Tag: Church

I Didn’t Leave Christianity Because I Was Hurt

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

A few days ago, I realized that the intense feeling of religious and spiritual homelessness I’d felt for so long was gone. Since the beginning of my deconstruction, I’d begun to feel myself forced out of my Christianity, like a child being forced out of a womb. This left me with a profound feeling of existential homelessness — drifting away from my religious identity and family, and with little to cling onto as a home.

But, a few days ago, I realized that I no longer felt that homelessness — my home is now The Satanic Temple, my spiritual and religious identity is Satanist. (Does this surprise you? I recommend reading my articles on Satanism.)

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I Won’t Leave the Church Because I’m a Satanist

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 31 Comments

Note: If you have been following my work for any amount of time, you know that I do, in fact, consider myself a Satanist. I’ve written a great deal on the subject, and you can read that wealth of information by following the Satanism category. If this is the first time you are encountering my work, I suggest exploring that category so you will (hopefully) be less confused.

Despite my self identification of Satanist, I don’t leave the church. Many of my dearest friends are devout Christians, I still interview Christians, I still review Christian books, and I still work at a church (which shall remain nameless, so they don’t get hate mail about me.) Why?

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When I Became a Sexual Compulsive

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 12 Comments

In 2013, I was sick with heartbreak. My boyfriend, on a sunny January day in Baltimore, broke up with me.

He was a conservative Christian, and so was I. We both believed that homosexuality was not God’s best for humanity, and that it would be a sin to act on it. And yet, here we were: deeply in love, and now deeply heartbroken. We had lived in a horrible in-between place, unable to change our beliefs and unable to stop loving each other. The dissonance drove us mad, and it ended in him breaking up with me. I’d never known such rending emotional pain.

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Three Assumptions Christians Make About Gay Relationships

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 1 Comment

I’m away from the blog this month, focusing on school, work, and vacation, and I will be back next week writing regularly. While I’m away, I’ve decided to repost articles from my previous blog. Enjoy.

As I’ve struggled through questions of faith and homosexuality and arrived at a more affirming position, I have found myself on the receiving end of some persistent and annoying assumptions. Granted, some of these might be stereotypes of affirming gay people for a reason, but I feel that these assumptions become blocks, disengaging people from the uncomfortable and redeeming act of listening to each other.

While I can’t even begin to address all of the assumptions people make about gay people, I will go ahead and list the ones I most frequently run into here.

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In Which I Have a Breakdown: An Open Letter to the Church

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

I am away from the blog this week, finishing up my degree and preparing for vacation. Because of this, I’m reposting an old article of mine originally published on my previous blog on February 17, 2014.

Back in October, just before I left the blogosphere for my sabbatical, I had something of a breakdown.

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The Epidemic of Codependent Christianity

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

There are two primary accusations brought against Christians today: hatred and hypocrisy. Over the past year, though, I’ve come to see the apparent hypocrisy and hatred (or bigotry, as many people put it) as occasional symptoms of a much deeper problem, a disease that is rotting out the heart of modern Christianity: codependency.

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The Church is a Whore, and I Am Her Gay Son

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 21 Comments

“The church is a whore,” wrote Augustine, “But she is my mother.” Too often, I have heard this quote used to say, “yeah, the Church is messed up, but family’s family. I can’t leave, even if I wanted to.”

I’ve often wondered if the people who so willingly fling this quote around have any notion of what It’s like to have an abusive mother.

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