In 2022, there were just 42,000 nuns in America and the majority were elderly. For The Baffler, Lauren Fadiman spent some time with Benedictine sisters and explored the history and decline of religious life. "There was a time when the convent was the closest a woman could get to both the Lord and women’s lib," she writes. "The vow of chastity lifted the burdens of early marriage, bad sex, and potentially lethal childbirth; the habit released women from the obligations of beauty; and the requisite knowledge of Latin and a wide range of religious texts required that nuns be well-educated."
Stars played an important role in ancient Egyptian belief. In the Pyramid Texts the soul of the deceased pharaoh ascends to the #celestial realm of the imperishable circumpolar stars.
"He places thee at the head of the spirits, the imperishable stars."
When you take the lyrics "would he devote that Sacred Head for such a worm as I?" into your very core as a 5-year-old, it takes A LOT to get shut of that unsightly baggage as an adult.
Even "Amazing Grace": "...how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...."
Really? I was a child. A baby.
A wretch?
Reprobate & miscreant are some of the synonyms. I was to learn those as well.
...the wider implications of my experience & of the fact that it is not unique to me.
There are so, so many of us.
And when those of us who critique Christianity & #religion & church engage in our critiques, I think we underestimate the depth of the trauma that has damaged and is continuing to damage the people who remain caught up in Christianity, religion, church.
They are all walking around with raw, open, festering wounds that they deny deny deny so as to neither see nor feel them.
6/
Trickle down is literally a religion for economists. There is always a few professors of economics that SWEARS that if implemented correctly it will work THIS time.
Planning a run? One shrine in Tokyo, made famous by a long-running manga, has a protective charm just for you. Plus , you can carb up on pastries while you're there. Learn more about the unique strategies the shrine is using to increase visitors and stay afloat.
An angel unlocking the Door of Hell. Hell is represented as a great mouth within which are human beings and devils. Winchester Psalter [Psalter of Henry of Blois; Psalter of St. Swithun]. Winchester [Priory of St. Swithun, or Hyde Abbey]; between 1121 and 1161. #art#medieval#devil#religion#books
A 1969 letter from a Papal envoy to Vladika Danilo of Montenegro and the Littoral, with an offer of rewards for the removal of Njegoš's chapel and remains and replacing them with a big mausoleum which would house the remains of a Montenegrin woman (who would be canonised).
"I began this post with the (now laughable) intent of offering a few brief comments on Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto published in October of last year...
I would frame the manifesto as a revivalist sermon, or more specifically perhaps, a jeremiad, calling for repentance and a return to the religion of technology. Such a sermon is a response to the process of secularization, which has accelerated in the last decade."
"To basically offer me hush money or threaten me into silence, it just shows that they really do not care about their people, which is really sad," Crenshaw told 60 Minutes.
"This has never been about money for me. It was about justice and accountability and a hope that no one else would be treated the way I was treated."
Crenshaw first told 60 Minutes about her Hillsong hell in 2021.
Worshippers attend the Day of the Spiritual Indoctrinator, annual celebrations at the Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) community in the Planaltina neighbourhood of Brasilia, Brazil. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
An orthodox faithful Monk attends the Good Friday prayers at the Wukro Cherkos Rock Hewn church in Wukro, Tigray region, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population >>
"The threat, we are told here this weekend, is existential, #biological, epoch-defining. Economies will fail, #civilizations will fall, and it will all happen because people aren’t having enough #babies.
“The entire global #financial system, the value of your money, and every #asset you might buy with money is defined by leverage, which means its value depends on growth...." >>
>> ...#natalist#ideology become dominant quickly in the United States — everyone in this room has to have more #kids, and fast.
Keenan, who has previously celebrated her sense that it is now acceptable to say “#white#genocide is real,” says better means #conservative. Pat Fagan, the director of the #Marriage and #Religion Institute at the #Catholic University of America, says good #children are the product of stable, two-parent #Christian households,...>>
"I’m having a nightmare, can you please wake me up? I’m dreaming that they fooled the Jewish people to do the bidding of western imperialism. To feed their tech, their #fascism, their bank accounts, their global death squads for the expansion of empire."
An activist I interviewed today, a #UTAustin alum, shared this powerful piece with me:
Report: Pastor testifies on the reason evangelicals support Republicans: We “made a deal with the devil”
"That deal was, we would support everything on the conservative agenda," says Robert Schenck and they would give us Roe. Taking rights away from half the population.
In that meeting that I participated in, the conversation went something like this: 'You guys want Roe v. Wade overturned, we can do that for you, but you take the whole enchilada, you take the whole thing,"' he said. "You take everything else that comes with it. Because if you want Roe gone, you have to work with us."
"From that point on that community that I had served, and still do, made a deal with the devil," he said. "That deal was, we would support everything on the conservative agenda, whether or not we had conscientious conflict with them.
Christian Nationalists Are Trying to Gaslight You.
Christian nationalism is a threat to both democracy and Christianity. The gaslighting is just a strategy designed to advance that threat.
Christian nationalism –in the contemporary American context – is an attempt to merge American identity with Christian identity. It is “less accurate to think of Christian nationalism as a coherent belief system than as a movement; a joint venture between religious and political actors seeking power.” Two corrupt groups join forces to take over American government. The fascist have captured the #scotus corrupt court.
Everything in this story is leading somewhere amazing. It's emotional, beautiful, touching, surprising and so incredibly moving. Sniffed, snuffled and out and out cried my way through the last part of this book.
@kcfromaustcrime@bookstodon Finally got hold of this beautifully written multi-levelled love story. Like her other two brilliant novels of #historicalFiction, she shows she has done the research and thinking and internalized the stories and feelings of the time and place as well as the relentless control and persecution of the feminine and the 'other'. This 3rd novel is personal for Kent. Highly recommend it.