Kyrkogång

[regndoft]

Context: we are currently learning about Christianity in Religion class. When the first- and secondyears go orientating in the woods, we go to visit different denominations in the Swedish church.

Apparently visiting a Pentecostal congregation and getting all fired up about their sexist and homophobic interpretation of Christianity is a great way for my class to bond.

I feel like... You know, I should be really offended about the fact that I was told that my sexuality is a choice and that we'll all go to hell for not believing in Jesus Christ as our Saviour, but. When we were sitting there I was mostly squirming in some kind of horrified glee over meeting people who are actually stupid enough to believe that.

AND EVERYONE GOT SO PISSED OFF, IT WAS HILARIOUS. One of the two guys in particular got really aggressively defensive whenever anyone questioned their beliefs, and the entire class was basically the same (claiming that believing in evolution is a choice and that God is on the husband's side in domestics can do that.

Religious bigotry isn't really amusing, but I. I have never actually met people like this; I'm very familiar with the Lutheran Church of Sweden, which is pretty liberal about, well. Everything.

So basically I couldn't stop thinking "Hahaa omg people like this actually exist, why". If I wasn't laughing I'd be crying.

(Even my teacher in Religion started cracking up at some points. Which is just... Bad.)

But yeah. A pretty dull day overall, the three first churches were very sensible and PC. But several things that were brought up during the last visit reminded me of several errors in text interpretation, so... I talked to my teacher, and now I'm ridiculously excited about getting to talk about the problems with manuscript copying and translation errors in a textbased religion.

Now I need to do some last-minute baking for LGBT society tomorrow. At eight in the evening. *Sigh*

Comments

[kainoliero.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Pentecostals. They do come in many flavours. It tells something about the general group of them though that my previous employer, a Pentecostal, would have nothing to do with the rest of them. "Idiots, halfwits, crazies, the lot!" was one opinion that sort of stuck to my mind right after hearing it. :D

[taiyou_to_tsuki.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, what else is there to say to someone who can churn out the phrase "my wife and I converse and make decisions together, but if she disagrees with me God is on my side" with a straight face (after someone asked whether they viewed women as the Old Testament dictated, that is as property).

[parallax-prose.livejournal.com]

Hahaha that sounds pretty amusing, actually. We have plenty of those kinds of people in the US. I've found the best way of dealing with it is just to laugh myself. ;)

[taiyou_to_tsuki.livejournal.com]

It was! I know some classmates who got genuinely angry, but I was pretty much just baffled and amused. I didn't find their opinions as offensive and frightening as their overall attitude, this... Complete lack of critical thought. What's written is written and that's that, never mind HOW those words were written down or translated (which is why I'm going to hold a presentation on that in class).

Sweden is a very secularised country, so this was the first time I actually encountered those kind of people irl (on the internet is another matter). And even then, most Christian conservatives live up north, not in the big cities. The church I used to attend was incredibly liberal and was very adamant about bringing up communication, deconstructing norms and understanding other people; better than my school, in fact. Before I started upper secondary school, all the queer people I knew I met through church. XP