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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34908 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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What do you mean by a crucifix? Do you just mean a cross? Do you even understand the difference, and why doctrinally it was treated as such a difference between Protestants and Catholics? Is the crucifix-wearer just going to be "generic non-dom Christian who carefully avoids any real doctrines and instead is just 'let's all be nice and do good things' version"?

There's a lot going on, and just slapping in Generic Nice Chick Who's Allegedly Christian Not That You Could Tell won't achieve anything. "We know Susie in 'The Green Banana Show' is Christian, isn't that great representation?" "How? Does she go to church? Pray? Read the Bible? Disagree with the secular take on something?" "Uh, no, she acts and talks just like the rest of the cast, but she wears a cross!"

And if she is represented as a good person who is victimized because of her religion, the positive valence of Christianity will increase, which is a step forward for Christians in American culture.

Mainstream TV/movies will only present Susie as a good person victimized because of her religion if it's the liberal version being persecuted. You know the drill - she volunteers as an escort for an abortion clinic because she is Compassionate about the Emotionally Wrenching Dilemma women who Will Die Otherwise undergo, but her horrible knuckle dragging church rebukes her and excommunicates her.

Susie a Christian who gets the boot from her local para-church ministry because she's not on board with trans clergy persons? She's an evil bigot persecutor who deserves it!*

There was a late 90s TV fantasy show which only lasted one season, and in the first episode we got a blind black Catholic priest and I was mentally going "Oh here we go", expecting the usual kind of "you only need to be a nice person and have good intentions, God doesn't care what you believe" stuff. I was shocked in a good way when he came out with "yep, cool motive, still murder" (to quote a much later show) about what the lead character had done.

My immediate reaction was (1) holy crap I think I love this show (2) holy crap it's not gonna get more than one season, is it? 😂

*I don't know if I need to say this on here, but that person is not a priest, a Catholic priest, or a Roman Catholic priest in any sense at all. They may be playing dress-up in this cult but they're not Catholics, not clergy, and not anything but a bunch of lay people who are inventing their own church in the best American fashion.

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