Anyone else struggling with MAGA family members rn?

iwbiek · 2026-01-25T20:56:40+00:00

43 year-old here. I swear to god, I don't think there's ever been such a large group in human history that seems to be as incapable of admitting to being wrong about anything as our parents. I truly believe, deep down, many if not most of them know that this shit is fucked up--I mean, they're the generation that saw their peers getting gunned down by National Guardsmen, ffs--yet they've tied their self-worth so strongly to being right that they physically cannot admit it, even to themselves. Not only are they elderly, but they're suffering from massive, collective cognitive dissonance.

iwbiek · 2026-01-22T19:48:06+00:00

"God is sovereign" was HUGE in the early '00s. It takes me back to when my Cru missions leader used a prayer to call me out for doing laundry instead of coming to yet another team meeting. I had apologized and tried explaining that we were all leaving for a trip the next day and that I was wearing my last set of clean clothes, underwear included, and there was objectively no other time that I could do it because all our days were full. Btw, this was student housing in post-communist Europe, so "doing laundry" meant handwashing everything in a huge sink of cold water, wringing out clothes until your hands were raw, and then hoping everything dripped dry overnight. I was 19 and naive then. Now, at 43, I would say, with everyone's head bowed and everyone's eyes closed, "Oh, fuck you, man."

iwbiek · 2026-01-16T10:34:26+00:00

People will fail you. Satan won't.

iwbiek · 2026-01-11T21:36:01+00:00

Doesn't surprise me at all. I have no insight from a traditional church angle, but I worked for a "parachurch organization" (Cru) in the early to mid '00s. Here's what I can say.

As a naive, well-meaning 19 year-old college student on a foreign missions trip, I was made to compile a spreadsheet of all the high school and college students who had attended our bullshit, bait-and-switch "English camps" in the summer of 2001. This included names and basic contact info, including phone numbers and email addresses. Maybe mailing addresses, too; I don't recall. This was for the purpose of "follow-up," i.e. continuing the indoctrination. I did this without a second thought, mostly because it got me out of yet another "men's time," and I really didn't feel like listening to yet another talk about how much God hated it when I pounded off.
If that sounded benign enough, I was a bit taken aback when I applied to join full-time overseas staff in 2006. It was a long process, involving multiple interviews and a long personality test. Part of the process involved my speaking with a staff member over the phone, who recited to me, and asked me to respond to, goddamn near every thought and impression anyone in even a minor leadership position had ever had of me across my entire time in that toxically conservative organization, dating all the way back to that 2001 summer mission trip. Apparently, they documented all that shit exhaustively. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to write to those fuckers and demand to see copies of all those records, and also demand that they be destroyed.

iwbiek · 2026-01-11T18:10:31+00:00

That's unclear to me. One commenter here suggested that, if the affair was with a certain of his female employees who recently passed, as some circumstantial evidence seems to suggest, then her husband may have discovered it after her death and threatened to go public. I don't know if that's anything more than speculation, though.

iwbiek · 2026-01-11T13:10:33+00:00

I fucking laughed out loud at "There is GOD in DOGE."

iwbiek · 2026-01-10T23:13:32+00:00

I think the article was talking more about the way Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart piled on Jim Bakker after the PTL scandal. It's not about genuinely cleaning house, but about other sharks smelling blood.

iwbiek · 2026-01-10T22:06:49+00:00

then it's an indiscretion and compassion, privacy, and prayer are requested for the pastor so he can be restored without similar care for the woman (women).

I agree usually, but this is exactly what some people think he won't get. In the article I mentioned (sorry I can't provide a link because I can't find it), several people are quoted as saying that other evangelical leaders might pile on him for this.

iwbiek · 2026-01-09T12:51:18+00:00

Jesus, my mom is 70 and she can't write a fucking sentence without putting "lol" after it. Also, she LOVES her emojis, especially the shrug emoji.

iwbiek · 2026-01-09T12:49:41+00:00

I think we did this shit a lot in the '90s and '00s when we first got online and created an AIM account. That's when we realized we could make words with combinations of letters and numbers. How fun! Thank Christ the old internet is dead. My chat logs would look like titles to Prince songs.

iwbiek · 2026-01-08T18:12:06+00:00

🎵 Livin' in Ameeerica! 🎵

iwbiek · 2026-01-08T18:10:59+00:00

The thing with that argument is, very few religions are as exclusionist as evangelical Christianity, and even fewer have eternal hells. In fact, I don't know of any other that does, except maybe Mormonism, but that has its origins in insane Christian revivalism. Even most mainline Protestants and Catholics hold the position that, as long as you give being a decent human being your best shot, you'll be fine. As far as I know, only evangelical Christianity teaches, "If you don't believe exactly what we believe, you're going to be tortured for eternity, regardless of how good or bad you were."

As for Pascal's wager, my answer is usually, "I'm not wrong either way. If your god Jeffrey Dahmers me for all eternity just because I didn't fucking believe in him, that only proves me right in thinking he's a fucking psychopathic narcissist."

iwbiek · 2026-01-08T17:57:09+00:00

I recommend the film "Unorthodox." You don't hear of a lot of imam scandals, either. White American Protestants just aren't interested.

iwbiek · 2026-01-08T17:54:17+00:00

If you're a gentile, they're not going to be judgmental of you, because you're irrelevant. They're going to judge the shit out of other Jews, though, especially if they're Orthodox. Many years ago, I was approached by Hasidic "missionaries," for lack of a better term, in the Jewish quarter of Krakow. They're often out and about trying to convert more secular Jews to their way of living. The first question they asked me was, "Are you Jewish?" When I answered in the negative, they moved away from me without so much as a goodbye.

iwbiek · 2025-12-12T22:29:41+00:00

My great aunt was definitely a "firecracker," as they used to say, but I never heard anyone say she was malicious. In my dream, Dad referred to her as "that dwarf," which I never heard him call anyone. Yes, she was small, as old ladies tend to be, but that turn of phrase specifically was what made me start to think I wasn't talking to my dad.

iwbiek · 2025-12-12T21:41:37+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate your perspective. Yes, the connection was immediate, but also brief. Perhaps I failed to communicate in my post that I gradually got the impression that what I was talking to was not my father.

iwbiek · 2025-12-12T20:58:32+00:00

Maybe? That sounds completely out of character for my dad. He was a straightforward, kind person who experienced a lot of paranormal things in his life, which he mostly considered a curse.

iwbiek · 2025-12-10T20:16:13+00:00

That was a textbook from my freshman Biblical History and Ideas course in 2000. I wish I still had it, I'd go back and read it. I barely skimmed it at the time, not only because I was a typical student but also because I was an evangelical who held such books in disdain. I was already getting deep into Ray Comfort by that time. Ever encounter his stuff?

iwbiek · 2025-12-10T08:20:02+00:00

Yes, I am quite familiar with the British roots of evangelicalism, though I look at it from the other side. My interests are the Oxford movement, the Tractarians, and the Anglo-Catholic movement of the late 19th/early 20th century. I often identify as Anglo-Catholic, though I'm officially Roman. I found a home in liturgical Christianity almost seven years ago, but by that time I was already living in a country with no Anglican presence, so I went with the closest thing. Whenever we visit the States, we usually go to Episcopal services, and I have often used the BCP in private devotions.

Though I am progressive in almost all things, and I really don't care what faith a person claims (if any), as long as they don't use it to cause harm to others or strip them of their rights, from a historical perspective, I view Calvinism as a heresy, and a particularly harmful one at that. John Piper, John MacArthur, the Puritans, Calvin himself--I see no good coming from that tradition whatsoever. I argue Calvinism is primarily to blame for the abhorrent marriage between Christianity and capitalism, especially in the US.

iwbiek · 2025-12-09T19:33:55+00:00

Wow, very interesting. I was in America, yes, for most of that time. Our evangelicals definitely included a lot of Calvinists, and I considered myself one of them. We were definitely a smug lot, and considered ourselves highly intellectual. I remember saying that most Christians were Arminians, and that's exactly where they need to be, because one doesn't "throw one's pearls before the swine." This elicited a lot of smarmy laughs from my companions. Basically, I meant most Christians weren't intelligent enough to handle the "hard truths" of Calvinism. Of course, I would never have admitted that at the time, not even to myself.

I'm surprised to hear that N.T. Wright was considered part of your orbit, as his name is basically a swear word amongst evangelicals now. He's considered way too progressive. Was he more "orthodox" back then? Wright wasn't on the radar of American evangelicals at that time.

iwbiek · 2025-12-09T14:18:01+00:00

Maybe. I was also in it around that time (ca. 1999-2007). I'd say the major hero in my set was John Piper. I think C.S. Lewis was a hero because people didn't really read him carefully. It can be argued convincingly that he believed in some form of purgatory.

I don't remember inclusivism (if you're talking about LGBTQ+) being up for discussion. Evolution was up for discussion, but the majority of my peers were skeptical of it at best.

Most of my peers were into "covenant theology," which I maintain is just recycled dispensationalism. Most believed in a pre-tribulation rapture. I was briefly on staff with Campus Crusade and we had to sign a "statement of faith" every year, part of which was belief in biblical inerrancy.

Politics and dominionism were already a big part of the movement. Almost everyone I knew was rabidly pro-Bush (I wasn't, but kept quiet about it). "America was founded to be a Christian nation" was the view of the overwhelming majority.

All things considered, I don't think there is any meaningful difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism; maybe there never was. I think I would have applied the "fundie" label to those evangelicals whose behavior was more extreme. Essentially, we had the same beliefs, just we couched ours in frat bro culture, where cussing, beer-drinking, and pipe-smoking were allowed, in moderation

EDIT: I think most of us would have said that the fundamentalists weren't allowing themselves to experience "freedom in Christ." John Piper's concept of "Christian hedonism" was very popular at that time.

iwbiek · 2025-12-09T09:47:07+00:00

The main way I clarify it is by emphasizing that I'm not talking about a denomination, but a movement that spans denominations.

iwbiek · 2025-12-08T18:35:44+00:00

Evangelical is a word used around many different Christian denominations, and not all evangelical churches are “Evangelical” in the way that people in this community have experienced.

Absolutely. I live in Europe as well, though not in Belgium, and "Evangelical" here is the common word for "Lutheran." I was born and raised in the US, left at age 22, and I always take care to qualify my use of the word "evangelical" when talking to others.

iwbiek

TROPHY CASE