Arizona Senator Comes to Defense of Satanism

Here’s something I never thought I would say: A US senator has come to the defense of Satanists, mainly due to the fact that Christian Nationalists have decided that this “parody” religion is their new bugbear. Democratic Senator Juan Mendez addressed the fact that their colleagues are trying to “ban” the religion, and this has outraged overly sensitive Christians who still think the organization is evil.

“They are here today to confront the arbitrary, tyrannical authority of religious persecution that’s scheduled for government committee later on today,” he continued. “We are graced with the presence of ministers and members of the Satanic Temple of “The mission of the satanic temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people,” he added. “They embrace practical common sense and justice. They are guided by their conscience to undertake noble pursuits that fulfill their religious values… I welcome them to the floor today.”

Mendez is referring to the recent attempt by Republican lawmakers to try and outlaw Satanism, which has been taking up the fight for separation of church and state. He’s keenly aware of just how much these groups are enraging Republican lawmaker. It’s awesome to watch.

What’s hilarious is that the article I have linked to states that “The Democrat senator was slammed on social media after welcoming the devil worshippers to the capitol with open arms.” If you actually bother to read the comment section of the Republican Twitter account, you might see a few religious dummies attacking Mendez, however the vast majority of the replies point out that religious toleration means you have to accept faiths that you don’t like. Atheists are used to this, but for Christians, anything less than a complete domination of the religious sphere is unacceptable.

It’s nice to know that not ever government official is a religious nutbag. Gives you a little hope for the future.

 

Oklahoma Senator wants to jail you for Sexy Selfies

Are you feeling strangled by religious conservatives? Are you tired of zealots trying to control every aspect of your life? Well, too bad if you are, because these religious nutballs are just getting warmed up.

Oklahoma Senator and all around ballbag Dusty Deevers has introduced a bill that would outlaw sexting to anyone other than your spouse. This is all part of a larger effort to try and outlaw pornography altogether.

How he plans to accomplish this reminds me of bounty posters in the Wild West. You see, a person can file a lawsuit against someone they suspect of enjoying their freedom as an American, and they can receive up to 10k for snitching. The person you accused of witchcraft, I mean sexting, would face up to 25 years in jail, and a fine of up to 25k (presumably to help fund this sick game of tattle tale).

You might be wondering how broad this ridiculous and unconstitutional law is. It’s so broad that just about anyone who participates in any remotely sexual activity would instantly become a criminal:

This bill is broad enough to include any person’s, like butt selfie for example, it includes live performances in play. So that would seem to include strip clubs definitely and maybe also burlesque and drag performances and things like that,” Nolan Brown said.

The good news is that there’s no way in hell is this thing going to pass. Even in some Christian Nationalist nightmare world, I find it hard to fathom that any prosecutor would dare go after people for living their best life. Considering that Oklahoma is considered one of the worst states to live in, it sounds like there are more important priorities to focus on, like ranking 48th in healthcare, or almost dead last in educational standards.

Apart from crazy, unpredictable weather, the study said Oklahoma has one of the nation’s highest rates of drug abuse, and the second highest rate of people without health insurance. Homelessness is another big issue.

You know, there are way more serious problems in your state than people sending themselves sexy pictures, Dusty. If you want to help improve your state, maybe don’t create ridiculous laws that create dangerous witch-hunts.

Border Trucker Convoy Cancelled due to Paranoia

Well, that didn’t last long did it? Just a day ago, TGA reported on a convoy of truckers calling itself “God’s Army” that was supposedly headed to Texas to “defend the border”. The event was cancelled, because many of the organizers started to think that the whole thing was an FBI operation, and that they were going to get coaxed into violence so that the feds could put cases on them.

According to Vice’s report, the less-than-stellar turnout was likely due to theories circulating in right-wing circles that the convoy could be a “psyop” or “honeypot” trap laid by the federal government to coax people into committing violence.

At least these guys were aware enough to know that when you put a bunch of these clowns together, people start getting hurt, or even killed. I also have a bit of news for these weirdos: people are not “coaxed” into acts of violence when they bring weapons to a protest. That shows that they are planning on getting their hands dirty.

We’re getting to an inflection point in Q-Anon it seems, where there’s a smattering of self awareness brewing at the service. Conspiratorial thinking is like a snake eating its tail. When you base all of your thinking in the idea that you can’t trust anything, eventually it all breaks down.

Here’s hoping that the Q-Anon people take the same approach to everything else in their lives. Maybe now instead of causing disturbances, they will all just stay home, since the outside world is just a giant conspiracy against them.

American Religious Wackos Headed to Border

American conservatives have it all backwards. When you hear about evangelicals going nuts about all the illegal immigrants that are entering the country, there’s an important variable that I think they are ignoring due to their overwhelming distaste for different skin colors: they are chasing away the last group of religiously minded folks. Allow me to explain:

In Canada, my home country, the conservative side of the isle love immigrants. That’s because in an overwhelmingly secular nation, the people who wish to make the Great White North their new home are usually quite religious, especially when compared to their counterparts. These recent immigrants tend to be anti-abortion, have a deep hatred of LGBT people and their issues, and tend to dislike liberal policies. This means that the conservative parties are always trying to solicit their support. It’s very rare that you will hear them speak ill of immigration, and they would rather attract the votes of these religiously minded people than ire.

So when conservative Christians decide that they are going to show up at the border in Texas intent on trying to take the law into their own hands, they are chasing away the only people that “mostly” support their religious agenda. One such group planning on adding to the chaos south of the border is called “Take Our Border Back”.

The group said that one of their goals is to stop illegal immigration immediately and close the border. It is not clear how the group plans to confront migrants at the border and stop them from entering the country.

My guess is that they will show up with weapons, and someone is going to get hurt, or possibly killed, all because of the fear that they have for people who literally believe in exactly the same God that they do. They do this, while also believing that they are preventing an “army of darkness” from entering their country. What they really mean is “an army of darkies”, but that would be an unsavory thing to say in this day and age. Better to just imply it and shoot your guns at people.

It’s inevitable that if religious voters want to maintain their power base, they are going to need to dip outside of the white, evangelicals base that they’ve historically counted on for votes. In fact, this group is shrinking so fast that the Republican reliance on them as their voting base is going to blow up in their faces spectacularly. The face of America is changing. Religious “Nones” now outnumber white evangelicals, and the gap is only going to increase.

Still, we cannot be complacent simply because our enemies are slowly dying. A cornered animal is at its most dangerous. Before we are free of religious interference in our lives, these wackos will try every trick in the book to force their faith down our throats.

New Hampshire Official Quits after Religiously Motivated Harassment

By all account, Jim Gleason is a good man who always wanted to do right by his community. For over three years, Gleason had acted as town manager for Littleton, N.H., working diligently to serve his fellow neighbors. All of this changed recently after a row with one of his constituents over a number of paintings that had been commissioned by a local LGBTQ group.

It began first when one of the board members, Carrie Gendreau, had labelled the paintings as “demonic”. Her responsibilities as a state senator are, in her words, “informed” by her religious faith, which simply means that she has theocratic justification for spewing hatred. If this would have been the only pushback, it would not have been sufficient to merit a resignation. After all, religious people are always calling things they dislike “evil”. The unpleasantness that led to him quitting was the result of something far nastier. A woman by the name of Jean Chouinard visited him, and things did not go well:

Jean Chouinard came to Gleason’s office in October to complain about a production of La Cage Aux Folles by Theater UP at the municipally owned Littleton Opera House. She wanted Gleason to shut it down. He said he couldn’t because it would be an infringement of First Amendment free speech rights but told Chouinard she could exercise her own rights by protesting the show. She then called him weak and asked if he was pleased that his son Patrick, who died of cancer in 2016, “was in hell with the devil where he belonged.

Not long after the incident, this hateful bitch also sent a picture of him with the words “Queer Bastard” written across it. The fact that she admitted to sending it allowed Gleason to file a restraining order against her.

Meanwhile, state rep Carrie Gendreau defended her actions, and has zero sympathy for a man being harassed for allowing the citizens he worked for the opportunity to express themselves. It’s just another sad example of how religion makes people into hateful monsters with no understanding of just how messed up their behavior is. Now, the city of Littleton is a poorer for losing such a committed member of government. This is how Christian nationalists win: they make the world unpleasant for everyone, and when there’s no one left to rule, they simply take over and impose their faith on the rest of us. Expect this kind of thing to happen more and more.

Evangelicals Think Jesus is Weak

If you’ve ever attended church in the south, odds are you may have heard the song “Give me that old-time religion”. If you have, you might remember these lyrics:

It was good for our mothersAnd it’s good enough for me,

Makes me love everybodyAnd it’s good enough for me

It seems that this message of love is no longer resonating with Evangelicals, specifically those that have been spoon-fed the recent rhetoric of Christian Nationalists, who see Donald Trump as their new messiah. They now see this Jesus character as a bit of a pussy.

Moore told NPR in an interview released Tuesday that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”

The whole, “turn the other cheek”, and “judge not lest ye be judged” sounds like liberal hogwash to them. They want that REALLY old time religion, the one where there was lots of smiting from God, and where his enemies were routinely destroyed. This is the great wish of Evangelicals of today. Even though they have won major victories, such as the Supreme Court repealing Roe v Wade, they are still convinced that the world of the future is a terrifying secular hellhole that needs fixing, and only their special brand of crazy is the solution.

Unlike the election that first won him the presidency, Trump’s new strategy is bound to blow up in his face. Sure, he has the loyalty of the Religious Right, but it’s impossible to win the office without getting a lot of independent voters on your side. The first time he ran, these voters were already sick of Democrats in the White House, and they felt a change was needed. It didn’t last long. Now that he’s literally referring to himself as the new messiah, the messaging is proving quite distasteful to pragmatic voters who have no real party affiliation. The Republican party used to understand this, but because of how much Trump loves to be worshiped, it’s doubtful he’ll change his tune to appeal to a broader base.

He’s even slowly eroding his base, by essentially acting as a false prophet. When he loses the presidency, there’s no doubt that there will be a need for the Evangelical community to do some serious soul searching. As new sexual abuse scandals erupt, the hyper focus on Trump will spell disaster for their membership in the long term. If there’s any comfort to be had, it’s the fact that this is decimating churches all over the country. It’s a reckoning that’s been a long time coming.

Christian Nationalists Want Gay Kids Attacked

Christian Nationalists are a cancer on American society. Not only do they want to transform the country into a theocratic hellhole by using the legal and political system, they also want children to join them on their violent crusade to rid the world of people who don’t share their zealotry.

You see, when it all boils down to it, when you can’t win an argument with someone, you terrorize them. Christian nationalists pine for the days when people were ritualistically beaten for being different. For instance, in this podcast called “Crosstalk”, the host and guests were tripping over themselves reminiscing about the good old days:

“There used to be a day and age, we beat up the kid at school who had two dads. And we weren’t jerks for that,” Szall says laughing. “That’s just what we did.”

Ah yes, those halcyon days when people were getting their asses kicked because they were loved by two same sex parents. These were also the good old days when people were dying of easily treatable diseases, and when black people had to ride in the back of the bus. I’m sure they would love for those nostalgic days to come again, wouldn’t they?

Since Christian Nationalists are so busy trying to infiltrate the government to impose their worldview, they naturally assume that other groups are doing the same. The fact that more and more Christians support same sex unions has convinced them that it’s a giant conspiracy, and they think that by allowing children to violently attack vulnerable minorities, more people will come around to their way of thinking.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. This is the kind of Brownshirt politics that extremists love. In the 1920’s, when Hitler needed an army of thugs to terrorize the populous, he claimed that this force was the only solution to the mounting problem of communism. These mindless zombies would routinely beat and kill anyone in opposition to their twisted beliefs. Ironically, the leaders of the Brownshirts were eventually murdered for their efforts, as Hitler was convinced that they would eventually try and usurp him.

This is what happens when you try an use violence to enforce your beliefs. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Will America wake up from it’s coma and put a stop to these dangerous cretins before it’s too late? If history is any indication, that’s a resounding “NO”.

Michigan State Rep Declares War on Church of Satan

As many of my listeners will remember, I have always been a big fan of the “Church of Satan”. As an institution, its primary purpose is essentially to expose the hypocrisy of Christians, and it does so with gusto, primarily by making afterschool programs to compete against the Unconstitutional religious groups that take up valuable time that should be devoted to actually learning something.

The existence of this church has rattled a few feathers, such as Republican Rep. Josh Schriver of Michigan who is making it his mission to bringing it down:

Schriver announced his intention to target churches that he doesn’t believe deserve equal treatment with Christianity under the law…“I actually am working on a policy right now… to really focus on making a distinction between the the church of Jesus Christ and this, quote unquote, Church of Satan,” Schriver announced. “You really have an issue where they’re seen as equal in the eyes of the state, and that doesn’t seem right to me for many, many legitimate reasons. And so removing tax exempt status from non-theistic churches such as the Church of Satan, I think is very, very well in order.”

This moron believes that he doesn’t work for the people who elected him. No, instead he thinks that he works for God, specifically the Judeo-Christian one that murderously hates masturbation, and it’s his goal to rid the country of those pesky religions that he doesn’t like.

Unfortunately for him, it’s almost impossible to remove the tax exempt status of any faith. That’s because the IRS isn’t in the business of determining what religions are “authentic” and which ones aren’t. In fact, so long as an organization complies with the IRS rules concerning tax exempt status, the actual content of the religion is meaningless. You could be worshiping a dead goat for all they care.

Consider how many religious organizations are already violating some of the terms that allows them tax exempt status to begin with. Here’s one of the rules that I know for a fact that the Church of Satan has never broken, while hundreds of smaller churches have:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

So, who is it that deserves to get their tax exempt status removed then? Did I mention he also wants to ban pornography? Good luck with that, you prude jackass.

Religion Makes Accountability Impossible

One of the hardest things in life is taking accountability for your actions. For whatever reason, this simple and powerful act is abhorred by all. In order to relieve this psychic tension, religions offer an easy solution: none of your problems are your fault, because an evil conspiracy is at play. For Christianity and Islam, their favorite bugbear is Satan, the supposed prince of darkness that meddles in human affairs. This does away with a person needing to accept any blame for their own situation. Just don’t forget to pay the tithe.

According to one victim of a conspiracy to destroy his life, when his kids refused for the 4th year to even call him for Thanksgiving, Georgia lawyer L. Lin Wood blamed the only ones he could: Satan and his cronies in the deep state of course!

“What evil explains the last 4 years???” Wood said. “The devil and his minions in earth. The deep state and its operatives.”

“Their time is coming,” he said. “I just have to wait on the LORD and trust the LORD. And I also look forward to the day when President Trump OBLITERATES the Deep State. I believe he is in the process of OBLITERATING the Deep State right now.”

Who wouldn’t want to call this bundle of joy for the holidays? I can just imagine his poor children having to listen to his mad rantings at the diner table. It probably got to the point where they all agreed that his presence in their lives was encouraging this type of behavior. I bet part of them hopes that the silent treatment might force him to take a look at his own actions, and how they contributed to his alienation.

With a man willing to blame outside forces for his own kids hating him, I doubt he’s ever taken personal responsibility for anything in his life. Religion feeds into the ego of people, making them sanctimonious, holier-than-thou sociopaths who have no empathy for those who do not share their view. There is nothing worst than the combination of religious fanaticism and civil service. How is a person who is blinded by their own zealotry supposed to serve the people who do not share their beliefs? We’ve often seen the type of final solutions they have towards these types of problems. If we aren’t careful, they are bound to try and implements them again.

 

House Speaker thinks Separation of Church and State “a misnomer”

As faith is slowly dying across the western world, it’s put a fire under the feet of religious political figures, who see themselves as martyrs in a “great cause”. As religious affiliation continues to decline, the dying animal of organized religion refuses to simply crawl into a corner and perish. Instead, it seeks to consolidate its worldly powers in the vain hope that by forcing their faith on people, it might get a glorious comeback.

This explains why so many US politicians are doubling down on faith. Take for example House Speaker Mike Johnson. Possessing the personality of a busted robot, he can’t stop acting as though the secular nature of government is a minor inconvenience that no one understands but him.

“Separation of church and state … is a misnomer. People misunderstand it,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked about him praying on the House floor. “Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote is not in the Constitution.”

“And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church, not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite,” the Speaker added.

This might be true if you ignore the very first phrase in the Constitution, which makes it abundantly clear that religion is not invited to the party when it comes to creating policy.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”

It’s important to understand the context of why the “no law respecting an establishment of religion” was added in the first place. This is because when it came to the separation of powers, the inspiration for the document had come from European Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and John Locke, who knew full well that the encroachment of religion could spell disaster for any government. Europe’s nations had been entangled for over 200 years in the Great Wars of Religion, and hard lessons of the involvement of religion in political affairs had been well documented. If America wished to avoid such entanglements, it had to take an official stand on just how much place religion would have in politics. The decision was simple: there should be none.

Of course, what non-thinkers like Mike Johnson, who seems to value piety over service to his fellow American, fail to understand that the “Wall of Separation” that Jefferson wrote about in his letters was to reassure a small congregation of Virginia Baptist who were wary of the abuse they had suffered at the hands of their fellow Christians. They too had faced adversity in Europe, and had no wish to further the conflict in their new home. Jefferson reassured them, as he did the rest of the nation, in guaranteeing that the propensity of religion to take the reigns of power would have no effect there.

It was this decision that allowed America’s various religious traditions to flourish. Unlike Germany or England that had official faiths, Americans were free to experiment with religion to their hearts content. This is why so many different branches of Christianity have flourished; a fact that morons like Johnson are completely ignorant of. These deluded fools think that all forms of Christianity are compatible, despite the hundreds of years of conflict that punctuate their existence.

Is it not enough that these organization pay no taxes, benefit from laws that protect them (even from police prosecution for crimes that anyone else would go to jail for), and have such a vaulted place in society? Already pastors preach politics from their pulpits, a clear violation of the rules that allow them tax exempt status to begin with. Now they want the whole enchilada.

If you want the bit of good news in all of this, it’s that the message of Johnson or his ilk is becoming less and less effective. Sure, their base is usually fired up by this rhetoric, but the rest of the nation remains unimpressed. It’s why Republicans across the country are getting slaughtered in the polls. It turns out that when you double down on religion, the voters that have no great affiliation with any political party quickly jump ship. He’s hoping that this reality check hits these troglodyte where it hurts: at the polls.

New House Speaker is a Creationist Idiot

We always knew you were a little troubled, America. If you aren’t being terrified on a daily basis by mass shootings, you have to worry about your republic being eroded by religious zealots intent on transforming the United States into a theocracy. They are now one step closer with the Republican Party installing a religious extremist as their House Speaker.

Mike Johnson is now one of the most googled person, since before his important position, most of America was unaware of his existence. A brief look is not encouraging: the man is a religious wacko, who has worked with conservative groups to ban abortion, which he blames for school shooting (it’s not the guns, you know). He also thinks that the embarrassingly dumb Creation Museum (which he fought to have funded with taxpayer money) is an important “educational” tool.

“The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth, that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events,” Johnson said in a 2021 interview with Ark Encounter founder Ken Ham while guest-hosting the radio show of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an evangelical activist group.

This man is now second in line to the American presidency. Is this a sign of more things to come, or will this act as a wakeup call for voters that religious nutbags are actively trying to destroy their democracy? Only time will tell.

Kazakhstan bans hijabs in schools

The topic of the hijab is a tricky issue for secular countries. On the one hand, it’s an obvious form of religiously mandated modesty, forced upon women. On the other, it can be (in limited cases) a free expression of one’s religious devotion, though unsurprisingly this freedom is rarely granted outside of Western countries.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, young women who dare to defy the practice are routinely harassed and sometimes beaten to death, as was the case a year ago, with 22 year old Mahsa Amini. Since her death, more women have defied the mandate to wear it, even as thousands are arrested and killed. The ones living in exile of this theocratic country are not fans of the headscarf, as it has become a symbol of both social and political revolution.

Paradoxically, in England, a recent statue was erected celebrating this vicious denial of female agency. This is the same country where honor killings have gone up by 81%. Many of these killings go unsolved, as the family is unwilling to cooperate with police investigations. How many other faiths can boast of this kind of this devotion?

Kazakhstan is facing the growing threat of religious upheaval. The country is 70% Islamic, although the government tries its best to stay secular. Their recent solution to the danger of sectarianism is inelegant, to say the least. They recently banned the wearing of the hijab in schools, arguing that wearing it represents a kind of religious  propaganda. Officials stressed that the ban does not apply outside of school, but already, the familiar cries of oppressions abound. In protest, hundreds of girls refused to show up to their schools, and one official was beaten by two religious thugs when she refused to allow a student wearing one to enter.

This kind of restriction only serves to feed the grievances of the religious, who always feel oppressed, even when their boot is on your neck. Free societies are always at danger of losing their commitment to liberty, since this can often be used as a tool to spread religious repression. This is what the hijab represents; the cross-section of freedom and oppression. The irony of course is that were Islam in power, the choice to wear it would disappear for everyone. The dilemma of freedom is a one sided affair, but it is our responsibility to preserve it.   Still, we cannot win this fight by compromising the values we hold dear. Instead, if schools really believe that religious symbols represent propaganda, the only inoculant against dogma is a good education. If there’s one place everyone can improve, it would be this.

Sweden rocked by terrorist attack

It began with a football match. Belgium had come to challenge their Swedish rivals, and the stadium was packed with fans eager to cheer on their teams, and by all accounts it was turning out to be a beautiful day. Arriving a little late to the game, a few stragglers were making their way inside the building when a bearded man approached and opened fire on them, killing two and seriously injuring a third. He then sped away on his moped.

Unsure if there were more and if this was part of a larger attack, the match was suspended, with the players going back to their locker rooms, and the terrified audience told to wait, rather than flee chaotically and add to the confusion. For agonizing hours these spectators were held captive, until finally near the stoke of midnight, they were allowed to leave.

A video had made its way to social media, with the suspect releasing a statement claiming to have killed others, and crediting his murderous act on his beloved religion of Islam. The Tunisian man had been living in the country illegally, his request for asylum having been denied back in 2020. Keep in mind that the country is not a troubled spot, and has accepted almost 10,000 asylum seekers themselves from other African countries.

While the country still reels from the shock, fears in the country are at an all time high. There are concern that others may try and mimic the act, especially with pro Palenstinian demonstrations happening throughout the country. It’s a tense time, and not doubt that the political repercussions of this act will be felt, not only in Sweden, but other European countries that realize that there are real dangers of violent spillover as the conflict between Israel and Palestine continues to escalate.

Churches forgiven for 8 Billion dollars in PPP Loans

We’d all collectively like to forget the pandemic that ruined our lives for those murky years. Many businesses were shut down as a result, though it would have been undoubtedly worse had it not been for the Paycheck Protection Program Loans, or PPP for short. This 800 billion dollar injection into the economy allowed businesses to continue to have money for payroll, which kept many of them afloat. However, a total lack of oversight, and the need for expediency meant that a huge amount of fraud occurred. The true scope is unknown, though there are estimates:

The SBA’s inspector general has identified $78.1 billion in potentially fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans, another Covid relief program for businesses. The Secret Service has its own estimate: $100 billion.

This basically implies over 12% of all the money loaned was done so fraudulently. Some have referred to the program as the biggest fraud in a generation (this would be true were it not for the Panama Papers, which dwarfs this little scheme). Billions of dollars worth of loans have since been forgiven, so long as businesses were able to prove that the money had been used for legitimate business expenses.

Do you know who didn’t have to prove any of this? Churches. Among the organizations that received loans were both urban and rural churches, large and small. While it’s true that some did pay them back, it’s estimated that over 8 billion dollars worth of loans have been forgiven so far.

Let me remind you that not one of these organizations has ever paid the taxes that funded these loans in the first place. Ignoring the fact that their free ride actually ends up costing us money; now Americans are literally paying for religions institutions that would have otherwise thankfully closed.

 

Poles becoming less religious

It’s not always doom and gloom on this site. Sometime, there is a little good news that trickles my way, just in time to prevent me from believing that there is only evil in the world. It would appear that Catholicism is steadily eroding in Poland.

A recent survey showed that roughly 70% of the population identified themselves as Catholic in the country. Now to us, this may still seem unusually high, but that number is down from the 87% that identified as such only a decade earlier. The main demographic to leave the church is, unsurprisingly, young people.

A 2021 study by leading Polish pollster CBOS suggests the number of regularly practicing Catholics aged 18-25 fell by more than half in the previous six years.

This is probably due to the fact that the church is heavily involved in politics, including being extremely close to the leading “Law and Justice” party (just the kind of fascist rhetoric that a favorite of those professing the Nicene Creed). While they may have dominated for the last few years, young people are unresponsive to their outdated, sexist, and barbaric ideals. With an aging populous, they have been able to maintain their grip on power, though this is surely not to last.

The next few decades will be interesting for Poland. As they begin to take a bigger role in European politics, their exposure to new ideas are bound to continue to force their repressive religious taskmasters to the wayside. Here’s hoping that they eventually cast off these sectarian shackles and dictate the future of the country free of the grip of Rome and its cronies.