Creep Shaming: The Musical

As someone who was raised Catholic, I’ve often wondered if the Santorum-esque sort of Christian has ever actually read the New Testament. It’s eternally baffling to me how they can get from a guy who quite clearly sets forth a religious philosophy in which you are supposed to love even the people you believe are sinful and unaccepted by your society, do your utmost to help the poor and the sick, keep your faith fundamentally private rather than showing it off, and refrain from judging others until you are perfect – which you explicitly can never be – to a political position that appears to be “hey, let’s do the exact opposite of all of that!”

I mean, I’m not a Christian anymore (arguably, I never was one, since I never believed in several of the fundamental tenets of the faith), but I’ve got no major bones to pick with Jesus. He seems like he was a pretty cool dude, if he existed. But if Christianity happens to be true, then I feel horribly sorry for the poor guy – it’d have to suck a lot to be tortured and die to bring humanity a message of kindness, humility, generosity, and acceptance and then sit up in heaven watching people explain that they’re standing outside abortion clinics screaming about whores and bullying gay kids into killing themselves in his name.

@ Kirbywarp:

Disagree with a man… MISANDRY!

Disagree with a man calling all women whores… WORSE THAN HITLER!

I think you mean . . . WHORSE THAN HITLER.

Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.

I find this romanticisation of Christianity and early Christianity socially and historically problematic. There were public lynchings of Jews and women by certain sects as early as the fourth century. The Archbishop of Constantinople, for example, taught outright genocidal shit about Jewish people as well, as well as sexism against women, and homophobia (dude said gay sex was worse than murder…). This was pretty common in a number of Christian sects at the time.

“Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.” ~St. John Chrysostom

“Do you know that each of your women is an Eve? The sentence of God – on this sex of yours – lives in this age; the guilt must necessarily live, too. You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.” ~Tertullian (he’s even earlier, second and third century)

“Let us set our women folk on the road to goodness by teaching them to display submissiveness.” and “Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman.” “Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil’s doorway. You should always go in mourning and in rags.” ~St. Clement of Alexandria (also second and third century)

Some christians of the second and third century, including the namesake of the term “martyr” openly taught the Jewish people were wicked Christ killers (there are also attributions of deeply anti-semitic quotes to both Apostles John and Paul).

Christians instituted legal codes calling for executions of queer people by the fourth century (the Codex Theodosianus calls for executions for men who marry men).

Yeah, I’ve read Theodoret too, and there’s a shit ton of problematic views attributed to Christian groups in his works as well. Cyril the genocidal fourth century maniac is still a saint to a number of Christian sects.

If you want to argue that these very common, often incredibly mainstream (Chrysostom is a saint of all three big Christian sects that existed prior to protestantism) groups do not represent the ideal, that sections of even the gospels themselves from the time do not represent the ideal, make that argument. But this historical revisionism to erase the violence and oppression built in those years is a denial of history and a form of apologism around the histories of these oppressions.

This is sort of like the difference between arguing that Stalin was doing Marxism wrong and arguing that Stalinism never happened.

DSC:

I wholeheartedly agree with you, the demonization of women started early and has been with us ever since but I honestly think that Jesus would have been furious with them. He really seemed to like us and treat us as human beings, telling his followers off for being misogynistic and trying to put his female followers and companions “in their place” and the legends make it very clear that it was the women he looked for first after the resurrection, not the men because the women were actually there already at the tomb, looking for him.

Also Cyril, I think, was the bastard who murdered Hypatia, the librarian of the great library at Alexandria. The man was a monster. So we’re many of his contemporaries. We don’t need revisionism here. This shit must be remembered. They are the precursers to the modern Christian right and we need to remember that. This is where they draw their bile from.

@CassandraSays

i totally agree. They have Scripture classes at my daughter’s primary school here. I have to write a note each term to excuse her from it (it is people from the local churches that come in to talk about christian religion). i have ZERO problem with her choosing to believe in God, i just actually think it’s a really important decision that she needs to be old enough to make. so when we talk about it (she knows i am atheist), she tries to act all cool with me and is dismissive, i always explain that people have different belief systems and just because she doesn’t agree, doesn’t give her the right to be mean (she is 8). i emphasise to her that how we treat other people is a defining characteristic.

Rutee:

No, you’re right there isn’t much said by the female deciples that have survived and there’s a vast male bias in all of the gospels but there are women mentioned as friends and deciples. And no, there is no real way of telling what he said and what he didn’t. It’s a belief I have, not being a Christian, because he didn’t seem to see his little band of followers as a gender exclusive little club and he does seem to have interceded to protect at least one woman and probably saved her life (according tothe mythology, anyway ). I have no way of knowing if what I extrapolate is real or wishful thinking on my part, but I do think he (or the stories attributed to him) had quite a bit to say that was valuable and is still applicable. I discard the supernatural stuff as being invented after his death and don’t believe or agree with a word of it. The lack of reliable, unbiased sources of any kind makes it really difficult to know what this man was all about, But from what I’ve read I think there is some evidence that he got on well with women and accepted them into his inner circle but I wasn’t there and I don’t trust the Gospels so neither I nor anyone else can know for certain.

As for the divided behemoth of a religion that he founded, as you said, they had actually discarded most of his political teaching before a single generation had passed or twisted it out of all recognition. Conservative Chistianity, as far as I’m concerned has very little to do with Jesus as a person who had a particular view of the world and they’ve swallowed the supernatural stuff hook, line and sinker. The liberals seem to be trying to look at both and I know a few who have discarded the supernatural view altogether. Not many, of course, but a few.

I didn’t mean to sound anything like as didactic and I did and consider your points completely valid, unfortunately my chemotherapy tends to give me a bad case of the dumb (shuts down my frontal lobes among other things) and some of my posts tend to get a bit silly and over-reactive. *Is embarrassed*

When I read the gospels a few years ago for a religion class I came away from it thinking of Jesus as a complete douche bag. Now I realize that is unfair as he did a lot of good stuff (healing people and all that), but everyone is always saying how perfect he was so when I actually read it the passages that really stood out to me were the ones where he came across as an asshole, like the one where he calls a woman a dog and the ones about the fig tree.

My best friend and my grandmother are both devout Presbyterians. They are both lovely, caring, social justice minded people who take care of everyone. My best friend wants to work in family law when she graduates from law school, and my grandmother has never been anything but loving, gracious, and supportive of my super Jewwy life goals (which is a big deal since her youngest daughter married a Jew in the early 80’s, before intermarriage was a thing). I remain fully convinced that it’s something other than Christianity that makes certain groups of Christians so utterly shitty.

I probably have told this story before, but cannot recall! I tell if often…

I was teaching William Blake’s poetry in an intro to literature course some years ago: the class discussion on “The Chimney Sweeper” got hung up on the young children being evil because they were black (some didn’t realize it was soot until I explained it) (good explication and text of poem here: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2010/09/a_perfect_discomfit.html).

Later on, a student writing a paper on this poem, replicated all the problematic aspects of the original class comments (i.e. chimney sweeps are evil and going to hell), and when I had a conference and was working with her to try to show how hard it would be to support that reading, I asked her what she thought was the most important thing that Jesus said.

She had to think a while before coming up with “Behave or you’ll go to hell.”

I quoted some parts of the Sermon on the Mount to her, and she just looked confused because (apparently?) that was not taught in her church. For all the fundamentalist claims of Biblical inerrancy, a whole lot of my students apparently did not read/study the Bible (in any version), but were told what it means by their minister (and yes mostly focus on the Old Testament, which as Lewis Black has pointed out is pretty ridiculous). In this area, for some churches, there’s no requirement that a minister or a preacher have any education or training or meet any criteria besides “Jesus called me to preach.”

I still remember the absolutely jaw-dropping shock of sheer bloody astonishment.

I have also been accused of violating my student’s right to free speech and religious freedom by telling them (in private gradebook comment) that if they continue telling their classmates that they will go to hell, that they will earn a failing grade on the discussion because 1) that’s not the discussion topic, and 2) I consider that telling people they will go to hell if they don’t believe like you want them to is in fact “discourtesy” which is not allowed by the student policy/handbook.

(My dept head has never pursued any of those claims, btw)

I mean it’s so horrid to go to the “FUCK YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS” thread and read, http://manboobz.com/2012/03/23/fuck-your-civil-rights-you-lying-whores-yet-more-words-of-wisdom-from-tom-sexismbuster-martin/comment-page-3/#comment-138857this sort of thing, and it’s follow-on.

I have cake pops! That I made because I have the new, as seen on TV, Bake Pop pan. Because my kids caught me at a moment of weakness and asked me to buy it. The cake pops came out really well! I recommend the pan, just do not call the number or you will end up with 4 pans…get it at Walgreens when it gets there.

*New World Order conspiracy 😛

Ithiliana:

The response to Blake really surprises me. The poems seem so clear and straitforward to me and students getting so way off track with them is a bit worrying. I remember the first time my father gave me a copy of “Jerusalem” to read and told me to read it as a political statement, rather than the hymn I used to sing in church, and I was completely gobsmacked because his political beliefs and agenda were so clear but even our very, very liberal minister didn’t seem to get it. He often preached about controversial social issues but never thought to use the hymn as a place to start.