Things that are breaking my brain. This week.

I had to make a dash to Texas for my aunt’s funeral right before our vacation…so it’s been a week. This will be my last post for a couple weeks. Thought I’d get some things off my chest on my way out….. The following phenomena have broken my brain this week.

Is a mess. Every time I come here, which is unfortunately a lot, what I notice more than anything is the barrage of evangelical-themed billboards. Advertising mega churches, warning me I’m going to hell, telling me Jesus loves me, telling me to protect the unborn, informing me about your Christian real estate business.

And Texas is indeed one of the most evangelical states in the Union, with 31% of Texans claiming that label. Texas also is a leader in Christian Nationalist policies, like mandating the Ten Commandments be posted and the Bible be taught in public schools. Texas is also in the midst of a Senate race between a certified scumbag who is considered a Christian and a squeaky-clean seminarian who is considered a heretic.

And yet, I had my friend Claude pull some data for me (and sorry, I haven’t double checked this, which I usually do when I use his services), and look at all the Christian love paying off out there:

• Texas leads the nation in the rate of uninsured across all age groups, including 13% of Texas children who don’t have health insurance.

• Texas leads the nation in food insecurity, including 1 in 4 children who are food insecure.

• Texas leads the nation with the highest per capita rate of child abuse or neglect deaths.

• Overall, Texas is 43rd in the country on child well being.

• Texas is only slightly above average in rates of domestic violence, but 59% of victims who requested emergency shelter were unable to find any.

• Texas falls below average on school performance, test scores, educational attainment, and life expectancy; and above average in gun deaths, violent crime, and property crime; premature births; and maternal mortality (including a 63% increase since it passed one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws).

What every godly woman needs is to fully scrapbook and accessorize her Bible. That way she won’t have time to think about how she is being subjugated. And she certainly won’t have time to do anything about child poverty in Texas. If you want to better understand this sort of trad-wife-tupperware-party madness, pre-order Kristin Du Mez’s new book.

As the daughter of evangelical missionaries, I can tell you that evangelicals proselytizing in cringe ways is nothing new (and in fact was a regular feature of my childhood). But now we have social media to make it trendy. Apparently preaching on planes to captive audiences is the latest way to make Jesus absolutely repellent to even those who were favorably disposed towards him before you showed up. But no worries, billionaire evangelicals will pay for ads during the Super Bowl to repair the damage.

Just. Ew.

And yes, I probably will buy this.

Everyone and their dog sent this to me. This is what happens when you fire or sideline all your regional experts. At least this map didn’t cost $87 billion, kill 18 Americans, F up the entire world economy, and shred what’s left of our credibility as a nation.

I’m not going to fully comment because he’s not quite evil enough to warrant being mocked for his appearance. I have very rigorous standards.

Our local news outlet consistently brings hard-hitting journalism to the stories that matter to the people with a front row seat to the fascist takeover.

I used to say they aren’t really socialists. After looking at their platform, I’m going to say they aren’t really fully cognizant adults. They certainly aren’t politically helpful to the cause of democracy.

Evergreen, but Kristin’s recent article (and a slight correction) on Christianity Today stirred my ire. Sure, our movement has produced a fascist takeover of America, and also an abuse crisis, and before that Jim Crow, and before that slavery. But our fundamental theology is just fine! Gay people are still big sinners! And it’s the liberals’ fault for being mean! It’s so sad how divided we are as a nation and church!

You know what is sad is that we are in the midst of a bunch of fascists trying to destroy the original constitutional democracy, and some people are still trying to “be the bridge.”

Look, I get it. Rich, white women have problems, too. Hell, I have been a rich-ish white woman with problems that I found terribly compelling. But I didn’t have extensive connections to the publishing industry and so the world was spared my tales of woe.

I am an exvangelical. But a lot of my fellows of various sub-types are annoying, including:

• Exvangelicals who have never heard of a liberal church. If you are done with church, that’s one thing. I will never try to sell you on it if that’s your choice. But I see at least one post a week from some exvangelical bemoaning the loss of their church community, wanting to go to church, missing church, BUT I CAN’T FIND AN AFFIRMING CHURCH THERE ARE NO CHURCHES FOR ME

  

• Exvangelicals who are as annoying about preaching atheism as they were about preaching evangelicalism. Seriously, have you learned nothing? Go back to therapy.

• Exvangelicals who swallow their new pills whole. I get that you have deconstructed, but you don’t have to adopt an entire new ideology. Let’s learn how to do something called critical thinking. It’s fun, I promise.

• Exvangelicals who are just really precious and weird for no apparent reason. I am unable to describe what I am talking about any more than that, but it’s irksome.

I realize this is a minor gripe about a couple of speeches that were full-on Third Reich, but Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller talking about lefties’ “ugliness”/their “deformed" appearance just sent me over the edge. Because the person who said this

Why do the people that are violently demonstrating—why is there not one normal-looking person among them? Every one of them, through the course of their life and their decisions, has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways, to the point in which their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred.

Serves a leader whose face is basically painted on every morning by toddlers in a movement full of people who have done this to their appearance:

Not to mention actual violent terrorists who did this:

Also, Stephen Miller IS evil enough for me to make fun of his appearance, and he looks like if Ross Douthat were recently pulled out of a birth canal with forceps. Or Voldemort with Mar-a-Lago face.

Anyway, I am going to take a couple weeks off because I am entirely too cranky.

I did a couple of videos for Axis Mundi this week:

Grace and peace, friends. Go well. Godspeed. May your brain stay in one piece even as your heart breaks.