I like that his relationship with Lucy has been forcing Walky to actually think about the more fucked-up aspects of Christianity, rather than just making fun of Joyce whenever she says anything because everyone already knows they dislike each other.
I don’t know. I mean the song is wayyyy creepy and to be honest pretty much every major religion feels a little culty, but I don’t think the Indiana State University’s local church engages in the kind of coercive tactics to maintain and/or expand leadership that would define a cult. Even if they wanted to, I think board might have something to say about that once outcry led to them loosing salary bonuses.
Well, the rhetoric of religious and political cults alike is used by a lot more than just cults themselves precisely *because* it’s designed by cult leaders to proliferate beyond their groups. It’s meant to be unwittingly picked up and spread by ordinary people to legitimize cult ideologies, make said ideologies more palatable to those in America’s religious and political mainstream, and eventually recruit them.
It’s precisely because Christian/conservative cults are so effective at this that their techniques are used by a lot more than just the cults — they are small but disproportionately influential groups in the religious red state in which the comic is set.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
That *would* explain how the Republican party devolved into the dysfunctional hive mind everyone’s had to put up with today…..
Jerach
A lot of that also has to do with Reagan trying to tie the Republican party to the white religious right as a political ploy. He brought in that cult mentality on purpose.
“The” local church? Depending on how much walking they wanna do, Google indicates 8 churches around IU Bloomington they could be at.
True Survivor
Good catch, I should have done more research. It would make sense that IU is very different from my college, which had only one church.
drs
IUB has like 40,000 undergrads these days? Plus the grad students and whole rest of the town.
Mr D
jesus christ that is a university bigger than many of the towns the students came from
drs
Indeed it is! Discovered that during swing dance with some undergrads. For me it was the smallest town I’d lived in by a couple orders of magnitude, for her it was the biggest, also by a couple orders…
Skater Girl
My uni had like 20 times the population of the town I grew up in.
Mark
An understandable mistake. My wife’s college had a church on campus, one of their largest buildings in fact.
It’s United Methodist. That’s a mainline denomination, it’s a LGBTQ friendly congregation.
Probably a good idea to not confuse the real life United Methodist church in Bloomington with the one in the Dumbiverse, for privacy sake at a bare minimum. Also the UMC is apparently schisming right now.
Wait I thought they were supposed to be LGBTQ friendly?
I’d like more details if that’s possible. :/
Lee
I don’t want to spam with a link, but to cut and paste from the first Google hit for “UMC schism”, the gist of it seems to be that the denomination may vote in 2024 to rescind their stance banning gay marriage and gay ordained individuals, but in the meantime 1/5 of their churches have de-affiliated (over it? On both sides of the argument?) since 2019.
> More than 6,000 United Methodist congregations — a fifth of the U.S. total — have now received permission to leave the denomination amid a schism over theology and the role of LGBTQ people in the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination.
> Those figures emerge following the close of regular meetings in June for the denomination’s regional bodies, known as annual conferences. The departures began with a trickle in 2019 — when the church created a four-year window of opportunity for U.S. congregations to depart over LGBTQ-related issues — and cascaded to its highest level this year.
> Church law forbids the marriage or ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals,” but many conservatives have chosen to leave amid a growing defiance of those bans in many U.S. churches and conferences.
Held up by a tack or nail perhaps? And wall looks oddly door-like.
Felian
Another question is, are they LGBTIQIA+ friendly, or just mildly LG friendly?
HueSatLight
It depends on the congregation, there’s a group of United Methodist Churches that are however friendly this is.
Felian
Thanks!
That first bit sounds really great. If i’d still be a believer, this is what i’d advocate for. I like that they phrase it as “LGBTQ+ persons are a good expression of God’s diverse creation”. This makes sense theologically.
I’m not a believer anymore because there’s so many other red flags, but i see myself as an ally of everyone who’s faith runs along those lines 🙂
VicMortimer
“Believe what we tell you to, or when you die our god will torture you in a lake it make out of fire for the rest of eternity.”
That’s all of christianity. It’s not a nice cult.
Taffy
Yeah, well. My god can beat up your God, and makes me fireproof, so your lake has no effect on me. ?
RassilonTDavros
I mean, not necessarily. There are Christian denominations which specifically teach that Jesus saved all sinners from Hell by dying on the cross, regardless of whether they believe or not.
Of course, even then there’s usually an assumption (unspoken or otherwise) that all humanity would be going to Hell if not for Jesus’ intervention— and, more chillingly, that every single one of them would deserve it— so yeah, still at least somewhat culty.
jmsr7
If you can think of a christian belief, there is a denomination that disagrees with it.
Pretty much the only things all christians agree on are:
1) They think they’re christian.
2) They think Jesus was important.
Concolor44
Recent occurrences in some evangelical congregations seem to indicate that Jesus is no longer the primary focus. One pastor stated that after he preached on the Sermon on the Mount, some in the church wanted to know where he got that sissified nonsense. When explained that those were Jesus’s words, the congregant was dismissive, claiming that such liberal garbage wouldn’t work these days.
So, yeah. Cult. Just a different one.
Dinajoyce
There are several different views on Hell out there, but a large portion of Christian theologians today, even evangelical ones, don’t buy into the active torture version. Generally, Hell is defined as being separate from God. So, more like God not forcing people to spend eternity in God’s presence if they’re not a fan of God. I think most folks like a *little bit* of punishment in their view of Hell, because obviously Hitler and other nasty people (nasty in history or just nasty in your own life, like an abusive partner or something) deserve some punishment, but a lot of views of Hell focus a lot less on the punishment and more on the just “it actually sucks being separate from God.” Several versions, as mentioned above, involve Jesus’s death saving everyone or even people getting to change their minds after they decide Hell sucks. It’s still obviously an uncomfortable point of the Christian faith for a lot of folks, but there’s a lot more nuance to the actual theological study around it than just “burn forever, everybody who isn’t us”
1. Indiana State University is another institution, in Terre Haute.
2. IU is surrounded by churches. You can probably find just about any kind you’re looking for.
3. That song is creepy? You haven’t heard creepy!
There’s only one difference between a cult and a religion, and it’s the size of the organization. If Christianity only had 50 members, it would be called a cult. And that’s the only reason Scientology is called a religion as well.
my opinion of this is that it became a cult for Walky when he realized that Becky (who was absolutely raised in a cult, that has an ACTUAL BODY COUNT now) was so familiar with the tune.
Considering how much he ragged on Joyce over it before, i’m surprised it wasn’t more common knowledge to him but i guess you have to be there to realize it
makes me wonder if lucy would be ‘thirsty’ enough to abandon her religion for walky lol (tho i’ve heard the opposite is more common where christian girls are ‘seduced’ by some playboys or whatever)
tho i don’t think lucy would be as ‘far gone’ as joyce was (who is an atheist now so yeah), since i think her paretns were prolly more normal/stable about it, liek at one point i think lucy did like Harry Potter (tho not that it’s aged well), or at least had enough knowledge to ask Jen what her “hogswarts house” is, and i def believe a handful of christian parents would never have let their children read/watch harry potter
Seems equally likely that Joyce being so extreme is what prompted her eventual atheist transition, and Lucy, being much more mainstream to begin with, would find it harder to abandon religion altogether. Her beliefs being much more accepting make them, in turn, easier to accept (and thus harder to reject).
Allandrel
The beliefs themselves are often a major factor. “Either everything in the Bible literally happened (as we interpret it), or all of it is lies and God does not exist” does not hold up well to experiencing the real world.
Hence the “Evangelical Bubble” that Joyce grew up in, where anything that conflicts with their “worldview” (such as actually meeting someone with different beliefs) is strenuously avoided.
“Seduced” hell, every one is different. I’ve known girls who were quite willing to throw down with the right dude regardless of how they worshipped. (and no, they didn’t throw down with ME, either.)
It only takes a little rationalization to get Lucy in bed with Walky, no matter what she believes.
Daibhid C
Yeah, “Will the Christian girl abandon her faith to sleep with an atheist, since those are the only choices?” is a bit weird when Becky is right there on panel.
Walky’s smart enough not to have assumed Joyce’s fundie upbringing is what the whole of Christianity is like. Now he’s wondering if maybe he should have.
Pergola
Walky, they will expect you to do this every Sunday morning.
Maybe she’d be willing to compromise with Walky on a church with a different emphasis that averages distance from their comfort zones. The denomination I grew up in focuses much more on gratitude and engaging with the community.
Lol, this reminded me of when I learned about the Gnostic Order of the Serpent or whatever they were called, a heretical order in Europe wiped out in the 13th(?) century. They interpreted the whole “Jesus died for our sins” thing as encouragement to sin, so long as they properly repented afterward. The basic idea being that because Jesus died for your sins, if you don’t sin, then Jesus died for nothing, so it’s better to sin, confess, and repent than to avoid sin entirely as that would undermine Jesus’ sacrifice. IIRC they focused mostly on lust and gluttony, having regular feasts and orgies where they’d indulge heavily in sins of the flesh, and then they’d all crowd into confessional the next day to confess their sins and be told how to repent for them, then they’d serve their penance, and do it all over again next week. Honestly my favorite sect of Christianity and I really wish they could have somehow survived to this day.
I don’t know, this one would probably get pretty low cult scores in BITE theory. Not discouraging contact with non-cult members or discrediting alternate sources of information, not punishing members for leaving, guess we’ll have to see how much they push the collection plate in your face but it doesn’t look like they’re trying to take all the money they can from members. . .
I mean, early on in the recruitment phase, manipulation of behavior, information, etc. aint really that apparent from the get-go, and that’s by design. What goes on first is the *mental prep* as it were that will support the former and insulate it from criticism once inculcated to members on a case-by-case basis.
This is all very unfamilar to me. Is that like a play on ennui, or is there more of a religious thing as illustrated by the comic itself? And please accept my apologies for asking if this is more than folks are willing to delve into.
All good. No, it’s just a sexual innuendo. The song is about being lost in the spirit of God. However, Lucy wants Walky to be “in her” in a sexual way. Also, the alt-text uses xenoglossia (“speaking in tongues,” or sudden unplanned speech in an unknown language) as a euphemism for sexual things people could do with tongues.
“Ennui” would be pronounced differently: “Ahn-WEE” not “In you”.
Laura
For more on the sense of losing oneself “in God” as the song describes, see:
398 thoughts on “In you”
Ana Chronistic
Walky prefers the cult of the lamb
RassilonTDavros
I like that his relationship with Lucy has been forcing Walky to actually think about the more fucked-up aspects of Christianity, rather than just making fun of Joyce whenever she says anything because everyone already knows they dislike each other.
RassilonTDavros
This was not meant to be a reply. Gah.
Thag Simmons
I mean, still a good observation
True Survivor
I’ve heard that is delicious. Wait did you say cult?
Ragingagnostic
I’d prefer a cut of lamb to this.
Ana Chronistic
I was expecting at least one person to recognise that but ok
NGPZ
Re: last panel,
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
True Survivor
I don’t know. I mean the song is wayyyy creepy and to be honest pretty much every major religion feels a little culty, but I don’t think the Indiana State University’s local church engages in the kind of coercive tactics to maintain and/or expand leadership that would define a cult. Even if they wanted to, I think board might have something to say about that once outcry led to them loosing salary bonuses.
True Survivor
Wait unless you where talking about evangelism as a whole, in which case… probably.
NGPZ
Well, the rhetoric of religious and political cults alike is used by a lot more than just cults themselves precisely *because* it’s designed by cult leaders to proliferate beyond their groups. It’s meant to be unwittingly picked up and spread by ordinary people to legitimize cult ideologies, make said ideologies more palatable to those in America’s religious and political mainstream, and eventually recruit them.
It’s precisely because Christian/conservative cults are so effective at this that their techniques are used by a lot more than just the cults — they are small but disproportionately influential groups in the religious red state in which the comic is set.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
That *would* explain how the Republican party devolved into the dysfunctional hive mind everyone’s had to put up with today…..
Jerach
A lot of that also has to do with Reagan trying to tie the Republican party to the white religious right as a political ploy. He brought in that cult mentality on purpose.
drs
“The” local church? Depending on how much walking they wanna do, Google indicates 8 churches around IU Bloomington they could be at.
True Survivor
Good catch, I should have done more research. It would make sense that IU is very different from my college, which had only one church.
drs
IUB has like 40,000 undergrads these days? Plus the grad students and whole rest of the town.
Mr D
jesus christ that is a university bigger than many of the towns the students came from
drs
Indeed it is! Discovered that during swing dance with some undergrads. For me it was the smallest town I’d lived in by a couple orders of magnitude, for her it was the biggest, also by a couple orders…
Skater Girl
My uni had like 20 times the population of the town I grew up in.
Mark
An understandable mistake. My wife’s college had a church on campus, one of their largest buildings in fact.
HueSatLight
It’s United Methodist. That’s a mainline denomination, it’s a LGBTQ friendly congregation.
Probably a good idea to not confuse the real life United Methodist church in Bloomington with the one in the Dumbiverse, for privacy sake at a bare minimum. Also the UMC is apparently schisming right now.
NGPZ
Heh. Any particular wedge issues driving the schism?
Casi
just LGBTQ+ rights, and whether or not we will be allowed into heaven
NGPZ
Wait I thought they were supposed to be LGBTQ friendly?
I’d like more details if that’s possible. :/
Lee
I don’t want to spam with a link, but to cut and paste from the first Google hit for “UMC schism”, the gist of it seems to be that the denomination may vote in 2024 to rescind their stance banning gay marriage and gay ordained individuals, but in the meantime 1/5 of their churches have de-affiliated (over it? On both sides of the argument?) since 2019.
> More than 6,000 United Methodist congregations — a fifth of the U.S. total — have now received permission to leave the denomination amid a schism over theology and the role of LGBTQ people in the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination.
> Those figures emerge following the close of regular meetings in June for the denomination’s regional bodies, known as annual conferences. The departures began with a trickle in 2019 — when the church created a four-year window of opportunity for U.S. congregations to depart over LGBTQ-related issues — and cascaded to its highest level this year.
> Church law forbids the marriage or ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals,” but many conservatives have chosen to leave amid a growing defiance of those bans in many U.S. churches and conferences.
NGPZ
thx that makes sense, yeeeeaaaah ?
HueSatLight
The writing is on the wall, as it were.
Dorje Sylas
Held up by a tack or nail perhaps? And wall looks oddly door-like.
Felian
Another question is, are they LGBTIQIA+ friendly, or just mildly LG friendly?
HueSatLight
It depends on the congregation, there’s a group of United Methodist Churches that are however friendly this is.
Felian
Thanks!
That first bit sounds really great. If i’d still be a believer, this is what i’d advocate for. I like that they phrase it as “LGBTQ+ persons are a good expression of God’s diverse creation”. This makes sense theologically.
I’m not a believer anymore because there’s so many other red flags, but i see myself as an ally of everyone who’s faith runs along those lines 🙂
VicMortimer
“Believe what we tell you to, or when you die our god will torture you in a lake it make out of fire for the rest of eternity.”
That’s all of christianity. It’s not a nice cult.
Taffy
Yeah, well. My god can beat up your God, and makes me fireproof, so your lake has no effect on me. ?
RassilonTDavros
I mean, not necessarily. There are Christian denominations which specifically teach that Jesus saved all sinners from Hell by dying on the cross, regardless of whether they believe or not.
Of course, even then there’s usually an assumption (unspoken or otherwise) that all humanity would be going to Hell if not for Jesus’ intervention— and, more chillingly, that every single one of them would deserve it— so yeah, still at least somewhat culty.
jmsr7
If you can think of a christian belief, there is a denomination that disagrees with it.
Pretty much the only things all christians agree on are:
1) They think they’re christian.
2) They think Jesus was important.
Concolor44
Recent occurrences in some evangelical congregations seem to indicate that Jesus is no longer the primary focus. One pastor stated that after he preached on the Sermon on the Mount, some in the church wanted to know where he got that sissified nonsense. When explained that those were Jesus’s words, the congregant was dismissive, claiming that such liberal garbage wouldn’t work these days.
So, yeah. Cult. Just a different one.
Dinajoyce
There are several different views on Hell out there, but a large portion of Christian theologians today, even evangelical ones, don’t buy into the active torture version. Generally, Hell is defined as being separate from God. So, more like God not forcing people to spend eternity in God’s presence if they’re not a fan of God. I think most folks like a *little bit* of punishment in their view of Hell, because obviously Hitler and other nasty people (nasty in history or just nasty in your own life, like an abusive partner or something) deserve some punishment, but a lot of views of Hell focus a lot less on the punishment and more on the just “it actually sucks being separate from God.” Several versions, as mentioned above, involve Jesus’s death saving everyone or even people getting to change their minds after they decide Hell sucks. It’s still obviously an uncomfortable point of the Christian faith for a lot of folks, but there’s a lot more nuance to the actual theological study around it than just “burn forever, everybody who isn’t us”
Mark
1. Indiana State University is another institution, in Terre Haute.
2. IU is surrounded by churches. You can probably find just about any kind you’re looking for.
3. That song is creepy? You haven’t heard creepy!
Hexx
There’s only one difference between a cult and a religion, and it’s the size of the organization. If Christianity only had 50 members, it would be called a cult. And that’s the only reason Scientology is called a religion as well.
David M Willis
This is offensive. Dumbing of Age doesn’t take place at Indiana STATE University! That’s in Terre Haute!!!!!
Belegcam
Yeah, the cult there is devoted to Larry Bird.
Clif
Here Vigo again.
Allen Alberti
my opinion of this is that it became a cult for Walky when he realized that Becky (who was absolutely raised in a cult, that has an ACTUAL BODY COUNT now) was so familiar with the tune.
YordleJay
You stumbled into the point.
Organized religion is ALL a cult
anon
Considering how much he ragged on Joyce over it before, i’m surprised it wasn’t more common knowledge to him but i guess you have to be there to realize it
makes me wonder if lucy would be ‘thirsty’ enough to abandon her religion for walky lol (tho i’ve heard the opposite is more common where christian girls are ‘seduced’ by some playboys or whatever)
tho i don’t think lucy would be as ‘far gone’ as joyce was (who is an atheist now so yeah), since i think her paretns were prolly more normal/stable about it, liek at one point i think lucy did like Harry Potter (tho not that it’s aged well), or at least had enough knowledge to ask Jen what her “hogswarts house” is, and i def believe a handful of christian parents would never have let their children read/watch harry potter
Michael
Seems equally likely that Joyce being so extreme is what prompted her eventual atheist transition, and Lucy, being much more mainstream to begin with, would find it harder to abandon religion altogether. Her beliefs being much more accepting make them, in turn, easier to accept (and thus harder to reject).
Allandrel
The beliefs themselves are often a major factor. “Either everything in the Bible literally happened (as we interpret it), or all of it is lies and God does not exist” does not hold up well to experiencing the real world.
Hence the “Evangelical Bubble” that Joyce grew up in, where anything that conflicts with their “worldview” (such as actually meeting someone with different beliefs) is strenuously avoided.
All-Purpose Guru
“Seduced” hell, every one is different. I’ve known girls who were quite willing to throw down with the right dude regardless of how they worshipped. (and no, they didn’t throw down with ME, either.)
It only takes a little rationalization to get Lucy in bed with Walky, no matter what she believes.
Daibhid C
Yeah, “Will the Christian girl abandon her faith to sleep with an atheist, since those are the only choices?” is a bit weird when Becky is right there on panel.
Daibhid C
Walky’s smart enough not to have assumed Joyce’s fundie upbringing is what the whole of Christianity is like. Now he’s wondering if maybe he should have.
Pergola
Walky, they will expect you to do this every Sunday morning.
Mark
Maybe she’d be willing to compromise with Walky on a church with a different emphasis that averages distance from their comfort zones. The denomination I grew up in focuses much more on gratitude and engaging with the community.
someone
Dunno about it not being an orgy cult. “My dick is in you, lord, in you, it’s in you”
Mel
That IS what I assumed he found troubling.
“Wait isn’t this song really horny for church?”
Psychie
Lol, this reminded me of when I learned about the Gnostic Order of the Serpent or whatever they were called, a heretical order in Europe wiped out in the 13th(?) century. They interpreted the whole “Jesus died for our sins” thing as encouragement to sin, so long as they properly repented afterward. The basic idea being that because Jesus died for your sins, if you don’t sin, then Jesus died for nothing, so it’s better to sin, confess, and repent than to avoid sin entirely as that would undermine Jesus’ sacrifice. IIRC they focused mostly on lust and gluttony, having regular feasts and orgies where they’d indulge heavily in sins of the flesh, and then they’d all crowd into confessional the next day to confess their sins and be told how to repent for them, then they’d serve their penance, and do it all over again next week. Honestly my favorite sect of Christianity and I really wish they could have somehow survived to this day.
Amelie Wikström
I don’t know, this one would probably get pretty low cult scores in BITE theory. Not discouraging contact with non-cult members or discrediting alternate sources of information, not punishing members for leaving, guess we’ll have to see how much they push the collection plate in your face but it doesn’t look like they’re trying to take all the money they can from members. . .
NGPZ
I mean, early on in the recruitment phase, manipulation of behavior, information, etc. aint really that apparent from the get-go, and that’s by design. What goes on first is the *mental prep* as it were that will support the former and insulate it from criticism once inculcated to members on a case-by-case basis.
Sirksome
What about my student loan debt? Is that in the lord too?
Angel
if only all the church donations could be spent into actually giving back to the community.
or all teh students passive aggressively ‘pay’ for their debt in those fake money bills wit hthose bible passages on them
butts
yeah sorry
jeffepp
There’s a number of hymns that make me uncomfortable. An all of the new crap.
Bryy
wow willis
that strip title.
Laura
Yup. That’s some cunning linguistics, there.
BarerMender
I saw what you did there.
Dara
“for a nickel.”
Decidedly Orthogonal
This is all very unfamilar to me. Is that like a play on ennui, or is there more of a religious thing as illustrated by the comic itself? And please accept my apologies for asking if this is more than folks are willing to delve into.
Laura
All good. No, it’s just a sexual innuendo. The song is about being lost in the spirit of God. However, Lucy wants Walky to be “in her” in a sexual way. Also, the alt-text uses xenoglossia (“speaking in tongues,” or sudden unplanned speech in an unknown language) as a euphemism for sexual things people could do with tongues.
“Ennui” would be pronounced differently: “Ahn-WEE” not “In you”.
Laura
For more on the sense of losing oneself “in God” as the song describes, see:
Ego death
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
The biblical letters of Paul call it being “dead to the world”.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Amazingly thorough reply. Thank you very much.
Laura
Oh, you are so welcome! Languages are my favorite thing. Thank you for asking!
DailyBrad
God asking if it’s in yet because of the shrinking hope and strength levels.
Proxiehunter
And he’s not even hearing a pre-pubescent child sing about being homesick for heaven.
Jo_Cubstar
Yup yup yup.
John Campbell