its disheartening as a person from a minority religion to see the phrase 'Cultural Christianity' used this way, from my experience in online religious circles, a lot of jews/muslims/pagans originally coined it to talk about the ways christian hegemony persists amongst secular americans when it comes to their perception of religion. Most people I saw using it back in the day weren't talking about banning people from spaces or considering them ideologically tainted by their upbringing, they more so wanted an easier shorthand and framework to explain to well meaning secular friends that they may have internalized harmful ideas about the concept of religion in general- or, on the occasions it was used pejoratively, as a way to vent among religious friends in our own spaces about a commonplace phenomenon of like, an atheist friend who assumes all religions are just like Christianity. I wouldn't use it as a barrier for entering spaces any more than I would ban like 'internalized misogyny' because I think that's just silly. All it means basically is 'internalized Christianity'. I don't think a person even has to have been christian to have it. I'm sure there's christian shit I've internalized just growing up in America through osmosis. And, (not your fault of course) its honestly really annoying to me to see it co-opted in this fashion especially from people claiming to support other religious communities. This was our word we were using to describe our oppression and if all people took from it was 'we should ban ex-christians from spaces' then i dont think they understood its original context in the first place. And, ironically, using 'culturally christian' to say all ex-christians are morally tainted forever is a very culturally christian thing to do. Sincerely, a jew
