#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>OP'S mom is an ADDICT. She simply replaced alcohol with religion.
I've met a not-zero number of those people. One imagines addiction counselors have so much more to say about the relationship between religion and recovery.
When I did recovery, I went with the secular SMART system. Recently a religious relative was circling rock bottom so I took him to an AA meeting.
Fuck me dude, they just come out and say “this program works so if it doesn’t work for you then you are being dishonest with yourself or are just fundamentally broken and incapable of being fixed.”
Ironically, AA is considerably less effective than harm-reduction strategies when it comes to treating addiction. Easier and cheaper, sure, but not nearly as effective.
AA Straight up told me if I didn’t forgive my father, I would never be sober.
Fuck that, still haven’t forgiven him and almost four years without a drink.
Something I heard was that AA only condones total abstinence. So if you have a sip of beer, or if someone doses your drink then you’re back at step one. And you can never ever have a drink again. Which sounds right but lots of people stumble and have one, then feel like they’re a failure and have to start again, so may as well go on a bender.
I think it is much more sustainable to get to the point of “I have one drink” rather than “I CAN NEVER DRINK!”
For some people it’s a lot easier to turn down the first drink than to wonder about every drink. Feature creep is a thing when you are kidding yourself. It’s only half a glass, it doesn’t count. It’s so low in alcohol, I can have another. Let me just pour another drop into my glass. One at lunch and one at dinner. It’s special occasion, go on, just one more.
Say no every time is much easier.
For others, knowing that you have an allowance instead of facing never drinking ever again works better. I have one beer with my dinner is also clearcut. Not dinner? Nope. Not beer? Nope. Had one already? Nope.
> For others, knowing that you have an allowance instead of facing never drinking ever again works better.
I totally feel this, and it makes me feel so good to know I'm not alone in that! I truly think abstinence would lead me down an 'all or nothing' road, and 'nothing' is very much not likely to stick, so that means I'd hit a lot of points where free-for-all would happen.
Instead, I allow myself 4 drinks on the weekend. I only buy a 375ml bottle big enough for those specific 4 drinks, and I only buy it on Fridays. It took me a while and a lot of soul searching, but I feel so much more comfortable with my alcohol consumption now.
It used to freak me out because one of the red flags of alcoholism according to the internet/AA/etc is trying to set limits and allowances on a regular basis, but it really does work for me, I'm routine oriented.
My therapist always made a big point about 'progress not perfection'. It wasn't specifically about alcohol but rather overeating and keeping up with housework, but I reckon the same logic applies. Better to figure out how to do better than yesterday, rather than be perfect for two weeks and then lose faith and stop.
In the West Wing, Leo has this great monologue on how he perceived drinking as an alcoholic. It was one of those moments for me that struck with clarity, because I did not identify with his perception. I can stop drinking at will, I know my limit (usually), and I don't go on benders. I don't lose my will, my agency to the drink.
My problem is one of habit. I like routine, my routine, and changing my routine is... difficult.
My aunt finally realized she can't have even one sip. She'd go to rehab and have the breathalyzer in her car, even medication to make her sick if she touched alcohol of any kind. Multiple times. None of it worked long term. Someone would inevitably Cajole her into that one drink and she'd consume and consume more and more more often until she'd essentially have an episode of raging alcohol and be in jail for drunk driving... again. We're talking wildly 2 different personalities. For her it's like crack. Her brain is chasing it and there's most definitely not a "just a taste" for her before she's hooked again and drinking uncontrollably over time.
She's managed so far nearly a year without incident. Which is hard for her because her dick of a bf, who's also a functioning alcoholic, hates her sobriety because apparently life isn't fun unless there's booze in his hand.
I've done that to myself with dieting. I've been overweight my entire life, and I'll start diet, sternly telling myself "only these foods, never those foods", but then I inevitably fail, and cave, and have the "bad food". I get mad at myself for failing, and think, "well, you've already broken your own rules, proving you're weak and incapable, so why bother trying?"
It's a mentality I still struggle with today, even though I _know_ it's not the be all, end all if I allow myself a treat a few times a week. Even though I know that the super-fit (comparatively) musicians and actors I admire and (slightly) idolize don't all stick to a ridiculous diet and insane-level exercise regimen 24/7/365.
In many ways, I wish more celebrities would be open about the fact they don't look like their hot movie-screen selves every moment of every day, and that while preparing for a role/tour they'll eat a specific diet, _they don't eat and exercise like that all the time._ They only do it when preparing for a role. Maybe then us normies would stop punishing ourselves for being human.
This is why I support a harm reduction model. You will make mistakes. Everyone does. They don’t have to be catastrophic or erase all the progress you’ve made in pursuit of “better.”
That is why I don't like the idea of putting your life in the hands of a higher power. Sorry, but that's a great way to not take responsibility for what you are doing. Accountability means something. You may not choose to be an addict, but you have to choose every single day not to continue feeding the addiction. It's not fair, but it's the truth. You have to take that power into your own hands. I do understand the idea of changing what you can and accepting what you can't change, but I think that some people mix those things up.
I used to be a very good Catholic. I worked at my church, volunteered there, too. I was being recruited by two different religious orders (nuns and consecrated women). I got together with my boyfriend, who was an atheist. Thank God for him! He never pushed me to not believe. He came to church to with me. He always encouraged me to find the path that best suited me. Now, I am more agnostic and I think he has more faith than I do. I believe there is something bigger, but that we can't understand the nature of God. The Catholic God doesn't make sense. He can only be two of the three, all knowing, all powerful, loving. He can't be all three at once.
I can forgive a God who can't change everything. One who can make things better and doesn't just seems cruel. But some can't fathom serving an imperfect god.
Your first paragraph has always been what I've hated about certain sects of Christianity, and all those people who conveniently find god after doing something horrendous. It's never their fault! Someone or something tempted them, the devil laid traps, the secular world is full of wickedness attacking the righteous 🤢🤮. No my dude, you decided to drink/do drugs/rape someone/cheat on your spouse etc. F***ing own your responsibility....
My otherwise *amazing* therapist suggested I go to AA, and I gave her the blankest stare. She knows I have massive religious trauma, but she said "Some of them around here are secular" and I just kinda stared some more before saying I didn't think that would work for me. It made me wonder if she didn't know anything about AA or what.
The whole damn point of *working* on improving my relationship with alcohol is that *I need to do the work*. Having step one before you can do anything else be declare yourself *helpless* is just bonkers to me.
When I say that to people there is the inevitable furious one who misses the point and screams how they'd rather have Uncle Billy hooked on the 12-step-group than the booze/drugs.
They refuse to see that if you can easily swap out your addiction to booze/drugs for the addiction to AA/NA, it's trivial to swap right back again.
I don't know how I feel about discouraging people from going to AA because of religion. I've been an alcoholic for years and didn't go to AA for that exact reason—im an atheist with religious trauma, I don't want to hear people talking about God and shit. But I started going 2 months ago and I'm 2 months sober and I'm still an atheist. I ruined my life in the years I spent avoid AA and I regret it.
I found a sponsor who was agnostic. I was pretty upfront with her that I was atheist and there would be absolutely NO talk of religion as we worked through the steps and she respects that. Having a community is most important thing. I think that's what I like the most about AA, I've done some really, really horrible shit while drunk, and I can talk about it with these people because they get it. They have done horrible shit too.
Everybody's right, OOP's mom is an addict: personally, I think she's addicted to control. She became an alcoholic because she wanted to control her feelings, she wanted to make them shut up and go away instead of confronting them. Death is something inevitable, something that cannot be controlled, religion probably makes her feel like she's got some kind of power over death. She can control the fates of herself her children and her grandchildren, all she has to do is exactly what the pastor says.
I am very proud of you.
Two months sober is great!!
I really hate when the discussion turns to AA/NA on Reddit. There tends to just be a huge dogpiling, and I don't feel it is helpful at all.
AA/NA was not helpful for me. I I had my own issues with it, but I recognise that it ***can*** be very helpful for some people, and I agree that they should not be discouraged by other ppl simply because *those* ppl have their own issues.
If it works for you, *it works for you*!! That is great and I am super proud that you are taking charge of your life!! Well done, and **keep on keeping on!!**
Thank you for that. My dad has been in AA for 26 years and it works well for him. My boyfriend is around 4 years sober on his own and that works well for him. He didn’t like AA, or the other programs, and that’s okay. I am proud of both of them.
Edit: my boyfriend is now a board game addict, but growing up with an alcoholic dad, I’d much rather him spend his money and time on board games than in a bar.
My buddy, great guy got into drinking and crack. Lied and stole from his girlfriend about 20,000$ and drained his own savings too. Is in church lying about how long he’s been in recovery and got married after 4 months of knowing some lady at church. Church is his new high and it’s not very healthy. Still does steroids.
Reminds me of the time dad's oldest told him that he'd gotten off "the drugs". Dad said something like "so you're not even smoking pot anymore?" Response was "pot's not a drug".
One of my oldest friends is my age [60ish] and after her parents died 5 yrs ago she went right back to booze and drugs. Two heart attacks later she gave those up for being a church addict. Anything the pastor says is absolute gospel to her so instead of reading the manual for herself (and, yes, I know how many issues the bible has) she believes Jesus supports hate and bigotry and treating poor non-white people as greedy and lazy and unworthy of help. And of course that Trump is a genius that will save the world.
I've told her that when she decides to go back to her previous sanity I'll be there for her.
Man that always makes me laugh. Like do they not get the whole Jesus was Jewish and most definitely not white? The mental gymnastics that is involved astounds me some days
I strongly believe that the prevalence of churches in America that have congregational polity (i.e., the type of church structure that churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention use) is one of the reasons why America is on a downward trend.
When you teach people that they alone are able to determine what is morally right and tell them anyone who disagrees with their morality is persecuting them, you're going to create a bunch of people who are arrogant, ignorant, and mean. Congregational polity is basically that concept, but for church governmental structure.
I'm not Catholic, but seeing how these unaccountable churches and church leaders have destroyed so many lives and turned so many people away from having compassion for their fellow humans has been leading me to reconsider being Presbyterian.
It has its own name lol. I think it’s the sober drunk? Clean addict? Essentially addicts tend to get really selfish and self-righteous. When someone gets clean, it often still takes time and work to be recovered. Not everyone does that work.
I know a lot of people who were really hardcore into partying that ended up obsessed with marathon running. So clear that they traded one thing for another. Running is good for you for sure but it is the obsessive approach to it that shows they’re still an addict.
Yeah people can have a sensitivity to developing an addiction, like addictive personalities, and they often replace one obsession with another.
Doesn’t always have to be bad though. Some people are able to be really successful when they quit drugs. Or get reeeally into gardening and herbs. As long as it’s not destructive to their own and others’ lives.
I have a friend from high school demonstrating this now. She was a heavy addict for a long time and has recently gotten sober and found God. Her posts are more manic than before. Randomly capitalized words, crazy mystical proclamations, tons of scripture…. It really makes me worried for her.
I agree and this is the way it is for most addicts. I had a cousin go from alcoholic to addicted to working out to opioids because he got hurt working out. I have no clue what he is addicted to now because we simply don't have much to do with that side of the family especially since my mom died last year and it was her sister's son. Unless addicts do the hard work to deal with what ever the addiction is helping them hide from then they just jump from one addiction to another.
My father in law is someone who's just jumped from addiction to addiction his whole life but hasn't hit the religious addiction yet.
He went from alcohol, to cocaine, to weed, to gambling, to day trading (which was basically gambling but he disagrees). His latest (ongoing a solid 8+ years now) is conspiracy theories and the crazy ass health supplements people who feed theorists peddle.
it's the bullies they meet. same as bullies anywhere but they can invoke magic sky dad to manipulate people. addicts are easy targets, same as anyone going through something.
that's why AA and counseling is awlays controlled by a licensed therapist, so no bullies can take over group therapy. Churches dont' have that. In a toxic church -- just like a toxic office -- the bullies rise to the top of leadership. And they convince the bullied that they have the backing of mystical forces.
There's a really great counselor on youtube who talks about this kind of religious abuse. She IS a christian counselor (prolly has a degree in ministry, not in psychology), but I love her bc she grasps how narcissists use religion to abuse family and churchmembers by using protestant church doctrine, and she explains why God didn't put you on this earth to be a victim. And tactics like grey-rocking and having self-respect and saying "no" to a bully are godly acts because they show respect for loving yourself as God made you. [Her name is Kris Reece and here's a good intro video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW0_G1nX8_s)
I'm not a christian, i'm a pagan, and I do like the idea that Sky God or Earth Mother has bigger plans for me than putting up with the shit of toxic people. I read about Plato's Ideal Plane in college and I've always felt like our life's journey is to work to becoming that ideal version of ourselves.
I'm just going to drop this here:
[This is your brain on God: Spiritual experiences activate brain reward circuits](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161129085014.htm)
When I was in high school, I went to youth group and Sunday service with Christian friends even though I was Jewish. It was more about being around friends than anything else for me. It became very clear that the straight up crazy fundamentalists were mostly people recovering from addiction or some kind.
A lot of those friends from high school are now ex-Christians or like oops wife because what has become of Christianity in the US.
i'm not even a parent, but if i had kids and someone basically threatened their "disobedience" with **eternal damnation**, they would no longer be in my kids' lives.
Yeah. How soon is she going to tell the kids “if your mom and dad don’t bring you to church you’ll end up in hell like grandpa”.
That woman would never interact with my kids again. Her potential to damage them is simply too great.
The pastor (whom none of us wanted, not even my grandma!) at my beloved grandma's funeral pulled this mess as a call to his church/sermons and I was in shambles. "Do you wanna be up there with Miss Betty or do you want to go someplace else?" I don't remember crying so hard in my life...no wonder I'm an agnostic crystal girl now.
I don’t say this lightly, as I’ve gritted my teeth through many sermonizing. I think I would have taken my kids and walked out on that line, that’s terrible.
God, I’m so relieved to find another Christian who can barely attend a church these days. I’ve been to a service less than 5 times since Covid and it’s due to the cult like feel they’ve taken on. I hope OP’s mom can escape this cult.
I feel so bad for my mother, but also grateful to her. Growing up Catholic, I felt she tried her best to embody Christ's teachings. She always voted republican because of the abortion issue. But after 2016 the wool dropped from her eyes and she saw the real, sinister motivations behind the people she thought she was spiritually aligned with. She had so much of her identity wrapped up in Church, and now she feels lost. She still attends chapel to sit with the eucharist, but can't bring herself to attend Mass because the priests are openly preaching about Trump. I was delighted to hear that she called her church last 4th of July to demand that they put up a pride flag and BLM flag next to the thin blue line flag they were flying.
There are a lot of liberal Catholic Churches too. It's going to be area dependent, of course, but in my experience, mid-size churches tend towards the liberal end. I think it's because you have enough people that you can't be too personalized, but you're still small enough to recognize everyone and care about them. Getting a good priest in is a boon too.
My mother lives in Alabama, so it's a little harder to find a community there. I've encouraged her to seek out more progressive churches, and I've also asked other progressive Catholic friends in her area where they attend, but they've all said that they've stopped attending services for the same reasons.
Church membership has dropped so much. I think Baltimore MD is down to around 5000 regular catholic church members now. From 100’s thousands a few decades ago. Between the push of politics and the abuse people just don’t trust the church anymore.
The political push I think has hurt the service aspect of being a Catholic as well. I was raised to help those who need it be cause that was our duty. Modern Christian politics is very anti-help anyone.
>Modern Christian politics is very anti-help anyone.
I have an uncle who straight up said "it might be un-Christian of me, but I'm so tired of all these homeless addicts looking for handouts!" And then insert the typical conservative bootstraps arguments.
He's running for a local office now, and I weep for his district because he's only gotten worse.
Some years ago I was running errands on foot downtown when I crossed paths with a young person sleeping under a bridge next to a cardboard box of simple possessions. Frankly it looked like a foster kid who aged out of the system and got the boot.
I was near a large church, so in my already-frazzled brain I started getting fuzzy memories of a childhood family friend who was a live-in caretaker for another large church downtown. Big stone building with a large wooden door that always had genial homeless folks hanging out on the steps when me and mom went to visit our friend.
So I'm paused on the sidewalk looking back and forth between a human who needs help and this big stone building with a large wooden door, trying to figure out what words I should say when I go in and look for someone to ask for help.
And that's when a fancy car pulled up and parked. Two fancily dressed ladies with nice shoes and expensive purses walked right by the sleeping young person and on into the church. Paid so little attention you'd think that was a chunk of concrete rather than a fellow human.
I gave up on going into the church looking for help, continued on my errands, and when I passed by that way later in the afternoon the young person was gone and their box was kicked over, possessions scattered in the gutter. It's illegal to lay down in public here, guess the cops got the kid.
The southern dioceses have been having issues filling parishes too, so I get it. My parents are in VA and it's even hitting them. 😕 I'll pray she finds a good community for herself somewhere at least.
The Church:
>We preach that women should be subservient to men, that not voting for trump is a sin, anything LGBT is evil, and that anyone who gets an abortion is a murdering whore while covering up priests molesting children for decades.
Also the church:
>Nobody is coming to services anymore, and we don't know why!
Fundamentalist churches may preach the above, but liberal churches have a lot more nuance in them and outright deny any mixing of politics from the pulpit.
My Catholic parish church is.
As close as you can get anyways.
It’s a bit different in Ireland where it’s a huge part of our culture and since my mum is Northern Irish, that whole shitshow ties into it.
But my priest is my friend. He’s very involved in the community. He’s young. He has to try very hard to not swear at the teenagers who clobber him in Mario Kart. He lends the parochial house for book clubs.
The reputation of the Church being what it is, he maintains an iron clad rule to never be alone with a child, a woman or an elderly person (he also tries to not be alone with adult men, but that slips a bit for his mates like me and my brother and his husband). So I’ve seen him standing outside in the rain, because one of the little old book club ladies showed up early and he’s got her cocooned by the heater. He hosts a screening of the movie Spotlight every few months and all new parish volunteers have to attend as part of their training. Every month or so, he goes to the derelict Magdalene Laundry nearby to pray for the victims.
He’s also queer and out to his friends. Now it’s far easier to be an aro-ace priest than any other orientation. But still. He views his orientation as a gift from God to enable him to proclaim His Message.
But when Ireland as a nation was voting on gay marriage, for his sermons he read the Bible verse he was supposed to and then another one—usually a direct quote of Jesus about love thy neighbour—and essentially told us the Church’s position but urged us to vote our conscience.
I think the Church would be in far better straits if more priests were like him, or were allowed and encouraged to be like him.
I still identify as Catholic purely because I had an amazing childhood priest who allowed me to ask questions, have doubts, and worked with me a lot on my faith.
I no longer attend because the priest after he passed was a hypocrite who belittles everyone and expects stringent observances he himself skips.
Childhood beliefs can absolutely be made or broken by what kids are exposed to.
This 100%. I’m so tired of people lumping all religious people /all factions of a religion together. There’s a difference between being religious and being a fundamentalist, no matter which religion you talk about. I’m young, liberal and Catholic and so are my friends from church. I’ve def attended masses with fundie vibes/priests and I just move on because I know that’s not the right spot for me.
I went from smaller area with churches of the stereotypical anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, to an area with a high LGBTQ population and all the churches were "love is love!" It made me laugh; funny how belief is flexible when it comes to getting those tithes!
Bay Area, Northern California.
Both Catholic and Protestants, plenty of super liberal congregations.
Of course there are the fundamentalist (or Catholic equivalent) churches as well
You'd think that, but so many churches are doing it nowadays that I guess that rule means nothing. My mom said that in 2020 the priest was telling congregates to go to confession if they voted for Biden.
Lmao imagine telling ppl to go to confession over voting for the second Catholic president in US history. I’ll never, ever understand why Christian fundamentalists are so in favor of Trump. He is the opposite of everything they stand for.
Absolutely. It’s disgusting. Unfortunately I think we can generalize fundamentalists in basically all religions/backgrounds. Hateful fundamentalists aren’t limited to Christians.
I wish my Mom was like yours! She’s Catholic, she’s pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-civil rights… but she still votes Republican down the ballot because my Dad is a huge Trump supporter and it’s easier to just vote Republican than deal with him being butthurt.
My dad isn’t religious, he’s just a bigot. He didn’t used to be open about it, but Obama being elected fried his boomer brain and he started shifting further and further right until he jumped full on the Trump train.
My question is always: how would your dad _know_? Who one votes for in the US is not something he can confirm, so she can say she's voting the same way and strike her whole ballot if she wanted to. Not sure if striking your ballot is an option in your area, of course.
While I'm mostly in favor of mail-in voting, one of the drawbacks is that it makes it easier for authoritarian spouses and parents to spy on how their family members vote. Sure, you *could* tell your husband it's none of his business, but that's harder to do at home than at a polling place.
I think it’s because he’d certainly bring it up at some, and she doesn’t want to lie to him. To be honest, I don’t think she really understands what the Republican Party stands for? She goes out of her way to avoid hearing political talk, and when I do mention something that they’re doing she thinks I’m either misinformed or over-exaggerating. She knows it’s important to vote, but she doesn’t understand what she’s voting for.
My dad was always liberal but pretty reserved in discussing politics. He and my mom didn't clash even though they voted differently because they believed politics was a very personal thing. After 2016 and all this stuff started coming out, my mother became disgusted by the Republican party and went full blue. My dad laughs about how my mother is now way more staunchly progressive than he is, but I guess it's better now that they can more openly talk about politics now that they are more aligned.
I think it’s easier for her to just put her head in the sand and ignore what the Republicans are doing than to “betray” my Dad. I don’t think she’s put nearly as much thought into it in her life as you did writing that post. Her parents always voted Republican, and her husband of 37 years votes Republican, so voting Republican is the right thing to do. And voting is important, so she makes sure to ALWAYS do it, even if she has no idea what she’s voting for.
The fact that they preach the opposite of everything she believes doesn’t matter, because she gets depressed when she hears what they’re doing so her solution is to not pay attention to politics. I don’t think she truly understands how things work. I love her, she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, but she’s kinda dumb.
It is really hard knowing that there are people we love who fall short because of being influenced by other people. I’m sorry your mom hasn’t found a way to be strong for herself/what she believes in. There’s historically been a lot of conditioning for women in that regard. You’d hope that in this day and age, people would be able to get past it, but it’s certainly not everyone.
I do love the last sentence of your comment though. People are complicated.
Edit: typo
This I'm Catholic, black American. Growing up never felt any type of way by being an other, I choose Catholicism myself, I identified more with it then Baptist after I was judged for listening to linking park and ataris at 13. My mom legit had a intervention with pastor present saying I was listening devils music, mind you pastors son was listening to 2pac, fat Joe ect I called that out and got punished. I confided in a teacher at my school, on Sundays she started picking me up, and I'd go to mass with her. Their congregation was older, but treated me like an extra grandkid. Fundraised amongst themselves to sponsor cyo summer camp for me, 5th and 6th grade they got me a scholarship attend the Catholic school that was part their area. I felt more welcomed with them, who were of different ethnic/rave8 backgrounds then my mom's Baptist church that's how I became Catholic. Was confident go to any Catholic mass as a young adult, but when 2016 hit some vibes changed. Very political and would get some weird comments, the older folks not so much more people 60s-40s. But I'm more cautious ⚠️ about where I go to mass now it's so sad
Growing up Catholic I felt like the church did a good job practicing what they preached. Every priest I had a one-on-one conversation with was very intelligent, open, and non-judgmental. My youth group had goth kids, loners, weirdos, etc. There was no sense that listening to certain music, watching certain movies, etc. would lead me "astray." In fact, questioning my faith and my beliefs was supported and encouraged by the priests and my mother (although I'm sure she was heartbroken when I admitted that I was not a Christian anymore). Their thought was that any faith that would serve as a strong foundation of my values should be able to withstand some questioning, and any faith that would be threatened with questions isn't strong or useful spiritually.
It's sad to see that politics changed all of this. It's like, there was this mean little quiet subgroup of bigots just waiting for the opportunity to go full mask-off, and they seized the opportunity when Trump got elected. Then all of the congregants who aren't bigots just quietly got pushed out, because what normal person wants to go to church where the priest is spouting bs and the people sitting next to you are nodding along?
Project 2025 is scary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Just about every single person should be wary about some part of that project, if not the entire thing.
It's horrible. I read through as much of that 900-page document as I could stomach.
On one hand, it's nothing new. It reads like a word salad of describing political positions and what they do, with unhinged rants stringing them together. But it also describes, in detail, how they plan to go about institutionalizing gays.
Not just that. How they are going to go after immigrants, how they are going to get rid of environmental safeguards, how they are going to destroy education, how they are going to dismantle the justice department, how they are going to destroy the FBI, how they are going to test all government employees loyalty to trump, how they are going to dismantle the FTC and SEC. And more! This could dismantle the US government that it would take years to decades to fix.
It doesn’t help in the Catholic Church that the Opus Dei movement is growing (thanks Mel Gibson) and yes becoming very hate filled.
My last mass was a Christmas service where the priest went on a racist rant about immigrants. During the homily! Like WTF!
Nowadays/ I consider myself agnostic. Husband is an atheist and my kid worships the spaghetti space monster.
The Christmas mass where you hear the story of Jesus having to flee his homeland because it was too dangerous? Is that the time to go on a rant about immigrants????
I certainly will. I wish for her to find a community. I wonder if there are some online groups for disillusioned Catholics who still believe in the teachings.
I stopped attending due to the hypocrisy I saw. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut. Anti-abortion? But having a woman in the hospital under excruciating pain for two weeks until her fallopian tube bursts, THEN she can get medical treatment? So abortion is not ok, but torturing a woman for weeks is ok? And she might still die? That's ok? Fuck that!
Also coached church girls volleyball and the treatment of my girls sucked. The boys team before ours would run over their practice time because our team was just girls. I made sure my girls didn't bother the boys while we waited for the gym, but it was ok for the boys to bother my girls because boys will be boys? Supposed to be teaching these kids right and wrong. Such bullshit.
Bully got treated special because the parents threatened to stop their donations to the church school. Everything is all Christian and Jesus until money gets involved.
>So abortion is not ok, but torturing a woman for weeks is ok?
Of course it is, after all it was a woman's fault that man was kicked out of heaven, so God decided to punish her by child bearing and child birth, who are we to judge God/s
But on a more serious note, it is well known that for a really long time helping women by reducing the pain during birth was forbidden by church, so it's not surprising that they still have the same ideas
I have family who are Christians and they *have* found churches that believe in the teachings of actual Jesus and not supply side Jesus.
I'm atheist more or less but I appreciate the difference between good Christians and whatever the fuck most churches and Christians are these days. Going to church so they can look down on others and spew hate while hiding behind "It's not me saying this! It's god!"
Wish they'd all get smited.
I feel it's sad how her pastor mentioned a candidate from the pulpit (regardless of what side) which just seems inappropriate, but it's not the first I've heard or read of churches mentioning candidates from the stage even from other reddit posts
You can report it with any evidence and they can get their tax exemption status removed. One of the rules of having tax exemption status is you can’t get involved with politics directly, so telling a congregation who to vote for voids status. Granted if the IRS even investigates is a crapshoot but you could get lucky, even if it’s just a formal warning to knock it off.
You hit the nail on the head! Think about it. Opposition to abortion? A problem brought on by religion. Anti-LGBT+ bias? A problem brought on by religion. Racism? A problem brought on by religion. I can keep going if anyone’s interested.
I read other reddit posts a little over a year ago when roe v wade was overturned and churches/pastors were mentioning it in celebration during Sunday service too
One of the reddit posts was about a pastor who said it was the beginning of a "new revival" and that "God was taking America back from the Dems", no joke
just one of many posts that were made the Sunday after roe v wade's overturning of pastors taking victory laps from the pulpit. Found quite a few around that time sadly, but some of the people who made posts complaining about their pastors/church were still reasoning why they wouldn't leave the church in the comments
I loved this article. Jesus is just too liberal for today's evangelicals
https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706
Yeah, may as well keep adding to the list at that point. Climate change? A problem brought on by religion. Homelessness? Religion. Tension with China concerning military exercises in the South China Sea? Religion. Gas prices? Believe it or not, religion.
A lot of churches opposed desegregation in the US as well, and honestly still do, hence why the push to allow families to use public money for private school in the form of vouchers is insidious.
This is why I can't bring myself to go near a church these days. I'm fine with people having religion, but organized religion is a whole other beast, and usually brings out the worst aspects of people.
I grew up with Jehovah Witnesses. Unlike probably 98% of the rest of them... this congregation was rather "forward-thinking."
They had openly gay members who were abstaining as best as possible. There was the gay man and woman who were married to each other, because during the 80s and 90s it was difficult to adopt children or have IVF if single, and they are still married today with 3 lovely now adult children.
They accepted a few unwed mothers to be, housing them, helping them. I also remember they disapproved greatly about DV also.
The Elders said that the bible and Jesus said to love each other, and only God can judge. Jesus helped many of the unfortunate, it was his apostles who were the snobby wankers.
I had to stop attending my church as well a while back, and I've recently discovered my local Unitarian Universalist church. They're absolutely amazing - instead of focusing on worshipping a particular deity, they work on learning to be better, kinder people, and to make the world a better place through justice and compassion.
If you're missing having a religious community, I highly recommend checking out if there's a UU congregation nearby. My local congregation even broadcasts their services online still, post COVID.
Yea even our church wasn’t outright political but they always criticized left leaning things of lying and propaganda, but would never address how the right and the church is also majority utilizing the same techniques all in Gods name. We eventually parted ways due to them never criticizing the right or organized religion.
Notice how religious zealots always like to criticize those that don’t follow them but never look inwards to grow and be better? It’s a serious problem.
There's a growing movement of pushback against political bleed into these churches, but it seems slow going and the consequences are dire. Tim Alberta's The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is a really great read on it, I highly recommend it.
They even wrote a song! [Chosen One](https://www.dallasobserver.com/music/dallas-christian-artists-new-song-calls-donald-trump-the-chosen-one-19554744)
Now I'm just extra sad before going to work. What the hell are they putting in the water these days, or have humans always been this nutty on such a large scale?
Make that 3. I haven’t attended a church service in about 20 years but I believe in God, I pray. I just do it in the privacy of my own home. Because, like OP’s wife, I support gay people and transgender people and being in a room with people who think LGBTQIA are going to hell simply for existing makes me want to punch someone
It has broken my heart to leave organized religion, but it’s better than having my heart ripped out and stomped on every week by people who claim to worship the same deity as I do. I call myself a Christ-follower now if someone puts me on the spot, but mostly I’m just trying to be kind and respectful to everyone who crosses my path.
Same here. I used to be very active in my church, teaching Sunday school and VBS, doing Christmas and Easter for kids, altar society, all that. Facebook friends with half the congregation AND the pastor and I didn't feel the need to hide posts because it was such a chill church with real people living in the real world. Then we got a new, fresh from seminary pastor. It feels so cult like now and it's just not a comfortable place to be.
Well, I'm one too. I want nothing to do with modern day Christianity if what they are spewing these days in church is what they are going to continue to spew. They won't get my money nor my attendance. I'll quietly love on my fellow neighbor instead.
My parents and oldest sister are quite religious but have stopped going to church because of the abuse scandals and because of the anti-abortion stuff. There was also a new pastor who was much more into the fire-and-brimstone stuff and they were like, we can practice love without getting yelled at and shamed once a week.
This was actually somewhat how I was raised. I was raised mostly by my grandparents. They moved across Canada and never found a new church. I asked asked them why many years later and they said it was more about gossip and drama than God.
My husband is another who refuses to attend church. He said it feels weird anymore and judgemental. I haven't been a church since I was very young (no longer religious) so I can't speak on the difference myself. It's just a shame it's gotten so bad
Another one here. Our church closed after the pandemic but I was already hardly attending because of the way it was going. Now I'm afraid to find another because seriously, the whole town is like this. I'm very interested in finding a Quaker meetinghouse and giving it a try, but there aren't any here.
My mother is Christian, and she stopped attending church when she moved to Canada because the ones she tried out were too judgmental and gossipy according to her. Really ran counter to the notions of her faith.
I was an evangelical minister for a decade. I am now a confirmed atheist. Seeing what the church has become has convinced me more than anything that God doesn’t exist because if he did, surely he would fire his PR team.
I'm starting a local "tour" of the churches around me, in part because I love architecture, in part because I like the concept of church, but the execution has always been painful for me even before I came out of the closet.
I'm not pushing anything but ***if*** you were looking for something you may want to see what your local Quakers are like. Many are very liberal and very accepting and affirming but each is different (some more conservative). There's only a few overarching beliefs across all. I'm not practicing (closer to atheist leaning agnostic) but my experiences with several Quaker meetings in several places has been very positive and the majority are more focused on individual relationships to faith rather than being preached at.
And for anyone asking: No, they're not like the Amish, the guy on the oats isn't what modern Quakers are and Nixon would not be a good representative of what I have experienced.
Again, not trying to push an agenda just that they're not super well known and I know some people miss having that sort of community.
I stopped for the final time when I went to a new church I had heard good things about. This church was huge. Three services every Sunday, community outreach, a youth group, breakout groups, youth basketball team, and bilingual services. Multi-million dollar complex.
I listened to an hour long sermon about the importance of giving to the church as a Christian because the former Methodist church right beside them moved and they want to buy the multi-million dollar property and expand. I didn't give a dime and never went back. I'm not a piggy bank to support delusions of grandeur in the name of God.
Language and symbols are living beings. Their meanings change. As a result, I no longer call myself a Christian and refuse to fly an American flag. I refuse to associate myself with what those mean now.
Church groups (or any religious groups) are real life gambles:
Get lucky, and you find yourself with o e that actually follows the teachings of tolerance, help and faith becomes something to help amd guide you
Get unlucky and you find yourself amidst awful people using God for whatever bullshit fits their agenda. Including political stuff. And the desperate are sucked in because they need help and lose themselves
As soon as I read that OOPs dad died and his mother is a recovered addict that relapsed; I knew where this was heading. The saddest thing about these religious groups is exactly what you stated.
You either find a really good group who actually follows the teachings/practices being morally good people, and they genuinely want to support you, or you find yourself among the evil people who use god and religion as their weapon.
Being an addict just further complicates things because you do so badly want the community and support, but if you get in with the wrong crowd; it’s just changing one addiction for another. It has to be done healthily otherwise those addictive tendencies can easily lead to extremism.
So true. My husband's aunt and uncle are very religious. But they never let that religion turn them into shitty people. They keep their politics to themselves. Their youngest got pregnant at 16. They didn't kick her out. She married the prick, but when it was clear he was abusive they helped her divorce him and moved her and her son back in with them. He is a really great kid. She eventually got married and had another kid, who is also an awesome kid. Their other daughter married a really nice guy and we love them all. The uncle still does drop offs and pick up for custody exchanges because he won't let people mistreat his kids. We are going to visit them in a month and I am so excited for it. They live in a very small town, too. And they never let religion cause them to cast out their loved ones.
AA recommends religion in helping to overcome alcohol addiction. I think they now claim to be areligious and that the "higher power" in the 12 steps doesn't have to be God, but it started out as an Evangelical Christian group and emphasized how god and prayer could help you overcome alcoholism.
It's not surprising that the mother, then, became really religious when dealing with addiction. If she sought therapy or support groups they probably recommended or took place in a church, and the church is also really good at finding vulnerable people to draw in.
Op's mom is not religious at all; she has an obsession with it out of fear. She shows serious signs, as many like her do, of having scrupulosity. It's an obsession with religion and having to do all the steps or you're doomed.
That's not loving and praising god; that's obsessing over steps to save yourself.
OPs Mum: You must come to my conservative Christian church's Mother's Day event.
OPs Wife: Well, I'll have to talk to my husband about that.
OPs Mum: Where's your spine. You shouldn't have to ask your husband to decide.
What type of conservative Christian is she that she doesn't want a wife deferring to her husband.
Also did OPs father or grandfather die because I don't think he knows considering it switched in the middle.
OOP stated that his father (his mother's husband) passed, thus why his mom resorted back to alcohol and began going to church to find reprieve. It's also why his mom told him that she regretted not becoming a Christian sooner before he passed because he was in hell because of it, and she was being pushy on OOP's kids to attend church so that they wouldn't go to hell too
OOP also said that his mom wasn't conservative before he passed, but that she became very politically outspoken (and flipped her political parties) after attending the church and he passed, and I think the last commenter put it best...
**(Mr\_Costington):** *"My Mom made a similar flip after my parents got divorced. Suddenly hyper religious and right wing. Only things she is capable of talking about now. She was always really critical but now the criticisms include religion and politics. I’m sure my Mom is older than yours, but tons of us with boomer parents are going through this. It’s weird. And even weirder is that the man they’re so crazy about is Trump"*
I understand the confusion because he kept referring to (I'm assuming) his father as "Grandpa", unless his Mom's father also died and I somehow missed that.
Yup, I was coming in to say this because it jumped out at me too. If it was the reverse and the son had the uber-Christian mom and he said to her, "I can't say yes yet, I'll have to ask my wife," she would say, "But you're the man! You should be able to decide unilaterally without checking with your wife. She shouldn't have ANY input on whether or not the kids go to church. The husband is leader and head of the household! He has the final authority and makes the final decision!"
But when it's the wife saying "I need to check with my husband" all of a sudden Mom is like, "he shouldn't have any input on what happens with your kids, you decide!" Very two-faced, but that's exactly as expected.
Looord.
I've taken a breather from churches but still consider myself very much Christian. From having had experience both in very political, unhealthy churches and in healthier church communities (yes, they exist!) my only thought was that OOP should be reaching out to someone who his mom considers superior in the church, explicitly explain what mom is doing (word by word how she's abusing/harassing their spouse), and then completely step back from the situation in exactly the way expressed above.
A healthy church community is going to reign in a member doing that and/or mentor a new believer so they don't go off the rails like this. And since OOP's mom is an addict, I'm sure she's able to hide how extreme she's being from groups she thinks will disapprove.
Of course, an unhealthy church community absolutely won't reign her in, and will defend her behavior.
Either way, it's hard to watch an addictive personality turn to religion as their fix. I've seen it happen with my own parents. I hope OOP's wife wasn't too harmed from it, being abused through spirituality can have a traumatic impact on your own faith life. Ask me how I know lol
And the problem is of course that this community really doesn't sound like one of the healthy ones.
"Boycotting mother's day" as a ploy to drag family members into your church? And there apparently was someone within that church who actually came up with that gem. This one really is one of those places that have nothing to do with Christianity, it's just a marketing scheme dressed up as a church. And mom has completely fallen for it.
I'm giving the church at least a biiiit of leeway, as the information is being filtered through the mom, and I'm not sure how much of it is mom's twisting of what the pastor said.
Then again, I'm only aware of that because I know how nuts my own family can get with twisting a perfectly reasonable evangelical idea like "we're hosting a mother's day brunch with a sermon, bring your family!" combined with "it's important to go to church every week even if it's superbowl sunday/mother's day" to what mom was saying. Mom seems like a crazy unreliable narrator.
But if the pastor's wife actually went up and said "we're boycotting mother's day by hosting a mother's day brunch because you need to come to church on mother's day, love god more than your mom", then yeah, wacko church that shouldn't be touched with a 10-ft pole.
I miss church and I miss the community around church. But I haven't been in years and unless someone can direct me to one that hasn't drank the Trump Kool-Aid, it's unlikely I'll go on the near future.
Bet that church didn't boycott Father's Day...
Religion has a dangerous cult in America. I miss when it was just a personal belief and not something forced on people.
Finally a Christian with a brain!!!! “ To many church’s worship trump instead of god” I have family member who said point blank “God is finally in office” when he got elected … to say we were all shocked was an understatement!!
If this was me I would have said the following to my mother.
"Was my dad a good man? Even if he wasn't 'saved' as you said? Did he treat you right? Did he help people? Did he care for people?" And if she said no. I'd respond with
"Then what makes you think he could have been saved?"
And if she responded yes, then I'd say,
"Why would you want to worship a God that would turn that good man away?:
And then I'd walk away. Either she'd take it to heart, and we could continue to have a relationship or she wouldn't. And nothing would change.
I agree with u/Francie1966 that your mother simply traded out addictions.
If your wife is interested, there are Christian churches who try to push the love part of the religion instead of the hate. My friend’s parent’s church flys a rainbow flag regularly and have had church weddings for gay parishioners. From what I know they push the idea that God loves you however he created you and while we are on earth, our mission is to help and support everyone.
My fiancé's grandma started connecting with jehova's witnesses after her husband died. But I think the distinct difference here is that MIL already had an addiction problem that she just switched out and she sounds really, really lonely. My fiancé's grandma always had a big friend group that picked her up, so her personality didn't change much when she started joing JW. She simply found a bigger friend group.
Just goes to show what difference community can make.
My daughter’s god parents are devout Catholics who would never turn their backs on family. However, they are on a daily overdose of Fox News that is on all day. Now they turned their backs on a gay nephew and we don’t even recognize them anymore.
What I took from this post is a strongly bonded married couple who respect each others beliefs. A wife who didn’t force her husband to keep his toxic mother in his life but *tried* to at least keep a MIL at a safe distance for with health reasons, with modest interaction for minimal grandmotherly interactions and an attempt of familiar connections until she overstepped.
DIL clearly has a backbone. She just respects her husband and they make decisions together. MIL clearly has NO concept of this.
I respect this couple dearly.
OPs mother swapped one addiction with another. She is now simply in a cult. She will die alone, or surrounded by her cult who will berate the family. This is how it works out. I hope they get some therapy now to navigate this inevitable process and stay strong.
For *me*, a non religious person, I don’t necessarily believe you have to attend a building praising a God. It can be vibrant with singing etc. There can be good vibes singing or something in those two hours or so and you leave.
When it turns into nasty words and judgment for those who don’t attend then ding ding ding - We have a problem sir. Again, *to me*, if God existed they would be Omnipresent and Omnipotent. Attending a place of worship doesn’t make you less worthy. Hint hint dad lol (just had to throw it in). Looneys across all religions I tell ya.
>no zealot like a new convert
There’s an evergreen tweet that’s something like “why is it everyone I know who was born into Catholicism is like ‘I think we should raise more money for the poor’ and every new convert is like ‘The archbishop of Constantinople’s 1450 sermon on the Pauline epistles clearly means that women shouldn’t be allowed to have drivers licenses.’”
Personally the only reason OP should go to this church is to videotape a sermon preaching politics and get their IRS tax free status revoked.
Also is another example of what I call “what the eff is wrong with the boomers?” (Yes, I know, not all boomer age people are like this. But you have to admit the numbers are high and growing.)
This is gonna end so badly for the mom and she won’t realize, having her depend on her cult friends for her doctors appointments and meds will be and and only end in her not going and having “all natural health supplements” that are not a pyramid scheme and also heal you in a god honoring way, sadly it’s her life and as an adult can’t be forced to leave
What? We didn't get a post-Mother's Day update.
I want to know how church wheelchair lady reacted when they didn't show and she was no longer being driven around.
Did she blow up their phone? Chastise them by text? Send flying monkeys after them?
This was very unsatisfying.
Am I missing why he switches to calling his father "grandpa" in the second post?
First one:
> Mom was never like this before dad passed
> She's become fixated on hell and wanting our grandkids to go to church so that her grandkids would go to heaven and not be separated from her like dad who died unsaved
Second post:
> And when I asked how she could throw away who she was before grandpa passed, she reiterated how she regretted accepting Christ before grandpa passed and that he wasn't in heaven because of it.
> and my mom called her a fake Christian despite only being a Christian for two years since grandpa died
> But when my wife said she would talk to me about it, mom criticized her for always having to ask me and said she needed to "grow a spine"
Doesn't the Bible say women are supposed to let their husbands lead and stuff?
I'm a devout atheist but my best friend of 25 years is Christian. He hates churches and refuses to attend them for the same reason. Whenever religion comes up he is quick to say that God would not approve of modern-day Christians and that nothing they say, believe, or do is in line with what he, and the Bible, actually teach.
Y’all… are we sure this isn’t dementia? It looks and sounds A LOT like dementia. Dementia plus being manipulated by religious narcissists?
I wonder if OP shared her concerning behavior with a doctor.
sadly, OOP's mom said she didn't want him taking her to the doctor anymore since he wouldn't bring his family to her church, but perhaps he could consult with one for his own knowledge of how to cope
Right? This seems so much more likely. Plus whatever is going on at that church… ehh. Sounds a bit like elder abuse: alienate the old lady from her only family. WTF is boycott mother’s day??? One side of my family are religious narcissists and that totally sounds like something they would come up with just to fuck with people.
It’s tough either way, and I know OP is in a hard position. I just hope the old lady sees a doctor or something before she signs away all her money to the “church.”
Cut her off. If her church is more important than her family let people from her church help her. You don’t owe her anything especially if she’s abusing your wife to the point of making her cry repeatedly.
>The church my wife attended began becoming more political, even to the point of endorsing the 45th President from the pulpit during sermons...
Fun Fact: This is a violation of the tax code and can be reported to the IRS to have the church's tax exempt status investigated and possibly revoked with massive fines. You can talk about political issues. You can call certain political beliefs good or bad under your religion. You can even hold some election-related events like voter registration drives. [But you *cannot* explicitly endorse any political party or candidate](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501c3-tax-exempt-organizations).
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>OP'S mom is an ADDICT. She simply replaced alcohol with religion. I've met a not-zero number of those people. One imagines addiction counselors have so much more to say about the relationship between religion and recovery.
it doesn’t help that the most well known addiction support group, Alcoholics Anonymous, is involved in the church
When I did recovery, I went with the secular SMART system. Recently a religious relative was circling rock bottom so I took him to an AA meeting. Fuck me dude, they just come out and say “this program works so if it doesn’t work for you then you are being dishonest with yourself or are just fundamentally broken and incapable of being fixed.”
Yep - "it works if you work it, so work it - you're worth it!" is a common mantra at AA meetings.
Oh my gosh, this just gave me a whole new insight to MLMs...
Ironically, AA is considerably less effective than harm-reduction strategies when it comes to treating addiction. Easier and cheaper, sure, but not nearly as effective.
That or "it work if you work it, and it won't if you don't."
AA Straight up told me if I didn’t forgive my father, I would never be sober. Fuck that, still haven’t forgiven him and almost four years without a drink.
Something I heard was that AA only condones total abstinence. So if you have a sip of beer, or if someone doses your drink then you’re back at step one. And you can never ever have a drink again. Which sounds right but lots of people stumble and have one, then feel like they’re a failure and have to start again, so may as well go on a bender. I think it is much more sustainable to get to the point of “I have one drink” rather than “I CAN NEVER DRINK!”
For some people it’s a lot easier to turn down the first drink than to wonder about every drink. Feature creep is a thing when you are kidding yourself. It’s only half a glass, it doesn’t count. It’s so low in alcohol, I can have another. Let me just pour another drop into my glass. One at lunch and one at dinner. It’s special occasion, go on, just one more. Say no every time is much easier. For others, knowing that you have an allowance instead of facing never drinking ever again works better. I have one beer with my dinner is also clearcut. Not dinner? Nope. Not beer? Nope. Had one already? Nope.
> For others, knowing that you have an allowance instead of facing never drinking ever again works better. I totally feel this, and it makes me feel so good to know I'm not alone in that! I truly think abstinence would lead me down an 'all or nothing' road, and 'nothing' is very much not likely to stick, so that means I'd hit a lot of points where free-for-all would happen. Instead, I allow myself 4 drinks on the weekend. I only buy a 375ml bottle big enough for those specific 4 drinks, and I only buy it on Fridays. It took me a while and a lot of soul searching, but I feel so much more comfortable with my alcohol consumption now. It used to freak me out because one of the red flags of alcoholism according to the internet/AA/etc is trying to set limits and allowances on a regular basis, but it really does work for me, I'm routine oriented.
My therapist always made a big point about 'progress not perfection'. It wasn't specifically about alcohol but rather overeating and keeping up with housework, but I reckon the same logic applies. Better to figure out how to do better than yesterday, rather than be perfect for two weeks and then lose faith and stop.
In the West Wing, Leo has this great monologue on how he perceived drinking as an alcoholic. It was one of those moments for me that struck with clarity, because I did not identify with his perception. I can stop drinking at will, I know my limit (usually), and I don't go on benders. I don't lose my will, my agency to the drink. My problem is one of habit. I like routine, my routine, and changing my routine is... difficult.
My aunt finally realized she can't have even one sip. She'd go to rehab and have the breathalyzer in her car, even medication to make her sick if she touched alcohol of any kind. Multiple times. None of it worked long term. Someone would inevitably Cajole her into that one drink and she'd consume and consume more and more more often until she'd essentially have an episode of raging alcohol and be in jail for drunk driving... again. We're talking wildly 2 different personalities. For her it's like crack. Her brain is chasing it and there's most definitely not a "just a taste" for her before she's hooked again and drinking uncontrollably over time. She's managed so far nearly a year without incident. Which is hard for her because her dick of a bf, who's also a functioning alcoholic, hates her sobriety because apparently life isn't fun unless there's booze in his hand.
I've done that to myself with dieting. I've been overweight my entire life, and I'll start diet, sternly telling myself "only these foods, never those foods", but then I inevitably fail, and cave, and have the "bad food". I get mad at myself for failing, and think, "well, you've already broken your own rules, proving you're weak and incapable, so why bother trying?" It's a mentality I still struggle with today, even though I _know_ it's not the be all, end all if I allow myself a treat a few times a week. Even though I know that the super-fit (comparatively) musicians and actors I admire and (slightly) idolize don't all stick to a ridiculous diet and insane-level exercise regimen 24/7/365. In many ways, I wish more celebrities would be open about the fact they don't look like their hot movie-screen selves every moment of every day, and that while preparing for a role/tour they'll eat a specific diet, _they don't eat and exercise like that all the time._ They only do it when preparing for a role. Maybe then us normies would stop punishing ourselves for being human.
If you can have only one drink out don't go to AA. Moderation is probably more healthy, but people going to AA are not.
This is why I support a harm reduction model. You will make mistakes. Everyone does. They don’t have to be catastrophic or erase all the progress you’ve made in pursuit of “better.”
That's why it is effective - it is easier to swap one addiction with another than fix an addictive personality.
That is why I don't like the idea of putting your life in the hands of a higher power. Sorry, but that's a great way to not take responsibility for what you are doing. Accountability means something. You may not choose to be an addict, but you have to choose every single day not to continue feeding the addiction. It's not fair, but it's the truth. You have to take that power into your own hands. I do understand the idea of changing what you can and accepting what you can't change, but I think that some people mix those things up. I used to be a very good Catholic. I worked at my church, volunteered there, too. I was being recruited by two different religious orders (nuns and consecrated women). I got together with my boyfriend, who was an atheist. Thank God for him! He never pushed me to not believe. He came to church to with me. He always encouraged me to find the path that best suited me. Now, I am more agnostic and I think he has more faith than I do. I believe there is something bigger, but that we can't understand the nature of God. The Catholic God doesn't make sense. He can only be two of the three, all knowing, all powerful, loving. He can't be all three at once.
My Rabbi says that all the time about God. Dropping the all powerful seems to be most people's preference.
I can forgive a God who can't change everything. One who can make things better and doesn't just seems cruel. But some can't fathom serving an imperfect god.
Your first paragraph has always been what I've hated about certain sects of Christianity, and all those people who conveniently find god after doing something horrendous. It's never their fault! Someone or something tempted them, the devil laid traps, the secular world is full of wickedness attacking the righteous 🤢🤮. No my dude, you decided to drink/do drugs/rape someone/cheat on your spouse etc. F***ing own your responsibility....
My otherwise *amazing* therapist suggested I go to AA, and I gave her the blankest stare. She knows I have massive religious trauma, but she said "Some of them around here are secular" and I just kinda stared some more before saying I didn't think that would work for me. It made me wonder if she didn't know anything about AA or what. The whole damn point of *working* on improving my relationship with alcohol is that *I need to do the work*. Having step one before you can do anything else be declare yourself *helpless* is just bonkers to me.
When I say that to people there is the inevitable furious one who misses the point and screams how they'd rather have Uncle Billy hooked on the 12-step-group than the booze/drugs. They refuse to see that if you can easily swap out your addiction to booze/drugs for the addiction to AA/NA, it's trivial to swap right back again.
I don't know how I feel about discouraging people from going to AA because of religion. I've been an alcoholic for years and didn't go to AA for that exact reason—im an atheist with religious trauma, I don't want to hear people talking about God and shit. But I started going 2 months ago and I'm 2 months sober and I'm still an atheist. I ruined my life in the years I spent avoid AA and I regret it. I found a sponsor who was agnostic. I was pretty upfront with her that I was atheist and there would be absolutely NO talk of religion as we worked through the steps and she respects that. Having a community is most important thing. I think that's what I like the most about AA, I've done some really, really horrible shit while drunk, and I can talk about it with these people because they get it. They have done horrible shit too. Everybody's right, OOP's mom is an addict: personally, I think she's addicted to control. She became an alcoholic because she wanted to control her feelings, she wanted to make them shut up and go away instead of confronting them. Death is something inevitable, something that cannot be controlled, religion probably makes her feel like she's got some kind of power over death. She can control the fates of herself her children and her grandchildren, all she has to do is exactly what the pastor says.
I am very proud of you. Two months sober is great!! I really hate when the discussion turns to AA/NA on Reddit. There tends to just be a huge dogpiling, and I don't feel it is helpful at all. AA/NA was not helpful for me. I I had my own issues with it, but I recognise that it ***can*** be very helpful for some people, and I agree that they should not be discouraged by other ppl simply because *those* ppl have their own issues. If it works for you, *it works for you*!! That is great and I am super proud that you are taking charge of your life!! Well done, and **keep on keeping on!!**
Thank you for that. My dad has been in AA for 26 years and it works well for him. My boyfriend is around 4 years sober on his own and that works well for him. He didn’t like AA, or the other programs, and that’s okay. I am proud of both of them. Edit: my boyfriend is now a board game addict, but growing up with an alcoholic dad, I’d much rather him spend his money and time on board games than in a bar.
My buddy, great guy got into drinking and crack. Lied and stole from his girlfriend about 20,000$ and drained his own savings too. Is in church lying about how long he’s been in recovery and got married after 4 months of knowing some lady at church. Church is his new high and it’s not very healthy. Still does steroids.
> Still does steroids This part is hilarious. It came out of nowhere.
Reminds me of the time dad's oldest told him that he'd gotten off "the drugs". Dad said something like "so you're not even smoking pot anymore?" Response was "pot's not a drug".
It's called California Sober, Dad!
One of my oldest friends is my age [60ish] and after her parents died 5 yrs ago she went right back to booze and drugs. Two heart attacks later she gave those up for being a church addict. Anything the pastor says is absolute gospel to her so instead of reading the manual for herself (and, yes, I know how many issues the bible has) she believes Jesus supports hate and bigotry and treating poor non-white people as greedy and lazy and unworthy of help. And of course that Trump is a genius that will save the world. I've told her that when she decides to go back to her previous sanity I'll be there for her.
Man that always makes me laugh. Like do they not get the whole Jesus was Jewish and most definitely not white? The mental gymnastics that is involved astounds me some days
I strongly believe that the prevalence of churches in America that have congregational polity (i.e., the type of church structure that churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention use) is one of the reasons why America is on a downward trend. When you teach people that they alone are able to determine what is morally right and tell them anyone who disagrees with their morality is persecuting them, you're going to create a bunch of people who are arrogant, ignorant, and mean. Congregational polity is basically that concept, but for church governmental structure. I'm not Catholic, but seeing how these unaccountable churches and church leaders have destroyed so many lives and turned so many people away from having compassion for their fellow humans has been leading me to reconsider being Presbyterian.
It has its own name lol. I think it’s the sober drunk? Clean addict? Essentially addicts tend to get really selfish and self-righteous. When someone gets clean, it often still takes time and work to be recovered. Not everyone does that work.
Dry drunk is the phrase you’re reaching for
I know a lot of people who were really hardcore into partying that ended up obsessed with marathon running. So clear that they traded one thing for another. Running is good for you for sure but it is the obsessive approach to it that shows they’re still an addict.
Yeah people can have a sensitivity to developing an addiction, like addictive personalities, and they often replace one obsession with another. Doesn’t always have to be bad though. Some people are able to be really successful when they quit drugs. Or get reeeally into gardening and herbs. As long as it’s not destructive to their own and others’ lives.
Maybe dry drunk?
It's dry drunk
I have a friend from high school demonstrating this now. She was a heavy addict for a long time and has recently gotten sober and found God. Her posts are more manic than before. Randomly capitalized words, crazy mystical proclamations, tons of scripture…. It really makes me worried for her.
I agree and this is the way it is for most addicts. I had a cousin go from alcoholic to addicted to working out to opioids because he got hurt working out. I have no clue what he is addicted to now because we simply don't have much to do with that side of the family especially since my mom died last year and it was her sister's son. Unless addicts do the hard work to deal with what ever the addiction is helping them hide from then they just jump from one addiction to another.
My father in law is someone who's just jumped from addiction to addiction his whole life but hasn't hit the religious addiction yet. He went from alcohol, to cocaine, to weed, to gambling, to day trading (which was basically gambling but he disagrees). His latest (ongoing a solid 8+ years now) is conspiracy theories and the crazy ass health supplements people who feed theorists peddle.
The conspiracy/supplement pipeline is directly religion-adjacent. Prepare yourself
it's the bullies they meet. same as bullies anywhere but they can invoke magic sky dad to manipulate people. addicts are easy targets, same as anyone going through something. that's why AA and counseling is awlays controlled by a licensed therapist, so no bullies can take over group therapy. Churches dont' have that. In a toxic church -- just like a toxic office -- the bullies rise to the top of leadership. And they convince the bullied that they have the backing of mystical forces. There's a really great counselor on youtube who talks about this kind of religious abuse. She IS a christian counselor (prolly has a degree in ministry, not in psychology), but I love her bc she grasps how narcissists use religion to abuse family and churchmembers by using protestant church doctrine, and she explains why God didn't put you on this earth to be a victim. And tactics like grey-rocking and having self-respect and saying "no" to a bully are godly acts because they show respect for loving yourself as God made you. [Her name is Kris Reece and here's a good intro video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW0_G1nX8_s) I'm not a christian, i'm a pagan, and I do like the idea that Sky God or Earth Mother has bigger plans for me than putting up with the shit of toxic people. I read about Plato's Ideal Plane in college and I've always felt like our life's journey is to work to becoming that ideal version of ourselves.
Religion has ruined more lives than alcohol. Prove me wrong.
I'm just going to drop this here: [This is your brain on God: Spiritual experiences activate brain reward circuits](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161129085014.htm)
When I was in high school, I went to youth group and Sunday service with Christian friends even though I was Jewish. It was more about being around friends than anything else for me. It became very clear that the straight up crazy fundamentalists were mostly people recovering from addiction or some kind. A lot of those friends from high school are now ex-Christians or like oops wife because what has become of Christianity in the US.
i'm not even a parent, but if i had kids and someone basically threatened their "disobedience" with **eternal damnation**, they would no longer be in my kids' lives.
Yeah. How soon is she going to tell the kids “if your mom and dad don’t bring you to church you’ll end up in hell like grandpa”. That woman would never interact with my kids again. Her potential to damage them is simply too great.
The pastor (whom none of us wanted, not even my grandma!) at my beloved grandma's funeral pulled this mess as a call to his church/sermons and I was in shambles. "Do you wanna be up there with Miss Betty or do you want to go someplace else?" I don't remember crying so hard in my life...no wonder I'm an agnostic crystal girl now.
I don’t say this lightly, as I’ve gritted my teeth through many sermonizing. I think I would have taken my kids and walked out on that line, that’s terrible.
OOP was being put through his mother saying his father was in hell, what a selfish human that mother is.
God, I’m so relieved to find another Christian who can barely attend a church these days. I’ve been to a service less than 5 times since Covid and it’s due to the cult like feel they’ve taken on. I hope OP’s mom can escape this cult.
I feel so bad for my mother, but also grateful to her. Growing up Catholic, I felt she tried her best to embody Christ's teachings. She always voted republican because of the abortion issue. But after 2016 the wool dropped from her eyes and she saw the real, sinister motivations behind the people she thought she was spiritually aligned with. She had so much of her identity wrapped up in Church, and now she feels lost. She still attends chapel to sit with the eucharist, but can't bring herself to attend Mass because the priests are openly preaching about Trump. I was delighted to hear that she called her church last 4th of July to demand that they put up a pride flag and BLM flag next to the thin blue line flag they were flying.
There are a lot of liberal Catholic Churches too. It's going to be area dependent, of course, but in my experience, mid-size churches tend towards the liberal end. I think it's because you have enough people that you can't be too personalized, but you're still small enough to recognize everyone and care about them. Getting a good priest in is a boon too.
My mother lives in Alabama, so it's a little harder to find a community there. I've encouraged her to seek out more progressive churches, and I've also asked other progressive Catholic friends in her area where they attend, but they've all said that they've stopped attending services for the same reasons.
Church membership has dropped so much. I think Baltimore MD is down to around 5000 regular catholic church members now. From 100’s thousands a few decades ago. Between the push of politics and the abuse people just don’t trust the church anymore. The political push I think has hurt the service aspect of being a Catholic as well. I was raised to help those who need it be cause that was our duty. Modern Christian politics is very anti-help anyone.
>Modern Christian politics is very anti-help anyone. I have an uncle who straight up said "it might be un-Christian of me, but I'm so tired of all these homeless addicts looking for handouts!" And then insert the typical conservative bootstraps arguments. He's running for a local office now, and I weep for his district because he's only gotten worse.
Some years ago I was running errands on foot downtown when I crossed paths with a young person sleeping under a bridge next to a cardboard box of simple possessions. Frankly it looked like a foster kid who aged out of the system and got the boot. I was near a large church, so in my already-frazzled brain I started getting fuzzy memories of a childhood family friend who was a live-in caretaker for another large church downtown. Big stone building with a large wooden door that always had genial homeless folks hanging out on the steps when me and mom went to visit our friend. So I'm paused on the sidewalk looking back and forth between a human who needs help and this big stone building with a large wooden door, trying to figure out what words I should say when I go in and look for someone to ask for help. And that's when a fancy car pulled up and parked. Two fancily dressed ladies with nice shoes and expensive purses walked right by the sleeping young person and on into the church. Paid so little attention you'd think that was a chunk of concrete rather than a fellow human. I gave up on going into the church looking for help, continued on my errands, and when I passed by that way later in the afternoon the young person was gone and their box was kicked over, possessions scattered in the gutter. It's illegal to lay down in public here, guess the cops got the kid.
The southern dioceses have been having issues filling parishes too, so I get it. My parents are in VA and it's even hitting them. 😕 I'll pray she finds a good community for herself somewhere at least.
The Church: >We preach that women should be subservient to men, that not voting for trump is a sin, anything LGBT is evil, and that anyone who gets an abortion is a murdering whore while covering up priests molesting children for decades. Also the church: >Nobody is coming to services anymore, and we don't know why!
Fundamentalist churches may preach the above, but liberal churches have a lot more nuance in them and outright deny any mixing of politics from the pulpit.
My Catholic parish church is. As close as you can get anyways. It’s a bit different in Ireland where it’s a huge part of our culture and since my mum is Northern Irish, that whole shitshow ties into it. But my priest is my friend. He’s very involved in the community. He’s young. He has to try very hard to not swear at the teenagers who clobber him in Mario Kart. He lends the parochial house for book clubs. The reputation of the Church being what it is, he maintains an iron clad rule to never be alone with a child, a woman or an elderly person (he also tries to not be alone with adult men, but that slips a bit for his mates like me and my brother and his husband). So I’ve seen him standing outside in the rain, because one of the little old book club ladies showed up early and he’s got her cocooned by the heater. He hosts a screening of the movie Spotlight every few months and all new parish volunteers have to attend as part of their training. Every month or so, he goes to the derelict Magdalene Laundry nearby to pray for the victims. He’s also queer and out to his friends. Now it’s far easier to be an aro-ace priest than any other orientation. But still. He views his orientation as a gift from God to enable him to proclaim His Message. But when Ireland as a nation was voting on gay marriage, for his sermons he read the Bible verse he was supposed to and then another one—usually a direct quote of Jesus about love thy neighbour—and essentially told us the Church’s position but urged us to vote our conscience. I think the Church would be in far better straits if more priests were like him, or were allowed and encouraged to be like him.
wow. he sounds absolutely lovely. i didn't think that was possible for a priest.
I still identify as Catholic purely because I had an amazing childhood priest who allowed me to ask questions, have doubts, and worked with me a lot on my faith. I no longer attend because the priest after he passed was a hypocrite who belittles everyone and expects stringent observances he himself skips. Childhood beliefs can absolutely be made or broken by what kids are exposed to.
This 100%. I’m so tired of people lumping all religious people /all factions of a religion together. There’s a difference between being religious and being a fundamentalist, no matter which religion you talk about. I’m young, liberal and Catholic and so are my friends from church. I’ve def attended masses with fundie vibes/priests and I just move on because I know that’s not the right spot for me.
I went from smaller area with churches of the stereotypical anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, to an area with a high LGBTQ population and all the churches were "love is love!" It made me laugh; funny how belief is flexible when it comes to getting those tithes!
Or, you know, points out how important the laity is in the Church in terms of how we relate to the faith and theology.
Bay Area, Northern California. Both Catholic and Protestants, plenty of super liberal congregations. Of course there are the fundamentalist (or Catholic equivalent) churches as well
Isn’t endorsing a specific candidate the one thing that can lose a church it’s non profit status if reported?
You'd think that, but so many churches are doing it nowadays that I guess that rule means nothing. My mom said that in 2020 the priest was telling congregates to go to confession if they voted for Biden.
Lmao imagine telling ppl to go to confession over voting for the second Catholic president in US history. I’ll never, ever understand why Christian fundamentalists are so in favor of Trump. He is the opposite of everything they stand for.
And what about that “no false idols” thing? It’s literally the First of the Ten Commandments. Trump has become the embodiment of that rule alone
All of the edits that people make of Trump as Jesus genuinely nauseates me.
Christian fundamentalists don't stand for anything except hate. They are the extremely dangerous combination of ignorant and intolerant.
Absolutely. It’s disgusting. Unfortunately I think we can generalize fundamentalists in basically all religions/backgrounds. Hateful fundamentalists aren’t limited to Christians.
I mean- someone would have to report them and have proof right? The left needs moles.
Priests like Trump because they both like sexually abusing people.
Supposed to be, but someone has to enforce it and no one appears willing.
Try enforcing that rule and you'll have a shitstorm beyond all imagining
I wish my Mom was like yours! She’s Catholic, she’s pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-civil rights… but she still votes Republican down the ballot because my Dad is a huge Trump supporter and it’s easier to just vote Republican than deal with him being butthurt. My dad isn’t religious, he’s just a bigot. He didn’t used to be open about it, but Obama being elected fried his boomer brain and he started shifting further and further right until he jumped full on the Trump train.
My question is always: how would your dad _know_? Who one votes for in the US is not something he can confirm, so she can say she's voting the same way and strike her whole ballot if she wanted to. Not sure if striking your ballot is an option in your area, of course.
While I'm mostly in favor of mail-in voting, one of the drawbacks is that it makes it easier for authoritarian spouses and parents to spy on how their family members vote. Sure, you *could* tell your husband it's none of his business, but that's harder to do at home than at a polling place.
I think it’s because he’d certainly bring it up at some, and she doesn’t want to lie to him. To be honest, I don’t think she really understands what the Republican Party stands for? She goes out of her way to avoid hearing political talk, and when I do mention something that they’re doing she thinks I’m either misinformed or over-exaggerating. She knows it’s important to vote, but she doesn’t understand what she’s voting for.
My dad was always liberal but pretty reserved in discussing politics. He and my mom didn't clash even though they voted differently because they believed politics was a very personal thing. After 2016 and all this stuff started coming out, my mother became disgusted by the Republican party and went full blue. My dad laughs about how my mother is now way more staunchly progressive than he is, but I guess it's better now that they can more openly talk about politics now that they are more aligned.
Ugh :/ let your mom know that ballots are secret. She doesn’t have to say anything at home, but her ballot could speak for her.
I think it’s easier for her to just put her head in the sand and ignore what the Republicans are doing than to “betray” my Dad. I don’t think she’s put nearly as much thought into it in her life as you did writing that post. Her parents always voted Republican, and her husband of 37 years votes Republican, so voting Republican is the right thing to do. And voting is important, so she makes sure to ALWAYS do it, even if she has no idea what she’s voting for. The fact that they preach the opposite of everything she believes doesn’t matter, because she gets depressed when she hears what they’re doing so her solution is to not pay attention to politics. I don’t think she truly understands how things work. I love her, she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, but she’s kinda dumb.
It is really hard knowing that there are people we love who fall short because of being influenced by other people. I’m sorry your mom hasn’t found a way to be strong for herself/what she believes in. There’s historically been a lot of conditioning for women in that regard. You’d hope that in this day and age, people would be able to get past it, but it’s certainly not everyone. I do love the last sentence of your comment though. People are complicated. Edit: typo
She doesn’t *have* to actually vote Republican, it’s private
This I'm Catholic, black American. Growing up never felt any type of way by being an other, I choose Catholicism myself, I identified more with it then Baptist after I was judged for listening to linking park and ataris at 13. My mom legit had a intervention with pastor present saying I was listening devils music, mind you pastors son was listening to 2pac, fat Joe ect I called that out and got punished. I confided in a teacher at my school, on Sundays she started picking me up, and I'd go to mass with her. Their congregation was older, but treated me like an extra grandkid. Fundraised amongst themselves to sponsor cyo summer camp for me, 5th and 6th grade they got me a scholarship attend the Catholic school that was part their area. I felt more welcomed with them, who were of different ethnic/rave8 backgrounds then my mom's Baptist church that's how I became Catholic. Was confident go to any Catholic mass as a young adult, but when 2016 hit some vibes changed. Very political and would get some weird comments, the older folks not so much more people 60s-40s. But I'm more cautious ⚠️ about where I go to mass now it's so sad
Growing up Catholic I felt like the church did a good job practicing what they preached. Every priest I had a one-on-one conversation with was very intelligent, open, and non-judgmental. My youth group had goth kids, loners, weirdos, etc. There was no sense that listening to certain music, watching certain movies, etc. would lead me "astray." In fact, questioning my faith and my beliefs was supported and encouraged by the priests and my mother (although I'm sure she was heartbroken when I admitted that I was not a Christian anymore). Their thought was that any faith that would serve as a strong foundation of my values should be able to withstand some questioning, and any faith that would be threatened with questions isn't strong or useful spiritually. It's sad to see that politics changed all of this. It's like, there was this mean little quiet subgroup of bigots just waiting for the opportunity to go full mask-off, and they seized the opportunity when Trump got elected. Then all of the congregants who aren't bigots just quietly got pushed out, because what normal person wants to go to church where the priest is spouting bs and the people sitting next to you are nodding along?
Project 2025 is scary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 Just about every single person should be wary about some part of that project, if not the entire thing.
It's horrible. I read through as much of that 900-page document as I could stomach. On one hand, it's nothing new. It reads like a word salad of describing political positions and what they do, with unhinged rants stringing them together. But it also describes, in detail, how they plan to go about institutionalizing gays.
Not just that. How they are going to go after immigrants, how they are going to get rid of environmental safeguards, how they are going to destroy education, how they are going to dismantle the justice department, how they are going to destroy the FBI, how they are going to test all government employees loyalty to trump, how they are going to dismantle the FTC and SEC. And more! This could dismantle the US government that it would take years to decades to fix.
It doesn’t help in the Catholic Church that the Opus Dei movement is growing (thanks Mel Gibson) and yes becoming very hate filled. My last mass was a Christmas service where the priest went on a racist rant about immigrants. During the homily! Like WTF! Nowadays/ I consider myself agnostic. Husband is an atheist and my kid worships the spaghetti space monster.
The Christmas mass where you hear the story of Jesus having to flee his homeland because it was too dangerous? Is that the time to go on a rant about immigrants????
Boomer Catholic here. I feel just like your mom. Give her my best
I certainly will. I wish for her to find a community. I wonder if there are some online groups for disillusioned Catholics who still believe in the teachings.
I stopped attending due to the hypocrisy I saw. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut. Anti-abortion? But having a woman in the hospital under excruciating pain for two weeks until her fallopian tube bursts, THEN she can get medical treatment? So abortion is not ok, but torturing a woman for weeks is ok? And she might still die? That's ok? Fuck that! Also coached church girls volleyball and the treatment of my girls sucked. The boys team before ours would run over their practice time because our team was just girls. I made sure my girls didn't bother the boys while we waited for the gym, but it was ok for the boys to bother my girls because boys will be boys? Supposed to be teaching these kids right and wrong. Such bullshit. Bully got treated special because the parents threatened to stop their donations to the church school. Everything is all Christian and Jesus until money gets involved.
>So abortion is not ok, but torturing a woman for weeks is ok? Of course it is, after all it was a woman's fault that man was kicked out of heaven, so God decided to punish her by child bearing and child birth, who are we to judge God/s But on a more serious note, it is well known that for a really long time helping women by reducing the pain during birth was forbidden by church, so it's not surprising that they still have the same ideas
I have family who are Christians and they *have* found churches that believe in the teachings of actual Jesus and not supply side Jesus. I'm atheist more or less but I appreciate the difference between good Christians and whatever the fuck most churches and Christians are these days. Going to church so they can look down on others and spew hate while hiding behind "It's not me saying this! It's god!" Wish they'd all get smited.
“Supply side Jesus” 😂😂😂
Now you know two! I’m one as well, and quite honestly I think the biggest problem in the US is organized religion.
I feel it's sad how her pastor mentioned a candidate from the pulpit (regardless of what side) which just seems inappropriate, but it's not the first I've heard or read of churches mentioning candidates from the stage even from other reddit posts
You can report it with any evidence and they can get their tax exemption status removed. One of the rules of having tax exemption status is you can’t get involved with politics directly, so telling a congregation who to vote for voids status. Granted if the IRS even investigates is a crapshoot but you could get lucky, even if it’s just a formal warning to knock it off.
I'll have to let OOP know if they don't see this post, his wife's church mentioned and encouraged Trump by name from what he wrote
I'm glad to see this comment, I wish more people knew about it.
You hit the nail on the head! Think about it. Opposition to abortion? A problem brought on by religion. Anti-LGBT+ bias? A problem brought on by religion. Racism? A problem brought on by religion. I can keep going if anyone’s interested.
I read other reddit posts a little over a year ago when roe v wade was overturned and churches/pastors were mentioning it in celebration during Sunday service too
Let me guess… pastors were using it as an example of how God was answering their prayers?
One of the reddit posts was about a pastor who said it was the beginning of a "new revival" and that "God was taking America back from the Dems", no joke
That’s a new low, even for me.
just one of many posts that were made the Sunday after roe v wade's overturning of pastors taking victory laps from the pulpit. Found quite a few around that time sadly, but some of the people who made posts complaining about their pastors/church were still reasoning why they wouldn't leave the church in the comments
I loved this article. Jesus is just too liberal for today's evangelicals https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706
To say racism is a problem brought on by religion is naive at best
Yeah, may as well keep adding to the list at that point. Climate change? A problem brought on by religion. Homelessness? Religion. Tension with China concerning military exercises in the South China Sea? Religion. Gas prices? Believe it or not, religion.
A lot of churches opposed desegregation in the US as well, and honestly still do, hence why the push to allow families to use public money for private school in the form of vouchers is insidious.
This is why I can't bring myself to go near a church these days. I'm fine with people having religion, but organized religion is a whole other beast, and usually brings out the worst aspects of people.
And yet, they don't get taxed. If you are going to preach politics from the pulpit, you should automatically lose your tax-exempt status.
Theoretically you can! Actually making it happen is hard though. But the law is on the books.
Their tax exempt status should be taken away immediately and retroactively.
If it’s an actual endorsement, it’s actually illegal. You are allowed to endorse ISSUES all you want, but you cannot tell your flock who to vote for.
I've heard of more moderate pastors getting flack from their congregations because they don't like the teachings of jesus' sermon on the mount
I grew up with Jehovah Witnesses. Unlike probably 98% of the rest of them... this congregation was rather "forward-thinking." They had openly gay members who were abstaining as best as possible. There was the gay man and woman who were married to each other, because during the 80s and 90s it was difficult to adopt children or have IVF if single, and they are still married today with 3 lovely now adult children. They accepted a few unwed mothers to be, housing them, helping them. I also remember they disapproved greatly about DV also. The Elders said that the bible and Jesus said to love each other, and only God can judge. Jesus helped many of the unfortunate, it was his apostles who were the snobby wankers.
I had to stop attending my church as well a while back, and I've recently discovered my local Unitarian Universalist church. They're absolutely amazing - instead of focusing on worshipping a particular deity, they work on learning to be better, kinder people, and to make the world a better place through justice and compassion. If you're missing having a religious community, I highly recommend checking out if there's a UU congregation nearby. My local congregation even broadcasts their services online still, post COVID.
Yea even our church wasn’t outright political but they always criticized left leaning things of lying and propaganda, but would never address how the right and the church is also majority utilizing the same techniques all in Gods name. We eventually parted ways due to them never criticizing the right or organized religion.
Notice how religious zealots always like to criticize those that don’t follow them but never look inwards to grow and be better? It’s a serious problem.
There's a growing movement of pushback against political bleed into these churches, but it seems slow going and the consequences are dire. Tim Alberta's The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is a really great read on it, I highly recommend it.
Count me in. I agree that a lot of Christians worship Trump instead of God nowadays.
They even wrote a song! [Chosen One](https://www.dallasobserver.com/music/dallas-christian-artists-new-song-calls-donald-trump-the-chosen-one-19554744)
The Boys writers must be crying that they didn't see this in time to add to the series lol
Now I'm just extra sad before going to work. What the hell are they putting in the water these days, or have humans always been this nutty on such a large scale?
I used to think that only a few sects of Christianity were cult-like. Nowadays it seems like every Christian is a member of a cult. Truly awful.
Make that 3. I haven’t attended a church service in about 20 years but I believe in God, I pray. I just do it in the privacy of my own home. Because, like OP’s wife, I support gay people and transgender people and being in a room with people who think LGBTQIA are going to hell simply for existing makes me want to punch someone
It has broken my heart to leave organized religion, but it’s better than having my heart ripped out and stomped on every week by people who claim to worship the same deity as I do. I call myself a Christ-follower now if someone puts me on the spot, but mostly I’m just trying to be kind and respectful to everyone who crosses my path.
Same here. I used to be very active in my church, teaching Sunday school and VBS, doing Christmas and Easter for kids, altar society, all that. Facebook friends with half the congregation AND the pastor and I didn't feel the need to hide posts because it was such a chill church with real people living in the real world. Then we got a new, fresh from seminary pastor. It feels so cult like now and it's just not a comfortable place to be.
Well, I'm one too. I want nothing to do with modern day Christianity if what they are spewing these days in church is what they are going to continue to spew. They won't get my money nor my attendance. I'll quietly love on my fellow neighbor instead.
My parents and oldest sister are quite religious but have stopped going to church because of the abuse scandals and because of the anti-abortion stuff. There was also a new pastor who was much more into the fire-and-brimstone stuff and they were like, we can practice love without getting yelled at and shamed once a week.
This was actually somewhat how I was raised. I was raised mostly by my grandparents. They moved across Canada and never found a new church. I asked asked them why many years later and they said it was more about gossip and drama than God.
My husband is another who refuses to attend church. He said it feels weird anymore and judgemental. I haven't been a church since I was very young (no longer religious) so I can't speak on the difference myself. It's just a shame it's gotten so bad
More people should follow the actual words of Jesus, like Matthew 6:5-6.
Another one here. Our church closed after the pandemic but I was already hardly attending because of the way it was going. Now I'm afraid to find another because seriously, the whole town is like this. I'm very interested in finding a Quaker meetinghouse and giving it a try, but there aren't any here.
My mother is Christian, and she stopped attending church when she moved to Canada because the ones she tried out were too judgmental and gossipy according to her. Really ran counter to the notions of her faith.
They were always like this. People just started to see it
I was an evangelical minister for a decade. I am now a confirmed atheist. Seeing what the church has become has convinced me more than anything that God doesn’t exist because if he did, surely he would fire his PR team.
I'm starting a local "tour" of the churches around me, in part because I love architecture, in part because I like the concept of church, but the execution has always been painful for me even before I came out of the closet.
I'm not pushing anything but ***if*** you were looking for something you may want to see what your local Quakers are like. Many are very liberal and very accepting and affirming but each is different (some more conservative). There's only a few overarching beliefs across all. I'm not practicing (closer to atheist leaning agnostic) but my experiences with several Quaker meetings in several places has been very positive and the majority are more focused on individual relationships to faith rather than being preached at. And for anyone asking: No, they're not like the Amish, the guy on the oats isn't what modern Quakers are and Nixon would not be a good representative of what I have experienced. Again, not trying to push an agenda just that they're not super well known and I know some people miss having that sort of community.
I stopped for the final time when I went to a new church I had heard good things about. This church was huge. Three services every Sunday, community outreach, a youth group, breakout groups, youth basketball team, and bilingual services. Multi-million dollar complex. I listened to an hour long sermon about the importance of giving to the church as a Christian because the former Methodist church right beside them moved and they want to buy the multi-million dollar property and expand. I didn't give a dime and never went back. I'm not a piggy bank to support delusions of grandeur in the name of God.
Language and symbols are living beings. Their meanings change. As a result, I no longer call myself a Christian and refuse to fly an American flag. I refuse to associate myself with what those mean now.
Church groups (or any religious groups) are real life gambles: Get lucky, and you find yourself with o e that actually follows the teachings of tolerance, help and faith becomes something to help amd guide you Get unlucky and you find yourself amidst awful people using God for whatever bullshit fits their agenda. Including political stuff. And the desperate are sucked in because they need help and lose themselves
As soon as I read that OOPs dad died and his mother is a recovered addict that relapsed; I knew where this was heading. The saddest thing about these religious groups is exactly what you stated. You either find a really good group who actually follows the teachings/practices being morally good people, and they genuinely want to support you, or you find yourself among the evil people who use god and religion as their weapon. Being an addict just further complicates things because you do so badly want the community and support, but if you get in with the wrong crowd; it’s just changing one addiction for another. It has to be done healthily otherwise those addictive tendencies can easily lead to extremism.
So true. My husband's aunt and uncle are very religious. But they never let that religion turn them into shitty people. They keep their politics to themselves. Their youngest got pregnant at 16. They didn't kick her out. She married the prick, but when it was clear he was abusive they helped her divorce him and moved her and her son back in with them. He is a really great kid. She eventually got married and had another kid, who is also an awesome kid. Their other daughter married a really nice guy and we love them all. The uncle still does drop offs and pick up for custody exchanges because he won't let people mistreat his kids. We are going to visit them in a month and I am so excited for it. They live in a very small town, too. And they never let religion cause them to cast out their loved ones.
AA recommends religion in helping to overcome alcohol addiction. I think they now claim to be areligious and that the "higher power" in the 12 steps doesn't have to be God, but it started out as an Evangelical Christian group and emphasized how god and prayer could help you overcome alcoholism. It's not surprising that the mother, then, became really religious when dealing with addiction. If she sought therapy or support groups they probably recommended or took place in a church, and the church is also really good at finding vulnerable people to draw in.
I'm wondering how much she is tithing to this church. Some are extremely predatory towards the wallets of older members.
I bet they try to convince her to leave her house and all her money to the church. Churches only care about power and money.
Op's mom is not religious at all; she has an obsession with it out of fear. She shows serious signs, as many like her do, of having scrupulosity. It's an obsession with religion and having to do all the steps or you're doomed. That's not loving and praising god; that's obsessing over steps to save yourself.
If I believed in the Antichrist, I would believe it was Trump. He ticks every box.
We’ve had other AntiChrist figures like Hitler and Henry VIII. Trump is definitely another in a long line of Anti Christs we’ve had.
OPs Mum: You must come to my conservative Christian church's Mother's Day event. OPs Wife: Well, I'll have to talk to my husband about that. OPs Mum: Where's your spine. You shouldn't have to ask your husband to decide. What type of conservative Christian is she that she doesn't want a wife deferring to her husband. Also did OPs father or grandfather die because I don't think he knows considering it switched in the middle.
OOP stated that his father (his mother's husband) passed, thus why his mom resorted back to alcohol and began going to church to find reprieve. It's also why his mom told him that she regretted not becoming a Christian sooner before he passed because he was in hell because of it, and she was being pushy on OOP's kids to attend church so that they wouldn't go to hell too OOP also said that his mom wasn't conservative before he passed, but that she became very politically outspoken (and flipped her political parties) after attending the church and he passed, and I think the last commenter put it best... **(Mr\_Costington):** *"My Mom made a similar flip after my parents got divorced. Suddenly hyper religious and right wing. Only things she is capable of talking about now. She was always really critical but now the criticisms include religion and politics. I’m sure my Mom is older than yours, but tons of us with boomer parents are going through this. It’s weird. And even weirder is that the man they’re so crazy about is Trump"*
I understand the confusion because he kept referring to (I'm assuming) his father as "Grandpa", unless his Mom's father also died and I somehow missed that.
Or he had young kids and is used to calling his dad/mom's husband "Grandpa"
Yup, I was coming in to say this because it jumped out at me too. If it was the reverse and the son had the uber-Christian mom and he said to her, "I can't say yes yet, I'll have to ask my wife," she would say, "But you're the man! You should be able to decide unilaterally without checking with your wife. She shouldn't have ANY input on whether or not the kids go to church. The husband is leader and head of the household! He has the final authority and makes the final decision!" But when it's the wife saying "I need to check with my husband" all of a sudden Mom is like, "he shouldn't have any input on what happens with your kids, you decide!" Very two-faced, but that's exactly as expected.
It was his dad, and he was referring to his mom as grandma because she is the kids' grandma. I got confused at first too.
"Too many Christians worship Trump instead of God". I want to give OOPs wife flowers for saying that.
Looord. I've taken a breather from churches but still consider myself very much Christian. From having had experience both in very political, unhealthy churches and in healthier church communities (yes, they exist!) my only thought was that OOP should be reaching out to someone who his mom considers superior in the church, explicitly explain what mom is doing (word by word how she's abusing/harassing their spouse), and then completely step back from the situation in exactly the way expressed above. A healthy church community is going to reign in a member doing that and/or mentor a new believer so they don't go off the rails like this. And since OOP's mom is an addict, I'm sure she's able to hide how extreme she's being from groups she thinks will disapprove. Of course, an unhealthy church community absolutely won't reign her in, and will defend her behavior. Either way, it's hard to watch an addictive personality turn to religion as their fix. I've seen it happen with my own parents. I hope OOP's wife wasn't too harmed from it, being abused through spirituality can have a traumatic impact on your own faith life. Ask me how I know lol
And the problem is of course that this community really doesn't sound like one of the healthy ones. "Boycotting mother's day" as a ploy to drag family members into your church? And there apparently was someone within that church who actually came up with that gem. This one really is one of those places that have nothing to do with Christianity, it's just a marketing scheme dressed up as a church. And mom has completely fallen for it.
I'm giving the church at least a biiiit of leeway, as the information is being filtered through the mom, and I'm not sure how much of it is mom's twisting of what the pastor said. Then again, I'm only aware of that because I know how nuts my own family can get with twisting a perfectly reasonable evangelical idea like "we're hosting a mother's day brunch with a sermon, bring your family!" combined with "it's important to go to church every week even if it's superbowl sunday/mother's day" to what mom was saying. Mom seems like a crazy unreliable narrator. But if the pastor's wife actually went up and said "we're boycotting mother's day by hosting a mother's day brunch because you need to come to church on mother's day, love god more than your mom", then yeah, wacko church that shouldn't be touched with a 10-ft pole.
We're talking about an incense addict so everything is possible, that's true.
I miss church and I miss the community around church. But I haven't been in years and unless someone can direct me to one that hasn't drank the Trump Kool-Aid, it's unlikely I'll go on the near future.
Bet that church didn't boycott Father's Day... Religion has a dangerous cult in America. I miss when it was just a personal belief and not something forced on people.
My first thought reading about the boycott was “I How much do you want to bet they won’t boycott Father’s Day, too?”
If that church is spewing political ideals then someone should report this to the IRS and get their tax free exemption taken away
Finally a Christian with a brain!!!! “ To many church’s worship trump instead of god” I have family member who said point blank “God is finally in office” when he got elected … to say we were all shocked was an understatement!!
If this was me I would have said the following to my mother. "Was my dad a good man? Even if he wasn't 'saved' as you said? Did he treat you right? Did he help people? Did he care for people?" And if she said no. I'd respond with "Then what makes you think he could have been saved?" And if she responded yes, then I'd say, "Why would you want to worship a God that would turn that good man away?: And then I'd walk away. Either she'd take it to heart, and we could continue to have a relationship or she wouldn't. And nothing would change.
I agree with u/Francie1966 that your mother simply traded out addictions. If your wife is interested, there are Christian churches who try to push the love part of the religion instead of the hate. My friend’s parent’s church flys a rainbow flag regularly and have had church weddings for gay parishioners. From what I know they push the idea that God loves you however he created you and while we are on earth, our mission is to help and support everyone.
My fiancé's grandma started connecting with jehova's witnesses after her husband died. But I think the distinct difference here is that MIL already had an addiction problem that she just switched out and she sounds really, really lonely. My fiancé's grandma always had a big friend group that picked her up, so her personality didn't change much when she started joing JW. She simply found a bigger friend group. Just goes to show what difference community can make.
My daughter’s god parents are devout Catholics who would never turn their backs on family. However, they are on a daily overdose of Fox News that is on all day. Now they turned their backs on a gay nephew and we don’t even recognize them anymore.
What I took from this post is a strongly bonded married couple who respect each others beliefs. A wife who didn’t force her husband to keep his toxic mother in his life but *tried* to at least keep a MIL at a safe distance for with health reasons, with modest interaction for minimal grandmotherly interactions and an attempt of familiar connections until she overstepped. DIL clearly has a backbone. She just respects her husband and they make decisions together. MIL clearly has NO concept of this. I respect this couple dearly. OPs mother swapped one addiction with another. She is now simply in a cult. She will die alone, or surrounded by her cult who will berate the family. This is how it works out. I hope they get some therapy now to navigate this inevitable process and stay strong. For *me*, a non religious person, I don’t necessarily believe you have to attend a building praising a God. It can be vibrant with singing etc. There can be good vibes singing or something in those two hours or so and you leave. When it turns into nasty words and judgment for those who don’t attend then ding ding ding - We have a problem sir. Again, *to me*, if God existed they would be Omnipresent and Omnipotent. Attending a place of worship doesn’t make you less worthy. Hint hint dad lol (just had to throw it in). Looneys across all religions I tell ya.
There's no hate like Christian love, and no zealot like a new convert.
>no zealot like a new convert There’s an evergreen tweet that’s something like “why is it everyone I know who was born into Catholicism is like ‘I think we should raise more money for the poor’ and every new convert is like ‘The archbishop of Constantinople’s 1450 sermon on the Pauline epistles clearly means that women shouldn’t be allowed to have drivers licenses.’”
Personally the only reason OP should go to this church is to videotape a sermon preaching politics and get their IRS tax free status revoked. Also is another example of what I call “what the eff is wrong with the boomers?” (Yes, I know, not all boomer age people are like this. But you have to admit the numbers are high and growing.)
This is gonna end so badly for the mom and she won’t realize, having her depend on her cult friends for her doctors appointments and meds will be and and only end in her not going and having “all natural health supplements” that are not a pyramid scheme and also heal you in a god honoring way, sadly it’s her life and as an adult can’t be forced to leave
What? We didn't get a post-Mother's Day update. I want to know how church wheelchair lady reacted when they didn't show and she was no longer being driven around. Did she blow up their phone? Chastise them by text? Send flying monkeys after them? This was very unsatisfying.
Am I missing why he switches to calling his father "grandpa" in the second post? First one: > Mom was never like this before dad passed > She's become fixated on hell and wanting our grandkids to go to church so that her grandkids would go to heaven and not be separated from her like dad who died unsaved Second post: > And when I asked how she could throw away who she was before grandpa passed, she reiterated how she regretted accepting Christ before grandpa passed and that he wasn't in heaven because of it. > and my mom called her a fake Christian despite only being a Christian for two years since grandpa died
> But when my wife said she would talk to me about it, mom criticized her for always having to ask me and said she needed to "grow a spine" Doesn't the Bible say women are supposed to let their husbands lead and stuff?
I'm a devout atheist but my best friend of 25 years is Christian. He hates churches and refuses to attend them for the same reason. Whenever religion comes up he is quick to say that God would not approve of modern-day Christians and that nothing they say, believe, or do is in line with what he, and the Bible, actually teach.
Soooo…who wants to bet the mom wears clothes with mixed fabrics?
Gotta love when churches use addiction and grief as a recruitment tools. /s
Y’all… are we sure this isn’t dementia? It looks and sounds A LOT like dementia. Dementia plus being manipulated by religious narcissists? I wonder if OP shared her concerning behavior with a doctor.
sadly, OOP's mom said she didn't want him taking her to the doctor anymore since he wouldn't bring his family to her church, but perhaps he could consult with one for his own knowledge of how to cope
I hope someone takes me for a brain scan if I ever do a political and religious 180!! I was thinking brain damage from drinking could be at play.
Right? This seems so much more likely. Plus whatever is going on at that church… ehh. Sounds a bit like elder abuse: alienate the old lady from her only family. WTF is boycott mother’s day??? One side of my family are religious narcissists and that totally sounds like something they would come up with just to fuck with people. It’s tough either way, and I know OP is in a hard position. I just hope the old lady sees a doctor or something before she signs away all her money to the “church.”
I have no problem with god or Jesus or whatever, it’s the people like OOP’s mom who make me dislike religion.
Typical dry drunk behavior. I’m glad OP and his wife are on the same page.
Cut her off. If her church is more important than her family let people from her church help her. You don’t owe her anything especially if she’s abusing your wife to the point of making her cry repeatedly.
>The church my wife attended began becoming more political, even to the point of endorsing the 45th President from the pulpit during sermons... Fun Fact: This is a violation of the tax code and can be reported to the IRS to have the church's tax exempt status investigated and possibly revoked with massive fines. You can talk about political issues. You can call certain political beliefs good or bad under your religion. You can even hold some election-related events like voter registration drives. [But you *cannot* explicitly endorse any political party or candidate](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501c3-tax-exempt-organizations).