My husband hates buying religious gifts for people. This may come as some surprise to some as he is still a professing Christian, but in his mind it is just part of a subculture that Christians use to set themselves apart while using mainstream culture to steal ideas. You know what I mean, A Nike swoosh that says, "Jesus, Just Do It" or a famous painting that has been re-rendered to be more religious. You've seen them, at your grandma's house, walking around at the mall, on highway billboards. Christians love to talk about not being in the world, but they have absolutely no problem stealing ideas from it to "connect" to a wider audience.
The one thing my husband hates more than anything is Christian fiction. We aren't talking about the occasional decent book like Narnia or Frank Peretti. We're talking about the trash romance novels that feature pioneer women and the Amish, which make up the majority of religious fiction at the bookstore. Christian Porn as my husband likes to call it. My mother-in-law loves it. She has at least a half dozen bookshelves full to the brim with this Christian fiction and she reads them over and over again. She reads these books searching for a good Christian fantasy man because she clearly doesn't think she got that when she married my father-in-law. I know this because she has emasculated him to the point of just existing. And they serve the same purpose as porn. From the Christian viewpoint: Porn degrades women and alters the way consumers think. It hinders men from developing mature emotional relationships with women. It reinforces and super charges the notion that sex is a commodity over which the consumer has complete control. This idea is taken from several Christian articles I have read on the subject. The problem is that these fantasy romance books aren't any different than actual porn, sans actual sex scenes. Since women are stereotypically ties more to their emotions, it would make sense that more women would connect to a love story rather than through the visual stimuli created by porn. This is not to suggest that women don't watch actual porn, but the numbers have been crunched by numerous studies and the consensus is, men watch more porn and women read romance novels. In the Christian books, the women are shown in a very vulnerable light, with a good Christian man being the necessary factor to complete them. They live simple submissive lives as pioneer women or Amish, slightly rebellious but only because they haven't been able to find a man who will marry them. It alters the way women think about their roles and the roles men should be playing in their lives. It reinforces and super charges the notion that sexuality and spirituality are one and the same and that by consuming these books, one is in complete control and is even doing something righteous by reading them.
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AuthorThis is a personal, but secret, blog archiving my deconversion from a Christian to a non-believer. Archives
December 2020
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