Read on Twitter
So many of y'all normally have such excellent analyses of power/how it's used to distort/manipulate other aspects of human life to suit its ends, and then you throw it entirely out the window as soon as we talk about faith or spirituality.
Imo this is a absolutely huge part of why "the left" often alienates the very people we try to reach. So many of y'all use your personal negative experiences with faith practitioners to go full reactionary about the subject and wonder why it's hard to reach others meaningfully.
I honestly do not understand how any of y'all can imagine you can help bring about liberation for all while you get unaccountably nasty and disdainful at the languages other people use to find meaning and belonging in this world.
Literally every problem I have seen brought up against any number of faiths as somehow inherent to those faiths are the very things y'all recognize in other realms as inherent to power, control, racism, misogyny, classism, etc. Those people will use *anything* as a weapon yall.
Btw, I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has actually come from that place. I have been very deeply harmed by practitioners of Christianity as well as New Age/Pagan spiritualities, and have gone into those reactive places too.
When people wound us by using spirituality as a weapon, it makes sense that those wounds are often spiritual in nature, and we lash out/distrust the whole faith because of it. Often, it's easier to blame the faith than blame the people who used it to do harm.
But that's not fair, and it's not accurate. Frameworks of metaphysical meaning don't do harm. People who use those frameworks to collect power and abuse it do harm. It is a vital difference for us to understand, and place the blame where it actually belongs.
