I recently heard a new term I hadn’t heard before: Glurge.But I’ve certainly experienced it. Now you can, too… You’re welcome. The image below is exactly how this came to me. Snopes has a great glurge hall-of-shame page, if you’re still not sure what I’m talking about.
I struggle to comprehend the utter desperation of this writer. I don’t even care if the incident described happened in Kingston, Tennessee. It’s probably fabricated. My sense of it is that a public school principal who gave such a speech would lose their job–quickly. But perhaps not in the South.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. What’s important is to observe what happens when a majority develops a persecution complex. How absurd. There are churches on nearly every street corner in the South. Christians are literally overwhelmed with places to pray. From what I understand, workplaces are pretty religious, too. First thing you’re asked by co-workers is what church you attend.
So it’s a good thing the law provides that place of refuge, where you just can’t lead public prayers where people of other faiths or of no faith might be present. The Constitution requires we recognize the public space as neutral territory.
(Thank you Thomas Jefferson and the rest!)
But that’s not good enough. These loons aren’t happy unless everyone is praying to the Christian god. And persuasion has completely failed to bring this about. The legal system has ‘let them down’ by refusing to enforce it. So now it’s all about shouting to friends and family in 36-point colored italic script, trying to guilt them into further spreading their demands. Because God’s law trumps man’s law, of course.
Update: Back in 2009, these little missives of Christian petulance spread mostly through email. But I was unprepared for the absolute torrent of this kind of filth that was about to overwhelm social media. And it hasn’t stopped as of 2022. The only defense, it seems is to delete and block “friends” who share this stuff. After cleaning up my feeds though, it makes me shudder sometimes to think about what’s circulating, that I don’t see. How do we expect to seriously engage with solving Earth’s problems, if our feeds–where we place an undue amount of attention–are filled with distracting, manipulative, aggrieved, and unctuous nonsense? We can’t. Don’t underestimate the severe damage to democracy caused by “just-so” stories, jokes, memes, copy/paste spam, nostalgia, prayers and prayer requests, quizzes, optical illusions and the rest of the cognitive sewage piped into everyone’s brain through social media on the daily. –Sean Prophet, September 2022
19 comments
Enough to make you purge; that's glurge alright! Right on the mark Blacksun.
Thanks! I needed that to get my blood all a-boiling. To return the favor, here is a comic strip version of one the most notorious Christian glurges of all time http://camelswithhammers.com/2009/08/07/the-evil-…
Enjoy!
Good stuff.
"First thing you’re asked by co-workers is what church you attend."
Fortunately that has not happened to me in Canada yet – and I live in a community that has enough churches, including a sikh temple and several evangelical congregations – my wife even volunteers at the sally ann. Nobody tries to convert her, or me. Church here has more to do with community, less with belief.
I had and have some excellent working relationships and discussions with members of a few non denominational commune – several, actually. They were accepting – so was I. We agreed to disagree and worked happily ever after.
And what this idiot of a principal does not understand – freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.
I guess the rise of religiously unaffiliated seems to strike fear into the hearts of the theocratic wannabees.
They're so used to getting their way…
PSMr. principal – and I am not offended, but by showing me what kind of moron you really are, I just politely despise you.
Ha ha ha. I remember when I had a job interview at a non-profit (NorthWest Medical Teams) in Portland, Oregon, and one of the questions was, "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?" Of course I said 'yes' — it's a good think he didn't ask What Kind of personal relationship!! Frankly, I was better at praying in our staff meetings than the rest of those guys — I'd been trained at CUT! Hey, I can work up religious fervor when necessary….
Well, "when in Rome," right?
My favorite are the "petitions". I change the topic/body of the email to whatever I like, leave the amassed signatures as they are, then hit Reply to All. Lulz ensue.
Oh that's hilarious. Plus you could slap those signatures on actually important causes instead of just "I'm a pissed old lady!" chain mails. Except that'd probably count as identity theft, so forget I even said that. Hey, look over there – something shiny!
That's awesome! hahahaha
It's interesting that the more powerful and insulated fundamentalism becomes, the more persecuted it feels. Fear-based world views that reduce the individual to a common value within the group always seem to have the most sinister and diabolical enemies imaginable. This favors the more paranoid within the group and provides incentive to the hysterical and paranoid "heroism" portrayed by the courageous principal above. That his testimony provokes an unanimous reponse among his hearers demonstrates the appalling complacency of group believers. Afraid to have an original thought or doubt they are easily cowed into a monstrous denial of human decency. And all of this at a football game, no less!
Yes, I'm still not sure it happened. It seems like it would have made the news. There are many examples of such people being fired and having injunctions filed against them, such as this one:
http://www.aclu-em.org/downloads/Doniphaninjuncti…
Yup, that's about right. Somewhere in my early twenties I figured out that anything with epic typographical errors was probably psuedoscience, nonsense, or cult material.
The random capitalization is just upsetting.
Yes, Angie, I think that's right. The use of large, colored script or the Comic Sans font is pretty much a guarantee of nonsense.
There's a reason they talk about "sober" vs. "lurid" prose.
Right, and this isn't sober at all. It's the email equivalent of a drunk dial.
I got that email recently. I forget who sent it to me. I just scanned it quickly and hit the DEL button. The handy thing about computers is that I never miss the trash can.
Yes, well since I have gmail, I never delete anything, just archive it. I don't get these too often, and it was so over the top I thought it deserved a posting. You've got to give them props for font size. I think it's the biggest one I've ever seen.
How quickly soi-disant "Christians" forget to "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". They're utterly unable to apply 'WWJD", which is to follow the rules of the government that's paying them when they're on the job. If they want to prosyletize during work hours, they should apply to a church!