god i tried :P

[that-middle-kid]

Thoughts...

When I was a kid I loved God. Thought he was the greatest; in fact, I wanted to be a nun. I didn’t know what God was like or what a nun did, but my teachers made it sound like being religous was the only way to be a good person. I don’t think that anymore though. I fell out of faith for a while because I didn’t feel like I was welcomed, and I think that was what drove me to question my faith and religion in general. I’d always had doubts about my faith, but I didn’t leave the religion untill it found out I was queer. That really made me question wether or not religion was good. At first I hated it I said I was agnostic, but I never really stopped believing in God I just hated him. When I broke off, I was suddenly aware that the church hurt people and that a lot of the things my teachers said about people who weren’t Catholic were really hateful. A lot of people seemed to think they were better because they listened to an old man chatter on for an hour every sunday, but they didn’t care about other people they just wanted to feel better about themselves. It was hard to think of religion as anything other than evil when so many people used it as a means of pushing others down, but my friends helped me see that it wasn’t all bad. A lot of my childhood friends who went to catholic school  found genuine joy from their faith. It inspired them to do charity. One of my friends worked with homeless shelters though her youth group, and another knit hats for the homeless. I don’t think something that could touch someone like that is bad. At the same time, religion can be excusionary. It’s hurt people and it still does. Religion has the potential to do so much good in the world but it can also hurt people because at the end of the day it’s an institution and it’s flawed. 

[that-middle-kid]

This is the second half of the interview. I asked my pastor about what drew people to the religion and why people left.

[that-middle-kid]

Religious Trauma

The interview I did with my pastor ran a little long so I split it up into two parts, and I wanted to talk a bit about religious trauma a bit before I posted it. Towards the end of the interview, my pastor talked about how the Church is flawed and how some people- especially queer people- have been hurt by religion. Even though religious trauma Isn’t in the DSM a lot of people experience it. A lot of the times people with religious trauma get anxious, hypervigilant, or depressed after breaking away from religion. Sometimes religious contexts can even trigger these feelings. I know that for a while, I couldn’t step foot in a church without feeling intensely anxious. Sometimes people with religious trauma feel like religion is dangerous and that religious people are misguided or cruel. There are a lot of bigoted churches out there. The Westboro Baptist Church for example is cartoonishly evil. They openly carry signs that say “God hates fags” to protests and co-opt bible verses to push their agenda of hate. I’d almost find it kind of funny if it wasn’t actively harming so many people. The Westboro Baptist Church might be more loud and extreme about their beliefs than other churches, but other churches still hold homophobic beliefs. As a queer person being exposed to these messages that your existence is sinful is incredibly stressful. Eventually, if you hear something enough you start to believe it which is why queer people who attend non-affirming churches have more internalized homophobia than those who go to an affirming church or those who don’t attend at all.

[that-middle-kid]

I interviewed my pastor about her faith. I only included the audio for privacy reasons- hence the blank screen. I thought it was really interesting. She talked a lot about how religion effects the ways we make decisions, and how it can act as a positive influence to do good.

[that-middle-kid]

Faith in Action

I know I can rag a lot on religion, but I dont think it’s all bad faith can be a powerful means of mobilizing people. Religion can help people organize and its the driving force behind a lot of good in the world. There are loads of Christian-based charities such as the Salvation Army, Operation Blessings International, and Faith in action. Faith used to be known as the Pacific Institute for Community Organization. PICO funded an action called “healthcare for all: reweaving the fabric of American communities”, and on May 2, 2000, three-thousand people gathered at California’s State Capital. The event was based in religion with many leaders even repeating the phrase “Healthcare now, for all God’s people! Alleluia! Amen!”. The event even opened with a reading from the book of Amos in a passage that denounced the wealthy for not caring for the poor. The religious angle must’ve really spoken to people because the event contributed to a radical change in California’s health policy. Shortly after this event $50 million of additional funding was allocated to community health clinics and bureaucratic requirements that kept immigrant families from getting insured were eased. Currently, PICO, or Faith in Action as they are now called does a lot of community organizing. Faith in action is divided up into different congregations that work to better their communities. They first work to address local problems and then work their way up to addressing public officials and attempting to change public policies. This year on May first they marched for immigration reform asking President Biden to provide relief to immigrants. They’re still pretty involved in politics and community organization, and they seem pretty legit with a score of 94 out of 100 on charity navigator.

Sources:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/382463646

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=qoVUwSqNtXsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=faith+in+action&ots=9tjiId52vB&sig=zjOMyVMtmZw3sg-I58yC1CJk5jE#v=snippet&q=PICO&f=false 

https://faithinaction.org/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/ 

https://www.facebook.com/FIAnational

[that-middle-kid]

Thoughts on religion/God

“Jesus saves! <3″ “God loves all no matter what!” “God is good! :)” “not real” “I love God just not the church” “Complicated but God is here not the rules” “love” “judgemental” “a place to recharge and recenter myself” “wear what you want, be responsable”

Today I went around campus and asked people to write about their feelings twards God and religion ingeneral on the back of my shirt (I wrote all the quotes above ^ in case you can’t see them in the photo). One thing I thought was pretty interesting is that a lot of the people I asked didn’t know how they felt. I had multiple people say they couldn’t write about how they felt about God because they themselves didn’t know. I even had a copoule of people write that their thoughts on God were complicated. About half of the quotes I got were positive and the other half were either negative or neutral, so there were a good amount of people who found comfort in faith, but there were also a lot of people who either didn’t like God, weren’t sure about him, or just felt confused. I think the majority of people were a bit unsure about where they stood given how many people write because they felt unsure about their own feelings. One thing to note though is that some of the people who wrote negative or neutral coments were actually religious. The guy who wrote  “wear what you want, be responsable” actually stoped to talk to me about what he wrote. He said that the he was religious and that he’d never had any doubts about his faith, but that he thought some people used religion to control people. He said he found it silly when people used religion to shame people for dressing immodestly and that they should learn to live and let live. I thought it was interesting that he was able to acknowledge problems within his religion while still being a man of faith. There is comfort to be found in faith a lot of the people I talked to hadn’t questioned their faith but a lot of them had, and I think it’s interesting that there’s something about faith draws people in to the point that they’re willing to overlook their doubts.

[that-middle-kid]

I made a mashup video of people who’ve left Christianity to explore why people loose faith. Religion can hurt people. I know it’s hurt me in the past and beause of that a lot of people leave. I left for a while, and though I’m finding faith again I’m not sure I’d identify as a Christian.

[that-middle-kid]

Wrote some vent art about my religous trauma thaught I’d share...

“A lone cross stood on the hill, strong dark oak clashed against a saturated orange sky. People gathered at its base. They raised their hands. They moaned and prayed grasping at the foot of the cross. They piled up clamoring over each other to get to it. Their limbs stretched out flesh pulled tight over bone. They gathered together in a mass, features obscured and blended together into a large, dark, amorphous blob. It surged up. Tens of hundreds of people kicking, scratching, clawing their way up the cross. Blood dripped down the cross, down the mass. The crowd’s twisted form covered the cross distorting its image until it could no longer be recognized. A dark silhouette swayed against a crimson stained sky.”

-------

I wrote that as a vent piece a couple of years ago when I was a Junior in high school because I kept having this reoccurring. It was just an image of people clamoring up a cross. It wasn’t really meant to symbolize anything, but I think it kind of reflects my thoughts on religion at the time. I identified as agnostic for a while, because I was bitter about Christianity and God in general. I went to a Catholic school from kindergarten through eighth grade, and the teachers would regularly preach forgiveness and tell us to love our neighbors, and then they’d turn around and judge people for being ‘bad Christians’ or tell us we’d go to hell if we stopped going to mass. It left a bitter taste because it seemed like they just used faith as a means of tearing others down. So I had doubts all throughout elementary and middle school, but it didn’t come to a head until I found out I was queer in eighth grade and I finally broke off shortly after. I liked the message of forgiving and loving others, but a lot of my people used religion to push their own agenda without trying to understand what the bible is actually saying. The fact that so many people twist religion as a means of pushing a narrative and judging others is really irksome and it made me feel like I wasn’t welcome in religious spaces for the longest time.