Category Archives: Religion

Online Life, Religion

Musings on sharing and passing on prayer requests on social media.

Leave a comment

This blog post is adapted from a Twitter1 thread that I tweeted out on the same topic.

Yesterday, I learned that my mother is in the hospital for COVID. I tweeted the following out to my followers, looking for support:

I would like to note that I specifically directed this message to “friends who…” I would have thought that this would have made it clear that I wasn’t looking for every person who believed in prayer to jump on it.

And yet, three different people who do not follow me and have no followers in common with me decided to retweet my request to their followers. I’m not even sure how any of them found my tweet, to be honest. As I said, I don’t follow me, and I doubt my tweets get promoted, sine I refuse to send Musk any money.

I get it. it’s entirely possible that these people meant well. After all, I think there’s an impulse to get as many people praying as possible. And I think that usually comes from a good place. But as the song goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. More on that later.

But I think we as a society also need to balance that impulse against respecting people’s privacy and whether or not they want every prayer they can possibly get. There are probably some people I don’t want praying for my or my mother. Namely people who are going to pray for an outcome I don’t approve of. (My mother’s health crisis is neither your evangelistic opportunity nor a chance to pray for my “salvation.”)

I will note that all three people who retweeted my request are Christians. Not the same kind of Christian, mind you. One seemed like a pretty progressive type. Another was an obvious Christian supremacist. I’d be hard pressed to describe the third one with such certainty, but their bio and tweet history suggested that they were at least inclined toward some degree of Christian supremacy.

Now, I will note that a lot of people I don’t know — including Christians who probably found my prayer request through the overt Christian supremacist — left kind offers of prayer. I appreciated that. But then you have good ol’ Tom, who totally found me through that overt Christian supremacist. Here’s what Tom had to say:2

I would be happy to pray for you, Jarred, AFTER you remove “send positive energy” from your request. If I pray Only God will get the glory.

Because leave it to a Christian supremacist to turn a chance to pray for a sick woman into a religious pissing match.

Now I’d like to think that most people — including multitudes of people who fall somewhere in Christian supremacy — would be horrified by Tom’s behavior. And many of my friends took Tom to task for his behavior. (Much love to you.)

But the Christian supremacist who enabled Tom to find me through his retweet? As of late last night when I checked, he hasn’t said a peep. He hasn’t taken Tom to task. Nor has he expressed any regret for — whether intentionally or not — put me in Tom’s rhetorical crosshairs. For me that’s a problem.

So consider this post a reminder that maybe not every tweet should be retweeted and that maybe we should take more care in considering what the consequences of retweeting something deeply personal and sensitive to other people might be. Even if our hearts are in the right place and just want to make sure that a sick woman and her son get as much prayer as possible. Because remember, I was somewhat specific in who I was directing my prayer request to.

1I will never call it “X.” However, if someone pays me $20 per month, I’ll gladly start referring to it as “Close App Icon.”

2I will not link directly to Tom’s profile or tweet because Tom does not deserve the traffic. Also, I’d just as soon he not find this post through Google search if he’s the type to search his name. (In fairness, I search my name about every six months and don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the practice.

Paganism, Religion

Pagan Ponderings: Old Gods, New Pantheons

Leave a comment

Earlier today, I answered a question over on Quora which asked whether Pagans believed in more than one pantheon. I would like to duplicate part of that answer here.

The other thing that I will note is that in my opinion, “pantheons” are mostly a cultural construct. They’re the result of a bunch of cults to different gods existing in close proximity and their various members intermingling. In this sense the “Greek pantheon” is simply a collection of the various deities that the various people living in Greece (or more properly, the Greek city-states) worshiped. Eventually, people started trying to figure out how these various deities related to each other, and the myths explaining those relationships emerged.

I think that as the modern Pagan movement gains traction and maturity, we might see new pantheons emerge. That is, rather than merely talking about what culture a given deity originated, we will start inventing new stories to explain their relationships to the various other deities they find themselves co-existing with today.

I found this idea both fascinating and appealing. As I mentioned in my answer, I believe that pantheons are the result of different cults/religious groups that worship different deities living in proximity of one another. So why do we still think about ancient pantheons rather than the pantheons that might be forming in our own communities by virtues of which deities we each worship while living together?

And what about the more eclectic Pagans among us who tend to worship different deities who stem from different cultures? Does it not make sense to think of this disparate group as forming a sort of pantheon today? Perhaps even new myths about how Aphrodite and The Morrigan relate to one another and share a follower in common. In many ways,

I imagine the more strict reconstructionists are practically howling in rage at this idea. But some of us are much more innovative and are not as interested in maintaining some weird (and often illusory) sense of historicity. instead, we cherish the (again, sometimes illusory) historical roots, but take them in new directions. And this is okay.

For those of us who are so innovative, I think developing new pantheons and even myths explaining the wide variety of deities is a rational and natural development of our pagan traditions as they grow and mature. Such a thing might even be necessary for that growth and maturity. After all, it might help add some level of cohesion to the often scattered and disparate gods whose names get bandied about in an almost random-seeming manner.

Religion, Religious Discrimination, Witchcraft

Tilting at Windmills: A Christian raises the alarm about Paganism and the New Age Movement

Leave a comment

Every now and then — and especially around this time of year — someone decides to write a news article about Paganism and witchcraft. On occasion, it’s just an informational peace, noting our existence as if we’re some sort of curiosity. On rare occasion, we even see an article by one of own that is pretty positive.

Sadly, there are also a considerable number of articles — typically written by Christians — that are critical and and even downright defamatory toward us. In this blog post, I will be taking a closer look at one such article. I should note that this particular article focuses primarily on the New Age movement and Paganism — also called Neopaganism in the article. It mentions witchcraft a few times, but does not substantially focus on it as a potentially separate identity. (After all, some Pagans are witches, but not all Pagans are witches nor are all witches Pagan.)

The article starts off by talking about how children often grew up seeing the image of witches as evil characters in folk tales and other literature, then moves on to the author learning later in life that some people identify as witches, “but they weren’t all that bad.” The italicization of “that” makes me smirk. Thank you, Emmy Griffin. You are too kind.

Griffin closes here first paragraph with the claim that “Neopaganism and New Age are trying to supplant Christianity in America.” What’s interesting me me is that this is the sudden switch from talking specifically talking about witches to talking about Neopaganism and the New Age. She uses the terms interchangeably as if they all mean the same thing. They do not, and this choice immediately leaves me wondering just how reliable her sources are.

What may be more interesting, however, is Griffin’s assertion that we are trying to supplant Christianity. I do not think that this is an accurate statement. In fact, I would argue that it is a matter of projection. The vast majority of Pagan religions — and the New Age movement as well — are non-proselytizing. We do not seek converts. This is not to say that we don’t welcome newcomers or those interested in joining us. But we are also perfectly happy to let people stick with whatever religion they wish to, or no religion at all. Instead, it is Christians who often seek to convert others and even hold the belief that everyone must convert or face the wrath of the Christian god as a central tenet of their religion. So what Griffin is expressing here is a fear that others will treat her the way she and her fellow Christians treat others.

There may be a second fear here, however. And that is the fear that Christianity — or at least her brand of that religion — cannot compete with Paganism and New Age religions and people will find the latter more preferable to her own faith. But surely the Pagans and the New Agers cannot be held responsible for her own religions failure to remain competetive in today’s spiritual marketplace.

Griffin spends the next paragraph giving statistics on what various people believe in various religions or are atheists, presumably to back up her claim that we’re all seeking to supplant Christianity rather than treating it as evidence that other religions and even nonreligious belief is more appealing than Christianity.

Weirdly, Griffin then takes a jab at Pagans and New Agers by invoking an old quote by G.K. Chesterton:

As Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton once said, “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

This quote reeks of Christian supremacy, suggesting that other belief systems in general and Paganism and New Age spirituality in particular are somehow inferior and for gullible people. It seems like a rather harsh and unfounded assessment on both Chesterton and Griffin. It demonstrates a sort of aggressive dismissiveness and condescension that likely does nothing to help attract people to her own religion.

Griffin then goes on to give her explanation of what Paganism and the New Age movement is, citing an LA Progressive article as her source. This is an interesting choice because Bruce Larro, the author of that article, does not himself seem to be part of either movement. To Larro’s credit, his own research on both movements included looking into the actual words of members of those movements. So in this sense, Griffin’s choice of Larro as a source is far to superior to someone like Mike Warnke or Bill Schnoebelen. However, the fact that she used a non-primary source rather than seeking out actual Pagans (to whom she refers as “Newpaganists” later in the article, again calling her knowledge and credibility into question) and New Agers directly is questionable.

This is especially questionable when one reads Larro’s article. While considerate and even mostly positive, Larro’s article has a clear agenda: To consider the two movements through the lens of socialism and to consider whether either movement could serve as a spiritual or religious vehicle to support the socialist movement. I suspect that this is exactly the reason Griffin chose this article as her source. Socialism is another bogeyman of conservative Christians and they often like to link all of their bogeyman into a single (often Satanic) conspiracy. This hypothesis finds support in the following paragraph found a little later in the article:

Climate change, transgenderism, abortion, cancel culture, and even critical race theory (CRT) have their poisonous roots in New Age and neopagan religious ideas. Under the auspices of New Age fall CRT and cancel culture. The tenets of CRT and cancel culture emphasize the importance of “lived experience,” “special knowledge,” and manifestation of your best life. Anyone who dares to contradict these deserves to be canceled because they are evil according to New Age. Ironically, New Age preaches that it can help its adherents self-help their way out of their problems while also creating a victim class.

Had Griffin geared her research toward exploring the truth rather than mining for quotes and sources that fit her narrative, she might have discovered that opinions on many of those topics vary greatly among Pagans (and presumably New Agers as well). The accusation that either movement acts with a hive mind with no disagreements is woefully ignorant. And again, I posit that this is more likely a matter of projection on Griffin’s part: She assumes that Pagans demand conformity of opinion because her own brand of Christianity demands it.

Griffin then mentions the former astrologist Angela Ucci. I had never heard of Angela Ucci before reading this article and a Google search of her brought up little more than YouTube videos of interviews she’s given and her own social media pages. Beyond that, she seems like a total unknown, which raises the question of why Griffin chose such a relatively unknown person to hold up her experience and try to paint it as universal among New Agers. Again, this feels more like Griffin cherry-picking a testimony that fits her desired narrative rather than an honest attempt at research or presenting factual information.

Griffin hen goes on to give examples that she considers evidence of the two movements’ growing influence, citing media portrayals of witches and the portrayal of witches and Pagans in a positive light, something which seems to bother Griffin greatly despite the fact that she doesn’t articulate why that is as well. Instead, she offers barbs like “it’s the embodiment of chaos.” Which is a particularly ironic in light of her previous claims that Paganism and the New Age movement are a monolith which demands adherence to the group think. The idea that everyone must think alike and chaos (or total individualism, as Griffin mentions later) are fairly incompatible concepts. Griffins accusations are rather inconsistent and incoherent if one merely scratches the surface a bit.

Griffin then invokes the specter of the Satanists, mentioning a specific incident in Texas:

This rise in New Age/mysticism and paganism is getting ever more prevalent in the mainstream culture. In Tyler, Texas, over the weekend, satanists (who would go into the neopaganism column) had a booth at a Pagan Pride event. The Morning Telegraph, a local paper covering the event, quoted the event organizer, Raynie Castañeda, as saying the event was not satanic, just an alternative celebration of non-Abrahamic religions. She said: “There’s kids trick-or-treating, people getting their faces painted. … We’re not doing anything satanic or any crazy rituals. We’re just existing.” She must have missed the part where the Satanic temple booth was preforming “unbaptisms” for $10 and handing out certificates that literally said: “All bonds of servitude have been broken. Power and agency have been restored. Thyself is thy master. Hail Satan!” Maybe Castañeda doesn’t understand what “satanic” is?

There’s a lot to unpack in this quote and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to it all, but I at least want to start that process. The first thing to note is that she uses the activities of a single group and their booth to paint a picture of all the other Pagans attending the event. Again, this is a case of Griffin cherry picking examples that fit her narrative and ignoring anything that might run counter to it.

I will also note that Griffin seems to either be ignorant of the fact that The Satanic Temple is primarily an atheistic form of Satanism or is intentionally ignoring or even erasing that fact. When most members of the Satanic Temple say “Hail Satan,” they are not literally talking about the Christian devil, but a concept or a principle. So yes, even the Satanists in this story most likely do not consider themselves “satanic” in the sense that Griffin is attempting to imply. Then again, Griffin seems to think that anything that doesn’t fall into step with her own brand of Christianity is satanic, so maybe they do. But I don’t find that a particularly useful or honest use of the word on her part.

The concept of “unbaptisms” — which Griffin seems to find troubling and possibly offensive — is an interesting concept. As someone who had a bad (though not as bad as others) experience in evangelical Christianity, I can certainly see what value some people might find value in a ritual act of breaking ties with their former, toxic religious experiences. So Griffin cries fowl and animosity toward Christianity without exploring why some might justifiably feel such animosity.

Griffin closes her article with the unfounded and unsubstantiated claims that Pagans and New Agers are seeking to destroy American soceity and that neither movement offers true happiness. This later is a claim that I hear often, but ignores the many Pagans (and presumably New Agers) that are quite happy and lived fulfilled lives. But again, our experiences and our truths do not fit Griffin’s narrative so we must either be ignored or presumed to be lying.

In closing, I will just note that I am again disappointed in just how uninterested many Christians are in pursuing and presenting the truth despite their many claims to the contrary. There is so much dishonesty in Griffin’s article and the way that she presents her case that I struggle to believe that it is not intentional.

Religion

Thoughts on Voluntary Baptism for Children

Leave a comment

In a Discord community, an acquaintance asked for thoughts on the idea of children and teens making a profession of faith and getting baptized. I gave some thoughts on the topic. I would like to now share them here and even expand on them.

My own thoughts are influenced by a number of factors. First is the factor of being brought up in an American Baptist church that was a staunch believer in the believer’s baptism. We did not do infant baptism. Baptism was a choice a person had to make for themselves when they were able to do so.

One of the big questions among Baptists tends to be the question of at what point CAN a child make that choice for themselves. When do they have the maturity and cognitive ability to make that choice for themselves? There’s no easy answer to that question. There’s also no one-size-fits-all to that question. Individual children develop and mature differently, each at their own pace. The moment we pick an age, we will have children that would have been ready for such a decision sooner and children for whom that age is still too young.

In the long run, I think belief in a child’s right to personal autonomy – and that is a belief I hold as fiercely as my belief in any adult’s right to personal autonomy – we may need to trust individual children to make this call for themselves. After all, getting baptized is typically not as dangerous as operating a chainsaw, imbibing alcohol, or driving a car. If a child gets baptized “too soon” or decides it was a mistake later for any reason, no harm, no foul. Or at least, I would hope so.

There are some obvious caveats here. Hopefully, they are getting baptized in a church and not some sort of cult. Hopefully, that church is healthy and espouses theology that is non-toxic.Hopefully, that church is not authoritarian and allows its members to establish friendships and other relationships outside of the church as well.

I acknowledge that this is a lot to hope for, and there are a lot of churches that do not match my desired attributes.But I think it is an error and an injustice to a child to try and resolve these potential pitfalls by deciding said child is “too young” to make that decision for themselves. In fact, I’d suggest that doing so would be to fall into the same kind of paternalistic, controlling behavior we’re concerned about the church engaging in.

Before I move on to my preferred way to mitigate these pitfalls, I want to offer another insight, this one influenced by my experience as a witch. And that’s an appreciation for the importance of praxis and religion as a communal practice and identity. I’ve come to see baptism as not only a profession of belief, but as an act of joining community and even a family. In fact, that may be the most important part to a child. Maybe they don’t believe in God and Jesus, but find meaning in singing the hymns or worship songs alongside others. And if the community/family is healthy, I think it is important to encourage a child who wants to join it and partake in it. After all, if they decide they no longer want to be a part of that community later on, they are (hopefully) free to leave it. No harm, no foul.

As an aside, I wonder how many of us balk at the idea of kids getting baptized or professing a belief is bad are acting out of old ideas about apostasy. We seem to have this reaction that “once we’re in, we’ll never get out” or something. Granted, that thinking also grows out of our own – often traumatic – experiences with Christian – particularly evangelical, as that’s the background of myself and a lot of the people I talk to – churches. We have an understandable and noble desire to protect others from experiencing the same or similar things.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can always protect others. Even children. I also think there comes a time when our attempts to do so become controlling in their own way and rob others of their own – possibly positive – experiences.

So what do I think we should do? I think we should encourage children to think for themselves and to make their own choices – even if those choices sometimes make us nervous. Here are some concrete things that I think go into that:

  1. Instilling a sense of self-esteem and self-trust in the children around us.
  2. Teaching children that their needs and wants matter and are valid.
  3. Teaching children critical thinking skills and encouraging them to always think things over.
  4. Ensuring that children don’t end up in an echo chamber or solely reliant on the church (or any other source) for support and companionship.
  5. Teaching children that they are allowed to change their mind and that it’s okay (and probably even inevitable) if their beliefs change over time.

I believe that a child so equipped can and should be trusted to make their own choices about what they believe and whether they want to be a part of any given religious community.

Religion

“You just want to sin!”

Leave a comment

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard or seen that statement now. Some have leveled this accusation directly at me personally. I’ve seen it in the dozens of posts where evangelical and other conservative Christians try to explain why people are deconstructing their faith, leaving their churches for more progressive ones, and/or leaving Christianity altogether. (I will not link to any of those articles, but be sure to check out the excellent response to one of them by Kurt Kroon over at Cascade Church of Portland.)

It’s a garbage accusation. No one goes through the process of deconstructing or changing their beliefs just because they want to “sin.” It’s an explanation that allows the accuser to summarily dismiss the truth of what many people who deconstruct go through. I’d argue that’s most likely because if the accuser took an honest look at what was really going on in such people’s lives, they’d have to grapple with some serious and difficult questions. And that might actually might make then start their own journey of deconstruction.

So as someone who has gone through the deconstruction process and came out realizing he prefers a cauldron over a eucharistic cup any day, allow me to unpack this whole idea of how some of us actually grapple with the topic of “sin” while we deconstruct.

As always, note that this is neither a comprehensive nor an exhaustive list. There are likely aspects of the topic of sin that I will not cover in this post. Hopefully, other people will pick up their pens (whether literal or figurative) and fill in the gaps that I leave so together, we draw a nuanced and beautiful picture of reality.

We question what qualifies as a sin.

I would estimate that 99% of the time that this accusation comes up, the accuser specifically has “sexual sin” in mind. And in 99% of those cases, I’ll note that the “sexual sin” in question is usually centered around engaging in sex with someone who is the “same sex” (in quotes to acknowledge the complex nuances that are added when you start thinking beyond the gender binary) as you. Oh, sometimes, they’ll throw in someone cheating on their spouse (which I personally would classify as breaking one’s word/agreement to one’s spouse rather than a “sexual sin”), but that often feels like an attempt to “prove” they’re not really just out to queer people. (Often, I feel they really are just out to get queer people.)

My response is very similar to Kroon’s response in his article, where he wrote the following:

Maybe what this concept is really exposing is that specific behaviors or identities are seen as sinful in these church communities and the process of becoming who God created them to be gets interpreted as just “loving sin”.

You see, here’s the deal. Some of us experience desires for people that evangelical churches tell us we shouldn’t. They often tell us that even having these desires is inherently sinful. Even in the cases that they don’t, they insist that acting on those desires is definitely sinful.

The thing is, for allosexual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual people — and even ace/aro people who are not sex-indifferent or sex-repulsed — sexual desires/and or the need to experience sex is a very real and basic human need. Expecting such people to perpetually deny themselves the fulfillment of that need for no good reason (and we’ll get to the reasons in a bit) is cruel. So these churches are demanding something of their followers that is cruel. That deserves to be questioned.

So do some people deconstruct because they want to find sexual fulfillment and intimacy? That was certainly one of my reasons — and the one that got the whole process kicked off. The thing is, I don’t see that as a bad thing. And I’m critical of any theology that does.

We question how sin is defined and determined.

One of the things I learned with my experiences in evangelical Christianity is that “sin” is very arbitrary. That is, the decision as to whether something is a sin and why it is a sin boils down to “God decides what is and isn’t sin.” I have said elsewhere and will repeat here that I think this is the worst basis for a moral framework that I can imagine. Morality must be something more than an arbitrary set of proclamations by God.

To once more go back to sexual desire and the desire for sexual gratification and intimacy, most evangelical Christians will insist that the Bible “clearly teaches” that such sexual activities are clearly sinful. But they do not grapple with whether their interpretation of the Bible is actually correct (there is good faith disagreement on how to interpret the Bible passages in question) nor whether the Bible would be correct even if it was proven that theirs was the correct interpretation. This is where my and others’ anti-authoritarian leanings come into play. “The Bible says so,” even if it were an unquestionably correct statement, does not settle the matter for me. We still must question whether the position is defensible from a moral standpoint. That is, we must look at the impact this doctrine has on the people it targets. That impact is toxic and harmful, which to me invalidates the doctrine. Doctrine that inflicts harm on people should be rejected, even if it’s “correct.” (See also: A deity who harms their own creation is a deity that should be opposed and undermined rather than worshiped and obeyed.)

I will note that some conservative Christians — such as Catholics — do not rely solely on “the Bible say so.” Instead they will invoke “natural law.” The problem is, their “natural law” arguments are based on outdated, obsolete understandings of science and/or outright junk science rather than based on what science has now revealed about the natural world. These arguments also deserve to be explored and criticized, and many queer and queer-friendly Catholics do exactly that.

We question original sin, total depravity, and sin as something that forever separates us from the Divine.

As far as I’m concerned, the whole concept of sin as taught in evangelical Christianity and other conservative forms of Christianity is toxic and irredeemable (pun intended) to the core. The idea that people need to be “rescued” from their sins is laughable and serves no other purpose than to force a perspective of self-loathing, helplessness, and unhealthy subservient reliance on God — and church leadership by proxy.

This is a reality that many people who deconstruct and/or deconvert go through, in my experience. We start questioning the whole idea that we are “sinners,” that sin is something that permanently separates us from God without God’s intervention. Instead, we start to formulate other ways to understand and derive our morality and our relationship with the Divine (assuming we have any further interest in the Divine). We start to explore other ways to address our moral shortcomings and the “messes” we create when we screw up. There are plenty of other models for atonement and accountability. Quite frankly, I consider quite a few of them far superior to the evangelical model, which tends to focus primarily if not exclusively on some perfect afterlife rather than seeking true justice, accountability, and restoration of human dignity in this life.

Concluding remarks.

I hope you, dear reader, are starting to see just how much there is to explore and deconstruct about the topic of “sin.” These are the kinds of questions that those of us who deconstruct and/or deconvert grapple with. And yet our accusers want to flatten that into a trite accusation that we “just want to sin.” I’m not buying it. I hope you don’t buy it either. In fact, I hope you start to see just how cruel and immoral the accusation actually is.

Movies, Religion, Religious Discrimination, Sexuality

An Ex-Gay Survivor’s Musings on the “Pray Away” documentary

Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers. If you are reading this post when I first scheduled it to appear, I just finished taking part in a Clubhouse room where we discussed the documentary “Pray Away,” which was directed and produced by Kristine Stolakis. I watched the documentary for the first time earlier this year and then re-watched it to take notes and prepare for the Clubhouse room.

As I was preparing for the Clubhouse room, I realized that there was no way that I could possibly talk about everything I wanted to. The room was scheduled to last for only one hour and other people needed a chance to talk. And this room was sponsored by a club where a lot of people want and need to talk. So I had to pick out a few important points to make and make space for the other participants.

So I decided to dust things off here at the ol’ blog and write this post. After all, I can take all the time I need to share all of my thoughts. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. (And if anyone from Clubhouse followed me over here to hear the rest of my thoughts, hi!)

Note from editing: I still didn’t get everything in. Some things had to go for the sake of structure. I’m pleased with the final outcome though.

Let me go into my own ex-gay background.

I never attended an Exodus conference. I never saw a therapist while trying to change my sexual orientation. Instead, I was the kind of ex-gay that read a book (this one, if you really want to know), confessed my “struggles” to my Christian friends and church family, and prayed like hell at home asking God to please make me attracted to women rather than other guys.

You see, there are all kinds of ex-gays. This is something that did not come across at all in the documentary. In fact, there was a time when I wasn’t sure I actually qualified as an ex-gay survivor. I expressed this to Peterson Toscano back when he and Christine Bakke-O’Neil (just Bakke back then) first founded the now inactive Beyond Ex-Gay (bXg). He assured me that I definitely qualified as an ex-gay survivor. In fact the bXg FAQ page has a few questions that cover the broad range of “ex-gay experiences.”

I think it’s also important to note that even those of us who did not attend formal ministries or events like Exodus International and its conferences were influenced by them. These ministries and events put out reading materials (a.k.a. propaganda) that influenced the general conservative Christian view of LGBTQIA+ people. So despite my self-driven attempts to pray away the gay, Exodus and the other organizations still had an impact on me.

Some things in the documentary were relatable.

I think the most powerful part of the documentary was the part that I related to most. That’s the part where John Paulk talked about feeling alone even though he was surrounded by his wife (at the time) and kids. Just before my fifteenth coming out anniversary, I offered the following reflection:

The thing is, dealing with one’s feelings is ultimately something one has to do alone. No one can feel those feelings for you. No one can take them away from you. No one can do anything other than support you through it all, and no one can give that support 24/7. I found that late at night, laying in my bed, I was left all alone to either face my desire for love and intimacy with another man alone or repress it alone. It was my burden to carry, and the more I fought it, the heavier that burden got.

— Jarred. “The Path Left Behind.” This blog.

Paulk went on to talk about the fact that it was during this time of loneliness that he finally realized he had to figure out who he really was or it was going to destroy him. I had a similar experience in my own coming out process, which I wrote about elsewhere.

Many parts of Julie Rodgers’s story were moving.

I had never heard of Julie before this documentary. That’s probably a huge reason why her story was one of the stories in the documentary that touched me most. When she read a section she had written about how her struggles reconciling her faith with her sexuality led her to injure herself, it moved me deeply. it (along with the part of John’s story that I discussed above) is one of the few parts of the documentary that I felt actually gave a glimpse into the kind of pain and suffering that the ex-gay movement has caused. (I’ll come back to this statement later.)

I wish the documentary would have talked more about the politicization of the ex-gay movement.

The documentary talked about how Exodus got involved in advocating for the passage of Proposition 8. Yvette Cantu Schneider talked about going to work for the Family Research Counsel. So the documentary covered that the ex-gay movement got in bed with the opponents of LGBTQIA+ rights. But the way it was presented made it feel like this was a “later development.” And perhaps as an explicit decision, it was. But the idea of political neutrality is often a fiction, and that certainly applies to the ex-gay movement. The ex-gay movement and its purveyors were useful tools to the opponents of LGBTQIA+ rights from the beginning. This is evidenced by the fact that Anita Bryant tried to form a coalition with Exodus back in the eighties. Exodus declined the invitation (for which I will give them some credit).

Yet, anyone familiar with the anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric will remember well the common defense: “Gay people don’t need rights. They can simply change.” Whether knowingly or not, the ex-gay leaders at the very least allowed themselves to be weaponized against the rest of us. Silence is complicity.

I wish the documentary had talked more about the ties between the ex-gay movement and the Pentecostal movement.

You get a glimpse of how Pentecostalism is heavily tied to the ex-gay movement in the scene from the documentary when everyone is laying hands on someone to pray for them. It was a scene from Jeremy McCall’s story. It didn’t come up in the documentary, but during an interview shortly before Exodus closed its doors, Alan Chambers talked about how his Pentecostalism influenced his claims to have changed his orientation. According to Alan, claiming to have already changed was supposed to be a statement of faith in the hopes that God would eventually make it a true statement. This is actually a common practice in Pentecostal practice and more specifically a common practice in the Prosperity Gospel movement, often referred to by the phrase “name it and claim it.” At the time of the interview, Alan expressed remorse that people mistook this practice for a factual claim representing the present reality.

It’s interesting to me that other former Exodus leaders talked about their claims to have changed differently in the documentary. Michael Bussee said he had been “pretending.” John Paulk outright said that he had been lying. I’m curious if that’s how both men would have interpreted their actions at the time they were still involved in Exodus or if it’s a description of their behavior after the fact. If the latter, I wonder if they, like Alan, approached their statements in a “say it as if it’s true so that it will become true” manner at the time they were still a part of Exodus.

I wish the documentary had talked about the shift in promised results by Exodus.

Everyone involved in the documentary was very honest in admitting that Exodus originally promised a change in sexual orientation. John Paulk said he joined with the expectation of getting married and becoming a father, thereby fulfilling his “proper role as a Christian man.” One of the earlier promotions for Exodus International — shown early in the documentary — practically equated turning straight with “being saved.” Paulk and Michael Bussee both admitted to presenting themselves as formerly gay men who had experienced a change in orientation in the past.

What the documentary did not cover was the eventual shift from “change is possible” to “the goal is holiness, not heterosexuality.” Exodus spokespeople started admitting that a change in sexual attraction may not actually be possible — at least not for everyone — and started promoting lifelong celibacy as an acceptable alternative instead. I suspect a lot of this had to do with the work of Justin Lee, who was critical of the ex-gay industry and formed the Gay Christian Network (which has since been renamed the Queer Christian Fellowship and continues on without Justin’s involvement), where the Side A/Side B terminology was first coined. (In that paradigm, I have seen people who promote actual change in sexual orientation referred to as “Side X” and deemed a completely different thing in its own right.)

I feel this change from promising “change” to offering “God-pleasing holiness” through celibacy is important. I feel it was one of the first signs that Exodus was failing.

I wish the documentary would have talked more about the tailoring of the ex-gay narratives.

In the documentary, Julie Rodgers talks about how Ricky Chalette pushed her to include a personal experience of sexual assault into her testimony — a terrible act on Chelette’s part. When she initially refused, she noted that he expressed disappointment because he felt the story would add so much power to her testimony.

One of the things I talked about when reviewing Randy Thomas’s own apology at the time Exodus closed its doors was how he noted that Exodus regularly encouraged ex-gay speakers to “tailor their testimony to fit a certain narrative” at the time he joined. Randy did not go into detail, but I have a bit of a hypothesis about what he’s talking about, and I feel Julie’s story about Ricky pushing her to include her assault in her testimony tends to back it up.

One of the things that I and others have long noted about many ex-gay testimonies is how they all talk about addictive and self-destructive behavior. They weren’t just gay. They were drinking way too much. They were abusing other drugs. They were engaging in risky sexual behaviors and/or “being promiscuous.” You can even see this in Jeremy McCall’s testimony in the documentary. It seems to me that this is probably a direct result of the “tailoring process.”

Now, I’m not saying anyone made up a drug addiction or drinking problem. (Though I’ll note that conservative Christians are notorious for overstating problems, to the point of sometimes painting having a beer or two with dinner as “a drinking problem.”) But I do think that there was a concerted effort to paint these problems as both inherent to the “gay lifestyle” (as opposed to a coping mechanism for dealing with the stigmatization and oppression of LGBTQIA+ people) and universal to all LGBTQIA+ people. And again, this is something that the opponents of LGBTQIA+ rights reveled in.

I wish the documentary had interviewed some ex-gay survivors who were never professionally ex-gay.

Hopefully up to this point, this analysis has been mostly positive and constructive. Overall, I think this is a great documentary, even if I think it could have been better. But now I have to talk about the one thing that drives me to absolute distraction.

In some ways, this documentary feels more like a part of the participants’ redemption story rather than an incisive analysis or exposé of the ex-gay movement. And that’s largely a result of who was interviewed. Every single person interviewed for this documentary is a former — or in one case, current — leader in the ex-gay movement. I call them “professional ex-gays.”

Now my feelings about each of them as individuals varies widely, based on when they left the ex-gay ministry, the circumstances surrounding their exodus (from Exodus! Ha!), and what they’ve done since then. Michael Bussee left Exodus back in 1979, has lived as an openly gay man with his partner ever since, and has done much to elevate the voices of former ex-gays. Compare this to Alan Chambers, who stuck it out until Exodus closed its doors, but has agreed to talk about his marriage to Leslie — a marriage he weaponized or at least allowed others to weaponize against the rest of us for years — as a difficult, but acceptable “alternative” for LGBTQIA+ Christians as recently as a couple years ago. (Fortunately, the expressions of outrage over the invitation caused QCF to quietly withdraw it, but it was done very quietly.)

I would have liked to see at least one person who had not been platformed by Exodus or some other organization — Jeremy McCall has his own ministry and accepts speaking engagements which I suspect he gets paid for, but have no proof — at any point. Someone who paid to attend conferences where they were told “pray harder” and were fed pseudoscience without a single bit of compensation. I mean, surely Michael Bussee could have arranged a few introductions between Kristina Stolakis and such people.

This meant that even when the documentary talked about the meeting Michael did set up between ex-gay survivors and Exodus leadership around the time of its closing, that narrative was filtered through those leaders. What we saw was not so much the stories of those survivors, but the reactions of the leaders to those stories. To me, that was a huge injustice on the part of this documentary. It may be an unforgivable injustice.

Let’s tl;dr this thing.

As I said earlier. I think it was a good documentary overall and worth watching. i especially think it’s worth watching if you’ve never had to struggle with your sexuality or never experienced what conversion therapy and ex-gay ministries are like. However, I would just suggest that you also seek out other sources of information and stories about the movement. Some such stories are still visible on the bXg site. I’d also recommend checking out sites like Ex-Gay Watch and the now inactive Box Turtle Bulletin which have tracked and reported on the activities of ex-gay ministries and the greater anti-LGBTQIA+ movement for years. Because if you only watch this documentary, you’re not getting the full story.

Getting the full story is important to me. The ex-gay industry did not die off when Exodus closed its doors like many people had hoped it would. If anything, It’s had a distressing resurgence in recent years. Many within the current industry are even back to promising “change” rather than offering lifelong celibacy as LGBTQIA+ people’s best hope. We need to remember — and remind people — that we have already been down this road and the costs that were extracted while traveling it. We must learn from history so we can stop repeating it.

Magic/Magick, Religion, Videos, Witchcraft

New Video: Power in the Craft

Leave a comment

In this week’s video over on YouTube, I talk about the concept of power in the Craft.

[youtube https://youtu.be/lS43xAW1oMA]

As a former evangelical, I think it’s important to have an understanding of power that prohibits control and abuse of others. One of the things I did not mention in the video is the role of systemic power. Also, institutional power.

I think that systemic/institutional power should be avoided. All individuals should have access to power. This leads to equity and justice. I keep coming back to the idea of self-empowerment in witchcraft. That’s because I think it’s an important topic.

Institutional power and self-empowerment often come to odds with one another. For evidence, consider how institutions expect individuals to give up freedoms and make sacrifices for “the greater good.” But whose greater good? Most often, the institutions’ greater good.

As an aside, I’m amused by the fact that this topic came up during Pride Month. LGBTQIA people (though clearly not the only group) have been hit hard and abused by institutional power. Especially the institutions of various Christian churches. We desperately need a vision of power that breaks down that harm.

Paganism, Religion

Pondering Priesthoods in Paganism

Leave a comment

This past Sunday, I got into a conversation on Twitter in which the topic of priests came up. This got me thinking about the role(s) of priests in Paganism. To that effect, I want to capture and offer a few thoughts on priesthood(s).

There should be no priest vs. non-priest basis for determining a person’s value or worth.

In some religions there is sometimes a sense — whether officially stated in doctrine or simply implied by practice and attitude — that priests are somehow superior, closer to the Divine, or more special than non-priests. This kind of thinking has no place in Pagan practice. Priests who promote such thinking should be avoided and left without any followers.

Priesthoods may be established to perform special services to a deity or deities or otherwise form special relationship with them.

One of the most well-known examples of this are those priests of Brigid who keep an eternal flame lit in service to her. These kinds of priesthoods don’t necessarily serve other Pagans in the more common priest-laity relationship. They simply serve their deity or deities or form a special relationship with them that is personally meaningful.

It is important to note that being a member of this sort of priesthood does not make one better than those who are not. Relationships with the Divine are like relationships with human beings. Each person chooses the relationships that they need, want, and find personally fulfilling. A person who wants a more casual relationship with the Divine (“I’ll call when I need something or invite you if I have a really big party”) is just as valid as someone who chooses to get more deeply involved (“Let’s be besties!”).

Some priesthoods may offer services to members of the “laity,” but is should be done from a place of humility.

There are times when someone may want advice, require comfort, or need other services from another person, and there is something to be said for priests who have dedicated time and experience toward this end. Also, since many Pagan traditions believe in and practice magic, it might make sense for some priesthoods to provide help in that area. Such priesthoods should seek to empower those they help rather than keeping others dependent on their priestly services, however.

The Divine is within everyone and belongs to everyone. Not just priests.

Above all else, this must be kept in mind. Priests are not our only connection to the Divine. We have our own connection, every last one of us. We might benefit from a priest’s counsel or comfort. They might provide us a service that we find useful at a given time. But they are not the source or bridge to all Divine grace. We may ignore the priests if we wish and still live healthy spiritual lives. A good priest will be the first to promote this ideal.

Other posts I’ve made about this topic

Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: Do you worship nature?

Leave a comment

This post was inspired by Question #19 from this list.

In order to judge whether I worship nature, I feel we just first understand what it means to worship something. Worship is one of those words that is often tainted by our primarily Christian culture and the images of what it means to worship something in the most vocal and visible expressions of Christianity.

In that context, worship has taken on a connotation of giving something — usually the Christian god — ultimate praise and honor, usually at the price of bowing and scraping and humbling (or humiliating) oneself before that which is being worshiped. I do worship nature in that sense. Hell, I worship nothing and no one in that sense.

However, if we look at a more general definition of the word, we see that to worship something is to give it honor and adoration. Looking at the word’s etymology, its roots suggest acknowledging worth. In this sense, yes I do worship nature. I honor it and adore it and enjoy expressing that honor and adoration. But then, seeing as I see everything and everyone as sacred, you could apply that same definition and say that I worship everything and everyone. Nature is no more or less worthy of my honor than my husband, my friend, my cat, my coworker, or the person around the world and have never met.

Religion, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: Do you believe in Karma or Reincarnation?

Leave a comment

This post was inspired by Question #12 from this list.

I’m not a big fan of the concept of karma, at least not in the sense that there is some cosmic scorekeeper that makes sure you receive the same amount of good and/or bad as you put out into the world. I do get the impression that my own understanding of wyrd is very similar to the tradition Hindu understanding of karma. But my understanding of the Hindu understanding of karma is limited by the fact that I’m not terribly familiar with that religious tradition. So my understanding may be completely wrong. So I prefer to focus on wyrd rather than attempt to co-opt the word “karma.”

As for reincarnation, I tend to have complicated beliefs about that. The short answer is that I believe in reincarnation and actually consider rebirth into a new life after death to be the desirable outcome rather than something to be escaped through some sort of reunion with the Divine. This life is full of wondrous things and I want to live again so I can experience them again. Or maybe have all new experiences.

I’m also not convinced that souls are atomic units, either. I tend to believe that it’s more a case that our essence — that vitalizing force within all things — flows back into the universe and flows where to wherever it may. So my essence may end up helping to revitalize a bunch of different people and living things rather than just getting repackaged as a whole into a single body.