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 “Behold, in the nostrils of the nations, they have caused the name of the LORD to stink.”

Once upon a time, the Mainstream churches assumed—and maybe at the time they were right—that most of America was Christian.

In such a cultural environment, what mattered most, then, was not that you were Christian—which was largely taken for granted—but rather what kind of Christian you were.

So the Mainstreamers pretty much stopped using the C-word in public. To call yourself a “Lutheran Christian,” after all, smacks of the redundant.

Then along came the Evangelicals, who picked up the disused term and ran with it.

The media—which mostly, generously, calls people by their preferred name—unthinkingly acquiesced.

Shame be upon them, the media still parrots conservative Christians when, in effect, they claim proprietary rights to a name that is not theirs alone. In plain words, the media—not, let us admit, particularly well-versed on matters religious—not only let them get away with it, but abetted the theft.

That's how the nazzes stole “Christian.”

Recently I have listened and read and watched the Pagan community face transphobia. Again. Denora wrote a summary here and offered the challenge “How will you enact change?”

I wasn't around in previous years. I long to see our Pagan community become a healthy and welcoming place free from transphobia. I have no easy answers but I’ve been encouraged to tell the story of my personal struggle with transphobia. I used to a fundamentalist Christian and that meant also being misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, a creationist, and then some. So I offer here a glimpse of my own struggle and transformation.

I briefly lived in San Francisco, or “sin city” as we called it, with a Christian Outreach group over a decade ago. Someone in said group once warned me not to go to the “wrong side of the Safeway”, beyond which lay the Castro, the place where “the gays” lived their sinful lives. I once crossed over to eat at a Thai restaurant and felt frightened and guilt ridden the entire time.

Shellfish are a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us in Leviticus to suppress. They also smell bad. [...] Any person who willingly consumes or sells shellfish is guilty of a felony, and shall be fined $666 thousand per occurrence, and/or imprisoned up to 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days.

 - The Shellfish Suppression Act

In my post “What I used to miss about Christianity” I mentioned the article How Playing a Good Christian Wife Almost Killed Me by Vyckie Garrison. The reason I mentioned Vyckie Garrison’s article was the parallel she drew between literalist biblical theology and the power & control wheel, a tool used for understanding abuse. For her, Christianity and abuse go hand in hand. Garrison opens her story by saying

In this edition of the PaganNewsBeagle (Air - Monday) edition we have three stories from Creighton University including Voodoo in New Orleans, how online social media reflects (and affects) religious behavior, and a study that concludes religious teachings create an inability to tell fact from fiction in young children.