a foreign place? It took until the late-19th-Century for denominations that wanted educated clergy in the United States to be able to train all their own clergy without needing to import them from Europe.
Meanwhile, those lay movements have spawned and grown and provided an alternative to the traditional intellectual Protestantism that was so hard to do in the United States because there simply weren’t enough universities. Meanwhile, all those European immigrants are getting presented with the Faustian bargain of White Supremacy: you can have all the benefits of whiteness, but only if you get rid of most of your cultural and religious distinctiveness (and are willing to help oppress people of color).
Meanwhile, in intellectual circles in the US and Europe, starting in the 19th Century you get a lot of snobbery about “superstition” and how the difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholic religion (and all folk practices of any religion) are just “superstition” and nobody sensible could possibly believe in miracles or nonsense like that. And the Protestant groups that want educated clergy, those are the circles many of the clergy are coming from! Those are the people they want to impress! You get a lot of Biblical interpretation focused on finding alternate “scientific” explanations for miracles and stuff like that. The non-education-centered American Christians see this and are horrified and are confirmed in all their beliefs about how education is the enemy of religion.
Also, the late 18th Century is when literalism started taking hold in European and American thought at all levels. And it got applied to everything (and it still is), including the Bible. By the early 19th Century, Biblical scholars and theologians in universities are noticing that if you take the Bible literally, it’s got a lot of internal contradictions. And also, it contradicts all the things science was beginning to tell us about the world. (And also, then you have to take miracles seriously which is embarrassing when you talk with other people in your intellectual circles.) So they start asking questions like “how would people at the time have understood and interpreted these stories?” (i.e. historical criticism) and other ways of understanding the texts which still take them seriously, but without needing to believe that creation LITERALLY took 6 24-hour days. (This all actually gives space for a rebirth of spirituality that is congruent with intellectual studies, but that took a while to develop.)
Anyway, the anti-clerical American Christian groups took a look at that and hit the roof. It was proof, it was the nail in the coffin that all those over-educated types were absolutely not Christian any longer (if they ever had been) and only the true Christians like themselves (who were now calling themselves Evangelicals) knew how to interpret Scripture, and education could only lead you away from Jesus. And after a lot of debate, that led to the publishing of the Fundamentals starting in 1910 and the birth of Fundamentalism.
And then World War II happened, and by the time it was over, White Christians started flocking to the new suburbs. But crucially, their churches and communities didn’t come with them. They formed new churches and communities, based on nothing more than bland white-bread conformity. And church attendance was at an all-time high! A higher percentage of Americans attended Christian worship during the 50s than during any other decade in American history! Not because the War Generation was any more faithful than their forebears, but because after the labor movements of the 30s and the war in the 40s, they were joiners. They joined everything. Clubs and associations of every kind blossomed in the 50s and 60s! Bowling leagues! Fraternal organizations! Churches! You name it.
Then came the Baby Boomers, who weren’t going to join anything they couldn’t see immediate personal benefits to. And there wasn’t much benefit to those bland suburban churches because there wasn’t any “there” there. No mystic ritual. No deep intellectual discussions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. There wasn’t anything deep there, and there wasn’t anything cool/groovy/fashionable, either. The culture started changing. Alternatives to being Christian sprung up as people looked for a spirituality that was actually … spiritual. It was normal for kids to leave home at age 18 and create new social groups, which made it a hell of a lot easier for them to leave the church if they wanted to.
Evangelicals and Fundamentalists responded by cracking down on controlling their members and indoctrinating them that the world is evil, leading to a rise in religious abuse in Christian communities. Mainline denominations stuck their head in the sand and basically ignored it. (”They’ll come back to church when they have kids!”) The Evangelical/Fundamentalist option was effective in the short run but backfires in the long run; the mainline option wasn’t effective in either the short run or the long run.
And now both groups are panicking because the writing is on the wall. They have no idea what to do that might actually work. And they have no sense of how to create authentic ritual or express the deep theological convictions they have to anyone who doesn’t already share those beliefs.
Rachel Held Evans, a former Evangelical who wrote a lot of books about her experience with Christianity, used to talk about how she’d get asked to speak at these church conferences about how to appeal to Millennials, and she’d talk about the need for authenticity and spirituality and being willing to ask deep questions that there aren’t easy answers to and form communities based on compassion instead of judgment. She’d finish her talk and ask if there were any questions and inevitably there would be a bit of silence and a Baby Boomer would raise his hand and say, “so what you mean is, we need a praise band in worship?”
Fascinating thread.
That last paragraph you wrote, @beatrice-otter, made me chuckle darkly. Such a strong commitment to not getting it…
honestly a good partner isn’t necessarily someone who loves the exact same things you love but rather someone who is willing to listen to you ramble on and on about a particular subject that you’re passionate about even if they have little to no interest in it
It's hilarious to me when people complain about AO3 and its policies, and what they allow on the site - but it's ESPECIALLY funny when people complain like "Why can't the freaks make their own site and just go there?"
Sweetie... AO3 is the site for that. Y'all invaded our space.
Wattpad and FFN still exist. Go there. They're as shitty and G-rated as you want. You can't have the luxuries that AO3 offers if you're gonna be a little bitch about its policies. Imagine walking into a strip club and complaining about the alcohol and naked ladies when there's a god damn Dennys next door you could have gone to. Christ.
who tf they think the "our" is in Archive Of Our Own??? it's freaks babe. AF3. archive for fucking freaks. if you don't go here that's a you problem
this is so funny to me bc like. yeah obviously and thats what it seems like yall want to happen to ao3 too. fandom is an overwhelmingly queer dominated space but when you start moderating content guess which community starts jumping ship ? and guess which community is going to get fics flagged bc of false reporting ? you cannot seperate censorship from queer issues bc censorship will always be used against us. you cannot ban "immoral" content bc that is so subjective and will always inevitably lead to ppl mass reporting queer fics
One of the MAIN REASONS ao3 exists are the queer fan fic purges on places like FFnet and livejournal. Who do you think the freaks are?
Ao3 has made queer inclusivity so commonplace in fandom that younger fans take this inclusivity for granted.
That's why so many older fans are so against censorship. You grew up in the golden age of queer fandom, we grew up in chat rooms that banned queer content because it was "disgusting" and "disrespectful". Back when any queer content was considered mature fic, and mature fic was banned from the fic site. When you had to ardently defend yourself saying "of course I would NEVER want them to be a couple in the show!"
So next time you decide that ao3 is actual awful because it doesn't kick out those that make you uncomfortable, remember that to 80 percent of the population, the thing that makes them uncomfortable is you.
Sorry, I could never be a capitalist, I suffer from “wanting humans to have their basic needs met” disorder, where I care about people who aren’t me.
Someone once asked me if, assuming we got universal healthcare, I would be okay with the rise in “healthcare tourism” where people who are sick come to our country to get their medical bills taken care of and life-saving medical treatment cheaper than in their home countries. I was just like, yeah thats fine, I’d actually prefer it if 0 people died from preventable causes kept behind a paywall for no reason.
“even the addicts?” yeah dude did i fucking stutter
Quick PSA,
You can fight for a woman's right to wear a hijab and also fight for another woman's right to NOT wear one if she doesn't want to - and you'd still be fighting for the same thing, a woman's right to choose.
You're still fighting for her freedom.
Prev tags are right
Fact: Today (September 23rd) is bisexuality awareness day. Be aware of bisexuals. They are dangerous.
They’re right behind me, aren’t they.
You’re flanked. They have advantage, and get sneak attack damage if they hit.
oranges (and clementines and tangerines) as vessels of love
Alessia Di Cesare, Eduardo Mueses, Rebecca O’Connor, Frank Ocean - Golden Girl (Feat. Tyler, The Creator), Nina LaCour, @smokedsugar, Gary Soto