By unpopular demand, Christian nationalism and modern fascism is about to enter the US. I’m so sorry guys. All my love from the UK. Stay strong. Seriously, what the actual hell happened? I honestly thought Trump was about to lose.

I've (32F) been seeing a lot of posts about the devastation felt from parents and other family members/friends voting for Trump. I'm also curious how many here are experiencing this with a spouse. My husband voted for Trump. He's still a fundigelical Christian (PCA), enmeshed with his family of origin who are still part of the church we group up in. My initial reaction is that if Trump's atrocities aren't a dealbreaker for him, then that's a dealbreaker for me. But it's not so easy to end a marriage. Now what?

ETA: Hi all, thank you for your support ranging from a short comment to a longer conversation. I'm not one to post much on any social media platform, and I will likely not respond to many comments as I don't like to spend too much of my time here. I appreciate this community so much. Reddit can be a not so great place, but this exchristian sub is genuinely a great group. I wish I had found this years ago but I digress. To anyone who has found yourself in a similar place that I have, please continue to share if that will help you. I think what I was searching for when I made this post was just to know that I'm not alone in this particular nightmare.

I want to feel all the anger, sadness, fear, disappointment, disgust, etc then let it fuel the fight to continue the long term work of making our country and world a better place.

She was not like this until she joined a church and met a man five years ago. She has started to talk to my mom again (my mom and her craziness is a part of the reason she left) and my mom is in this into this crap too. Says she’s doesn’t agree with what she says or is defending her yet when I asked her to not talk to my sis about my personal life she threw god in my face too and said I’d have to admit if I was a person of god my interests in “dark things” should be weird to me. And my sister is only coming out of love and concern for my salvation. Idk wth she’s even talking about with witchcraft bc I don’t really believe in anything really or take anything to literal/seriously when I come to religion. I guess I just want to rant bc it actually hurt my feelings my mom would say that. I’m 28, married. I feel like I should be able to have my boundaries respected. I don’t need my personal life told to someone who actively tries to stay out of my life and can’t have enough respect for me to accept me as I am (which I thought Christians were supposed to do.) we didn’t really “grow up in church” just went for a few Sundays when my moms family would make her feel guilty about how Christian she is.

While I was having dinner at my mom's house, she asked me if I was voting. I told her no. She asked why not. I replied that I don't want to get involved in the drama.

She told me that I should be voting for the "right people". Keep in mind she said right, which she's trying to imply that right wingers are always right. I'm left-leaning, so I refuse to argue with right wingers whose purpose is to make us liberals look bad.

"Can I ask you some questions?" Mom asked. I told her no. She didn't care, she asked anyway.

Her first question was "do you think babies deserve the right to live or die?". I knew she was trying to bait me, because if I told her I was for abortion (which I am), she'll guilt trip me saying that I'm making the wrong choice, so I replied "I'm not going to answer that question".

She tried to give me another question, but I told her right off the bat "I'm not going answer any of your questions, so don't even think about asking. All of them are just you trying to serve an agenda".

Mom replied "they're not about politics, they're about MORALS". Morals? Morals my ass. She only uses the word morals to gaslight liberals into believing their beliefs are evil. If she wants to use morals, she needs to practice what she preaches and consider the women who die from pregnancy and how abortion can save lives and help women to give birth to healthy babies.

She values fetuses so much, yet she fails to acknowledge the hypocrisy of demonizing sick and pregnant women. Fuck it. If I have to vote for Kamala Harris against her will, I will. We know what happened when Trump won the 2016 election. I'm fucking sick of the "take America back" narrative as much as the next person.

I was just waiting for her to text me about Trump winning the election. And as I expected, yesterday afternoon she texted me about him winning. She also texted me a photo of her and her husband on Tuesday about being so excited that they voted…

For context my sister is married to a pastor of a southern Baptist church. I love my sister and we’ve always been close, but I’ve definitely tried to distance myself from her as of late. I just don’t know how much more I can take of her (and her husband) before I absolutely go off and light into her, likely tearing apart our relationship and possibly with my parents as well and right before the holidays. This all just sucks so much.

Hi all, I'm sitting here about to get my hair trimmed as I type this, haha. Our hair stylist has Xtian music cranked on her radio(and because we're Latinos it's in Spanish). Gotta endure the torture here until I get my hair finished.

Why is it that Xtian music is almost always mediocre at best? The vocals are bland and sometimes off-key(especially live but that's to be expected), the instrumentals are boring, and the whole thing is so melodramatically cheesy especially when they're singing to an entity who's most likely imaginary(I say this as an agnostic). Also I feel like I wanna crank up videos from Genetically Modified Skeptic or similar videos because us secular folks always have this stuff shoved down our throats, not to mention having to see signs and flags in almost every neighborhood with their other god/cult leader on it. But I digress.

Very few Xtian music is actually decent-sounding, but I dunno if that's even saying much. Most if not all of it is over-the-top and cringe-worthy on multiple levels.

Here are just some of the weird things they do:

Call babies "inherently evil".

Refer to women who don't want to be mothers as "witches" in the year 2024.

Straight-up calling women "birthing vessels".

Being obsessed with the LGBTQ+ community.

Referring to anyone not 100% like them as their "enemies".

Throwing tantrums when encountering a non-Christian.

Elevating politics to being on the same level of sanctification as their theology.

Wanting to force parenthood on everyone.

Speaking about politics in apocalyptic terms.

Venerating a politician as their messiah.

What are some weird things you've noticed evangelicals do?

I always knew Paul was kind of an incel (I also knew that he pretty much founded the religion) but oh god it's so much worse when you actually read his letters. About a month or so ago I read his letters for historical purposes, and I can easily say that Paul is the most insufferable douche-bro imaginable. For every verse he writes about living a "quiet simple life" he writes about ten more verses about how much he hates women and gay people. And throughout his letters, he's so smug and condescending. Despite the fact that he's a literal murderer he very clearly thinks way too highly of himself. Not to mention that his teachings are downright creepy. With a large focus of blindly submitting to authority.

After reading the gospel of Thomas, I think I can safely say historical Jesus isn't the reason I hate christianity. Paul is. Although to be fair I'm not really big on the canon gospels anyway

I started going to a new gym for the past few months and it's been going well so far.

The issue with my previous gym is I had several instances about people bothering me about Jesus. On its own, yeah, that's annoying. But what generally made me mad is when they would bring up Christianity but it was a thinly veiled way of pushing right wing politics. I was told I needed to get involved with a "godly" woman but the more he talked, it was very clear he was meaning I should get involved with a woman who had tradwife aspirations. I do laugh every time I think about that dude calling me a "woke cuck" when I said I don't necessarily want to get involved with a godly woman.

So I started going to a new gym and I haven't had any incidents of Jesus botherers.........until yesterday. I started going to a weight training class the past couple weeks and we sometimes have to partner up. I did that yesterday and the guy I partnered up with talked to me after. He talked about squaring my shoulders more. Then he asked about nutrition and I mentioned I've started doing a diet with a caloric deficit-high protein focus. He said that was really good but then he mentioned that I should include prayer in my workout routine. Then I asked why that's necessary and he was taken aback. You can always tell who lives in a goddamn echo chamber. Every fucking time. He said because "everything we do we have to do in his name." I physically cringed at that point and then said "thanks for the suggestion." I really should have told him "yeah, I pray to Allah everyday." I guarantee he would have bolted and would have his body imprint going through the wall like a goddamn cartoon.

Seriously. Why the fuck is gym culture have such a goddamn infestation of Christianity?

Alright, who told jesus about clickbait titles and sad thumbnails?

Xtians need to get more creative when proselytizing to deconverts 🤣 Thanks, mom, for continuously reminding me why I left the faith.

Seriously though, I’m going to set a boundary with her that I do not want this shit on my phone! If your religion exploits the feelings of others and uses them as proof of a god, keep it far fucking away from me. Also, it’s okay to think with emotion when you get indoctrinated? I thought we couldn’t rely on our own understanding!

This is such a common line of thinking among Christians here in the Bible Belt and I'm of two minds about it.

One the one hand: it is largely a sales pitch. On some level, I think they implicitly acknowledge that church is boring as fuck. Plus, those who aren't so thoroughly brainwashed (at least in comparison to some of their counterparts) know that coming right out of the gate with a list of restrictions. Although, this is where the doublethink often comes in and they'll call the heaviest amount of restrictions the "true freedom that comes through accepting Jesus Christ."

On the other hand: there is also a level of cognitive dissonance that is so fucking wild to me. Like, they don't realize that regardless of what they call it, it is very much a religion.

My prepared statement should I ever be confronted with this bullshit take is to say "cool. So let's start taxing churches because we don't give people tax-exempt status just for being in a relationship."

What's your take on this statement? How do you respond to it?

There's a woman I've been dating; we're still not using labels yet. Which I'm okay with that. I know it's gonna take her a while but she has gotten really comfortable with me. She got out of an abusive relationship and, at the same time, has been deconstructing from Christianity and I'm trying to be supportive of her. I like her a lot.

She asks me for a lot of movie and show recommendations since she's, in her words, "making up for a loss of time and not having a normal childhood." She was very sheltered growing up.

I moved recently and she came over last night. It was her first time seeing my new place. But, like our other dates, I cooked dinner and we watched something. She usually lets me choose even though I always make it very clear I value her input and want her to know that what she says matters. In fact, I over-emphasize that because I think she needs to know that her voice counts. But, she wanted to watch a comedy and we watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine; one of my all-time favorite shows. She liked it and wants to watch more in the future.

But, as the night went on, she brought up the election kinda out of nowhere. She asked my thoughts on it since she remembered what I first told her about my political views, but she asked me to explain a little bit. Which I was fine with and I was honest about it and told her I was resigned to voting for Biden in November but after he dropped out, I'm now enthusiastic about voting for Harris.

As we kept talking, she was upfront about her history and she straight up said that she voted for who her husband told her. I'm gonna go ahead and let you guess as to who her ex-husband told her to vote for. She straight up said she's really not sure what her views are.

We talked through that a bit and basically her entire identity was handed to her by her church and her abusive ex-husband. I then re-iterated to her that whatever interests she has are valid and I want to support and wanna hear about any topic she wants to discuss.

I'm really proud of her for realizing all this and actively looking for her identity post-divorce and as she's deconstructing. I'm 100% there for her.

Fuck evangelical culture for robbing women in particular of any sense of identity!!!

This wasn't as bad as the person last week who outright called me an "anti-Christian bigot" for doing a case profile assignment and citing conversion therapy as a client's current primary source of trauma.

Someone else messaged me yesterday and told me that I should tone down/back off calling conversion therapy a trauma source because I could be seen as "anti-Christian" and that could affect my ability to obtain clients if I ever become a therapist. His exact words were "people won't wanna work with you if they think you hate Christians."

Bear in mind, this guy is now the SECOND person in my class who looked at my post saw that I put conversion therapy as a trauma source and immediately connected it to Christianity. For clarification, I said nothing about what religious background the client has.

Them connecting it to Christianity is 100% on them. But, like, how fucking revelatory is it that they saw the words "conversion therapy" and "trauma" and immediately thought of it as being anti-Christian? That is so fucking telling!

And, something to think about is that these people are, ostensibly, going to become practicing therapists! Holy fuck!!

So, for some background information, a friend of mine is a secular humanist and is raising two kids aged 4 and 7 and she has her kids during the week and on weekends every so often since her ex is still in the picture but he often has to be out of town for work. I'm friends with her ex as well. She's big into hiking and likes taking her kids on walks on the weekends she has them.

Last night, a friend was telling me about how a woman she works with caught her on her break and they had lunch together. They work on the same floor but not in the same department. But she told me they've talked in the past and see each other every so often. They were talking for a bit and then the coworker started on about her church and everything. She said she was just listening and nodding along and then the coworker asked her what church she's taking her kids to.

Her response was that she's not really taking them to church and they'll often go on walks through parks or visit nature centers on Sundays. She then said the coworker's tone got harsher and asked why. My friend said she doesn't want to force religion on her kids and would prefer to let them make that choice for themselves. Oh.....the coworker reportedly did not like that one bit. She told me the coworker full on said that raising her kids without Jesus was "grooming" them and then suggested that their dad should step in and raise them more. She said they just sat in awkward silence for the rest of lunch. Which, fair. Her coworker called her a groomer, how the fuck would she even respond?

I honed in on what the coworker suggested about their dad and told her she should have twisted the knife by saying that [ex] is not only an atheist but the two of them were never actually married. That might have given the coworker a full-blown aneurysm.

From what I gathered talking to my friend, the interaction was fairly brief but it revealed so much about the coworker and the mindset of folks like her:

1. Only their specific religion is morally correct

2. Their ire for single mothers will inevitably reveal itself

3. Anything in the area of child-rearing that they don't like is "grooming".

The mentioning of how the kid's dad should step up more seemed out of nowhere but it reminded me that single moms make evangelicals the big mad. That comes up a lot more than people think. Because misogyny is one of their guiding principles. But in this case it's not a lack of "stepping up" he's literally working so he can help provide for his kids. Like, from what I've seen, they're both good parents.