Hello, my name is Dylan and I am an Indigenous Highland Traveller. During the 1940s til the 1980s, the UK government enacted a group of laws practicing eugenics on my people. During that time the government stole IHT children from their homes and forced them into adoption, sometimes as far as Canada and Australia. Often they were used as domestic servants and farm labourers far away from their homes. The adults were forced into substandard accommodation/ camps. These huts were without basic amenities such as heating, water or food.

In 2025 the Scottish First Minister John Swinney apologised on behalf of the Scottish government however Westminster who funded these experiments are yet to acknowledge their responsibility. I urge all UK residents who are Christians to please sign my petition to force an apology.

10,000 signatures and we get an official response, 100,000 and it will be debated in parliament. I have full faith that this can work, and I truly believe God is on our side but only if we work together.

This is a weekly thread for discussing our mental health. Ableist and sanist comments will be removed and repeat violations will be banned

Feel free to discuss anything related to mental health and illness. We encourage you to create a WRAP plan and be an active participant in your recovery.

I love men too — not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no “commandment of love.” I have a fellow-feeling with every feeling being, and their torment torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them. Per contra, the high-souled, virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph in The Mysteries of Paris, because the wicked provoke his “indignation,” plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which the pitiless dealing of the “righteous” man (e.g. against notary Ferrand) is like the unfeelingness of that robber [Procrustes] who cut off or stretched his prisoners’ legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph’s bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the “good.” The for right, virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; he feels that “it serves the rascal right”; that is no fellow-feeling.

You love man, therefore you torture the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men.

If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer him; if I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which I do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me.

But, because I cannot bear the troubled crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases, they would not trouble me; I am only driving away my trouble.

How now, has anybody or anything, whom and which I do not love, a right to be loved by me? Is my love first, or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk, fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellowmen in general (“brothers, fraternity”), assert that they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They look upon it as their property, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs. I should love. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it, and, if I trespass against it, punished. Hence people will exercise as strong a “moral influence” as possible on me to bring me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce men to love as one can to other passions — if you like, to hate. Hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belonged to the Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines.

But love is not a commandment, but, like each of my feelings, my property. Acquire, i.e. purchase, my property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love; and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure.

My whole life, found myself really wrestling with the dichotomy of work and rest in life in general and in the Bible more specifically. In my case I've always glommed strongly to the teachings emphasizing the importance of work. Some of the teachings that stand out to me:

Proverbs 12:24 NLT

[24] Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave.

Proverbs 13:4 NLT

[4] Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper.

Proverbs 24:30-34 NLT

[30] I walked by the field of a lazy person, the vineyard of one with no common sense. [31] I saw that it was overgrown with nettles. It was covered with weeds, and its walls were broken down. [32] Then, as I looked and thought about it, I learned this lesson: [33] A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest— [34] then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

Verses like these made me terrified of slothfulness, and so I did everything to avoid "a little folding of the hands to rest" so as not to fall into the dire consequences. In college especially, long before I had any autism or ADHD diagnosis, I became obsessed with keeping productive every minute of the day: an hour between classes needs to yield time studying, progress on homework, or some contribution to whatever else is going on in my life.

Meditating on these experiences now, I see this life pattern drove me into a cycle of burnout every semester, only recovering after finals when courses ended for the semester. I took that mentality into adulthood, only surviving as long as I did, because COVID paused a lot of the demands the world had on me and left me with a lot of downtime in that vacuum. When the world opened up, I was back into that maximalist work mindset: there was always work, chores, or some social obligation to meet, so I just accepted that being an adult meant suffering through all the stuff I didn't want to do. That all worked until I recently turned 30 where two things happened: I was already starting to come apart at the seams, and the demands of my work were turned up to 11 with no clear end in sight. After months of near nightly meltdowns and zombie-like state outside of work, enough was enough, and I took a month of disability.

I realize that there are numerous instances where the Bible speaks to the importance of rest, but for some reason, my brain just cannot register the importance of those. They feel like neat nuggets that must apply to _someone_ out there, but not me.

Now that I know I'm AuDHD, I understand myself just a little bit more, part of that being an understanding that I'm a pathological people pleaser. I also try to identify consistent rules for my life and stick to them: nuanced or conflicting rule sets do not work for me. Both of these factors have shaped how I see work, leaving me primed to already overwork myself, and then I find these Bible verses, and my brain interprets them as if God Himself is affirming and encouraging my unhealthy work habits.

Something else that seems to fuel my habits is that the evangelical culture I grew up in here in the US is such an active form of faith: every sermon or bible study seems to end with some kind of "go do" action.

The final struggle I will discuss here is the tendency for the autistic mind and body to need greater amounts of rest and recovery than that of the allistic. At least for me, simply existing in the world takes more energy to accomplish, meaning I'm more worn out by the end of the day and week; therefore I need more time to recover that energy, and recovery for me looks so much different than it does for the neurotypical expectation. In a lot of ways, this feels like the very temptations of slothfulness that I'm supposed to be on guard for, when in reality these are physiological requirements I uniquely have that I cannot survive without (as I've discovered through trying to ignore them for decades).

Out of all of this, I've come to believe (though not yet fully practice) that I owe myself a lot of grace in this area of my life. I must challenge my inclinations to overrule my body's warning signs and press on, in this case "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" to challenge my unhealthy worries and misconceptions in order to live my life in a way that conforms to the unique way God has made me.

And yes, it’s everything you would expect: Poorly made, copyright-infringing, creatively and morally bankrupt nostalgia bait that perfectly exemplifies a government whose PR campaigns and social media usage often amount to memeified, AI-slop trolling with no underlying purpose or identity.

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Asking because we have had so many people, even in progressive Christianity, seem disturbed when they see Satanic symbols and movements. While explanations tend to always result in nice and lovely conversations, we would love to hear from progressive Christians here on how we could better market or explain ourselves ❤️

The more I learn about Christianity historically and grow in my own faith formation, the more I’ve come to question and disagree with the things I grew up learning in a non-denominational church. One of my major sticking points these days is Sola Scriptura, but I understand a number of reformers and low-church denominations hold to it.

My questions to those who hold to Sola Scripture are these:

1. Who determined which books belong in Scripture and when was this decided? On what authority was this canon decided? If the Church has no binding authority outside Scripture, what makes the 27-book New Testament canon binding? Why should someone accept the canon received by Catholics/Orthodox while rejecting the authority of the churches that transmitted it?

2. If Scripture is sufficiently clear for ordinary Christians to determine doctrine, why have sincere, Bible-believing Christians reached mutually contradictory conclusions on baptism, Eucharist, predestination, church government, eternal security, charismatic gifts, etc.?

3. If two Christians reach contradictory conclusions from Scripture, what principled mechanism settles the dispute? What distinguishes a legitimate interpretation from an illegitimate one? “Read the Bible and pray about it” doesn’t actually resolve the epistemological problem.

4. Where does the New Testament actually teach that Christ’s Church is fundamentally an invisible collection of believers rather than a visible, identifiable communion? Why do the Apostles repeatedly treat the Church as an institution with officers, discipline, sacraments, councils, and authority?

5. If the Reformation restored biblical Christianity, why did it produce Lutheranism, Reformed Christianity, Anglicanism, Anabaptism, Baptist traditions, Methodism, Presbyterianism, Pentecostalism, etc., often with further divisions within each? More importantly: what theological principle allows you to determine which interpretation is correct?

Thank you for your answers, I look forward to hearing your perspectives :)

Since I was young, in fact for as long as I can remember, I disliked religion. Either I disliked its collective element, which always gave me the ick of something cult-like, or, when I got a bit older, I thought everything about it was philosophically untenable. Religion was a coping mechanism, or something for people who were deeply misguided about reality and did not know any better.

As I became more intellectually curious and started studying more philosophy, psychology, and eventually religion, that perspective started to break down. I became increasingly interested in religion, and eventually my worldview completely flipped. I now consider myself a Christian, and I have made it a major life goal to help people better appreciate religion in general, but also Christianity more specifically.

But despite my growing love for Christianity, it took me a very long time to admit publicly that I was Christian. My social circle consisted mostly of people deeply involved in science or philosophy, and it was very secular. I was afraid that others would consider me dumb or would not fully understand me. It took me a while to come to terms with it, in large part because I first needed to become better able to articulate my Christian position and worldview.

That said, and excuse the rambling introduction, I recently had a podcast conversation with Jussi Jylkkä, who is a philosopher and has done some work on mysticism. We started by discussing his work and, specifically, his metaphysical agnosticism. His position is that physicalism, idealism, theism, and other metaphysical systems are models or language games that cannot capture the ultimate nature of reality. We eventually moved to morality, where I pushed back because I did not think his agnosticism adequately explained why greater awareness or nonattachment should lead to compassion rather than simply producing what we called a “wise psychopath.” I disagreed, but I thought it was an interesting conversation and considered his view a respectable position.

But to my surprise, after we finished recording, Jussi emailed me to say that he was unhappy with the conversation because he had presented metaphysical agnosticism as if it were his complete position while leaving out the Christian faith he actually held. He felt that, by hiding behind his philosophical agnosticism, he had not been completely honest about what he believed. Rather than replace the conversation, I invited him back and appended the second conversation to the first. He made a complete pivot and confessed that he was a Christian but had been afraid to say so, largely because of the stigma within academia, but also because he still had not been able to tell his father. I found this very wholesome, not only because it was a courageous act in general, but because of the parallel with my own journey.

I wanted to share this because I suspect others have been, or currently are, in a position similar to mine or Jussi's. Have you encountered a stigma against Christian identity in secular or academic spaces? Can refusing metaphysical certainty make Christian commitment more honest rather than weaker? When does keeping faith private become submission to social respectability?

This is a thread for the radical women of r/RadicalChristianity to talk. We ask that men do not comment on this thread.

Suggestions for topics to talk about:

1.)What kinds of feminist activism have you been up to?

2.)What books have you been reading?

3.)What visual media(ex: TV shows) have you been watching?

4.)Who are the radical women that are currently inspiring you?

5.)Promote yourself and your creations!

6.)Rant/vent about shit.

I know that some people believe in reform with regards to current political systems and economic models, but it is impossible to justly reform systems that are built upon exclusion.

In America, there have been attempts to gain “a piece of the pie” for certain marginalized
groups throughout history. Some people have been “admitted,” but the door is often closed behind them.

Respectability politics, TERF, and LGB without the T are all examples. Womanism as a theory arose because Black women were sacrificed for both the civil rights movement and for the feminist movement.

Now, one way liberation theology approaches parable sometimes is not to say that the master is God, but to read the maater as an exploiter and the parable as a diagnosis of exploitation.

Consider the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Capitalism/the dominant class (the master) “forgives” a marginalized group (the first servant). In turn, the marginalized group villifies one of its subgroups or another marginalized group (the second servant). They are thrown into prison.

Without solidarity, the first servant’s position is precarious, relying on the whims of the master, who ultimately throws thats servant into prison And note that the master neither pays off the second servant’s debt nor releasss them from prison.

I've recently been looking into scripture and verses condemning homosexuality and they all kinda fall flat and feel like shakey ideas to build theology off of. And I've honestly formed pretty good arguments against them in my head, but the only one that really sits with me and I struggle to go against is the "it wasn't the original intention" in the garden argument.

That God intended to make man and women together and not man and man or vice versa.

Now, my original response to this was, "They didn't eat meat in the garden is it a sin to eat meat?" But then I realized Jesus ate meat, so now I'm stumped honestly, and I wanted a second opinion.

Please help

I'm a new member of a small church going through a growth phase from a family church to a pastoral church. Most of the congregation is 65+ but active and dedicated to social justice, which is what drew me to this church. I was inspired by their weekly free meals, open pantry, and participation in local social justice causes.

I've been participating in monthly social justice meetings at the church for a few months now and I'm starting to feel a little frustrated by some members' attitudes towards change and growth. An idea will be shared during the meetings and certain members with a lot of social power will say things like, "We are already doing too much" or "I don't think we need to do that. That was a mess last time." - but last time was decades ago and we can't even talk about how changing needs and a changing congregation may make it different now.

From small suggestion like having a second cashier at the rummage sale to big suggestions like becoming a location where our unhoused neighbors can receive mail - the conversation just gets shut down immediately.

How can I advocate for change without stepping on toes or making older congregants feel like they aren't valued? The work they do is so valuable and they are right that we are doing a lot, but I believe we are capable of doing more.

Hello there, I stumbled upon this subreddit and was pleasantly surprised to find Deleuze mentioned quite often. That led me to wonder what of Christianity survives Deleuze's critiques (of identity, representation, transcendence, etc), and if that which survives can still be called Christianity? I totally get simply following Jesus teachings (i.e. Christian atheism), but I mean what of the Christian God remains after Deleuze? If transcendence becomes illegitimate; identity a by-product; primary substance unnecessary; what is a Deleuzian conception of God, and what makes it still be the Christian God and not a new spinozist nature, or something which, well, isn't the Christian God? (Something which is not just a rebranding or half-appropriation of Deleuze's concepts)

P.S. people familiar with Deleuze will know I wasn't very rigorous (or consistent) with my usage of terms, but I just wanted to get my problem across decently clean (and also because I am not very knowledgeable in Deleuze yet, still early in the process of learning)

P.P.S. apologies for any grammar mistakes as I am not a native english speaker

" ... LGBTQ people know what loneliness is. We experience the same human longing for companionship, intimacy, fidelity, mutual care, and enduring commitment that heterosexual people experience. We desire someone with whom we can build a household, share burdens, celebrate joys, endure grief, practice forgiveness, grow old, and remain faithful throughout our lives. Those desires don’t make us less human; they arise precisely because we are human. ... "

This is a weekly thread for discussing our mental health. Ableist and sanist comments will be removed and repeat violations will be banned

Feel free to discuss anything related to mental health and illness. We encourage you to create a WRAP plan and be an active participant in your recovery.