#culturally christian

[normalhumanperson]

Things I would prefer to be called rather than “culturally christian”

+ Raised christian

+ Has a christian background

+ Exchristian

These still acknowledge a person’s history with christianity while also respecting the fact that they have left it. Hope this helps!

#atheist #atheism #culturally christian #exchristian

[jessicalprice]

Today in truths culturally Christian atheists who get really angry when you point out that everyone who lives in Christian hegemony is shaped by it to some degree aren’t going to like:

To actually deconstruct the ways Christianity has shaped how you think, you need to study Christianity. From the outside. When you no longer believe it.

You can’t deconstruct what you can’t recognize, and recognizing ideology and worldviews usually requires studying them from an exterior perspective.

#jumblr #cultural christianity #culturally christian #Christian atheists #deconstruction #deconstructing Christianity

[a-s-fischer]

The atheists who hate the terms "culturally Christian" or "Christianized" atheist/atheism, need to come to a reckoning with the fact that most of the people talking about the phenomenon of Christian cultural practices and default assumptions remaining present in atheist communities in historically Christian and Christianized parts of the world, are in fact also atheists.

Jewish atheists, and other atheists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds latched on to "culturally Christian" as a term to describe the ways in which atheist communities dominated by people from majority Christian, or majority Christianized, countries, are hostile to us and don't recognize our forms of atheism and secularism as legitimate, in spite of the fact that we also don't believe in any deity. it also became a convenient term to talk about the ways in which atheists from culturally Christian backgrounds frequently insist that to be properly secular, properly an atheist, you have to assimilate into a specific set of cultural practices viewed by these particular atheists as culturally and religiously neutral, AKA secular. "Culturally Christian" is a convenient term used to point out that these are not in fact culturally neutral practices, and that there are forms of atheism that do not include them, and include other cultural practices, and that atheists from other cultural backgrounds should not have to assimilate into another culture, for our atheism to be considered valid.

So like, the fact that the response to the term culturally Christian is to paint the non culturally Christian people using it, as religious people going after atheists as atheists, is both an example of a culturally Christian phenomenon, and also really obnoxious and ironic, given that the people who are making this argument are usually making it from within the atheist community. We are also atheists, which is why this phenomenon actually matters to us. This is an intra-community discussion, and trying to frame it as the mean religious people going after the atheists, erases our atheism, and is really annoying, and the only thing it serves to do, is to protect the people using this framing, from having to confront what those of us talking about the phenomenon are actually saying.

#jewish #atheism #culturally christian #jumblr #a s fischer original

[jewishvitya]

Something really annoying about culturally Christian atheists, and especially antitheists, is that they'll talk about atheists like we're a whole category they can speak for.

You're not speaking as an atheist, you're speaking as an atheist with a Christian background. You don't speak for me. I don't believe in a god, I lost a lot over this, but I'm Jewish and nothing you say about atheists applies to me. You act like you're the default human. That's why we use the term "culturally Christian." You're not the default, your background and culture don't get erased when you stop believing in the religion.

And often you don't believe in their god, but you kept their mindset - especially the persecution complex.

#riki babbles #culturally christian #jewish things

[hindahoney]

I've seen the cultural Xtianity discourse for so long so often I'm sick of seeing it. Because it's the same thing over and over. Jews being like "hey recognize that some atheists are still culturally christian and this still harms us" and atheists being like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW DARE YOU CALL ME BY MY OPPRESSORS I HATE ALL RELIGIONS AND JUST FOR YOU SAYING THAT I HATE JEWS NOW"

#judaism #jumblr #jewish #frumblr #antisemitism #jewish history #oyim at the goyim #fucking hell #culturally christian #cultural christianity

[disabledunitypunk]

Screenshot below:

[Image ID: A tumblr post with the username cut off which reads "i mean this in the gentlest way possible: you need to eat vegetables. you need to become comfortable with doing so. i do not care if you are a picky eater because of autism (hi, i used to be this person!), you need to find at least some vegetables you can eat. find a different way to prepare them. chances are you would like a vegetable you hate if you prepared it in a stew or roasted it with seasoning or included it as an ingredient in a recipe. just. please start eating better. potatoes and corn are not sufficient vegetables for a healthy diet." /end ID]

No. Just no.

You don't HAVE TO do anything. ARFID is called an EATING DISORDER for a reason. What's it going to take to get it through your heads that some people cannot, under ANY circumstances, eat certain foods because of their neuroDISABILITIES. It's almost like disabilities of the brain can still make you NOT ABLE to do things!

You also have no moral obligation to be healthy. Healthism is one of the fundamental pillars of ableism. Health is a personal choice that must be fully, enthusiastically consensual (which does not mean you can mumble-grumble about the steps it takes to get there or have complex feelings that include resentment about the process or what caused the unhealthiness in the first place).

The "hi, I used to be this person!" is, get this, ALSO ABLEISM. Like good job, you had the ability to do something with effort that some people with your same disability can never do! Something that, might I add, you had no obligation to do but chose to because YOU either wanted it or were unfairly pressured to. Plus, the narrative of "you can overcome your disabilities if you try hard enough" is incredibly insidious even in disabled communities (in my experience, especially so in neurodivergent communities, but I'll also add my experiences aren't universal).

Just, everything about this post reeks of ableism. A "hey, if you're wanting to eat more veggies but can't because of sensory issues, these ways of preparing them might make them edible for you!" would have reached MORE people and accomplished more than... all of that.

I'd also like to add: healthism is how you get involuntary psychiatric holds for even people who are self-harming or using substances as a form of harm reduction. Healthism is how you get psychiatric and medical abuse that forces or manipulates you onto meds you do consent to being on (including coerced consent, as that is not consent).

Healthism and ableism both is why insurances and doctors require you to go to physical therapy to "get better" before even considering prescribing a mobility aid because "what if the mobility aid has health consequences when PT could 'fix' you?" Healthism is responsible for "do no harm" stopping at bodily harm and not taking a holistic, whole-person approach to making sure disabled people have a good quality of life.

Healthism is also a primary driver of fatphobia and to a lesser extent, medical intersexism. There is a normative idea of what "health" even is, one that is often incorrect and based in bigotry, that means deviations from that norm get blamed for any symptoms a person expresses while actual causes are ignored. "Corrective" measures are forced are many people who neither want nor need them to be healthy.

Healthism aims to make people more abled (or at least more able to conform to abled standards) without regard for their quality of life, personal wishes, or even consent. It is directly responsible for medical abuse.

It is also responsible for medical neglect, in that if you *can't* pursue a treatment option, doctors will often refuse to explore other treatments. Instead, they assume you're simply lazy and don't want to get better, and are therefore a waste of their time.

("Can't" here includes 'is technically possible but the consequences of doing so make you as sick or sicker/in as much or more pain/as or more disabled than not doing anything at all.)

Often there's another treatment option that would work just fine. Sometimes there's no viable option, and GOOD treatment then becomes exploring how to still live as fulfilling a life as possible with the condition untreated. Sometimes it's only possible to manage a disability that is usually fully possible to send into remission. There's a wide spectrum of experiences here.

But the most important thing is: what do YOU want for your body? Will conforming to standards of "health" help you feel happier and live a more preferable life for you? Will the requirements in the process of becoming "healthy" end up just making you sicker or more disabled in one way or another?

Also, are there access barriers or direct obstacles caused by your disability in the way of seeking the health outcomes you want? Are those outcomes not possible because of your disabilities, and if so, is healthy OR helpful to keep pushing yourself past your limits or trying and failing to do so? Have you made sure this is what YOU want, and not what you feel pressured into doing*?

*(Reminder to BELIEVE PEOPLE if they say it is what they want. We respect autonomy above all here.)

I've talked about this before, but recovery is about what YOU want and are able to do. There are no milestones you have to make or requirements you have to meet. It's okay to be unhealthy. Often, disability means you don't have a choice in the matter, and moralizing health is therefore moralizing disability.

It contributes to the myth that disability and chronic illness especially is a result of "bad choices", and especially the culturally christian idea that it is a "punishment" for "sinful behaviors" and "righteous behaviors" will be rewarded with the person becoming abled again.

As I said above, remember: Autonomy above all. What matters, first, foremost, and forever, is what each disabled individual wants. Helping other disabled people with tools to reach their desired bodily and psychiatric outcomes? Yes!! Do that!!

Disabled people don't owe anyone health, though, and certainly not standards of health that may make us sicker or more disabled than simply not conforming to them.

#ableism #healthism #intersexism #fatphobia #disability #culturally christian #recovery #neurodisability #eating disorder #ARFID #just another reminder that if YOU want to recover and be healthier we FULLY support you #this is about respecting people's autonomy and not moralizing or forcing 'health' on anyone #I also would welcome commentary on how healthism interacts with medical racism as that's not something I have experience with #cw medical abuse #cw psych abuse #cw medical neglect #cw self harm #cw substance use

[thejewitches]

The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was one of 20th-century America’s greatest political inventions.

Read the Article

#jewish #judaism #jumblr #judeochristian #judeo-christian #christian #culturally christian

[hadeantaiga]

there are literally laws on the books in some states that atheists can't hold office but whatever dude

Yeah, and you can't kill Bigfoot in Washington. A weird law is meaningless if it's not enforced, and those laws are not enforced, because guess what?

Atheists are not systemically oppressed in the USA.

Meanwhile, lemme count up the number of Islamophobic hate crimes in the USA since 9/11...

(And yes - I'm atheist too, I'm just not a whiny baby desperate to feel oppressed for some reason)

#annoying atheists #ex-christian atheists #american atheists #culturally christian #culturally christian atheists

[embervoices]

May your holy season be bright, peaceful, and loving, whoever you share it with, whatever you celebrate!

Tonight my household has the Advent altar lit, and I have given extra candles to my gods on the Community Well Being altar:

#interfaith #ritual #Advent #Spell #Prayer #christopagan #culturally christian #religiously pagan #yuletide #christmas #solstice #yule #candles #altars #love #peace #light #winter

[atheostic]

@tgirlsaintlawrence "With love and respect" my ass. What a totally Christian move to say you're basically "speaking truth in love" while being an asshole out of nowhere for no reason.

If your response to someone sharing something unrelated in a friendly manner is to call Indigenous people culturally Christian (without knowing anything about them) simply because they pointed out in an unrelated post that Jewish people aren't the only ones who have generational genocide trauma (because someone was claiming that only Jewish generational trauma is valid) you're a bigot and not worth talking to anyway.

#hypocrisy #culturally christian #bigotry #racism #religion

[date-a-jew-suggestions]

For a lot of ex Christians (especially queer ex Christians) their reasons for leaving the church have a lot to do with religious trauma. I empathize with this, because even though my religious community has never been a source of homophobia or transphobia for me personally, I know how it feels to be ostracized by people you care about on the basis of being gay and trans. And I think you have every right to be angry about the trauma you went through, but you have to realize that not all religions are like the one you left. Christianity operates differently than Judaism, which operates differently than Islam, and so on. There are overlaps but no two religions are identical, and none have the stranglehold over our culture that Christianity does.

For many people religion is an identity they are marginalized and targeted for, and putting your religious trauma over our right to experience and discuss our religion and culture is not okay. Doing work to understand that Christianity is only one of many, many religions and that they all operate differently and on different cultural practices and beliefs is something you have to do before you can engage in conversations about non Christian religions.

I’m never going to tell people how/when they have to work through their trauma, but if you are still struggling to see the differences between christianity and marginalized religious groups, you should just avoid conversations about marginalized religious groups for the time being.

#please reblog this if it makes sense #i hope it does #jumblr #culturally Christian #ex christian

[spacelazarwolf]

culturally christian atheists: wow christianity is so dumb who would believe this garbage it’s so antiquated and ridiculous and easily debunked

also culturally christian atheists: *literally falls for early christian antisemitic propaganda*

#jewish #jumblr #culturally christian

[samwisethewitch]

Let's Talk About Religious Appropriation and Christianity

In my previous post, I talked about why religious appropriation matters and why it genuinely impacts pagan communities when culturally Christian authors take our gods out of context. Now I wanna talk about why it doesn't go the other way.

Religious appropriation is when someone from a dominant religious group misuses symbols or practices from a marginalized religion. (Reminder: marginalized means an identity or group is treated as insignificant or pushed to the periphery.) There is an element of power imbalance to appropriation.

In the United States, where I live, Christianity is the dominant religious group. Even Americans who are not practicing Christians themselves are culturally Christian -- they were raised in a culture where Christianity is assumed to be the default. In other parts of the world, the dominant religion may be another faith like Buddhism, Islam, or something else. I will be talking about Christianity in this post because that's my experience, but just remember that this isn't about theology so much as social influence.

Someone living in a culturally Christian society might use Christian symbols or elements in their art for a lot of different reasons. It might be a sincere expression of faith because the artist is a Christian (see: C.S. Lewis). The artist might use Christian symbols because they are widely known and will be easily recognized by their audience (see: It's a Wonderful Life). The artist might use Christian symbols outside of their original context or in a subversion of that context to create comedy (see: Dogma by Kevin Smith) or horror (see: Rosemary's Baby). And finally, they might use those symbols as a critique or satire of organized Christianity (see: Children of the Corn).

In any of those cases, it's highly unlikely that the depiction in this media property is going to overshadow actual Christian practices. Christianity is one of the most widely practiced religions in the world. There are over 2 billion Christians globally. 63% of Americans identify as Christians. (And that number is at an all time low! In older generations, it's higher!) And because of the built-in hierarchy of Christianity, there are designated spokespeople who can speak up to set the record straight.

For a real life example of this, let's think about The Da Vinci Code. For those who don't know, The Da Vinci Code is a thriller novel written by Dan Brown. A major plot point in the story is the reveal that Jesus Christ had sex and fathered children with Mary Magdalene, which is considered a heresy by most Christians. The Catholic Church specifically had a huge negative reaction to Dan Brown writing about them spending 2,000+ years intentionally covering up the fact that Jesus fucked.

And The Da Vinci Code had a HUGE impact on pop culture. The book has sold over 80 million copies in 44 languages. The movie stars huge actors like Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellan and was the second-highest grossing film of 2006. The massive protests drew even more media attention. This story was a very big deal for a couple of years.

And yet, most people in America and other culturally Christian countries still know that, in Christian lore, Jesus died without marrying or fathering children. Even people who have read The Da Vinci Code or seen the movie can usually recognize that the whole Mary Magdalene thing is fiction. Even if someone did come away thinking Jesus getting it on with Mary Magdalene was historical fact, they're likely to encounter other media at some point that will depict Jesus as unmarried.

More people do not believe Jesus fucked because of The Da Vinci Code. It has not significantly changed popular perceptions of Christianity, or even of Catholicism. This is because Christianity, and specifically the Catholic Church, are huge institutions with both the power and the platform to set the record straight.

Marginalized religions do not have that kind of power or platform, which is why religious appropriation is a much bigger deal for us. In general, you can't appropriate something from a dominant cultural group.

#long post #religious appropriation #cultural appropriation #christianity #culturally christian #media studies #media analysis #the da vinci code #pop culture paganism #witchblr #paganblr

[sapphiconoclast]

I still don't really "get" the discourse around the term "culturally christian". like I don't understand what the term adds to the conversation about christianity and other religions. call me crazy but I feel like it's possible to say "many aspects of western life have been sculpted by christianity, and you, as a product of western society, have been heavily influenced in how you think and feel about the world around you by christianity" without using such a loaded term. I thought "don't use labels for people they're not comfortable with" was something we understood around here

#culturally christian #would love to engage in a meaningful conversation about this with someone just because I've been hatescrolling the tag for it #and scratching my head for a hot minute

[hartsnkises]

...Not that I really want to throw my own thoughts in the ring about cultural Christian discourse, but maybe it would be better if we focused less on the need to unlearn biases and behaviours and more on acknowledging that Christianity has a culture as well as a religion.

Like, yeah! It's important and useful to talk about how certain ideas about, for example, the work ethic are Christian in origin but it's also important to say things like "you celebrate Christmas because it's an important part of your culture. We need a term to be able to talk about stuff like that because it's worth discussing!"

I dunno. I just feel like we'd actually be able to talk if we focused on the idea that nothing is "neutral" instead of the idea that people can never unlearn enough bad things

#culturally christian #discorse

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Sympathy for the Grinch

I've not celebrated Christmas with another person since 2006 (? -ish?). And with each passing year, I miss it less and less.

And the more I learn about the origins of Christmas traditions, the more I see how much antisemitism is baked into the formation of Christianity as a separate religion, and that tarnishes the tinsel, so to speak.

I'm still here for celebrating for celebration's sake. But I cannot completely separate the cultural iconography of Christmas with Christian theology, and that makes it less fun.

#Christmas #culturally christian #hegemony #history of Christianity