Cable “News” & Church Pews

I think about this all the time, because I have relatives and peers who were — at one time — (seemingly) normal people.

But after years of exposure to Fox News and QAnon, and other things of that odious nature, their brains have rotted.

You may be thinking, That’s extreme. You don’t need to exaggerate, or be mean, or be judgmental. Be a little kinder!

No. I don’t think I will. People have already spent too much time mincing their words about a pretty serious situation. This is something that’s poisoned minds and hearts. We may as well call Fox News and QAnon Jupiter, because these folks have gone there to get more stupider.

And — in addition to acting more ignorant by the hour — these people are suffering from other diminished faculties. They’re more fearful than ever. They’re angry all of the time.

They’re also convinced that all Christians in America are secretly spied upon and persecuted, even though there are dozens of Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Catholic, Episcopal, and non-denominational churches around here. None of those churches are boarded up, and they’re constantly holding events for new members. They send out postcards begging young families to bring their kids to game nights and car shows. They really try to make it a family affair.

Truthfully — and even the brainwashed folks, if they were being rational, would acknowledge this — the biggest “enemy” working against “the faith” is apathy. Many of these people have kids and grandkids who don’t have an interest in the church. Many young people also won’t go to church because they can find faith-based information and/or community in a judgment-free zone. The church is not — generally speaking — a judgment-free zone. The young people are tired of being bullied by people who think church is a competition or a fashion show. That is why they have no interest in attending a “more traditional” church. It feels too much like high school.

But the concept of “traditional values” has given these (usually older) folks something to rally around. They think that, if they could just convince their kids and grandkids to go back to church, that suddenly everything would fall into place. Lots of cherubic babies, little ones with soft curls and dimpled cheeks, would spill out of us, the young women, like lace unspooled from a slender filature.

With a Gunne-Sax dress covering my body from shoulder to ankle, and a beautiful (but silenced) baby on my hip, and a young man with an unfortunate face expression standing in front of me, I would be the model of perfect femininity. I would bend to my husband’s will, as the perfect helpmeet, and listen to whatever tidbits of nothingness he’d managed to collect from a busy day of listening to Ben Shapiro’s podcasts while he either (1) drove an air-conditioned tractor up and down the field or (2) dumped numbers into Google Sheets.

My husband and I would pretend to smile from sunup to sundown, and we would only get a break while we cried ourselves to sleep, miserable at having been paired off to meet the church’s No Husband Left Behind policy.

But on Sunday morning, with Cherubleigh on my hip, we’ll walk into church with our heads held high — but not too high, because the preacher’s daughter will inevitably be there, too. And she will expect us to know our place, as slow-witted peons who can’t afford designer clothing. She — and her peers and her daughters — will glide in wearing matching Coco Chanel and pearls, while I’m stuck in a cheap-o prairie dress that came from a virtual vanity boutique.

The boutique, of course, is run by the preacher’s wife or daughter. And that’s yet another way they expect us to tithe. I’m starting to wonder whether this money is funding the house of the Lord or the House of Chanel.

Anyway — as bleak as that sounds, I think that some people think this “return to traditional values” sounds nice and normal, simply because people are given a place to be in the world. That’s true — so long as everyone knows their place.

Nobody expects to be at the bottom of the ladder — except for me. I know that I would be placed on a bottom rung, and that I would be given a philanderer or an abuser, and that I would be expected to straighten him out or be a good little SAHM Soldier. I would be expected to tame the dishes, the mistresses, the laundry, and the insatiable libido. And I know I couldn’t do it, because my spirit would be broken.

Surprisingly — to many people — I am actually a straight woman. But I would prefer to choose things for myself, just as every living being does. Even children and the elderly like to choose things for themselves, because they are people, too.

And while it’s true that some children and some elderly folks need extra assistance, they still have the autonomy to refuse things — or to ask for an alternative option. If our ability to even have preferences is taken away from us, then I’m at a loss for what to do.

Suppose I do decide to marry a Godly young man, but I would prefer for us to attend a different church — for one reason or another. If I don’t have a say in the matter, how is that fair to me? Similarly, how is that fair to my husband and/or family, to have a sulking mother who’s on the path to becoming an apostate, all because they wouldn’t allow me to have my own thoughts and feelings?

Ah, well. They don’t care about that. These are the same people who leave “F**k your feelings!” in the comments on every Facebook posts — from the poorly-generated AI art to the AT&T ads.

While I know they don’t care about confining people to a lifetime of unhappiness, I find it odd that they think their sons and daughters, or grandsons and granddaughters, would find being a Trad Spouse Content Creator exciting. Besides, that market is beyond oversaturated by now. I can’t compete with the Ballerina Farms lady, because I’m not a ballerina and I don’t own my own farm.

I’m certainly not opposed to spirituality and faith — and I find a lot of folks find strength in their faith. But making faith a commodity and/or fodder for influencers, and making church feel like a country club, and making people feel that any Outsiders — even other Protestants — are not to be trusted?

Those are the things that have made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in the various churches I’ve attended or visited.

Yet there’s still this lingering idea that, if we could get every American soul — to say nothing of the bodies! — into a pew on Sunday morning, that the country would experience a complete reversal of fortunes. Everyone would have a stately, ornate dining room. Everyone would have a solid gold toilet. Everyone would drive a freshly-waxed Maserati.

“Well, everyone except for the people I hate!”

But enough about that.

Anyway, the folks at that terrible cable “news” network — a channel that focuses on punditry and opinion shows, a channel that rarely broadcasts actually news content — have landed on a gold mine. They know that they can pay someone to ramble about highly-emotional topics — faith, bravery, veterans, children — and that they’ll entice millions of Boomers to sweat issues that …

Frankly, these issues are best handled on a family-by-family basis. Not every family has kids — some are childless, some are childfree, some are TTC, and some have stepchildren who are only in the home half of the month, or half of the year, or only during summers. Not every family goes to the Baptist church — though some are Methodists, some are Catholics, some are not religious, and some are happily living in interfaith families. Because of this variety, there’s no one prescription to “save” all the “families” of America.

For the people who are all about states’ rights, or taking away federal power, it seems that they’d be able to understand the need to make less centralized decisions, or to give the power to choose back to the individual.

But these are the same people who ignore the “well-regulated” in front of “militia,” so I can’t be too certain they’d appreciate the irony of this situation.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t spend a lot of time drafting this post — simply because I spend most of my time living this post. The South is, of course, where America buckles its Bible Belt. I’m used to hearing people (of all backgrounds, ages, economic classes, denominations) speak about their faith, their church, their volunteer group, or their Bible study class.

I don’t flinch. I certainly don’t insult people. I’ve even taken people up on their offers to visit their churches, because I am admittedly quite nosy, and because I have family members who’ve affiliated with nearly every denomination.

So perhaps it’s shocking when I say that church can still be isolating — and that the biggest “offenders” who have lectured people for not attending church are usually people who are themselves unchurched.

These are the people who have had their names read at a packed Sunday service, or who have argued with a preacher, or who got hopping mad when they saw that a gay couple is now “allowed” to attend services.

It’s hard not to judge the judgmental person who wants to “ban gays” from coming to church. On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the woman who quit going to church because she had her name read — a form of public shaming — after divorcing an abusive spouse. There are all kinds of people who have left church — from the judgmental to the unfairly judged.

Through careful planning or dumb luck, the folks at Fox News — and Conservative commentators and podcasters — have landed on the magic formula: make people afraid and get them screaming-mad about feeling persecuted. The delicious irony of this, considering that their own enemies are “snowflakes.”

In fact, that was my original reason for writing this post. After seeing pushback in the wake of the Opening Ceremony — pushback to “mocking religion,” to Greek gods, to pagan priestesses — I realized we were fighting a losing battle against willful ignorance. And after calmly explaining the allusions to Greek mythology at an Olympic celebration, I realized that they didn’t even want an explanation. They’re just as bad as a playground bully who wants to fight. How childish and weirdly unnecessary. Get a better hobby than arguing on Facebook!

Now that I’ve thought about it, Rupert Murdoch has made me a more devout person. Not because I’ve bought into any of their programming. Not at all.

Instead, this wellspring of faith has come about for another reason. I hope and pray that there is a just God watching all of this nonsensical, mean-spirited programming. And I hope that God shows mercy to every person who’s suffered at the hands of someone who’s weaponized the hateful rhetoric on that channel.

I also hope that the same God who shows mercy to others smites dishonest CEOs. If that’s not too much to ask, then I will — as they say — pray on it.

Thoughts and prayers, prayers and thoughts. Pardon me for not having kind thoughts about any of the media moghuls who are trying to deliver us to evil.