Author: Stephen Bradford Long

Stephen Bradford Long is a writer, yoga teacher, and Satanist living and working in North Carolina. His work focuses on religion, sexuality, culture, and other subjects that strike his fancy.

Non-Theism and Satanism with The Pastor With No Answers

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I was recently interviewed by the Pastor With No Answers. It was a great conversation, in which we explored our differing theologies and points of agreement. I was impressed with Joey’s cordiality and openness to what must have been some profoundly uncomfortable ideas, like Satanism and non-theistic Christianity. I found this conversation refreshing, and Joey’s attitude delightful, and I hope we can have more conversations in the future.

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Why Fundamentalism Hates and Fears Imagination

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 5 Comments

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks reading the brilliant book Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Religion, Play, and Imagined Worlds. I’ve already written about this book, and even interviewed the author for my podcast, but I wanted to touch on another aspect Laycock explores in the book: the great fear fundamentalism has of imagination. Laycock calls these critics “Moral Entrepreneurs”, but I find fundamentalism a personally more helpful term.

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Games, Religion, and Walking Between Worlds

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I’m the middle of a fascinating book called Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. Author Joseph Laycock explores, with great detail and insight, the parallel worlds of role-playing games and religion. For three decades, role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons were at the center of a moral panic involving everything from fears of cults, satanists, to a lost generation of super predators. His thesis is that role-playing games were threatening to the religious right because, if communities could create such intricate, imagined, and meaning-making worlds through games, does that mean that religion itself is a sort of game? But beneath this initial thesis lie some profound insights for people like me who still greatly value religion, even as I doubt the existence of a personal God.

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The False Binary Between Atheism and Religion

Church against a beautiful night sky
~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

For the past year or so now, I’ve been caught in the strange, lonely, interstitial space of no longer believing in the existence of a personal God but still deeply valuing the role of religion in my life.

Looking back, I realize that I’ve been quietly grieving for my faith in a literal, personal God for most of my twenties, and that it was only in 2017 that I finally accepted the death of my personal God. It took a long time to grieve, to even to build up the courage to pull the covers back and peak into a world without God. God felt more fundamental than my skin, breath, and blood. To lose Him felt like the loss of everything.

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How Depression has Made Me a Happier Person

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 3 Comments

When people ask me how I am, I usual say, “I’m alright,” or simply, “ok,” and some people respond with concern or condescension: “/just/ alright?” As if being manically exultant is not living a full life. I hate that response: “just ok?” To me, just ok is heaven. For me, just ok is hard earned fulfillment.

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Being Gay and Grieving for the Holidays

Grieving for the Holidays
~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 2 Comments

I’m writing this the day before Thanksgiving. I’m weighed down with exhaustion – I manage a grocery store, and the holidays always hit us like a tidal wave. But I’m also weighed down with sorrow, with grief. As the holidays approach, I’ve felt an inexplicable dread come over me, and a deep grief. The sort of grief that exists deeper than conscious thought, and lives in the body itself.

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What I’ve Learned From Living with Suicide

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Several months ago, I went to a family gathering. I’d worked all week, and I was exhausted. The event was miserable, and I felt incapable – truly, utterly incapable – of talking to anyone. I felt like I’d been drugged, the paralysis of exhaustion and family and socializing was so great. On the drive home, all I could think about was suicide. Fantasies of death filled my being.

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