Y’all-Qaeda
Deep in the Heart of Texas
I’ve never been a good fit for this place. Even as a child, I was repulsed by the provincialism that permeates this society. Texas is one of the few states that mandates a full year of its own specific history in public schools. Long before we learned about the rest of the country, we were taught to be in awe of the Alamo, Stephen F. Austin, and lines in the sand. There’s this shared mythos of the cowboy, the frontier, and, of course, cultural exports like BBQ and high school football.
It always rang hollow to me. I just happened to be born here to an immigrant mother and a blue-collar father. Pretending that we were something more, something worthy of pride because of distant historical events, felt cheesy.
But as I got older, I noticed something else that felt off. I would later learn to call it "Church Culture." Despite the recent rise of the “nones” and non-Abrahamic faiths, I’ve always known Texas to be a tug-of-war between Evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The latter is driven largely by the Hispanic population, while the former is responsible for the “faith, family, football” ethos prominent in my region. What they have in common is their profound impact on the culture and day-to-day life here in the Lone Star State.
Church Culture elicits a visceral reaction in me. To put it bluntly, it makes me want to vomit. The decorative wrought iron crosses all over houses; the “Pro-God, Pro-Gun, Pro-Life” bumper stickers; the “Keep Praying” yard signs; the disingenuous smiles and the “I’ll be prayin’ for you, darlin’,” delivered in an exaggerated southern drawl. It’s the hypocrisy of the after-church crowd, who, after spending an hour singing the praises of a Near Eastern storm god and failed messianic cult leader, drive their big diesel trucks to nearby restaurants only to be notoriously vile to the waitstaff.
When a loved one dies, it’s “God’s will.” When someone is suffering from addiction, they “have a demon.” Sacraments and incantations are all offered with the implicit understanding that they’re righteous and you just aren’t. So much of my youth was spent struggling with the idea that I was inherently evil, and that these unbelievable stories from a distant land had to be believed or else I would burn. I think a lot of people roll their eyes at the term “religious trauma,” but I assure you, it’s real.
So it comes as no surprise to me to learn that Texas plans to make Bible stories required reading in schools. We have an administration that explicitly denies the separation of Church and State. The ideologues and zealots are now emboldened, free to drop the mask of impartiality. Generations will suffer as a result.
Selfishly, I prepare for my escape while also mourning the damage done to my own family. For a religion that is ostensibly about peace, I see only hate — for “the gays,” liberals, socialism, heretics, etc. There’s an insidious “us vs. them” mentality baked into the Abrahamic faiths that slowly poisons the believer.
White Jesus
As my rant comes to an end, I want to address one more grievance: the weird retcon that is modern Christianity. Every “Praise Jesus!” type is quick to point out that it’s “all about love.” Did we read the same book?
Jesus explicitly stated he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword to divide families (Matthew 10). He initially refused to heal a woman's daughter because her mother wasn't of the right ethnicity, calling her a “dog” (Matthew 15). He told a grieving follower to abandon his father's funeral to follow him, and he’s the one who popularized the concept of throwing people into a blazing furnace for eternity if they didn't fall in line.
If people actually acted exactly like the biblical Christ, they’d be intensely apocalyptic, highly divisive, and demanding an absolute, radical abandonment of their families and society.
Let me be clear: all of this stems from a radical Jewish cult that eventually morphed into a syncretic religion, spread first by home churches and later used more widely as a tool of empire-building. Pauline influence allowed for more Gentile traditions to be adopted.
The Judaism from which it sprung is itself just the surviving sect of a henotheistic Near Eastern religion in which “Yahweh” survived the culling that comes with time and expansion.
The idea of sons of gods, death and resurrection, bread and wine / flesh and blood communion, a specific number of disciples, virgin birth, and many other core aspects of Christianity can be found in numerous Hellenistic, Roman, and Near Eastern mystery cult environments.
If Jesus existed at all, he was a radical. If we can trust the texts at all (which I don't believe we can), he said some good things, but also some abhorrent things. The god of the Old Testament and the mythos of the New support, in my mind, the Buddhist understanding of other such deities.
That is, there is no infinite creator god, as such. Being generous, we might say the Christian god is a deva — in the cycle of samsara like the rest of us, but so incredibly long-lived that it is delusional in its own belief that it is the creator and ruler of all.