us culture is so heavily influenced by protestant beliefs, especially re: work, that as an ex-fundie it's so easy to assume everybody else was raised some less extreme sort of christian and just doesn't talk about it. right? they're all still saved and i'm not. even as an adult i feel like a struggling kid looking around the auditorium at all the adults with their heads bowed and eyes closed, effortlessly sharing something ive never been able to make myself feel.
i was really really surprised when my roommate told me she wasn't raised religious and didn't know anything about the bible. and when my friends who were raised vaguely catholic didn't know what the rapture is. and every time i have to explain why the evangelical right is so into zionism.
when i'm on the bus and i find some the-end-is-nigh-get-right-with-jesus bullshit i pick it up and take it with me to let it die on my bookshelf, because part of my brain still thinks it's blasphemous to just throw it away. it feels like seeing an old friend. i've never met any else who could even point to my hometown on a map, like, the 10 square miles where i spent the first 20 years of my life is less than insignificant even to the rest of the world, and when i see pamphlets that talk about the end of days i feel seen. when i hear people endorse an ideology that would like to kill me and everyone i love, i feel at home. flat and barren fields and dead, decaying trees, and the smell of mildew; suggestions to REPENT NOW, and the strangers who won't see me as anything but a tranny and a sinner and an abomination, and the fog that hovers on the surface of the river in the morning.
the culture i'm from wants to kill all of us. how do i scrub the fascism from all the places I want to take my friends - before it becomes illegal for us to visit them?
