I've been seeing this more and more recently, so I'm curious what you all think about this.

Feel free to include in the tags why you voted a particular way.

Hey there I have a question: do you think the boys would like celebrate any holidays or birthdays with each other? And if they did what would they do?

Good question! And one I've considered as well!

I think it's different for all of them, including Michael and even Star. It also largely depends on three things - how much they individually care, how old they are, and what exactly the holiday/event means to them. (Under readmore due to length lmao sorry -_-")

David: Turned in the early 1870s - The biggest holiday for him would likely be Christmas as he was some denomination of Christian (though if you asked him, he'd say with a roll of his eyes that he'd be in Hell purely for how little he actually attended church when he was alive). The custom of Halloween came over from Ireland and started to comebine with other fall celebrations into the fetus that would become what we today know as Halloween in about the 1840s with the immigrants coming from the potato famine, and David's parents were children when they immigrated, so he'd have some idea of that.

I think he still likes the idea of the holidays, but it's hit or miss whether he celebrates them any more. In a lot of ways, he sees them as a very human thing, and though he can still see the spirit of celebrating or commemorating the passage of time, certain points of the year like Equinoxes or Solstices (times of power), he may not do anything particularly special.

He also doesn't celebrate his birthday for similar reasons. He keeps a memory of it, but...any more, it's just to add another tally mark on the wall of his mind to count the years, the decades he's been alive.

Dwayne: Turned in 1900 - Dwayne doesn't tend to enjoy European holidays. Most of them are pretty well tied with religion, and given his history, and his outlook on most of humanity, he tends to avoid much of anything to do with them. Even if he was human, I think the sheer commercialism would drive him batshit up the belfry. And really, it's not limited to Christian celebrations either - the new age witchy stuff with Samhain, Yule, the Eight Major Wiccan holidays; even eastern religious stuff tends to put him off (though that's more for lack of familiarity and the similarities he sees in white people adopting the language of eastern philosophy but not actually understanding it feels much, MUCH too close to home.)

Dwayne will enjoy drinks at a party, but he won't really stick around for anything more. If you want to give him a gift or something, fine, but don't expect one back.

This attitude doesn't really change when Laddie comes into the picture, but Dwayne doesn't want to make him sad, so he lets the kid have fun with the others.

Dwayne does not know his birthday. I am unsure what cultural practices the Haida people of the western coast of Canada had in regards to birthdays or something akin to it, so I cannot write that for him, but regardless, because of what happened to him, Dwayne does not remember even what time of year his birthday was in. He counts the years like David does though, and just marks it at January 1st for convenience's sake.

Paul: Turned in 1956 - Paul does enjoy most of what we consider to be modern holidays! Paul came from a pretty religious family, mainline Protestant (his father was a pastor of their church), so he definitely celebrated the big ones, like Christmas and Easter. Now. Whether or not he liked them.....well. He likes them here and now. Paul enjoys candy, sweets of most kinds but especially candy. He likes the way the seasons bring different flavors with them - peppermint in winter even on the sunny west coast, chocolate at Halloween, popsicles in the sticky summer, and more recently - yes, he's that bitch - pumpkin spice in the fall. Oh, and drinking. Paul mainly celebrates with lots of indulgences of many kinds, and is always down for a party no matter what it is you're having it for.

Sometimes, though, you CAN catch him in an off moment, usually right after the holidays, or during ones like Easter or Christmas, where he won't. Really be in the mood. Paul doesn't 'come down' so to speak often, but when he does, he ends up hitting the proverbial floor of his emotions pretty hard. Sometimes, his past gets the better of him still, and seeing as his bane is being affected by holiness, it still hurts to pray, but that doesn't mean he won't do it - even if out of a sense of chasing the ghosts off his back.

Paul treats himself for his birthday, and when Marko came to the pack, of course he wanted to do something nice for Paul. Usually a little gift, or just saying 'whatever we do together tonight, happy birthday'. He keeps birthday trinkets from Marko especially close.

Marko: Turned 1980 - Marko is similar to Paul in a lot of respects. Even more modern, but oddly both more and less religious. We call Paul a 'good Protestant' and Marko a 'bad Catholic', and it's true. Marko's family did pretty much the whole nine yards, having come right over from Italy and then having their son. Marko's idea of holidays usually involved a lot of church, which wasn't...unfun? He had friends, but it wasn't ever the most exciting thing for a rambunctious kid to be doing. Marko likes summer and fall holidays the most, when it's basically just an excuse to eat a lot of food, drink and lot of drinks, and have fun.

He and Paul have a blast treating Laddie - they even went trick or treating with him the year that they had him, Marko having made Laddie a custom wolf mask and tail with a pelt that Dwayne had saved from a coyote. Star was. Well. She was impressed with the craftsmanship and didn't want to spoil Laddie's pure vibrating joy at the gift. She saved her complaints for later.

Marko isn't sure how he feels about his birthday to be honest. A part of him still wants to celebrate it, because that still makes logical sense to him. After having done it for the past 18 years of his life it feels more weird to stop than not. And. It's not really about the gifts, but being an only child (and a boy) he had a fair amount of attention poured onto him, but he feels...weird asking for that from the Boys, even if by all rights, they'd give him attention for a special day. Marko and Paul will share some pastries and drinks, maybe a body (or three) and Marko is satisfied. Sometimes he wonders if he will ever stop bothering, like David and Dwayne.

-

On the whole for the pack, holidays tend to be small affairs. Feasts Hunts, similar to the hunt shown in the movie are actually much rarer events, only occurring once and a while throughout the year. This is getting a little into oc and YCCM territory, but there is a coven of vampires called The Sarahs that the Boys end up meeting and becoming allies with, and they spend major holidays with them when they're invited.

Vampires have things they celebrate...sort of as a culture? They're not a monolith, and indeed, pretty isolated. A pack from just a state over will look totally different than another, and largely depends on what the members celebrate or decide to do.

Vampires tend to commemorate when they were turned more than when they were born, they celebrate Centennials (hundred year marks), they celebrate 'rainbow teeth' which is when they get old enough (usually older than about 200 or so) and their teeth start showing the opalescence of their bones and blood. They celebrate first kills, if it was consensual. They celebrate mateship.

Hi, thank you all so much for running this blog--I was hoping I could get your feedback on a Jewish MC. The crux of my question is whether I, a gentile, would be out of line depicting her experiencing internalized discrimination from her own father (who in my first draft was Catholic, but I think that will be changing to a TBD protestant denomination).

The backstory I have for her right now is that her mother is Jewish and places great value on the history and culture of being Jewish, but is not a particularly religious person. Her daughter refers to her as having sometimes attended events at a local reform synagogue and making note of the high holidays but she is, overall, not someone with strict religious observances of any kind, and for a long time she and her husband (raised Christian but deeply agnostic) raise their daughter on the idea that it's important to understand where she and her family come from but that how she ultimately pursues faith--whatever that faith may be--is up to her. Both parents introduce her to the stories and lessons they grew up with but don't pressure her to attend religious events, etc. unless she has a personal, independent interest in doing so. For the first 16 or so years of her life this is how she's raised and her family is stable and her parents seem deeply in love. So far beta readers from households with one Jewish and one Christian parent have told me this backstory seems fine to them, though I welcome any feedback you have, too.

What I'm most concerned about, though, is when she's a teen and her parents divorce. Right now I have the reason for their divorce as being that they fell out because her dad becomes a bit of a Christian zelot and becomes less and less respectful of his wife's religion and background as he gets deeper into this mindset. The reason he becomes like that is essentially that when 9/11 happens MCs mother, who grew up with the story of how her grandparents fled from the Soviet Union because of religious discrimination under Stalin, only narrowly managing to immigrate as far as the US before the breakout of WWII, powerfully empathizes with the people suffering from the horrible rise of Islamophobia we saw in 2001-2002. Her husband, on the other hand, does what I saw a lot of people in my family and community do and becomes increasingly religiously conservative as a reaction the percieved "threat" of the Islamic world. (This is all clearly identified in the book as his being in the wrong.) One of the ways this manifests is that he starts pressuring his daughter, the MC, to attend church services with him and become Christian. His rationale is that he just wants what's best for his daughter--to be "saved."

MC's mother has no tolerance for that crap, as she shouldn't, so they fight quite a bit going forward and eventually separate. Mom gets custody of the MC.

While her father never says anything openly antisemitic--implying those ideas but never stating them explicitly--he does respond to 16 yr. old MC basically asking him if he would still love her if she pursued her mom's faith by saying some bullshit along the lines of "well honey I just love you and want the best for you," as his answer. She never says to him that she's cutting him out, but after this moment she's never close to her father again and by the time the main narrative takes place 10 years later, she hasn't spoken to him since she was 21.

This backstory helps build a foundation for a lot of themes for the MC in terms of different ways alienation manifests in her life, how she trusts, and what we can and cannot forgive our parents for, so I like it from a narrative standpoint, but I would deeply appreciate your feedback on whether writing this kind of experience for a Jewish character is inappropriate for me to be doing. And, if not, do you have any suggestions on ways to modify this backstory, or would you recommend scrapping it entirely? Thank you so much.

Interfaith family broken up when Dad becomes a jerk and a bigot

A difficult situation definitely but I don’t have a problem with the setup. If this isn’t based on your own observations, it’s probably a good idea to get a beta reader with experience around bigots of the same stripe as Dad to make sure the awful stuff Dad says uses word choices and ideas that feel authentic. If that IS your experience I am so very sorry and I hope you have other wonderful people in your life to make up for it. 

--Shira This seems very well planned, and thought out. It's also very real, and will be an emotional read I'm sure. As long as your character isn't forced to give up her Jewishness because of her father, and provided that you are careful during fight scenes between the parents earlier in the work (to ensure that the mom doesn't end up seeming like the Shrill Jewish Woman stereotype), I think you are on solid ground. Good luck!

--Dierdra

Also, I just caught that you said "internalized discrimination" from her dad -- that's not what internalized discrimination means. Internalized discrimination is when someone is feeling negatively about their own group, because they've absorbed bigoted ideas from outside. Discrimination from someone who isn't yourself isn't called “internalized” even when it comes from someone as close as a parent. But that's just a little language correction.

--Shira

Oh no, this backstory is so sad! I hope your MC has a happy ending with some very mutually supportive relationships.

I agree that this shouldn't be a problem as long as you take care to avoid stereotypes on a more micro level in specific scenes. As for the overall idea, nothing jumping out at me. You've clearly put so much effort into creating a believable background for your character and its influence on her current psyche - that gives me confidence that you will write humanised characters rather than falling back on tropes!

Also, don't know if you knew this but something to note with interfaith families: if MC's mother is Jewish, she is a Jew in Jewish law. It doesn't matter what she believes or practises or how she was brought up. (I don't say this to invalidate patrilineal Jews or oppose anyone self-identifying the way they want, but just halachically. You should be aware that many more religious Jews will consider her that way.)

Good luck with your story! I would read this 😌

--Shoshi

Hi, I hope this isnt annoying to ask but w the old guard ive seen a lot of people mixing up catholic and christian when it comes to nicky. when by todays standards theyre not interchangeable as catholic is a specific strain of christianity. i was kinda under the impression the crusades were a purely catholic thing since the pope. is that right or were other christians involved??

Hmm. Just to be clear what you’re asking, are you wondering whether it’s a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when talking about this time period or describing Nicky’s faith? And/or asking for a basic religious primer on medieval Europe and the crusades more generally?

First, it’s not a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” as synonyms during the crusades, especially since a) Catholics are Christians, no matter what the militant Protestant reformers would like you to think, and b) until said Protestant reformation, they were the dominant and almost (but not quite) singular Christian denomination in Western Europe. Our source material for the period doesn’t describe the crusaders as “Catholics,” even if they were; they call them Christians or Franks. (Likewise, the word “Frank,” i.e. “French” was often used to describe Western European crusaders no matter which country they were from, since so many crusaders came from France and that was where the crusades were originally launched, at the council of Clermont in 1095.) To call them “Christians” points us to the fact that the crusades were viewed as a great pan-Christian enterprise, even if the reality was more complicated, and nobody would need to specify “Catholic,” because that was implicit.

In short, medieval Europe had two major strands of Christianity, which developed out of the centuries of arguments over heresy, the contents of the biblical canon, the nature and/or divinity of Christ, their relationship to Judaism, paganism, and other religions of late antiquity, and so forth. Eventually these two competing branches took on geographical, cultural, and linguistic associations: Western (Latin) Catholic Christianity, and Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism in 1054 split these two rites formally apart, though both of them had at least some thought that the internal divisions in Christianity should be healed and dialogue has continued intermittently even up to the present day (though they’re still not actually reconciled and this seems highly unlikely to ever happen.)

The head of Western Catholic Christianity was (and is) the Pope of Rome, and the head of Eastern Orthodox Christianity was (and is) the Patriarch of Constantinople. Both of these branches of Christianity were involved in launching the crusades. To make a long story short, the Byzantine (Greek) Emperor, Alexios Komnenos, appealed to the Catholic (Latin) pope, Urban II, for help in defending the rights of eastern Christians, territorial incursions against Greek possessions by the Muslims of the Holy Land and North Africa, and the city of Constantinople (and Jerusalem) itself. So although the actual French and Western European participants in the crusades were Catholic, they (originally, at least) joined up with the intention of helping out their Orthodox brethren in the East and “liberating” Jerusalem from the so-called tyranny of Islam. To this end, the accounts of the council of Clermont focused heavily on the brotherhood of western and eastern Christians and the alleged terrible treatment of these Christians by the ruling Islamic caliphate in Jerusalem. At that time, that was the Isma’ili Shia Muslim Fatimids (who had replaced the Sunni Muslim Abbasids in the early 10th century -- there are many names and many dynasties, but yes.)

However, despite this ecumenical start, relations between Western and Eastern Christians started to go bad very quickly over the course of the crusades, indeed within a few short years of Clermont. Alexios Komnenos wanted the crusade leaders to swear loyalty to him and pledge to return formerly Byzantine lands that might be recaptured from the Muslims, and the crusade leaders did not want to do this. There were deep cultural, linguistic, religious, social, and political differences between Greek and Latin Christians, even if they were both technically Christians, and these caused the obvious problems. The Greeks were obviously located in a different part of the world and had a different relationship with their Islamic neighbors (they fought them often, but also traded with them and established diplomatic ties) and this caused constant friction during the crusades, since the Westerners always suspected (not entirely wrongly) that the Greeks were secretly in league with the Turks. Albert of Aachen, writing his Historia Ierosolimitana in the early 12th century, referred to “wicked Christians, that is to say Greeks,” and our primary source for the Second Crusade (1145--49) is Odo of Deuil and his De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem (Journey of Louis VII to the East.) He spent the entire time grousing about “treacherous Greeks” and blaming them for the crusade’s struggles (though the Second Crusade pretty much sabotaged itself and didn’t need any outside force to blame for its failure). There was some truth to this accusation, since Byzantium was then engaged in a war against Sicily (Louis VII’s ally, though it had its own connections to Muslim culture and indeed had been Muslim before the Normans conquered it in 1061). The Greeks had thus been working with the Muslims to undercut the invasion of Western Europeans into this contested territory, and this was not forgotten or forgiven.

The best-known example of Western-Eastern relations during the crusades going catastrophically awry is in 1204, at the sack of Constantinople as the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Basically: the crusaders were deeply in debt to the Venetians and had already attacked the Catholic city of Zara (Zadar in Croatia) in hopes of getting some money back, then got involved in the messy politics of the Byzantine succession, went to Constantinople, and eventually outright attacked it, sacked and destroyed the city, and raped and slaughtered its inhabitants. This obviously poisoned the well all but permanently between Latin and Greek Christians (frankly, in my opinion, it’s one of the worst tragedies of history) and Constantinople never regained its former wealth and pre-eminence. It declined until it was captured in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II, and has been an Islamic city ever since. (It was renamed Istanbul in 1923, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the “founding father” of modern Turkey.) Obviously, Latin and Greek Christianity still had to work with each other somehow, but the crusades were actually the single biggest factor in driving the two branches further apart, rather than reconciling them.

The words “catholic” and “orthodox” both have connotations of universality, overall correctness, and all-encompassing truth claims. Therefore, in some sense, to a Catholic Christian or an Orthodox Christian, defining themselves as such, with both words, is repetitious; they are Catholic/Orthodox and therefore the correct sort of Christian (even if their theological opponents would disagree). However, historians obviously do use that convention to distinguish them, since the identity is important, and makes a big difference as to what religious landscape an individual is living in. As for heresy, it was an equally complicated subject. Numerous “heretical” (i.e. not mainstream Catholic Christianity) Christian sects existed in Europe for this entire period, most notably the Cathars. (They got their own crusade launched against them, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209--29 in southern France.) The lines between heresy and orthodoxy (small-o orthodoxy meaning in this case, confusingly, Catholic Christianity) could often be blurred, and religious practices were syncretic and constantly influenced each other. A big problem in the Albigensian Crusade was identifying who the heretics actually were; they looked like their Catholic neighbors, they lived in community with them, their friends and family members were Cathar and Catholic alike, both rites were practiced, and plenty of towns were just fine with this hybrid arrangement. Hence it was not as simple as just pointing and going “get those guys,” and indeed, one of the leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, when asked by a knight how to tell them apart, advocated to just kill them all and God would know who the good Catholics were. Welp.

Northern and eastern Europe also remained pagan relatively late into the medieval era (into the 10th and 11th centuries) and the Northern and Baltic Crusades were launched with the aim of converting them to Catholic Christianity. (You will notice that the crusades have a complicated history as both a vehicle of religious warfare and as an attempted theater of conversion.) Heresy was a constant preoccupation of the Catholic popes, especially Innocent III (the progenitor of the Fourth, Albigensian, and Fifth Crusades). Especially in the thirteenth century, splinter religious groups and localized sects of “heresy” were popping up like crazy, and it was a constant point of contention as to how to deal with them, i.e. by force, persuasion, reconciliation, dialogue, etc. No, the medieval Catholic church was not the stereotyped instrument of fear, oppression, and tyranny, and could never enforce its views universally on all of western Europe. Church attendance on the parish level could be so low that in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent issued an order requiring Christians to take communion at least once a year. So yes. The standard was very far from “everyone believed Catholicism fervently at all times and if they didn’t, they were immediately punished/burned alive.” The idea of burning heretics at the stake wasn’t even introduced until the early fifteenth century, and even then, it required an often-months-long formal church trial and wasn’t just something that the local village priest could hand out on a whim.

There were also monastic orders, and these (at least in Western Europe) were therefore Catholic, but they had different ways of practicing it and what their orders emphasized. The most common order were Benedictines (founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict), who adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which is still the basis for the following monastic orders. There were also the Cluniacs (founded in 10th-century France at Cluny Abbey) and the Cistercians (founded as rivals to the Cluniacs at the end of the 11th century, also in France). In terms of the crusades, the Cistercians were by far the most involved with/zealously supportive of them (Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian) and took part in directly financing, preaching, and launching the Second, Fourth, and Albigensian Crusades alike. The better-known monastic orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, weren’t founded until the thirteenth century, on the tail end of the crusades, and didn’t take much direct part in them. The Dominican inquisition, however, took over the business of dealing with the Cathars after the Albigensian Crusade petered out, and their concern was often with heresy thereafter.

Anyway. This has gotten long, as per usual. But I hope this gives you some introductory sense of the religious landscape of medieval Europe, the divisions within Christianity, and the fact that it’s entirely accurate to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when discussing Nicky’s crusades-era faith and counterparts. The crusaders themselves did not specify themselves as being Catholic, and the crusades were (at least initially) viewed as a pan-Christian movement, even if eventually fatal tensions with Orthodox Christians left a permanent scar. The idea of identifying the precise denomination of Christianity is also another Protestant Reformation-era innovation, and wasn’t, at least in this case, necessary to do.

WIP influences tag

thanks @kittensartswriting and @siarven for the tag! I think the rules are just that you ramble about a few influences for your WIPs so I’m going to do this for The Laoche Chronicles as a whole, including both Storge and the main trilogy that I really need to name. 

Life stuff! 

Sometimes (a lot of the times) reality is stranger than any fiction I could come up with, and so one of my favorite things to do is take scary and relevant irl situations and then recontextualize them in a fantasy world to get a different POV (and give the characters dealing with them a happy ending). For example in Storge: what would a world look like where sexism and racism don’t really exist, but there’s serious systematic oppression based on magic and religion? How does a healthy vs unhealthy family deal with a crisis? how does a society get so polarized? For Laoche: I was sitting in Calc AP my senior year listening to my friends complain about the upcoming test when someone said “I’d kill to get into X program” and my first thought was “hmm. what if?”

This sort of stuff is the driving force behind the themes in all of my stories. No matter how fantastical it gets, it’ll always have that relatable basis in reality to ground readers in the story.

This is going to get long so there’s more under the cut...

Mythology and religion:

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one given how many religions and variations on religions I worldbuild for this world but the way people understand the supernatural and approach concepts like faith and hope and a higher power fascinate me. Also a really weird thing that I’ve noticed reading modern literature as a devout Catholic (especially YA novels) is that it’s very commonly sterile and secular for some reason? I only realized this after going back to classics this year like Dracula and being surprised when characters write prayers into their diary entries. This shouldn’t have surprised me becasue that’s something I do, but after consuming so much modern media and then going back to it, I found myself weirdly missing how much faith was intrinsically baked into society back then, for better or for worse, because it adds a really interesting dimension to how characters view the world. 

which leads into my next point...

The Sword and Serpent Series by Taylor Marshall and pretty much anything Hannah Heath has ever written (names are links to their books)

I don’t actually like Christian fiction like 90% of the time. A lot of it is written by writers from different protestant denominations which is fine, but sometimes the theology has me going ????, or the genres are just not my thing, and regardless of the denomination it all runs the risk of being really really preachy. (sorry, Narnia, that means you too). These two writers are outliers and I want to be like them when I grow up. 

Hannah Heath is a scifi/fantasy/dystopian writer who actively goes out of her way to tell good stories that also happen to have a Christian theme so that they avoid that preacher pitfall, and her worldbuilding and prose are spectacular. She also tackles a lot of hard themes and is a huge disability advocate which is incredible! I haven’t read all of her works yet but I’m slowly working through them. Skys of Dripping Gold made me cry a few different times and it’s a novella. 

Sword and Serpent is a trilogy historical fiction retelling of the St. George and the Dragon that ALSO deals with the political climate the Roman empire in 333AD and it’s FANTASTIC. There are saint cameos everywhere and if you know their stories it’s really cool to spot them even if you don’t recognize their period-accurate names, and it does a great job of showing how much the underground church relied on each other to survive. The character arcs and dynamics are amazing, the way it blends mythos and reality is amazing, and my (unfairly underrated imo) confirmation saint, Catherine of Alexandria, is a main character in the 2nd book so what more could you want??

Rangers Apprentice by John Flanagan and The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

moreso for Laoche than Storge but these were my favorite book series in middle school when I first came up with the story and their general genre inspired a lot of what Laoche eventually would become. Grand adventures with epic final battles, a small band of heroes trying to save a kingdom becasue they have the knowledge of how, and earning the trust and help of other people through their heroic actions. Swords and magic and bows and knifes and cool capes/cloaks and horses and castles and all that good Fantastical Medieval Aesthetic stuff I absolutely ate up as a kid. Also Alexander’s mastery of voice with the different characters and Taran’s character arc and the platonic love and banter in RA  have me dying every time every time I reread them. Good quality fun all around

The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Didn’t influence me in time for Storge but now I’m rehauling everything in Laoche becasue I’m ~inspired~. I can’t speak to the extent to which it’ll influence me yet but I expect it’s going to be a LOT. Thanks Jana XD 

Honorable Mentions:

J.R.R. Tolkien because what list of influences for a Catholic high fantasy author would be complete without him? This explains itself I think

Avatar the Last Airbender and everything about the way it handles themes and characterization. Also self explanatory because it’s the best

So many??? people here on writeblr! I am so inspired by everyone who is brave enough to put their writing out there and I have read stuff on here that’s better than published books. It would take too long to name everyone, but just assume that if you’re reading this and you got this far in the post I mean you.

A lot of classic literature? Not a direct influence per se but the writing style is something I want to emulate. Some of my favorites are The Count of Monte Christo, Dracula, A Tale of Two Cities, Frankenstien (sans Victor’s incessant whining), The Divine Comedy, A BUNCH of scifi stuff by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells I loved in middle school and need to reread, and Little Women. 

movies and music should also probably go here but that’s a rant for a different day. I take more general vibes and aesthetics from those. 

Tagging (no pressure though!): @andiwriteunderthemoon @abalonetea @inkwell-attitude @zielenbloesem 

Can we please write more Jewish / Jewish & middle-eastern main characters in stories? As an Israeli Jew, I don’t see nearly enough representation for people like me!

(And I get why you may not want to write an Israeli mc, the Israeli government has and still makes very bad decisions. However, you can separate the character from the government!)

Anyways, here are my pointers for writing good Jewish characters main characters:

1. When picking a first name, please do your research on it! Generic baby-naming websites like nameberry.com will either give you names that don’t actually have Jewish origin or give you the false definition for what Jewish names mean. Instead, take names from the Torah (the Jewish bible) - you can make your own spin on these names if you want to! Or what I like to do is just search up “top baby names in Israel” and take names from there. 

2. When picking a last name, you’ll see many generic last names like “Cohen” and “Goldstein” and “Levy”. Try to avoid these three last names bc they’re super popular - there are so many other last names you can choose from! Just search up good Jewish last names. Also keep in mind that during the Holocaust, many Jews had to change their last names to appear more European/American. Many Jews also had their last names anglicised when coming through Ellis Island in the early 1900s, so that could be important too if your character is American. (A lot of Jews had family that experienced the Holocaust or that went through Ellis Island. Just make sure you do your research and know how to write that well. You can also message me if you need help!) It’s also totally fine to pick “normal” sounding last names - many Jews don’t have Jewish-sounding last names.

LITTLE TIP ABOUT NAMES: some Jews have a Jewish-sounding first name and a not-so-Jewish sounding last name, and vice versa. Some Jews may not have a Jewish-sounding name at all! (like me) If they’re mixed, you can feel free to pick whichever of the parents’ culture’s name you want, or give the mc a middle name or a combined last name!

3. Do your research on the Jewish holidays, what they mean, and when they take place! It’s likely that your mc will pass through at least one holiday during the timeline and celebrate it. Know what the holiday(s) celebrate/commemorate and how they’re celebrated. Different Jews have different ways of celebrating the holidays, but it’s always a variant of how the holiday is generally celebrated. Some types of food are staple during different holidays, so research which foods are typically eaten during which holidays (like chicken soup and matzahs are eaten on Passover, jelly donuts and latkes are eaten on Hannukah, etc)

- Let’s take Hannukah for example. This holiday celebrates the Jews breaking free from the Egyptians, who enslaved them. Every Jew lights a menorah, lighting one candle for each night. Some Jews will have a big dinner each night, some will have a small dinner, some will simply light the candles and say the prayers.

4. Research what denominations of Judaism there are and decide which one your mc is! Just like how there are Catholics and Protestants in Christianity, there are different types of Jews. The three main types are: Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Orthodox Jews follow the Torah strictly and are usually very traditional, while Reform Jews adapt Jewish beliefs to modern times and are considered more “progressive”. Conservative Jews are right in between Orthodox and Reform (and unlike the name, they’re not affiliated with any political belief). Each type has their own way of practicing Judaism so make sure to research all of them and their practices! 

- If you choose to have an Orthodox Jewish mc, there can be different sectors of Orthodox Jews (like Hasidic Jews, which are “ultra-orthodox”). Do extra research on Orthodox Jews. They have things like the way they dress and the way they practice Judaism that makes their practices so complex. Some speak Yiddish! The tv show ‘Unorthodox’ portrayed a Hasidic Jewish community in NYC, and while not entirely accurate, it gives you a good depiction of that community.

- Some Jews aren’t that religious, like me! I only go to synagogue for some holidays and only pray on the holidays. However, I embrace the culture! It’s totally okay to write semi-religious characters, but see which things are considered the most important and keep those in. For example: all the Jews I know, regardless of religiousness, celebrate the big holidays like Hannukah and Passover and Rosh Hashanah. I would consider myself a reform Jew. 

5. Try to steer away from Jewish stereotypes. Not all Jews are rich, work at banks, super intelligent, have big noses, run the media, or whatever else you've heard about us. Just like any other culture, we are complex people and don’t stick to the stereotypes (take any other culture and see if the stereotypes are applicable to every single person in the culture - the answer is probably no.) Just like any other mc, make your Jewish mc complex. 

6. Popular Jewish culture is so important! Regardless of religiousness, embracing Jewish culture is super important in in our religion. Because of all the things that Jews have gone through throughout history (ex; the Holocaust), there’s a whole lot of community! I find that a lot of Jews also have a similar taste in humour (or maybe it's just bc I’m around people who find the same things funny) and we all embrace our culture a lot!! Like have you seen how many important or popular figures are Jewish? There’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Andy Samberg, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. Although we often go through hardships like antisemitism, many of us like being Jewish and embrace it. 

7. Talking about antisemitism: all Jews have experienced antisemitism at least ONCE. I’ve had people make offensive jokes to my face and behind my back and countless more microaggressions (ex: “I wouldn’t have thought you were Jewish, your nose isn’t that big!”). Some Jews will hide their Star of David necklaces under their shirts while in public to avoid discrimination, some will even hide the fact that they’re Jewish to avoid discrimination. Antisemitism still exists and all Jews are affected by it! It’s not a perfect world, unfortunately. If you want to make your story super realistic, keep that in mind. And, try not to be antisemitic in your writing, obviously.

8. Not every Jew agrees with the Israeli government! Keep this in mind! I heavily criticize the Israeli government and I’m Israeli myself. But also keep in mind that Israel is still considered the Jewish Holy Land and it’s heavily important in Judaism. Jews will still visit Israel and for some, it’s a big deal when they first visit Israel. 

If you have any questions, use the ask section and I will answer asap! I might make a part two if enough people ask questions or if people are interested in writing Israeli characters. I hope this was helpful!

Luciferian Challenge: Day 12+13 (And 22)

A few of these prompts ended up being very similar in theme, so I’ve combined them into a bit of a long reply.

Dogma is something we throw about…that we reject it. Where do you think we may fall short as Luciferians/Satanists when it comes to dogma? Do you think dogma has a certain value?

I don’t think dogma has any value really, no, as I don’t like the idea of rules or ideas that cannot be questioned on principle. Even as a child, I took issue with blind obedience. My mother once called me downstairs, and I asked why, and my father got angry and said that I shouldn’t bother to ask why and just do it, and that even if one of them told me to jump out of a window they probably had a good reason for it.

That memory is seared into my brain and still irks me.

I do think rules themselves can be important, but when we speak of rejecting dogma it’s typically in the sense of it being some authoritative status quo that cannot be discussed or challenged. I think my example above is a good example of that, as petty as it may seem: that parents should be obeyed without question and with the assumption they have our best interests at heart.

I do not believe there’s room for that sort of attitude in an empathetic and respectful society, even towards children. Respecting their natural curiosity and teaching them about bodily autonomy is something I think can only be a net good. The only thing growing up in a strict household taught me, where there was little room for negotiation or challenging of the way things were, was how to be a decent liar.

It harmed me in far more ways than it helped instill any positive values, and while I would not want to belittle the experiences of anyone in a similar boat, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. There are some families where a dogmatic stance, whether based in politics or religion, can lead to the alienation or outright abandonment of LGBT youth, of young women who wish control over their own bodies, of those with views that differ from their parents’, or any other black sheep.

I feel like this question and my thoughts on it really go hand in hand with the next one, so I’m going to actually combine them into one post and make up the difference later.

Do you think it’s dogma or silly to say what Luciferianism/Satanism is not?

I do not think it’s dogmatic to say what Luciferianism or Satanism is or isn’t. The reason I’ve kept both labels in these two prompts, when I’ve removed them in every other post, is because I spent a lot of time in a mixed Luciferian and Satanist community during the beginning of my religious journey. Despite our differences, especially in the case of Atheist Satanism versus Theistic Luciferianism, I saw a great deal of overlap in a lot of the values/ideals, inspirations, and talking points. 

I think outlining those ideals and values is important to just… having a label. Words mean things. Religious affiliations and ideas mean things. Even saying you belong to or adhere to a school of thought typically has some manner of definition or parameters. While Luciferianism and Satanism can be incredibly diverse when it comes to the details of one’s ethics and morals, practices, views of the divinity or lack there of, and other suck points, there’s a good deal that does unite us that’s reflected in the archetypal figures our religions are named after. I also believe that certain aspects of what is seen as the Standard Luciferian should be weighed more or less heavily. For example, I don’t see my irritation with hostility towards Christianity as something that makes me less of a Luciferian.

However, I want to combine these two prompts with one more to round out my view of this topic. 

What do you disagree with Luciferians/Satanists most?

In the goddamn dogma they cling to and perpetuate while claiming to be adversarial to or enlightened above such ideas. It’s become almost a meaningless buzzword. It barely still looks like a real word to me anymore. This is honestly where my post goes completely off the rails into a mini essay, so it’s under the cut.

The idea that all “Abrahamic” religions should be treated as inherently harmful and oppressive is a bad take. 

That Christianity, Judaism, and Islam should even be lumped together when discussing such issues betrays a shallow understanding of these religions that’s been regurgitated from one person to another, typically through a culturally Christian lens.

The idea that “only LaVeyan Satanism should be called Satanism because nothing else that calls itself Satanism is actually Satanism” is exhausting, and I will fist fight Anton myself in hell.

The principles of Might Makes Right and Social Darwanism that some Satanists perpetuate is dumb and bad and wrong, sorry, that’s the only rebuttal I’m dignifying that school of thought with. Once again, I will be fist fighting Anton in hell.

And that’s to say nothing of the Satanists and Luciferians out there that regurgitate the same racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other assorted bigotries that they’ll condemn religions like Christanity for while perpetuating it with a coat of black paint. Because I have absolutely seen this first hand, both as an observer and as the target of it.

Like... I can’t speak on Islam at all, because I have very very limited experience with it from both a research and real life experience point of view, and thus I’m not comfortable making any claims. On the other hand, I do know that to list all the ways that Judaism is not a dogmatic religion would deserve its own post written by someone far more knowledgeable than me, and it somehow still gets lumped into the Problematic n’ Dogmatic category of AbRaHaMiC ReLiGiOnS. For that reason, in the case of Islam, I can’t help but wonder if the assumption that it’s also dogmatic comes from the harmful assumption that it’s a religion that’s strict to the point of harshness that a lot of people have.

Even in the case of Christianity, which I would argue (as someone who I’d say was raised within the church) is hands down the most seemingly dogmatic of the three (particularly in North America), this is just not universally true. If it was, there probably wouldn’t be so many branches and denominations, many of which cannot stand each other and think the rest are misguided at best and heretical at worst. This is something that’s even brought up in the Satanic Bible; I’ve read the miserable thing. Have you ever seen someone say “Christians and Catholics”? That’s a pretty loaded example of how much disagreement exists within the religion when an entire core branch of it is considered tangentially related.

Not to mention, I was raised Lutheran. That came about because a German Catholic got incredibly steamed at his own religion so he made a more boring different version of it. While the existence of dogma has led to these schisms, historically speaking, the end result has been a religion so varied that it’s hard to say what is and isn’t treated as inarguable law. If you don’t believe me, try talking to a Protestant pastor about the Seven Deadly Sins and see how far you get. I tried during confirmation class and got shut down immediately... but on the flip side, my church was pretty accepting of LGBT folks, which I think some people would claim Christianity is dogmatically against by default.

Is there dogmatic thinking within specific churches or branches or communities? Absolutely, I wouldn’t argue that. I think it can arise in any community, religious or not, but that some religious communities seem to be particularly vulnerable to it. But the harm those specific cases could do should be where our focus goes, not the condemnation of these religions or the concept of religion as a whole, which I touched on in a previous prompt. 

I’m not some glorious enlightened mind. I would not want to give the impression that I think I hold in my hands the One True Way to do Luciferianism, or that I think the majority of this religious community are uncritical edgelords. This is, after all, my answer to the thing I take issue with the most, not my thoughts on Luciferianism or Satanism as a whole. I just don’t think it should be a particularly hot take that Religious Discrimination Is Bad Actually, or that maybe you can be rebellious and adversarial and hedonistic and enlightened while still genuinely giving a shit about people. Because otherwise what’s the point?

If we are hostile and rebellious with no actual end goal, no greater cause or purpose, we are simply being contrarian for the sake of it. If we blame the idea of organized religion instead of those who manipulate and abuse faith and scripture for selfish and malicious ends, we’ve missed the point, as I said in the aforementioned previous post. Not all of us have the ability to become an activist, obviously, and I would not ask you to. But I think as those who would claim to reject dogmatic thinking and strive to embody either the ideals of enlightenment or the adversary would do well to be ever questioning their preconceptions of the world around them, of other religions, and of less obvious unjust structures of power.

I don’t know why a community that believes in illumination and free thinking sees the world in such black and white ways.

While I will always strive for a greater understanding of the world, and I hold the concept of enlightenment very dear to my heart, I think it’s something that one spends a lifetime working towards. Alongside my favourite quotes from Paradise Lost, I hold the Socratic Paradox of “I know that I know nothing” as a personal motto, and I wish more people who I share this label with would do the same.

JUSTICE FOR JESUS — Misconceptions & Prejudices about the Faith in the Biblical Jesus Christ.

PART TWO: But why are Judaism and Christianity extremely different from one another, if they worship the same God?

The short answer is: Satan has infiltrated Christianity around 300 A.D. and turned it into something ENTIRELY else than God said, and Judaism developed to be an extremely religious system with 48942084 rules on top of the rules that YHWH originally established for Israel - like the food laws (which according to modern Science are for a very good reason and me personally, I try to eat as „kosher“ as I can as well because I know God doesn‘t say ANYTHING just to show His dominance, He ALWAYS has 100% good reason to say things and usually all these things are in OUR best interest). Also, at some point Judaism had all the oral traditions of the Rabbis, and the Kabbalah, which is 100% mysticism and magic, when God makes abundantly clear from the VERY beginning that He HATES sorcery, witchcraft, divination, all kinds of occult secrets and arts; and He has all reason to do that. Which you will probably only understand if you watch this video series

I‘m going to adress „Christian Witches“ and „Christian Mystics“ for a second directly and I pray you would listen and REPENT because God makes it abundantly clear that you can not serve two Masters, there‘s no way you can be God‘s child and dabble in occult practices. The Bible says very clearly that everyone gets judged according to their knowledge. So, knowing the Truth about God and Jesus, you still decided to turn your back on Him and mock Him and His Truth („Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.“ — Galatians 6:7) - I really don‘t want to be in your shoes when Judgment Day comes. I understand that you have been hurt by the institutional church, that you needed „more“ than „this“ and that you thought Occultism would make you more „spiritual“ and more „fulfilled“; thousands of Christians have been hurt by the church and dabble in the New Age. But there‘s NO WAY that God will forgive you for being a CHRISTIAN WITCH. It‘s. Not. Possible.

The longer answer is: From the moment Jesus was crucified and was raised to life again by his Father, the Devil knew that he has literally NO POWER anymore. Satan has held humanity in chains since practically the beginning of time, because he had the keys to Sheol since Adam and Eve fell into a linear existence in Eden and would ultimately die, and every single descendant of them (to be more specific it is the Father who bequeathes the spiritual nature of a human, that‘s the whole point of Jesus having a human virgin mother and God Himself as His Father) would be under the curse of death, and when people are afraid to die someday, well, they do all kinds of ridiculous things. The only way Satan can accomplish his goals (of ruining every single person on the planet) is to discredit, confuse and alter the work that Jesus finished on Golgotha. So basically, He can‘t change that it‘s all done, but he can change the way we perceive Jesus; he can change the way we collectively think, behave, feel, act - to take us away from God and His Truth as far as possible; he can change the way how humans „interpret“ God and Jesus and what has been done for us, he can basically distort EVERYTHING, except the fact that it is DONE. He KNOWS there‘s not much time left for Him - because Satan is a diligent student of Bible prophecy and uses literally EVERY flawed translation, every piece that could slightly be misunderstood and develops WHOLE doctrines and denominations and cults of them; in some few cases he even managed to alter the text of the Bible entirely to create a doctrine, today the CORE doctrine of Christianity - without it, you can‘t be a pastor or preacher without getting extreme backlash and will be considered a Heretic or cult leader, and that „you would lead people astray“, and this doctrine will steal your salvation and 90% of all Christians don‘t even notice it, it‘s just so sad. And when you speak up against this doctrine, the Holy Christians suddenly become nasty and call you a Heretic, like? Yes, of course that is God‘s Holy Spirit dwelling within you, and not that counterfeit one from Satan (because Satan can disguise as an angel of Light if he needs to, he once WAS the most beautiful and glorious Angel in Heaven, but his pride and arrogance ruined his heart. So basically, YES, Lucifer‘s/Satan‘s powers are VERY real and VERY powerful, but he will NEVER be as amazing as Jesus, and he most certainly will NEVER be as amazing as God, who created him!)

Basically, when Satan knew that the brilliant plan of Salvation was accomplished when Jesus was raised alive again after His crucifixion, he tried his first attack: relentless persecution of the Apostolic Church from 31 A.D. until ~320 A.D. through both the Jews and the Romans. But Christianity EXPLODED to that time, because the Gospel was pure, the Apostles and Disciples were extremely effective and the body of believers was just amazing. Then, Satan noticed that the message of Salvation in Jesus spread so hard that there was no point in persecuting every single Christian, so his new strategy was to infiltrate it and morph it from within.

“From the first moment of his accession declaring himself the protector of the church...the first emperor who publicly professed and established the Christian religion...rendered Christianity the reigning religion of the Roman empire” The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, Vol 2 Chap 16, pg 138.

This was no other than the Roman Emperor Constantine who professed to be converted to Christianity in 323 A.D. himself, but his belief at best was a blend of paganism and Christianity for political purposes, to keep unity in his empire. This change of events was the reason why pagan and occult practices, traditions and beliefs from Ancient Babylon could infiltrate the true Gospel of Salvation, and sadly it‘s been like that EVER SINCE.

So basically, there‘s no reason at all why Christianity and Judaism should be THIS much of a difference. The faith should be the exact same with the only (major) difference, that one group accepts Jesus, the Son of God, and gains everlasting Life and the other group refuses to accept Jesus, and will not. But both groups have developed into something that God absolutely never wished for. Christians always feel like they are so high and mighty and yet they have NO IDEA that they will not make it to Heaven themselves, because they ALL teach, believe and practice doctrines and traditions (of men) that have NOTHING to do with the God of Israel and mock Him without even knowing it. God says in the Bible that people who diligently SEEK Him and who don‘t fall for man-made doctrines and traditions, THOSE people who overcome the world and overcome THINGS OF THIS WORLD with the magnificent power of Christ, will have Everlasting Life.

Satan raised up his own „Christian“ church through pagan Rome and when he made it big and strong enough, he went back to his first strategy: relentless persecution and execution of true Bible-believing Christians, which we all know as the years of Papal Supremacy or „the Dark Ages“ from 538 A.D. to 1798. And why was it dark? Because there was no spiritual light in the world: The Papacy has managed to destroy all of the ~500 different language translations of the Bible in that time, the common people had no access to the Word of God and the only language the Bible was available in was Latin, and most people could not read Latin. This was a truly dark time for humanity and believers in God. And then, thank God, the protestant Reformation started, the Bible got translated for the common people again, preachers stood up for the Truth of God‘s word, risked their own lives for spreading the true Gospel, got rid of a lot of the terrible blasphemy in those days, millions of true Bible-believing Christians got burned alive as Heretics and Witches, only because they wouldn‘t bow down to the Papal Church. 

Sadly, they as well, adopted an essential doctrine from the Roman Catholic Church and so now today, only people who are not indoctrinated by Religion and discover God, Jesus and the Bible for themselves, without Church, Pastors and Creeds, have the Truth of God. I remember at the beginning of my walk with Jesus, I‘ve thought I need to find a church congregation and attend church every Sunday and so I‘ve tried it once. My local Church is a VERY beautiful church on the inside and I was moved to tears just being there, but as soon as I listened to the sermon, felt the atmosphere and saw the other people in there, i just KNEW in my spirit that God is not present at ALL. It was very disappointing and so I never went to church again. Ever since then, I‘ve learned A TON and know exactly why I had felt this way. God truly is not in the institutional Church - how could He, when all churches belong to Satan?

Up until this day the Papacy, who claims to be the Mother of ALL churches, even the protestant and evangelical ones, says things like: „Let Judaizers be anathema!“ which means that people who practice Jewish traditions rather than Catholic traditions should be accursed (!) as if the Jesus that walked the Earth 2000 years ago was a Roman European and NOT A JEW, like..????. It‘s just bewildering what Satan has accomplished to make people stray away from God and His Son.

In case you ever wondered why „Christian“ Holidays, rituals and beliefs are so similar to the ones of Pagans, why monumental church buildings have been planted on ancient sacred pagan sites, why Christianity seems like a „high and holy“ version of Paganism - it was NOT God, it was NOT Jesus, it was NOT even the Bible, simply said: it was the Roman Catholic Church (Satan) and no one else. 98% of all things that Catholicism believes, teaches AND REQUIRES is absolute blasphemy when you take God‘s Word as the highest authority (which the Scriptures says we SHOULD do, lest we be deceived, nothing will ever contradict the Bible that is true and of God) yet Catholicism is the largest, most influental and most powerful Church; how? Because the Papacy developed something that is called „Papal Infallibility“ which enables them to literally be the scum of the Earth (if you think that I am being rude, please read the following picture carefully) without facing any repercussions!

Maybe it becomes more clear now why Christianity is utterly misunderstood, hated and judged. It was not Jesus Christ, it was „MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.“ — Revelation 17:5 .... and Christians today get confronted with, for example, the Crusades and how Christianity is the worst Religion in the world and they don’t even know how to answer because they never cared to investigate their own Faith! Every evil deed that has ever happened within “Christianity” was, in fact, the Roman Catholic Papal Church who belongs to Satan himself.

According to an Ex-Jesuit (special order of Roman Catholic Priests) whose whistleblowing testimony I‘ve posted a few posts back, the Opus Deii (who disguise themselves as „Christian Democracy“ like my country pretends to be) is an arm of the Jesuit Infiltration that is responsible for the Illuminati, the Masons, the New Age Movement, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, and many more; and all of them serve just one purpose: The total control and world domination of the Roman Catholic Church (Satan).

If you love Jesus and are a Catholic brother, PLEASE LEAVE IT BEHIND.

Thank God that He not only gave us our world, our existence, and his Son Jesus, but also the Bible, which tells us EXACTLY what is going to happen and who the Enemy is, when we make the effort to study, and keep Jesus close to our hearts.

It grieves my heart that God and Jesus are so misunderstood because of Satan‘s works and that millions, the majority of all humans that ever lived and all humans that live right now, in these last days of humanity, are all deceived and will perish. And to any other generation in the past I would have said „well.. at least you had an entire human life experience, if it made you happy, then so be it“, but this generation right now, is the one that will regret their decision the most because every person under 60 will not even be close to having an entire human life experience, nor will it be happy. The worst thing is that which is going to manifest until ~2025 will not even be worth considered as a whole „human life experience“. If you think that Covid-1984 was a tough year, buckle up, because from now on it‘s going to get worse and worse. 

I know I say this a lot but today I cried on my way back from the supermarket because it‘s just so devastating to see Prophecy unfolding right in front of my eyes and everyone is VAST ASLEEP. People STILL wonder why it was possible that Hitler (who, by the way, was a Catholic, not a true Christian like he claimed, no wonder he was deeply wrapped up in the Occult) rose to power, how it was possible that we Germans didn‘t notice and didn‘t do anything to stop him from the evil things he did, why we gave him power and authority ... One word: Propaganda. Germans back then were absolutely brainwashed, just like today, WE are being brainwashed globally. And I can PROMISE you 100% that you WON‘T like where our world is heading and everyone will cry „but how could this happen?“ just like they cried about Hitler.

I pray that God‘s chosen people wake up in time, that these posts can help someone to find Christ, see through the deceptions of this world and be set free from Satan‘s bondage. Life is so much more than what we think it is, and honestly, if you‘re like me; always craved for deeper connections, more support and more honest affection in your social circles but never received it, always felt like an alien to everyone else, never had anyone to talk to about meaningful things because everyone was just shallow, then please just maybe consider Jesus as your best friend, because HE LOVES YOU and you will never ever be lonely ever again and you will always, always feel loved and „at home“. Jesus is literally the BEST thing that has ever happened to me, and I truly tried to be happy in this world. You have NO IDEA what I‘ve experienced in my 30 years, I‘ve literally experienced ALL OF IT, and nothing has ever given me peace and love and sanity. Only Jesus. I will never exchange that ever again for nothing! And I wish this experience to literally everyone because it‘s the most beautiful thing ever.

TESTIMONIES

How I Know God is REAL... my encounter with Jesus

Atheist To Believer In Jesus Christ: How Jesus Cured My Eating Disorder

Ex-Muslim Conversion Story

Homosexuality Was My Identity

My Testimony for Jesus 2020- WEED, ALCOHOL, PORN, LUST, TOBACCO, PRETTY MUCH IT ALL! SET FREE!

THE EXACT TRUTH    BY STEVE FINNELL

If you were looking for the exact truth where would you look? Would you look in books written from oral man-made tradition? Would you look in the books of opinions aka, as Bible commentaries? Would you look in man-made creed books that voice their opinions as to the meaning of Scripture? Would look in books written about the Bible? Would you consult extra-Biblical books to learn God's truth?

The exact truth is found in Scripture and Scripture alone.

Luke 1:1-4......3 it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

Luke did not write down man-made traditions.

Mark 12:10 Have you not read this Scripture: 'THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDER REJECTED BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER STONE;

Jesus taught from Scripture. He did not teach from made-made tradition, oral nor written.

Matthew 12:5 Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?

Jesus did not asked the Pharisees if they had read in the man-made traditions of the elders.

Mark 12:24 Jesus said to them, "Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?

Jesus did not tell the Sadducees that they were mistaken because they did not understand the writings of the early church fathers.

John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, it is these that testify about Me,

Jesus did not say you search the man-made church catechism.

Matthew 26:54 How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?"

Jesus did not asked Peter how will the words of the Bible commentaries be fulfilled?

John 7:38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water!"

Jesus did not say as the books written about the Scripture said.

John 19:24 So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be"; this was to fulfill the Scripture: "They divided My outer garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots."

This did not happen in order to fulfill what was written in creed books.

Acts 8:35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from the Scripture he preached Jesus to him.

Philip did not open some extra-Biblical book and preach Jesus to the eunuch.

Romans 10:11 For the Scripture says, "WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."

It is not the church catechism, the Bible commentary, or any other extra-Biblical book that should be doing the talking. It is the Scripture that says.

Galatians 3:22 But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

There is no promise given because of man-made writings. It is the Scripture and the Scripture alone.

Acts 17:2 And according to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

Paul did not use the man-made church catechisms of the elders as a teaching tool.

1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching.

The apostle Paul did not tell Timothy to publicly read from a man-made creed book, Bible commentaries, church statements of faith, writings of the early church fathers, nor the denominational book of the month.  Paul said read from the Scripture. Did Paul, simply not understand that the Scriptures were not sufficient to teach the truth about God' plan for mankind?

Acts 18:28 for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

Apollos did not need nor did he use extra-Scriptural references to refute the Jews. He used the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone.

Acts 20:20-27 how I did not shrink from declaring to you  anything that was profitable,......27 For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.

The apostle Paul declared the whole purpose of God. The so-called modern day prophets. The ones who contend they are still receiving new revelations from God, and all other extra-Biblical creed book writers are in fact denying that Paul declared the whole purpose of God. Who are you going to believe?  

Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

The Scriptures give hope. Extra-Biblical writings give the opinions of men.

2 Peter 3:15-16 .... brother Paul , according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

The words and letters of Paul and the rest of the apostles were Scriptures. The words of man-made creed books, man-made church catechisms, Bible commentaries, books written by the gospel preacher of the month, writings of the early church fathers, Greek dictionaries and all other extra-Biblical writings are not Scriptures.

There has been no new Scripture since A.D 100 nor is there any need for more instruction from God. WE HAVE THE BIBLE.

THE BIBLE AND THE BIBLE ALONE IS WHERE YOU CAN FINED THE EXACT TRUTH!

(Scripture from: NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE)

    What's Going On In The World?

GEORGE L. FAULL

Antony Flew, world’s most respected atheist has changed his mind.  He is now an admitted deist (one who believes God created the world and went off and left it to run on its own with no revelation of His will to His creatures.).  The thing that convinced him was the design of DNA.  He reminded journalists that even Darwin required a creator to start it all.  He also says that the resurrection of Jesus has more evidential support than any other miracle.  His stumblingblock is the problem of evil in the world.  He regards Islam with horror and fear due to their desire to conquer the world.

Robert Schuller, of the Glass Cathedral.

Two of Schuller’s students are Bill Hybels and Rick Warren.  Schuller says we do wrong in making people aware that they are sinners.  He stresses mans value instead of mans unworthiness.  The boys have learned well.  Hybel, Warren, and Schuller have had more input in our Churches in the last 10 years than Paul or Peter.  Incidentally, Schuller said it would not disturb him to come back in 200 years and find his descendants Muslims.  That will never happen simply because he isn’t coming back.

Fuller Theological Seminary President speaks to Mormons.

In speaking to them in Salt Lake, Richard Moun apologized that evangelicals “have often misrepresented the faith and beliefs of the Latter Day Saints.  We evangelicals have sinned against you.”  Better think twice before you send your Preacher to a Fuller Church growth meeting.  Our preachers are attending in droves to Rick Warren, Jack Hayford and other such gurus  who espouse the Fuller attitude.  They invite in every hue of sectarianism to these Church growth meetings including Mormons.

TBN’s Paul CrouchThe charismatic Paul Crouch of TBN attempted to conceal the fact that he was gay by paying $425,000.00 to Laverne Ford who eventually exposed him.  Crouch also said, “I have come to the conviction that Martin Luther made a mistake, he should have never left the Catholic Church.  I am eradicating the word Protestant from my vocabulary.  I am not protesting anything.  It’s time for Catholics and Non-Catholics to come together as one in the spirit and one in the Lord.”  TBN is an apostate network that some of our men appear on for interviews.

Max Lucado

Max Lucado, the new darling of the North American Christian Convention, used to be a Church of Christ preacher.  In October, he changed the name of Oak Hills Church of Christ.  He dropped the “Church of Christ” name in an effort to reach people hesitant to attend a Church of Christ.  His Church jumped from 3,300 to 4,500 in 6 months.  At a Charismatic Promise Keepers rally he said, “It does not matter about your denomination, it’s all about God.”  Oak Hills has a booklet called, “

The Purpose of a Teaching Position

”.  It says,

“A teaching position serves to articulate the convictions of the Oak Hills leadership on a particular doctrine or practice.  This paper on the topic of baptism is useful for:

1.      

Those who have never been baptized.

 If you want to become a member of Oak Hills and have not been baptized, we ask you to do so.

2.      

Those who have been baptized

, but not by immersion.  We have many potential members who were baptized by sprinkling, usually as infants.  This paper will help you see why we baptize by immersion.  It also explains why we don’t baptize infants.  We urge you to read the paper and consider adult baptism.  If you choose not to be immersed at this time, we still welcome you as a member.  We ask only that you respect this position and not be divisive.  Members serving in instructional capacities (such as Bible class teachers, small group leaders, and ministry leaders, elders and staff ministers) need to be in agreement and compliance with the teaching position.

3.      

Those who have been baptized by immersion.

 It is our prayer that this study will give you new insights into the beauty, simplicity, and significance of this demonstration of devotion.

Open membership was the hottest debated issue in the Restoration Movement in the last century.  Today, the Brethren heading up our Colleges and conventions and camps have no conscience at all of bringing in apostates like Max Lucado, David Reagan and others of that persuasion.

Tony Compolo

They even bring in Tony Compolo, who even many denominational Churches will not use because of his stating that homosexuals were born that way.  He has socialist agendas.  He was brought to a heresy trial in 1985 for saying that Christ is in every human being. His wife promotes homosexual marriages.  He often uses vulgarisms in the pulpit to shock and shame his listeners.  His defense, “what’s worse, is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said [vulgarism] than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night!”  This was repeated at one of our schools.

John Hagee

John Hagee of TV fame believes that the spiritual gifts still continues today is getting a larger following.  He has raised thousands of dollars to move Jews to the Holy Land, uprooting Palestinian Christians in the process.  He believes Christians should have no duty to evangelize Jews since eventually.  “All Israel will be saved.”  He is a Christian Zionist.  He pals around with Benny Hinn and other Charismatic charlatans.  He is best known for his pushing of the Jewish agenda, thinking they have a spiritual relationship with God that will bring about their redemption without Christ but by living only in the light of the Torah.  He says,

“I’m not out to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith.”  He adds, “In fact, trying to convert Jews is a waste of time.  The Jewish person who has his roots in Judaism is not going to convert to Christianity.  There is no form of Christian evangelism that has failed so miserably as evangelizing the Jewish people.  They (already) have a faith structure.  Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha’i, needs to believe in Jesus.  But not Jews.  Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity”.

Hagee is renown for taking on anti-Semetics but he is in reality, the true anti-Semetic for he will not evangelize the Jew and give them what they need for eternal salvation.

Rick Warren

Rich Warren, of “The Purpose Driven Church”, and “The Purpose Driven Life” fame has changed the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ more than any fad for the past century due to gullibility of our preachers.  He has been fellowshipping with John Templeton of the John Templeton Foundation.  Templeton awards a million dollars to different persons who further the cause of harmonizing world religions.  These have been awarded Agnostics, Pantheists, Hindu’s, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews as well as Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, Bill Bright, and Mother Teresa.

Is Rick after such?

Who knows?  Having sold millions of books, he certainly does not need the money.  He is now one of the judges for a written essay contest that Templeton is holding.  He will serve as judge in the contest with renowned left-wing radicals.

TV Attention Deficit DisorderPortland (Oregon) Life found that for every hour per day preschoolers watch TV, then chance of developing attention deficit disorders later in life has boosted 10%.  This is an alarming fact.  You need more than control.  Abstinence may be easier than temperance.

Billy GrahamRobert Schuller asked Billy Graham this question, “Tell me, what do you think is the future of Christianity?”

Graham’s reply was:

“Well, Christianity and being a true believer you know, I think there’s the Body of Christ.  This comes from all the Christian groups around the world.  Outside the Christian groups, I think everybody who knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they’re members of the Body of Christ.  I don’t think that we’re going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole word to Christ at any time.  I think James answered that.  The Apostle James in the first council in Jerusalem, when he said that God’s purposes for this age is to call out a people for His name whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ, because they’ve been called by God.  They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and I think they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved, and that they are going to be in heaven with us”  (Billy Graham, televised interview with Robert Schuller, May 13, 1997).

In response to Graham’s totally unscriptural statement, Schuller explained, “What, what I hear you saying is that it’s possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life even if they’ve been born in darkness and never had an exposure to the Bible.  Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?”Graham answered, “Yes, it is because I believe that.  I’ve met people in various parts of the world in tribal situations, that they have never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, and never heard of Jesus, but they’ve believed in their hearts that there was a God, and they’ve tried to live a life that was quite apart from the surrounding community in which they lived.”  This was 1997.  But even as far back as 1961 Graham said of infant baptism,

“ I have some difficulty in accepting the indiscriminate baptism of infants without a careful regard as to whether the parents have any intention of fulfilling the promise they make.  But I do believe that something happens at the baptism of an infant, particularly if the parents are Christians and teach their children Christian truths from childhood.  We cannot fully understand the miracles of God, but I believe that a miracle can happen in these children so that they are regenerated, that is, made Christians, through infant baptism.  If you want to call that baptismal regeneration, that’s all right with me.”  

(Lutheran Standard October 10

th

, 1961)

Graham has for years turned over the names of those who came forward at his rallies to the Churches from which they came.  In 1957 Graham said, “Anyone who makes a decision at our meetings is seen later and referred to local clergymen, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.”  (San Francisco news)

Yet many of our top leaders in our own Churches appear with Graham and support his crusades...SHAME!

“KINSEY” Movie,

You need to know that Alfred Kinsey, the hero of the movie, was a pervert, pedophile, wife swapper, bi-sexual and the one who deceived America with his false

Kinsey Report

.  He is the one who made up the lie that 10% of Americans are homosexual.  He used for his own survey prison inmates and prostitutes.  He made his staff perform lewd sex acts on film.  He employed no trained statistician.  He himself should have been imprisoned as a pedophile.  The American Legislative Exchange Council (2400 State Legislators) recently concluded the

Kinsey Report

was “illegal and criminal acts masquerading as science.”  See proof of all this in a book by Judith Rusmar and another by Susan Brinkmann or contact the eagleforum.org website.

The above news information has been gleaned from

The Calvary Contender

,

The Sword of the Lord

,

O Timothy

,

Christian News

,

The Eagle Forum

, and

The Way of Life

magazines.  These groups do a great service in marking those who teach contrary to what the Christian has learned from the Holy Apostles.Posted by

S

INHERITED SIN, SIN NATURE, AND TOTALLY DEPRAVITY?  BY STEVE FINNELL

According to those who believe in the doctrine of original sin, because Adam sinned, all men are born guilty of sin, with a sin nature, and totally depraved, and void of free-will to do good or resist evil.

If all men are born guilty of sin, then the 57,000,000 million babies who have been killed by abortion are on their way to hell. Babies are babies before they are born. Unborn babies have no chance to believe and be baptized in order to be saved. The truth is babies are not guilty of Adam's sin. People who sin are guilty of sin. Adam was guilty of his sin. Men are not guilty of sin until they reach an age of accountability. Babies born nor babies unborn do not know right from wrong. They are not sinners.

Are all people born with a sinful nature and totally depraved? Do men have the ability to choose right from wrong?

Can men choose good and resist evil? Do men have free-will?

Luke 1:5-6 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.(NKJV)

If all people are born with a sin nature and are totally depraved, then how could Zacharias and Elizabeth be righteous and blameless before the Lord?

Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil.(NKJV)

How was it possible for Job to be blameless, upright, and resist evil, if he was born with a sin nature, totally depraved, and without free-will?

1 Kings 18:21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him." But the people answered him not a word.(NKJV)

Why did Elijah offer the people a choice to follow God or Baal if the all the people were born with a sin nature, totally depraved, and unable to choose between good and evil?

The truth is men do not inherit the guilt Adam's sin. Men are not born with a sin nature and totally depraved. Men have free-will.

        MAN-MADE CLIMATE?  BY STEVE FINNELL

Man-made climate control? Really?

Matthew 5:45 "that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.(NKJV)

Following the logic of  man-made climate change and global warming advocates, man-made CO2 emissions sends and prevents the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Satan is the great deceiver!  

PRO-CHOICE CHRISTIAN---REALLY? BY STEVE FINNELL

What is a pro-choice Christian? Their message is, "I am personally opposed to abortion, however, a women should have the right to kill her unborn baby." That is a self-contradiction. You can be against abortion or for abortion, but cannot have it both ways.

Can you imagine a person stating, "I am personally opposed to slavery, however, slave owners should have the right to choose." Who would be pro-choice concerning slavery?

What about being pro-choice on theft? Can you be personally against theft, but support a person's right to steal?

There are absolutes. There is right and wrong. There is no middle ground when it comes to sin.  

do you believe that Protestants are Christians/are saved? what are your religion's thoughts on the matter?

I would like to preface this by saying that this is a tricky question to answer. Not because I don't like Protestants, but because there is such a wide scope of belief that would come under the Protestant umbrella. For example, there are anti-Trinitarian Protestants, Protestants that don't baptise, and so on as well as Protestants who hold very closely to a lot of things that Catholics believe in also. Whether the Catholic Church recognises them as Christian, I'm not sure. It's very hard to encapsulate a wide range of views, and how these theological differences might present complications. For example, the Catholic Church does not consider those that aren't baptised with water in the name of the Trinity to be a valid Baptism. I've used the example of Baptism for a reason, but I'll come back to it in just a bit.

As Catholics, we believe the Catholic Church is the very Church that Jesus established. We believe that our current Bishops are successors to the Apostles. The Second Vatican Council teaches us that the Church Jesus established 'subsists in' the Catholic Church. The way that this might be understood is that everything Jesus intended for His Church to have is preserved in the Catholic Church. There might also be things that exist in the Catholic Church as it stands, that were not specifically intended but do not come into conflict with what He wanted for His Church. By this we are referring to the Sacraments, the Scriptures, the doctrine, as all being things that God intended to preserve in His Church until His return, and that these things are preserved in their fullest within the Catholic Church. A lot of Protestant denominations might stil retain a lot of these things, but they might also be missing a lot. A lot of Protestants can simultaneously have valid Baptisms but not have a valid Eucharist (indeed some Protestant denominations reject the Eucharist outright).

That isn't to say that God only works within the walls of the Catholic Church. Or else it wouldn't make sense that other denominations that baptise with water in the name of the Trinity could have valid Baptisms. If you convert to Catholicism through one of these denominations, then you don't get rebaptised. This only happens with denominations where a valid Baptism didn't take place or if there was no guarantee that the Baptism carried out was valid. Likewise Baptism and Confirmation in the Orthodox Church is also considered valid by the Catholic Church - although I'm not sure about Confirmations in other denominations, but I do know this for a fact. Indeed God calls to all of us, we are all meant to have a relationship with Him. It's how people brought up in atheist households can come to God. So to answer the question - Yes, Protestants are Christian and they do have very valid and real encounters with God in their life. Even those outside of Christianity can and do have very valid and real encounters with God, and God loves them and calls them to Him.

Because we recognise the validity of non-Catholic baptisms, we would see those people as being part of the mystical body of Christ. They are very much our brothers and sisters in Christ, although there can be a lot of historical/political/theological separation in other ways. Unfortunately, because of these separations, they might not think of us in the same manner. Likewise, there are definitely a lot of Catholics who are very earnestly anti-Protestant to the extent to reject Protestantism as in any way valid, but I do think it's important to note that this isn't taught by the Church. We should be praying for the salvation of our brothers and sisters in other denominations, as well as for people outside the faith. Likewise, we should strive towards reconciliation rather than putting up more barriers to divide us. But as mere humans, we can not fully know who is saved other than who the Catholic Church states are Saints. There are many Saints that we just don't know about, that are known only to God and the rest of Heaven. Baptism and/or belonging to the Catholic Church is no guarantee of Salvation. Indeed, Salvation is truly a gift given to us by God and only God can bestow this kind of Salvation on us, and this has less to do with the denomination that we belong to and a lot more to do with our relationship to God and our neighbour.

Can Protestants be saved? Yes, but there is no guarantee of it. Just like being Catholic is no guarantee of being saved. We would perhaps take the view that being Catholic and actively being part of the Catholic faith can put you in a better position that a denomination that is lacking in a lot of these Sacraments or beliefs. I don't believe any Catholic can fully understand the fullness of the Christian faith, nor do I believe that it's necessary. Just like I wouldn't believe that a Lutheran can understand the fullness of the Lutheranism. Our relationship with God and with our neighbour is going to play a much more important role than whether we call ourselves Catholic or by any other denomination.

Sorry that my answer isn't the best, I really would recommend for these kinds of questions to have a discussion with a Catholic Priest who would be much better equipped to discuss these kinds of things

*nails my piece of paper to Philip Pullman’s front door*

So, I made a joke earlier today about writing up my grievances with the world-building of the His Dark Materials trilogy. I genuinely didn’t think anyone would be interested enough to ask me about this. But someone did, so I’ve abandoned the actual jobs I needed to do today and went away to cobble together this post to summarise My Thoughts (and no-one was more surprised than I to find that there were more than two).

Let me say that these are my thoughts and opinions on this particular canon of work. I don’t judge anyone who likes them (hell, I love the idea of daemons and I certainly think there are some interesting concepts explored in the series) and you are more than welcome to disagree with me on any (or all) of the points that I outline below. And you’re certainly allowed to acknowledge that there are issues with a text and still find enjoyment from them. I’m not looking to Cancel anyone – I just have questions and I’m prepared to shout them into the void.

If anyone does reblog this, I ask that you don’t tag it with #hisdarkmaterials or #hdm, because that’s unfair on the people who are using those tags to curate a positive fandom experience.

Caveat to all of this – I haven’t read the books, but I have watched the current BBC/HBO series in great depth. I’m also writing a fanfic called The Shadow Mandate set in the world of His Dark Materials and that has required me to do extensive research and engage with multiple sources about the world. It’s as a direct result of this research that much of these questions and critiques have arisen. I am planning to read the books soon though (mainly so I can roast them more thoroughly)

Don’t send this to Philip Pullman (or Philman, as I will probably refer to him from here on out). 1 – he isn’t going to care what I say (he’ll just say it’s a metaphor and to not read too much into it or something equally as infuriating) and 2 – I don’t care what he says.

Now all that boring stuff is done, let’s get to it. I’m putting this all under the cut so the poor folk who want nothing to do with this can ignore at their leisure.

This will possibly get a bit tongue in cheek in places – just a warning

One Church to Rule Them All, One Faith to Bind Them

So, one of my main questions about the world of His Dark Materials is the Magisterium and the Holy Church. And that question is “How?”

Overlooking the fact that this was probably a conscious decision by Philman to Make A Point, I still have questions behind this behemoth of an institution. Based on my research, I’m of the understanding that Lyra’s world parted from our own when John Calvin became the Pope, and transferred the seat of Papal power to Geneva. After Calvin’s death, the Magisterium was formed and they consolidated power from there.

In my mind, this just doesn’t work. Because it makes it sound like Calvin was the only person standing between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation. Whilst he had a big role in the Reformation, he just wasn’t the only person working for reforms (I mean – Luther? Hello? He had 95 problems, and Indulgences were all of them). You could probably argue with me on this, as he was a significant figurehead of the Reformation, but there were so many people working for change in Europe at the time that I would have thought that someone else would have taken that place (you can read more here).

The lack of denominations also doesn’t really sit with me because if there’s one thing I know about Christians, it’s that we love to argue over teeny-tiny details and build whole new ways of worshipping around them. The fact that the Magisterium doesn’t just tear itself apart is, to be honest, quite surprising. And, you know, the Eastern Orthodox tradition was already a thing at the time… (here’s a brief overview of the East-West Schism of 1054)

I’d also like to point out that Papal power was dominant in Western civilization. That leaves a lot of the world for the Magisterium to then suddenly gain power of. Or did Philman conveniently forget that Judaism (although the Jewish people had suffered significant persecution in Europe by this time), Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism (and many others) were all already very well-established religions in other parts of the world that I doubt would have taken too kindly to the Magisterium’s political advances. This idea of a religion having such a heavy-handed control over the whole world just seems a bit too far-fetched for me to believe.

However, I have to acknowledge that I say this as a white, Western Christian – perhaps people genuinely feel that is the case.

I do know that the witches are mentioned at having their own religion, but I can’t really find any information about it, so I can’t really compare them. It could well be that other religions and faith practices are mentioned in the books themselves, but I’m struggling to find them (do the shamans count? I’m not sure). Perhaps this is just me, but one religion consuming the whole world (or, at least, the vast majority of it) doesn’t strike me as particularly plausible.

 Beast from the East

This is probably my most serious critique of the series, and one that’s actually been the most nightmarish for me to deal with in my own expanded world-building of Lyra’s world for The Shadow Mandate. This is an issue that has been discussed at length Marek Oziewicz in the paper ‘Representations of Eastern Europe in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series’ – which I highly recommend you read!

(And it dunks on Ms R*wling too – what a treat!).

I’ll do a little summary for those of you who haven’t got the time to read a whole paper:

The His Dark Materials trilogy is told from a very British point of view (understandable, the author is a white British man)

Britain is a positive and exciting place, where all the characters are individuals with the capacity for good or evil

The general geographical sense of the world-building is that the further East you go (in Europe) that the less ties the people have to the Holy Church and the more barbaric they are – see the Tartars and their ‘Breathless One’ practices

The Eastern European races are frequently described with qualities such as “cruelty, pitilessness, barbarism, fierceness, physical and emotional instability” (Oziewicz, p. 8)

A lot of nationalist stereotypes surround the peoples of these races/countries

I mean, the treatment of the Tartars (which is a living, breathing ethnolinguistic group) as a whole is pretty disturbing. They’re described to be like a ‘warmongering race of xenophobic genocidal humans who want to conquer the whole of the Earth’ (Quote) - compare that to the complexity of the characters from the West. Oziewicz notes that the Tartars are somewhat akin to the Imperial Guard of Star Wars, as their helmets have ‘no eyes – or at least you couldn’t see any eyes behind the snow slits’ (Northern Lights, p. 289). As far as I can tell, they’re pretty much just tarred with one brush – made particularly plain by the fact that all Tartars seem to have identical wolf/husky daemons – unless that was a requirement when the Magisterium put the job posting on Indeed.

So, a whole nation of people has been reduced to a single archetype – one that plays on existing prejudices in British culture. That just feels like extremely lazy world-building to me – I don’t know a single country or ethnic population that could accurately be described as one archetype.

I also feel that a lot of other countries in the world are written off with sweeping generalisations – or just kinda lumped together? So, a lot of my research has involved me looking at the canonical list of Globetrotter Maps, and a whole bunch of countries tend to get lumped together – particularly, I’ve noticed, the South American countries. It does this really intriguing and complex world a major disservice. As I said, this is something that I’ve had to grapple with for my own work – and I hope that I’ve done enough work so as to begin to dissemble what Philman started.

 A new and exciting way to get around the ‘G’ slur

For those of you who are unaware (although, you’re on Tumblr – how could you possibly not be aware?) the G-slur is considered to be a pejorative description of the Romani ethnic group, associated with idleness and itinerancy. It comes from the mistaken European belief that the Romani people came from Egypt (they aren’t). You can read more about that here and here.

Philman decided to name his ethnic group known for travelling and trading as they go ‘Gyptians’. I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining any further.

Should I let this slide with the explanation that the term is so pervasive in Britain that it’s actually a legal term? Perhaps, but I’m not going to.

 Kill Bill God

My only issue with this is that if Philman wants to kill God, he should kill… God. Not some angel with a superiority complex. But seeing how badly some people took it, I can understand why he didn’t. I still think he’s a coward.

 Sex, Dust and Dragons

I have a whole other bone to pick with Philman about his obsession with sex in children’s literature, but that’s not what you’re here to talk about. No, you came to hear about His Dark Materials.

It’s established in the world that Dust doesn’t settle on children because they don’t have experience – they are too innocent. Based on the research I’ve done, and the language used in both the film and the mini-series is this maturation from childhood to adulthood is though protosexual experiences e.g. kissing. And this is what Mary Malone’s role as ‘the serpent’ is – she’s the one that make Lyra think about her sexuality for the first time:

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognised the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on...

Marzipan, The Amber Spyglass

(That’s such a long quote)

It’s then made explicitly clear that it’s the intimacy of Lyra and Will’s relationship, and the touching of one another’s daemons, that causes Pan and Kirjava to settle in their true forms.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was right – love really does change everything.

Here’s where things get a little bit petty.

So, if Dust begins to settle on children once they’ve had their first ‘sexual awakening’ – what about those people who don’t ever experience that? Because, believe it or not, asexual people have existed for a very long time. If they don’t experience this, then would their daemons settle? What are the implications of this? Are asexual people remaining in the ‘childlike innocence of the Garden of Eden’? (Quote)

Asexual fans of His Dark Materials, I pass this question to you – do you lack a soul because you’ve never experienced sexual desire? Is sex truly instrumental on the road to maturation? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and what you’d do if your daemon never settled. Would you let them shift into a dragon? I know I would if I were in that position.

This issue, to me, is massively indicative of the prevalent attitudes towards the asexual community. There is a tendency for media products to portray a-spec people as immature because they don’t experience sexual attraction – which is just not true. The ace community has said many times that they feel that this attitude infantilizes their orientation, and it’s a view that needs to be challenged. Check out this source for more information on the microagressions faced by this community – section six is particularly relevant. Asexuals are mature – despite this lack of ‘experience’ that Philman seems to think all people need to have in order to become free-thinkers. This just isn’t true. I don’t understand why society seems to believe this theory, but with its prevalence in media it’s not too difficult to see why this view pervades.

Anyway, the only reason I’m so petty about this particular aspect is that I’m so bored of reading stories where sex and romance are the most important thing. I think heresy is a much more interesting sin than sex, so that’s what The Shadow Mandate will be about once I’ve finished it.

I also have some more minor world-building issues both in HDM and the later Book of the Dust trilogy including, but not limited to:

Why is it New Denmark? The Dutch were quite famous for reaching America – New Amsterdam being the original name for New York. Admittedly I’m only cross about this because I got mixed up in my own world-building.

There’s even more ‘othering’ of non-British races – particularly the Skraelings who are analogous to the Inuit people (but possibly a term for all Native-American peoples) who carry out ‘barbaric’ practices such as trepanning

Witches can’t forgive men that turn them down. Well I don’t have much of a problem with this as such, but it just makes me think of that quote about fairies from Peter Pan – “Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”

The treatment of Pantalaimon by Lyra in subsequent adventures

Malcolm Polstead needs to leave Lyra tf alone

 I appreciate that this is a very long and whingy list about things that I don’t like, so congrats on making it this far! I’d love to give you something – perhaps your time back – but alas, my powers only extend so far. I appreciate that the His Dark Materials books are well-loved and that most people would probably disagree with what I’ve said – I just have lots of questions and Philman doesn’t have as many answers as I would like. But then again, should I really read this much into the work of a writer who seems willing and capable to ignore the personality of their protagonist for a whole book? I don’t know. But I do know, that axolotl daemons would require a lot of work.

(I have beef with Philman – thank you for humouring me)

Leave your hatemail in my inbox <3

Julia Hintlian, MTS ′18 and Harvard PhD Candidate

"I’ve spent time in the Republic of Armenia, and in 'Western Armenia' (now Eastern Turkey). A lot of our churches have been desecrated and destroyed, and those of us who are fortunate to survive have a responsibility not only to know what we’ve lost, but to know that what we have inherited is valuable."

Julia graduated in 2018 with an MTS from HDS. She is now a rising doctoral student in religion at Harvard. This past summer, she taught at the seminary of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Formations of My Identity

My doctoral degree is in the history of Christianity, and I am working on the influences of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism on Syriac and Armenian Christianity in Late Antiquity. My master’s degree is in Silk Road Religions, an individualized area of focus that included the same subjects I am studying now—as well as some other, lesser studied traditions like the religion of the Yazidis of Northern Iraq, and Ismailism, a sect of Shia Islam. During my undergraduate degree in religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, I focused on Hinduism and Islam. So, I arrived at the history of Christianity by studying many other traditions through the lens of “world religions.”

My mom got an MTS when I was in high school, and she would come home from her classes and talk to my 14-and-15-year-old self about what she was learning. She encouraged me to ask questions that I was not taught to ask in school, like: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? What have writers over millennia had to say in answer to these questions?

I am ethnically Armenian, baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian Church is ancient, and we are an ancient people with a rich religious history, strongly identified by our Oriental Orthodoxy. The traditional date of our conversion is 301 AD, which we claim makes us the oldest Christian nation in the world. This legacy has also been a big factor in my identity and my decision to study religion. Prior to being Christian, the Armenians were Zoroastrian, and our Zoroastrianism was somewhat unique from Persian Zoroastrianism. So, I think I have a lot to be proud of in terms of Armenia’s long-term historical, religious legacy, which has “evolved” to reach me over the course of many generations.

I feel that I have a responsibility to all the people who came before me to take my scholarship seriously. Especially on the Armenian side, because two thirds of our population was wiped out one hundred years ago in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Those of us who remain must carry this identity into the future. I’ve spent time in the Republic of Armenia, and in “Western Armenia” (now Eastern Turkey). A lot of our churches have been desecrated and destroyed, and those of us who are fortunate to survive have a responsibility not only to know what we’ve lost, but to know that what we have inherited is valuable.

Teaching at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

I have lived in Armenia on two separate occasions, and on a third occasion I traveled to Western Armenia. My family is Western Armenian. The Western Armenians lived under the Byzantine and later Ottoman Empires, and the Eastern Armenians lived under the Persian and later Russian Empires. The dialects are a bit different; they are mutually intelligible, but Western Armenian is more influenced by Arabic and Turkish, and Eastern Armenian is more influenced by Persian and Russian. Culturally, Eastern and Western Armenians are a bit different, too. It is a very complex history!

Last summer, I was teaching at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the center of the Armenian Church, which is located in Vagharshapat, half an hour outside of Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. I taught in the Gevorgian Seminary, which is where they train the next generation of clergy. I was mostly teaching deacons, and my courses were “English for Theological Reading” and “Introductory Syriac Language.” We read Irenaeus of Lyon’s second-century Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching in my English class, and we talked about the theology. I picked this text because it was basically lost to history for many centuries, and then it reappeared in Armenian translation (from the original Greek) in 1904.

In Communion

As Armenians, I think it is very important to know that we are in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, which are unfortunately very understudied in Western academia, are the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India. We have been in communion for many centuries, and these communities are often located in places that are not (or historically have not been) safe, and yet we have kept our faith and traditions alive. I think it is important to have inter-community relations, and that is one reason I study Syriac. I still have much to learn from my advisor, Professor Charles Stang, but I thought that it was important for these deacons to have at least a taste of Syriac, so they might one day find common ground with Syriac priests. Common language encourages the exchange of ideas!

It was very meaningful for me a few years ago when our HDS Syriac lecturer took us to a service at the local Syriac church. When they discovered I was Armenian, they said, “Why didn’t you take communion with us? We would have been so happy to have you!” And they were speaking to me in Armenian and really making an effort to welcome me and to let me know they were happy to have me in their church.  

Each Oriental Orthodox Church has its own leaders and hierarchy, but the leaders of those churches are in contact with each other. The Armenian Church has a Catholicos for its spiritual leader (actually there are two Catholicoi, but that’s a complicated story!) and then two Patriarchs, in Jerusalem and Istanbul.

Shedding Light

Orthodox Christianity in general is understudied in America, but even when we do refer to Orthodox Christianity, we are usually talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, which has its own rich heritage and tradition and history. I think it would be good for more light to be shed on Oriental Orthodoxy.

In the History of Christianity track here, there are people who have had very limited exposure to Oriental Orthodox history and theology. Many scholars of Christianity know that the “Miaphysite” Oriental Orthodox Churches broke away from the fourth ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451, but they know little of our history after that. Christianity is such a massive tradition, with so many iterations all over the world, but the Oriental Orthodox Churches are very ancient, most of them have been around since the very early Christian period, and they have survived many trials and tribulations. Right now, the Coptic Church is facing significant persecution in Egypt, and my students in Armenia expressed concern over this situation. Armenians know what it is like to feel unsafe and to work to preserve our faith at all costs.

There are a few reasons these traditions are understudied in the West. The theological breaks are very old, and the churches are very small (especially compared to Catholic and Protestant denominations). Linguistically, they are difficult to access; there are few people who know Classical Armenian and can teach it—same with Classical Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic. These are obscure languages, and culturally foreign, which makes them more obscure and less accessible than languages like Greek or Latin.

It’s interesting to study Christianity right now, because some people seem to be saying it is a Eurocentric tradition of oppression and colonialism. When I hear that, I wonder how much people know about Christianity outside the West, and I feel compelled to say that this is a very diverse tradition, with a unifying theology and ideology that is manifest in many different cultural settings. But I do find in Protestantism and Catholicism a narrative that I believe in, and I look positively on these traditions because though there are linguistic and cultural differences, I think we are aspiring to the same truth.

The Catholic Church and the Armenian Church are two examples of churches that have been finding common ground recently, and I see beauty in that. In 2015, for the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, Pope Francis named one of the great Armenian theologians and spiritual fathers, Grigor Narekatsi/Gregory of Narek (10th/11th c.), as a Doctor of the Church, and erected a statue of him in the Vatican. The Armenian Catholicoi and Armenian political leaders were present for this special moment.

A Priceless Heritage

I spend a lot of time with my head in books from the fifth century, reading things that happened a long time ago. But it is also very important to me to care for the modern iterations of the traditions that I study. Their continuing survival and existence inspires me. To this end, I’ve done a little bit of work for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in Washington D.C. as well.

Tur Abdin is a region in Turkey with a lot of Syriac monasteries. Unfortunately, the Turkish government has been trying to seize some of these properties, including the fourth-century Mar Gabriel monastery. Unless you can appreciate what happened at Mar Gabriel hundreds of years ago, the theology, spirituality, and history created there, you might say, “Why does it matter if the Turkish government takes it away?” But if you know its religious significance, you know why it is worth preserving.

I often contemplate what my ancestors would think of me, especially two of my great-grandmothers, Antaram and Sultan, who managed to escape Armenia with their children after their husbands were killed in the genocide. I hope they are proud of me, I hope they know that they passed a heritage to me that is priceless and beautiful, and I hope they know that I am doing everything I can to defend it.  

Interview and photos by Anais Garvanian

Could you talk a bit about the Catholic side of things? I was raised Lutheran so I guess I never see a difference because I never paid attention

Sure! I’ll touch on a couple of major things, but this is by no means a comprehensive list. Warning, this post is long and, obviously, talks about religion a lot. I’ll be adding tags momentarily, but let me know if additional tags are needed. 

Oh, and notice to all local assholes: I’m not here to play a game of apologetics. This anon was very polite in their request, and I love responding to polite anons, but if you bust into my inbox sealioning or looking for a debate you’ll be promptly deleted, thanks. 

Biblical interpretation - Most Protestant Christians believe that the interpretation of the Bible is highly personal, whereas Catholicism has dogma/catechism which comes from the catholic tradition, councils, the Holy See, etc. etc. While Catholics do have freedom to find what the Bible means for them, the Catholic church has an official stance on many issues including homosexuality which are included in our catechism (that is, the book that declares what it is we believe. Other Catholic-specific things like the body and soul assumption of Mary, veneration of saints, and resurrection of the physical body are included in this book). For the curious, the section on homosexuality begins in paragraph 2357 of the catechism and essentially says that “the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible…They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.” Okay, so that’s GREAT. Gay and bi people exist, be nice to them, don’t discriminate against then, they’re still God’s children. HOWEVER, the catechism also says, “Homosexual persons are called to chastity.” That is, the act of homosexual sex is still a sin. So’ saying “God still loves you if you’re gay!” is…well, sort of woven into the fabric of our religion, but it doesn’t change the fact that by the word of our religion… to have gay sex is still a sin. So positivity that tries to put a different “spin” on Biblical homosexuality (”but Jesus blessed a gay couple!” “but this part about men lying together is actually linguistically vague!”) also kind of has less meaning for us because that doesn’t change the word of our church. Some Protestants really don’t like this: I get it. You feel like we’re just marching lockstep under the pope or something. It requires a much more big-picture look at Catholic vs. Protestant beliefs to really “get” this idea, and this post is long enough as it is.

Purgatory - So I know “Gays go to Purgatory” is really not a catchy slogan for your average hate-preaching homophobe, but it’s important to note that Purgatory is a central conceit of the catholic faith. Basically, instead of “good/faithful person -> heaven; bad/unfaithful person -> hell,” Catholicism claims that because nothing impure can enter the kingdom of heaven, purgatory is the “final purification.” It’s frequently described as a cleansing fire, and a place of both suffering and joy. We have to truly repent of our sins and be made clean, BUT it’s an exciting place because hey, it’s basically the lobby of heaven. The catechism (paragraph 1030 for those interested) says that “all who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” go to purgatory to be made holy. Purgatory prevents us from entering heaven with our earthly biases, grudges, and angers, and lets us be made pure. It is “entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (that is, hell). (Unrelated but this is why Catholicism really emphasizes prayer FOR THE DEAD. We have to pray for them so they can stay strong, remember God’s love, and overcome the trials of the final purification.) A lot of Christian positivity (of any kind, not just LGBT) speaks of the afterlife as a heaven/hell binary without considering the dogma of purgatory for Catholics. Some Protestants don’t like this either, because “well, Jesus already died for our sins so…why should I have to suffer for them?” Remember, though, it’s a final cleansing. It’s to heal, not to punish. Kids hate taking baths or medicine, but their parents make them because it’s good for them.

“Faith alone” - One of the reasons Martin Luther broke away from the catholic church was because of the use of indulgences. Indulgences were preached about at the time, but were not official catholic dogma, and essentially claimed that monetary donations would result in reduced suffering in purgatory (see above). Luther (rightfully) said no, that’s not really how God’s love works, but went a step too far and began to really emphasize faith or even “faith alone” over actions. Depending on how much emphasis you put on faith, it’s possible for a Protestant to claim “well, your faith is what really matters, not your actions. It’s okay to do xyz as long as you have true faith in God.” The Catholic church places much more emphasis on action, which leads to our more pronounced history of Reconciliation/Confession (the use/significance of which varies in Protestant denominations). It’s not really in the teaching of our church for a catholic to say “it’s okay to do xyz (read: have gay sex, a gender correction, etc.) as long as you have true faith in God.”  

And I’d like to clarify that I’m in no way putting down the Christian LGBT positivity that exists - it’s so important for young queer people who are connected to their faith or are feeling excluded by their religious community - it’s just a personal frustration of mine that a lot of it is inherently Protestant or is Protestant-centric. 

right yeah so how does phantom’s religious beliefs affect or not affect his friendships is the rosary jut a pretty pocket accessory to his friends or like.?

Ooo good one okay so

For starters, I want to make a note on the rosary thing cause that definitely just seems like an analogy you were using but I still feel like it’s worth pointing out that his particular beliefs align more closely under the blanket term of some kind of protestant Chrisitianity. Maybe not Protestant itself but in any case, not Catholicism. (Cause y’know technically anything not Catholic is protestant but also Protestant is a whole thing itself and it’s…involved.) I should probably get more specific as to more Baptist leaning or something at some point but I argue with myself a lot about how much of the divisions between the nuanced practices (Baptist, Methodist, Non-denominational, etc.) would remain given the setting and BLI probably having a lot to say about squashing all religions, y’know? (So who even knows how much of those distinctions even remain) but essentially that just means it leaves out like. Seven deadly sins aren’t really a thing in most(?) protestant structures, also they’re not big on the saints (unless you’re Baptist and in that case, we can’t hear enough about dang John) and Mary’s not really sanctified either. 

In any case, his particular ‘’brand’’ of Christianity focuses on the new testament and Jesus’s lessons, basically. [[Though that’s…kinda biased because of my own upbringing but I digress. I really just gotta dig some more, expand what I already know and find what fits him best.]] Interesting note - he doesn’t think dustverse is the prophecized apocalypse, but I’d wager there’s at least one Bible-headed zone runner out there who does. That’d be an interesting character.

But to get to, uh, your actual question:

I’m sure it varies from character to character? So I’m gonna talk about a couple examples in a sec, but first/short answer is it’s definitely not a thing that he like, hides or avoids broaching for the sake of comfort. He’s not a high horse type – big on the ‘everybody sins and we’re all equally forgivable by divine grace’ train, actually– and if any friend of his has expressed they’re not interested in his (or any other) religion he doesn’t push it out of respect for your right to free will and autonomy, but he’s not gonna sit by and let you shit talk about it either. He’ll get mad if you’re taking potshots, man. Really basically just don’t dis his beliefs and he’ll keep his opinions about yours to himself as well.

[It probably has at least a little to do with how a thing like being religious and being a rebel to an oppressive regime like BLI intersect. Can’t exactly be a freedom fighter if you’re trying to force something on other people, right?]

This is..easier with some people than others.

Him and Des are on really good terms about having what are, effectively, contradictory religions (she’s big on the Zone Deities™ ), to the point that they’re comfortable discussing doubts about their respective beliefs with each other without feeling like the other will push them into abandoning anything. This could arguably be more to do with how close they are are members of the same group and the pseudo-parents of Dawn than anything about their specific religion(s) but it goes to show that basic respect about the topic goes a long way with Phantom. They’re probably argued about it in the past, but have ended up in a concession of agreeing to disagree, essentially, and since neither one of them uses their differing opinions as a means of saying that the other is inherently evil because of their beliefs, it works out fine for them.

[That might.. be a topic that’s dissolved some in the climate? That extreme Christian ‘convert or you’re the worst’ ideology? I feel like the exclusionary nature probably backed off once it came under actual threat as opposed to the victim complex a lot of Christianity falls under these days.  …Should I meta about Dustverse Christianity? Maybe. I’ll think about it.]

On that note, him and Tox actually got close when they met in city (which I…do not talk enough about nor have planned out as well as I’d like..) because of sharing religion.Tox’s views are a little more what you’d expect of a Christian from our time, probably [I feel like he’s just slightly more apt to remind you you’re going to hell than Phantom is, the shithead] but on the whole they’re very in sync on a lot of things. I imagine religions in general, all of them, have become pretty sparse and/or taboo under BLI, so for them finding another person who shares even the basics of the same belief system was probably an amazing thing, and then finding out that a lot of it is the same probably just furthered them growing really quickly to trust and lean on each other. (I mean, Tox trusted Phantom to get Lith out of the city safely should the worst happen after only knowing him for like… I think it was maybe a month or two? Like I said, timeline’s weak there for me.) But so the point being, for them it’s not even a secondary thing, it’s more or less the cornerstone of their friendship. They probably have a lot of talks about and around it, like a tiny church fellowship of two, sharing the stories they remember and reaffirming each other.

Conversely to both of those relationships, Diana is at best atheistic and at worst vehemently opposed to any mention of or belief in a higher power to which no actual evidence is presentable, and to that degree handles her interactions with Phantom with a chip on her shoulder about it. He tries to ignore it a lot of the time, but needless to say those aforementioned potshots he doesn’t kindly to often come from her. They’re.. kinda not really friends because of it. I mean they’ll tolerate each other and in a scrape could count on the other to watch their back, but it’s very.. professional, there’s a professional air to it. 

Weasel, as you may or may not know, is the resident nightmare about everything at all times and I’m sure he gives Phantom (and Tox. I guarantee he’s called Tox “John the Baptist” at least once) shit about it to varying degrees of awful, but to be honest that’s just because he enjoys stirring shit up and he and Phantom probably get along ..okay when Weasel’s not being a pain. Mostly because Weasel just doesn’t give a genuine shit about religion, and is only harassing him for the amusement factor.

So like. I guess the clearer answer is that it’d be basically impossible for someone to consider his religion an accessory because it’s woven into his life in a way that it’s not just convenience or habit. It’s belief, y’know? Where the structure of his ideologies comes from. So whether the people in his life want to agree with it or disagree with varies, but there’s not really room to ignore it without ignoring him, I don’t think. And not in a here-he-goes-with-that-Jesus-High-Horse-shit way but just.. there. Present. He’s got a faith and he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t for any conceivable reason. Ask him if you want, make no mention of it when he says something, take whatever path to or around or in opposition to it that you want - it doesn’t matter. He’s got what he’s got and you’re not gonna be the one to take it from him.

Alright, well today was overall pretty good. I woke up around 11:24 I think, I had my late alarm set for 1pm but figured I’d wake up before then. I had a weird craving for chocolate chip pancakes, which is kinda odd because I’ve literally never made them before in my life, but I had a hershey bar and some m&ms I could use, so I was like hey, let’s do this. So I chopped up the hershey bar and started making them, then moved to the m&ms when I ran out of the chopped chocolate. my pancakes haven’t always been cooperating with me lately, but I was trying to do smaller ones today and I think that worked a lot better, so that’s good to know. And they were really freaking good. So after I finished eating I knew I should get to work, so I pulled up the two things I had for the legal drafting assignment and started doing my final edits before turning it in tonight. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but honestly at this point I just don’t give a fuck anymore, I don’t care if I get one fucking C in my last damn semester, it can’t affect my GPA that much, and who the fuck cares anyway??? I just don’t anymore. but I made some edits and changed a few things around. The thing is I know my arguments are really solid, really damn good arguments, but I know that’s not gonna be what matters because with this prof it’s all about procedure and format and bullshit that doesn’t even matter in the real world. Like legit when I was talking with her last week looking over my past assignment she was like “oh you’re doing this like they taught you at the courthouse, but we’re doing it like this” and I was like ???? these hypothetical projects are *literally* supposed to be from the damn courthouse I worked at, like literally working for the cook county public guardian’s office, and you’re telling me what I learned actually being there was wrong??? I’m just so fucking done, this class should’ve been a breeze for me but it became a massive pain in the ass instead. And I really don't give a fuck if she doesn’t like my writing, the people I’ve actually worked under in the real world have always loved it, my one supervisor still gushes about the motion I wrote from the child death case as one of the best he’s ever seen, and I really, really don’t give a fuck about this goddamn class anymore. I’m ranting, I know. But anyway. I made my edits and printed it out, ended up having to print two copies of each because something didn’t turn out right in the first version of each, stupid staples (they’ll literally dock you points if your stapling doesn’t look good) and temporarily forget to use page numbers. But I got all that done and headed out to school a little early, there was supposed to be a PAD transition team meeting at 5:30 so I thought I’d come for a bit before class, except nobody actually doing the meeting showed up on time, and I had class at 5:50, so I left at 5:40, and I apparently didn’t miss much. We turned in our assignment, and then had class for about half an hour, talking mostly about factors regarding appeals and what you should take into consideration when deciding if you’re going to appeal or not. Good stuff I guess. But we ended around 6:20, and the PAD event we had for tonight didn’t start till 7 and it was right across the street so I chilled in the PAD office for a bit before going over. The event is supposed to be an official introduction to the new executive board, with alumni coming and networking and all that good shit, it’s called “Story Time” because we’re “Story Chapter” (all of the chapters are named after Supreme Court justices, since our chapter was founded in the 1890s it was after a very old justice, Joseph Story). So I headed over there and mingled for a bit, pretty good food, they had chicken tenders that were like, really damn good chicken tenders lol and they had grilled cheese, which is like, perfect, so I was pleased with that. I spent a while chatting with one of the older alums about work and life and all that good stuff. He’s looking for a law clerk, but since I’m a 3L he said I need to focus on studying for the bar, and worry about jobs later, which is valid, lol. After that I just went to where my friends are and hung out with them for a bit more, just having fun. The event ended around 9, and since we were the ones throwing it we ended up being the last people there, and they had a buffet style food set up and the staff put out to go boxes and were like “hey if you want to take any of this home go for it because it’s just gonna get thrown out” so I may have gone to town on the chicken tenders and shoved 20 of them into a to go box (I counted) which I expect will go to good use over the next couple of weeks (weeks because I’ll probably freeze some of them at some point, chicken tenders aren’t really a food that’s like, cooked one time, because most of them come pre-cooked, and they were warmed up today, but I can just warm them up again and they’ll be the same lol so that’s useful. I’m sure Jess will be having some this weekend because she hasn't eaten shit all week (sigh). But yeah, I went home, dropped my stuff and decided to watch Arrow. It was......odd. Not really an episode they’ve ever done before, mostly just because there was almost no Oliver in it. And I felt like the whole time they were trying to get us to like Diaz and like, I just don’t??? I don’t find him to be a very compelling character and the whole time I was just like Dinah honey why are you hanging out with this asshole?? I don’t get it. I will say though I did like the plot between Oliver and Felicity and the moment they had at the end of the episode, so that was good. After that the only other show I had left to watch was Riverdale, which I put on because we decided we’re going to “Riverdale Con” (god that sounds so absurd) next weekend because it’s in Chicago and we can, and plus we’re already going two weekends without a con, we definitely couldn’t go three. Riverdale was the musical episode of course, and I had fairly mixed feelings about it. I wasn’t familiar with the music of Carrie, I knew the plot obviously but hadn’t heard any of the songs before. Most of my feelings were that the majority of the cast really cannot sing and were very, very autotuned, and like the only one who could actually sing was the actor who plays Kevin, and they only let him sing like two fucking lines??? I mean wtf was that about, bad choice there. But yeah, I guess the episode itself was fine, and I did walk away with Veronica’s song stuck in my head. I also ended up looking up the plot on wiki because I wanted to see how the songs fit in, which was an interested read at least....lot of death. It was funny though because I know Christy Altomare and Derek Klena had played Sue and Tommy opposite each other in the 2012 production, and then of course they’re currently playing Anastasia and Dimitri in Anastasia right now. And yeah, I finished watching that then basically started getting ready for bed. Other things that have been on my mind though, I read an article talking about how Christians are becoming disillusioned with the term Evangelical because it’s come to be associated with the Trump idiots and everything that comes with that. And like, it’s so interesting for me to see this because I was thinking through all of this back in 2014 when I decided that I was no longer identifying with that term. Because what does it even mean?? Nothing, really. There’s no set definition that would make one an “evangelical.” I broke with the movement way before everyone else did though, over the “World Vision Incident” that left me so incredibly incensed at everyone who caused that horrific event to happen- basically, World Vision announced that as a non-denominational Christian organization they would be hiring Christian employees in same sex relationships since some denominations are now affirming. One of World Vision’s main programs is about sponsoring a child, send like $30 a month to go to the life of this specific child you’re matched up with. And when this happened, a lot of evangelical leaders protested which led to a huge number of people cancelling their child sponsorships, to the point where World Vision was forced to capitulate or they would suffer such a horrific loss in the work they are doing. Overall, the entire event resulted in 10,000 people dropping their sponsorships, and many did not renew them when they changed positions (incidentally, I immediately called up and started a sponsorship right after this happened). And like, for me that was such a clear line in the sand that was drawn. When you’re fighting your culture wars using the lives of children living in poverty as bargaining chips to force a company not to hire people you disapprove of, that keeping these people out of your organizations is more important to you than the literal lives of children, when that is what you believe in, I’m sorry but you and I do not believe in the same God. I believe in the God who said let the little children come on to me, and admonished the adults to be more like the children. The Jesus who never uttered a word about the culture issues evangelicals are obsessed with pressing. The God who said it was better that you throw a millstone around your neck and jump into the water than to lead a child astray, to hurt a child like that. That’s my God, I don’t know what bastardized version of a god (small g) that you believe in, but he’s certainly not the one I know. The one who gave me such a drive to change the world for children, to help the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable, those shoved into horrible situations and desperately need love and assurance from those around them. The God that created me to have steel in my veins when it comes to dealing with the child abuse I willingly engage with, the God that made me for this purpose, so much that I can feel it in my bones, this is what I was meant to do with my life, nothing else could ever feel right. The God who won’t let me stop until I make a difference, until I’m saving the lives of children in the system every day, no matter how difficult and traumatic that might be. The God who never turned his back on me when I doubted he was there, when I couldn't see him then, but looking back I can see he never left me, he was there the whole time, carrying me through the hard times while I was kicking and screaming and was furious with him for putting me through all I had to deal with. The God who used all of that to create a deep passion in me to save children, so they never have to go through that. This is my purpose in life, and that’s the God I believe in, I don’t know the one you’re praising who cares more about making gay people outcasts than the literal lives of children.

okay, that turned into a massive rant that went a little off the wheels, but I hope I got my point across. My faith is so, so important to me, and it hurts me so much to see the name of Christ being dragged through the mud by those claiming his name and acting as if they’ve never opened a bible. But anyway. That’s about it for my day. No official plans for tomorrow, I might do a short grocery run to stock up on a few things, and maybe small group at night, we’ll see. I mean, I should probably start studying at some point, but my first final isn’t until May 2nd, which is still a week and a half away, and it’s the easiest one, so I’ll have time. Alright, I’m done now. That was a massive rant about my many frustrations that I will hopefully feel better about now. It’s past 1:30 am so I’m going to get to bed now. Goodnight my dearies. If you made it all the way through this post, bless you for caring about my life enough to do that. ❤️

With Millennials less likely to believe in God, churches work hard to buck trends

John Boyle, Asheville Citizen-Times, March 31, 2018

The statistics are daunting, particularly when it comes to the “nones.”

Fewer younger people, particularly Millennials, attend church or believe in God, and they’re less likely to go to church. Just 50 percent of younger Millennials say they believe in God with certainty, compared to 64 percent for Gen X and 69 percent for Baby Boomers, according to the Pew Research Center.

“I think the first thing to point out, stepping back a moment, is there are big and important changes in the American religious landscape overall,” said Greg Smith, associate director for research at Pew, the Washington, D.C.-based organization that periodically publishes the Religious Landscape Study. “The share of Americans that have no particular religious affiliation--the atheists, the agnostics, the ‘nothing in particular’--that group is growing very rapidly. They are called the ‘nones,’ and the nones are growing very rapidly.”

The number of people who remain religious is still quite large, Smith said, but the trend away from organized church and faith remains troubling to pastors, priests and others who work in the field. Locally, they’re not just sitting on their hands and watching their membership decline.

Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village has a growing younger membership, including a lot of young families, said Milly Morrow, associate dean at the church. That comes from reaching out to families and creating a comfortable environment for them.

“The other day a new young family came in, and the mother said she’s been searching other churches to find out where the other young families are,” Morrow said. “She came here and said, ‘Oh, they’re all at All Souls.’ That speaks a little to the story of why they’re going to church.”

More important, Morrow said, is the emphasis on teaching Christian beliefs and really instilling a sense of community among church members. They have found that Millennials, those in the 21-37 age range, are really interested in being part of a community, but also serving that community.

“I do know that my generation is looking for a place where service comes first,” said Morrow, 44. “The churches that are thriving right now are the churches that are really involved in community service and in social justice. That’s what’s going to keep a 20- or 30-year-old coming to church--an invitation to serve others.”

Pew’s 2014 research found that the percentage of younger Millennials who attend church at least once a week was 28 percent, and 27 percent for older Millennials. By comparison, 34 percent of Gen X attends weekly, 38 percent of the Boomers, and 51 percent each of the Silent and Greatest generations.

Millennials are a huge generation. The Pew Research Center noted earlier this month that “Millennials are on the cusp of surpassing Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation, according to population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

Based on data from July 2016, Millennials (those ages 20-35 in 2016) “numbered 71 million, and Boomers (ages 52-70) numbered 74 million.”

At All Souls, which has been an anchor in Biltmore Village for more than a century, younger membership has waxed and waned over the years, but increased dramatically in the last 10 to 15, Morrow said.

The same holds true at one of the region’s largest churches, Biltmore Church in southern Buncombe County. The church comprises five campuses and has about 11,000 members, with an average weekly attendance of over 7,500, according to Matt Kendrick, the church’s Next Generation pastor.

Of those attending weekly, 25-30 percent are young adults, with more than 60 percent being under 40 years of age.

“The average age of new members has gone from the mid-40s to the low-30s over the last four-five years,” Kendrick said. “We’ve been intentional in trying to reach young adults, but I’ll also give credit where it’s due--a lot of people in their 60s or 70s, they’ve really rolled with the changes. Everybody is on board to reach more people.”

Biltmore is known for its dynamic services, featuring large television screens, upbeat music and energetic preaching, but Kendrick says the emphasis remains on the mission of teaching the Bible and the word of Jesus.

“We are authentic,” he said. “We are who we are, and we don’t try to be anything else. With Millennials, it’s all about transparency, all about being real.”

Biltmore Church also has a lot of service outreach programs, including international ministries, and the church has also developed a strong outreach on Facebook and Instagram.

Michelle Myers, 33, has been attending Biltmore Church for about six years with her husband, James, 35, and their three children: Noah, 7; Cole, 4; and Shea, a 19-month-old girl. They moved from Austin, Texas, and the No. 1 one factor in attracting them to Biltmore was “the authentic worship,” Michelle Myers said.

She also loves the community feeling there, though.

Asked what the church does to make the services and other amenities comfortable to families with young children, Myers said, “I’m trying to think of what they don’t do that makes it comfortable for kids.

“My kids love their leaders, and they’re not just being babysat--they’re learning and engaging,” Myers said. “Most Sundays, they’re studying the same passage as we are, so when we come home from church we’re able to have really great spiritual discussions.”

Reaching out to younger people and interesting them in church services is probably tougher today than it’s ever been, said John Grant, pastor of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Asheville for 29 years. The historically African-American church has about 200 families who are members but only 10-15 percent of those members are younger adults.

Grant sees several factors at work in the drift away from organized religion in America.

“My observation would be first, there’s been a general secularization of our culture,” Grant said. “People don’t go to church like they did when I was coming up.”

“My summary is it’s difficult to compete with our culture,” Grant said. “Young people are being bombarded 24/7, so the challenge is to compete with the culture with limited resources.”

Young adults who go off the college also often drift away from their religious upbringing, sometimes because they’re exploring, sometimes because they had become bored, Grant said.

Numerous factors drive people away from religion, the Pew Center’s Smith said, including “generational replacement.” The older generations, including Baby Boomers, who tend to be mostly Christian and fairly devout, are aging and beginning to die off. They’re being replaced by new generations of younger people “that are simply far less religious than their parents and grandparents before them,” Smith said.

“Upwards of one-third of Millennials say they have no religion,” Smith said. “Only about four in 10 millennials say religion is ‘very important’ to them, and just four in 10 say they pray every day. Only about one quarter say they attend services at least weekly. That’s far below the older generations.”

More troubling for churches is that these trends are “very broad-based--we see them happening all across the country, through a variety of racial and ethnic groups, with men and women and through those with a variety of educational backgrounds. It’s very broad-based.”

The South, the bedrock of the Bible Belt, not surprisingly is still more religious than other parts of the country, but the trend of moving away from religion has grown here, too.

Immigration, while controversial, has actually bolstered the number of Christians in the country, Smith said, as “among immigrants to the U.S. in 2014, two-thirds were Christian.”

Brown and Annie Hobson watch on with their daughterBuy Photo

What’s driving people away from religion?

Some of what’s driving the shift is that as less religious adults have children and those children grow up, they also tend to be less religious.

Smith said their data is less specific on this, but Pew also has found that is has become more socially acceptable to not be religious, or a “none.” In 2007 and 2014, Pew asked respondents whether they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who did not believe in God

In 2007, 61 percent said they would be less likely to support that non-believing fictional candidate. In 2014, the number fell to 53 percent.

“Being irreligious has less social stigma associated with it than it did in the past,” Smith said.

Politics also drives some of the decline. One idea among researchers is that over the past few decades religious belief “has come to be associated with--at least in the popular imagination--conservative politics, especially with moral issues like homosexuality and same-sex marriage.”

Different denominations have different approaches, but many people who do not share those conservative beliefs move away from religion.

“One part of the data that is consistent is we know religious ‘nones’ are a very politically liberal and Democratic group,” Smith said. “They vote strongly for Democrats and liberals in elections, and they’re very liberal on same-sex marriage and abortion.”

Grant, the Mount Zion pastor, said he’s often heard teens or youth complain that church can be “boring,” and he acknowledges that may be one factor in driving younger people away, especially in the media age when people have access to computers and social media all day long.

Smith maintains the drift away from religion is often just that--a slow movement away. He noted a 2008 study Pew did, asking Catholics and Protestants why they had switched religions or left a childhood faith. Answers ran the gamut and included their spiritual needs not being met, or they stopped believing in their religion’s teachings.

About a quarter said they were dissatisfied with the atmosphere at worship or with their clergy, which could indicate boredom with their church.

“But the number one answer they gave was they said they just gradually drifted away from their childhood religion,” Smith said. “It’s a gradual thing. A lot of things factor in--it could be boring, or it could be creeping doubts about the religion’s claims.”

The declining interest in religion is troubling for the religious world, but Smith points out that “even though we’re becoming less religious on a variety of ways, (America) is still a very religious place.” In fact, it’s not that there are fewer highly religious people in the U.S., rather “what’s changing is the population is growing, and that growth concentrated among people who are not particularly religious.”

And trends can be reversed.

“It’s worth remembering that just because a trend has been occurring in the recent past doesn’t mean that trend will continue indefinitely into the future,” Smith said. “Lots of things can impact trends.”