I meant in this strip in particular, not in general. In general Becky is awesome.
Stella
My vibe is that, Becky is trying to let Joyce off the hook. Like, if what Joyce needs right now is to attend a church that has the cultural and ritual elements she’s familiar with, even if that church is anti-LGBT, Becky is trying to give her permission. Which seems incredibly kind, if maybe not necessarily wise.
I suspect that Becky is a Theist– that is, she believes in God, but not any particular religion, not deep down. She was unworried about the spiritual consequences of coming out as gay and leaving her Christian college; she’s not threatened by evolution; none of the ritual’s in Bryan’s church bothered her.
Becky wants what’s best for Joyce, and, as she sees it, what is best for Joyce might be attending an evangelical church and tuning out the anti-gay stuff. I don’t really agree that that’s best for Joyce (or anyone). But, I can see why Becky might think that, and it speaks of her love of Joyce that she tries to offer this permission.
Stella
Dunno why I typed “Bryan,”; I meant Jacob. >.<
Time Sage
Wait, that’s a thing? *Suddenly has a word for his beliefs now*
Yumi
I agree with this interpretation of Becky’s comment, and it also makes me wonder how she’s feeling. When I was their age and had friends who were finding themselves religiously, I was definitely like, “If this is what you want, I will support the heck out of you” even when it was somewhat breaking my heart.
Durandal_1707
Isn’t that what a Deist is? I always understood “theist” as a general term for anyone that believes in *any* deity.
Stella
Oh, sorry! I thought they were synonyms.
Dandi_Andi
Deism is a belief in a non-interventionist God. God exists, but does not or cannot interact with our lives or the world in any way. Believing that God answers lesbian prayers (or any prayers at all) means she is probably not a deist.
Theist may be the closest word there is to describe Becky simply because, while she believes in a theistic God, she doesn’t have any particular doctrinal beliefs to put her in a more specific category. She may find herself at home among Unitarian Universalists, but she may just find a UU church to be just another place to go on a Sunday.
thejeff
A little more complicated, since I’m sure Becky’s conception of God is still a very Christian one, while Theist goes beyond that to cover pretty much anything religious.
I mean, she is a theist, but so are Joyce, Jacob and Raidah. She might not have specific enough doctrinal beliefs to pick a specific Christian denomination, but I’d be shocked if they weren’t specific enough to rule out Hinduism or Islam or Judaism.
Even among Christian sects, you’d think she’d want to find one that didn’t conflict over her only known doctrine – God answers lesbian prayers. Preferably one with guitars.
Kryss LaBryn
See, and I figure pretty much all gods are real; but I only follow my Norse ones. 😀
TemperaryObsessor
If you live in the Stargate universe that’s the way to go. I remember one episode where there was debate whether the million to one chance thing the main characters did actually worked or if it was close enough to working that the Norse gods could intervene.
Deathjavu
I think you’ve pretty much nailed Becky’s motivation, but I am 100% sure Joyce herself would not be ok with “attending an evangelical church and tuning out the anti-gay stuff.” She’s way too invested in the expressed beliefs of her religion.
Stella
I think you’re right.
thejeff
Seems right to me. I can’t really imagine Becky attending an anti-gay church on her own for long, but she’d do it for Joyce.
(I can kind of see a montage of Becky standing up and yelling “I am a lesbian” in the middle of services and being run out of church after church until she finds one where they just accept her. All with guitars, of course.)
Deathjavu
Are they running her out because she’s a lesbian, or because she was shouting during the sermon? 😛
If it were a Quaker meeting, Becky would totally be allowed to shout “I am a lesbian!” in the middle of the service. That’s actually kind of a thing that Quakers do; they sit throughout most of the service in total silence, but they stand up when they feel “moved by the spirit” to say something that they’ve been feeling strongly – whether it’s a thought, a question, or an answer. If she felt a spiritual need to let her community know she’s a lesbian, they’d probably accept it.
Songs and music aren’t terribly frequent in Quaker services, but they’re not forbidden either. Becky might have to bring her own guitar, or settle for joining some Quakers as they play retro protest songs at a peace rally or anti-pollution protest. Not kidding; my Quaker meeting has had a bunch of events where they protested a pipeline, prayed for peace, and spoke out against Donald Trump, and guitar music happened at all of those. Quakers are pretty much less-ostentatious hippies.
Deanatay
Some churches (southern Baptist, for example) _expect_ people to shout during the sermon – it’s kind of a ‘filled with fervor’ kind of thing.
Deanatay
What Heroes said – ‘moved by the spirit’. Quakers do it, too, huh?
Terry
You have a good interpretation. I saw her comment another way. To me, it sounded more like: “I believe that God loves me no matter what anyone else says about it and I can put up with narrow-minded people if I have to. And to be quite honest- your church is boring.” I agree that it was likely said for Joyce’s benefit, but more to let her know that feeling connected to God doesn’t mean that she has to feel connected to his congregation. I think it was encouragement for Joyce to find a church that speaks to her and worry less about the beliefs of the individuals.
I also agree, though, that Joyce probably will less and less find comfort in an anti-LGBT church because the sermons that address the topic will make her feel frustrated and uncomfortable the more she grows in tolerance. I think what she needs to do is keep exploring her options of churches until she finds one that has the tolerance of Jacob’s and the celebratory tone of her old one.
truk2
You guys are over thinking Becky. She’s not talking about selecting and support faith groups. She’s simply saying which activities she likes better. She’d rather be hearing some rock than get stuck kneeling. doctrine and supportiveness is also good and important, but that’s not going to make her enjoy the music any better.
Becky. It is what it is, so live in the moment.
She’s choosing guitars over no guitars. She explicitly says that the religion itself is wrong about her, and that she and God are cool, no matter what anyone says.
Yumi
Yeah, but the guitars in this case come with a whole bunch of other stuff. Personally, I think Becky might be saying what she is in part to comfort Joyce.
I do hope, though, that Becky can find an inclusive church with guitars some day.
Deathjavu
She’s choosing guitars and rejection over no guitars and inclusion, in response to Jacob posing that dichotomy. And…choosing the guitars and rejection is a weird, seemingly self-disrespecting choice. Extra weird given how self-confident she is in her personal religious views.
Doctor_Who
I don’t think the guitars and inclusion are mutually exclusive, though.
Joyce likes the message that Jacob’s church has, but dislikes how formal it was. Jacob thinks that the message is the important thing.
Becky isn’t literally saying “I’m going back to my old church where I can be hated by everyone”, because she clearly isn’t. She’s just saying that she doesn’t like the formality either.
Deathjavu
The guitars and inclusion aren’t mutually exclusive, but that’s how they were being discussed and that’s what Becky responded to with her choice. It’s hard not to take it that way in this context.
Stella
But it’s not really about guitars. Joyce says she didn’t “feel God in it.” The dichotomy might be, “a place where you feel God, but your friend is rejected,” versus, “a place where your friend is accepted, but feels spiritually empty to you.” Becky is being flippant, but she’s trying to give Joyce the option to attend the former without guilt.
GoblinScribe
Nawww, Becky is saying “I don’t care about the community of church.” That’s what this is really about. She doesn’t seem to feel any close connection to any church communities right now, so she prefers to just worship and have fun doing it.
I don’t study religion, so I may be overgeneralizing, but most religions have various sects, including Christianity, and each sect has a different opinion on what their religion is about. They decide what they believe and how they worship. Becky’s a Christian- she believes God exists and loves her (and presumably most, if not all other people), and she doesn’t believe that God is homophobic, or believe in Creationism. And you might say that she’s just picking and choosing what being a Christian is, but so is everybody else.
Woobie
“What do you mean you have musical instruments accompanying the singing?!”
Deanatay
Most religions have at least one – pipe organ is the ‘traditional’ one.
I think it’s just that she likes the “fun” church better than the one that stands on ceremony. Nothing wrong with that, either – she’d just need to find one that wouldn’t believe she’s condemned to Hell for not being straight.
She’s choosing her religion, which does not actually include the homophobia*, and rejecting mainstream US Christianity as unimportant. I’d say that’s pretty damn good. Hell, as a queer Christian/ Christian-adjacent, reading that speech bubble made me feel a little better too.
*I’m talking about what’s actually in the religion, not what the mainstream US Church has turned it into. Because I think its the former she’s referring to, with the whole (“God loves me no matter what”)
Becky has shown us pretty clearly she’s not going to return to her abusive and cult-like Christian community.
Jon Rich
It’s a lot more than just the mainstream US Church. Homophobia is deeply ingrained in Christianity around the world. There are more and more branches that are getting past that, but there’s been an anti-homosexual crusade in the Church for a long, long time.
Jon Rich
I’m amused, because both Mary and I would agree on that point, but for different objectives. Having her as my grav is actually pretty funny.
Well…. duh? There’s been lots of gross stuff done in the name of Christianity over the years which either directly contradicts the Bible or takes a passage from it and twists it up into something hateful. And it still goes on, just like when people do hateful violent things in the name of other religions. (Even though I don’t think those religions actually support those actions either. Its why I get so mad when people act afraid of Muslims. They’re nice people and what I know of their religion is pretty darn positive.)
I’m just here to talk about the comic and how I relate to it, so I specified US because that’s where both Becky and my experiences are. And I still believe that the religion itself isn’t inherently homophobic, just that there are too many people who use any opportunity to be selfish and violent.
Stella
Homophobia is such a frustrating aspect to many religions. I read a textbook once that was a comparison of nine major world religions teachings on sexuality, family structure, and gender; each chapter gave overviews of stances and scriptural bases for stances, then how those beliefs played out in different countries (for example, places where that religion is majority vs. minority). The nine religions were Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Other Polytheism.
While there were differing beliefs about the purpose of sexuality, all of the eight most mainstream either expressly condemned same-sex relationships, or did not officially sanctify them. The only sanctified same-sex relationships were in the scriptures of some “Other Polytheism” religions.
In terms of the thousands-of-years-old histories of these religions, there were no theological movements to sanctify same-sex relationships until the past 100 years or so, often far less.
It’s so baffling to me, even though I can somewhat understand the rationales. But, still–so few commonalities across the board, but anti-same-sex relationships is one of them.
This is a little odd for me to say, but I’m kinda getting the feeling that Joyce’s faith is really shallow. I know she lives it and breathes it completely, but her life before college was so sheltered that I kind of feel like her college experience is the first time she’s ever questioned any of this – that it’s the first time she’s ever thought that maybe, just MAYBE, her faith wasn’t what she thought it was.
It seems pretty clear to me that Becky went through that a long time ago, probably back when she was realizing herself that she wasn’t straight. And she seems to have her head on her shoulders. She knows what she believes and has a rock-solid foundation. Jacob, also, seems pretty comfortable and confident with his faith.
Joyce… she grew up sheltered, with a skewed understanding of Christianity and a lot of wrong theology. She was taught to be ashamed of her sexuality and fear any sin, among many other things. Heck, she even says here that she’s defining her experience not by the teaching or by the devotion or fellowship, but by her -feelings-. I thought she had a solid foundation, but the paint on her rock-solid foundation has been removed, and it’s all styrofoam underneath.
… I’m assuming I know where this is going, as Willis has stated that Joyce’s experience is somewhat autobiographical. And I’m sad. I’ve been through something like this when I started college; I realized that the God I thought I believed in was nothing but fluff and fancy words and empty rituals. But it drove me to try to get a REAL relationship with God and actually understand Him for who He is without any skewed church telling me what to think. And Joyce… well…
Her Christianity is core to her identity; it literally makes her the adorable little cinnamon bun that we all love. And if she loses that, then this becomes an even darker, more unhappy story. Maybe with its moments of light here and there. But losing faith in everything that you ever believed in really isn’t a cheerful subject, regardless of your religion.
I wouldn’t really say that Joyce’s Christianity is at the core of her identity. Its obviously a huge part of her life, but her sense of justice,determination, and loyalty seem to be more important to her. Just look at how she reacted to Becky coming out to her. When she saw that telling Becky she had made a mistake made her friend feel worse, she changed tact and embraced her for who she was, regardless of whether God was ok with it or not. Afterwards she found a way to reconcile her God with Becky’s sexuality through research, but she made it pretty clear before then that she was loyal to her friend before her religion.
I’m not saying that becoming an atheist wouldn’t be horribly traumatic for Joyce, but I think she’ll be able to come through with her cheerful optimistic personality in tact. Dorothy could help fix her up with atheist friendly philosophies to give her a reason to get up in the morning, and she’ll probably adopt social justice or something like that as her new passion to fill the gap left by Christianity.
CJ
Isn’t religion all about feelings, mainly the feeling of belonging? Of being part of something greater than yourself?
And right now, Joyce gets that feeling not with her old church and we saw her freaking out with the service she just attended so there weren’t many moments where a feeling of belonging could come up.
Evangelical churches are good in creating movements of connection that’s a mayor part of their success.
I think Becky recognizes this, and she seems to find it more important to have the connection (which has no relation to the words being said) than the right words.
Wright
No, not really; at least, not at a foundational level. You could argue that worship is based off of feelings, but again, that’s a bit shallow, and only a small portion of one’s experience as a Christian.
When it comes down to it, a religion is very close to a philosophy: a way that you see the world and interpret what is around you, with the main difference being that the religion is based off of a metaphysical understanding of the world, and philosophical being purely physical. A church (or temple, mosque, etc.) is essentially a group of like-minded people who agree on the same basic philosophy and who wish to gather together in order to pay respect, honor, serve, and learn about the deity they serve. As a result of doing these tasks, the worshipper may feel fulfilled. But the purpose of going to church, being with those believers, and doing those actions isn’t self-motivated; it’s outwardly motivated. You do these things for the deity you serve, not for some personal reward.
This usually seems extremely strange and awkward to an outsider (Dorothy wondering where she should look while singing to the invisible man in the sky), and oftentimes people try to rationalize it by saying that religion is a means to some other end – feeling good about oneself, feeling like they have a place in the world, inner peace and calm, a greater community, et cetera. And all of those things are good and should not be discounted. But to think of them as the end and the purpose of the action, instead of simply as the outcome of a life genuinely lived with a purpose for one’s god or one’s belief, is to put the cart before the horse. The Christian ‘feels good’ because they believe in God; they don’t believe in God in order to ‘feel good.’
Aesin
I’d say this *can* be true but usually isn’t: that for each person who’s thought about their faith and what it means to them, and their community, there are a hundred who are blindly going through the motions because that’s what they’ve done their whole life. Their sense of community comes from sharing space with people who share their social norms, and then their religion is a thin veneer of deity over those social norms.
thejeff
And yet, from the outside, it very much looks like many churches try to create that good feeling, through well known psychological tactics – that’s what all the ritual, affirmation, singing etc does.
Jenny Islander
This debate has been going on for generations in the Church. One side: “Stop chasing a feeling. Seriously, stop it. Holy rollering and falling down in the aisles and everybody with their hands in the air and the preacher up there pacing back and forth and yelling? Anybody can make a big noise, but y’all are missing a lot of actual content. The liturgy is there so that we can do things as a group that reinforce our beliefs, and it also reminds us of stuff we might otherwise leave out. Being transported in the Spirit will happen on its own schedule.” Other side: “Why are you sitting there reading words out of a book? Why do all your hymns sound so formal? What’s with all the doctrine talk from the pulpit? Is there no spontaneity, is there no joy? Why can’t people just speak from the heart? Why can’t we unite in joyful worship?”
Personally I’m on the formal side because I really dislike it when music and preaching try to make me feel something on cue.
Wright
Same here. Music and lyrics are intended specifically to produce a specific emotion. If my religious experience is no deeper than that of a ten-year-old watching Elsa belt out “Let It Go,” then it’s nothing but manufactured emotion.
thejeff
Which is the point. Whatever the internal debates about it, it works. It gets butts in the seats. Churches that do so have more members, more power, more influence. Pretty much regardless of theology.
StClair
The thing is, IMO (as an occasionally-cynical non-believer), that’s exactly the experience that a lot of believers are chasing and that some churches are selling. They don’t want to contemplate the details of scripture, they just want to feel. To be swept up in literal religious ecstasy. A lot of them, again IMO, do actually believe in some deity or another, but they’ve connected the worship of Him with gettin’ high and being part of a community.
CJ
I beg to differ on the “agree on the same basic philosophy” part.
The church offers some sort of explanation of the world and how one should conduct oneself theirin, but where I grew up, people went to church because that was something you did. And my catholic relatives in Ireland came in the flavours of “more catholic than the pope” and “Jesus never said anything about birth control” and they all attended the same church.
To my mind, organized religion is a thing that organizes life (from what I read, in the more rural areas of the US, the churches are involved in anything from village festivals to providing food for people in need and there is not really anything else that might provide social,cohesion). Without religion helping to organize life, organization of people might not have gone beyond city level.
In my mind, the wish to belong and be secure (and safe) are the needs that drive religion, and how this is actually done and which tenets one believes in used to be a matter of not too much choice. This has changed with faster communication and stuff, where you might learn about other churches or religions and chose one that fits your life more. But that’s a thing that’s rather recent in history. Before, most people tried to find a place within the framework of their religion because being outside of it had severe social punishments. Some who felt (again: feeling) strongly about something might have started and tried to reform their church, but that was uphill work. Maybe the US developed this slightly differently because most of the early settlers were dissenting sects of Christiandom so they had a stronger tendency when not of the same opinion to start a new church than the people who remained in Europe?
Wright
From what you’re talking about, you’re referring to religion as a mostly civic institution, that has a purpose specifically for social organization, and castigation for those who are outside of it. And from a certain perspective, I can see where you’re coming from. Certainly, in the more Bible-belt areas of the US, there’s a certain society that expects you to go to church as the “thing you do.” And I can’t argue the fact that in those societies, there might be absolutely nothing more to being a member of a faith then just hanging out with your social circle.
And there’s certainly a large amount of history, especially with the Catholic church before the reformation, in which Christianity was used as a method of social organization and control for a society that just didn’t have much in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire. So what you’re saying certainly has merit.
But for many professing believers, they don’t do it because they ‘feel’ they need to do it or because society dictates it. If that was the case, then you wouldn’t have those small pockets of persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria and India and China, or people who go to churches in more left-leaning regions in which Christianity is the exception, rather than the rule. To them, the religion -is- a complete worldview, how they define existence and how they orient the direction of their life. A church is more than just a social organization; it’s where you spend the most important time of the day.
And feelings only have a small portion of it. Martin Luther and the other reformers didn’t take on the Catholic church because they ‘felt bad’, they argued for reformation and later splintered specifically due to intelligent criticisms and critiques of the Church; areas in which it was contradicting its own teachings or the words of Jesus. It was intense logical theological debate, which continues to this day between numerous religious denominations and sects. And while Europe has cooled in the last three hundred years into essentially being set in its religious ways, it once was the hotbed of intense theological debate; where people regularly fought and died for what they believe. America is such a turmultous mixing pot of every different religious belief specifically because those people who felt extremely different than others left Europe and settled in the New World.
You don’t become a martyr for a source of civic organization, or for an emotional connection to a band with guitars. You become a martyr for a cause that you believe in so strongly that it’s worth more than yourself to uphold it.
Joyce is realizing that not all beliefs that people hold dear are good and right, and that a good number of them reside with the doctrines that she currently (or used to) hold dear. Yet she’s already been trained to believe that there’s only one way to feel close to God: specifically from the type of church that she grew up in. That’s the kind of feeling you get when your parents are so over-concerned about the specific doctrine that they believe that they jump from church to church just to get the perfect one. She’s left with this feeling not that her God is the only way, but that this extremely narrow way of understanding Him is the only way. And if that’s removed, she has nothing.
Bravo to Jacob for trying to broaden Joyce’s horizons. But if she isn’t able to reconcile his church and his faith as being the same as the one she had, and quite probably more grounded and ‘correct’ then what she grew up in, then all of her parents’ teaching essentially is driving her to NOT be a Christian.
Good job, Mom and Dad!
thejeff
Instead you get religious wars about trivial aspects of doctrine. Which pretty much proves the point: even then for most people, the religions are about identity and tribalism. Those emotional connections are what people fight for. They’re what unscrupulous leaders use to motivate their followers.
Those pockets of persecuted Christians (or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or ….) aren’t there because they looked around and researched and debated various doctrines and picked one that stood up to their most rigorous scrutiny: They’re their because that’s their identity. That’s the culture and the religion they were born into. Persecution makes the persecuted group cling more closely to its identity and traditions.
And that’s the way it’s been throughout most of history, in nearly every culture. The culture has its overwhelmingly dominant religion, with only a few outsider groups following their own traditions. Actual religious pluralism is actually a pretty modern (post-Enlightenment?) thing, at least in the West.
Stella
I dunno, I’m kinda with CJ on this one.
I’m a Christian, with pretty specific beliefs that I arrived at over years of study and prayer and thought. I was pretty sure I was an atheist for a while, and I studied the tenets of Jainism and other non-monotheistic religions that rang true to me in some ways, before ultimately coming back to Christianity (albeit one with quite a serious theological difference than the one I was raised in). I currently attend an Episcopalian church even though I don’t agree with 100% of their doctrine.
Aaaaaand MOST people I know, at every single church or temple I’ve ever been too, don’t think all that much about cosmology or theology. Church is a place where they feel they belong. Temple provides resources and does good work in their community. A thoughtful sermon in their pov illustrates how to be a good person more than it answers “why”.
I get along with these people! But it’s also why I’ll go for months or even a year without attending a church; instead, I’ll listen to sermons online and pray on my own. I feel guilty for skipping out on eucharist service so often, which is what usually motivates me to go back. But I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and the community aspect of church is the main draw for most.
By my estimate, more people have left churches over interpersonal conflict or not fitting in than because they had a serious doctrinal disagreement. This is the norm, not the exception.
Yeah, Becky seems really flippant about going to any religious service, even if they could accost her for her sexuality. I wouldn’t feel safe attending just any service myself.
There’s something about having the church you grew up in and trusted tell you that you ought not to exist that will shear off a whole bunch of reverence for religion in general.
I look forward to new variants of Joyce Freak-Out-Face ™ when Becky becomes agnostic, and then atheist.
Yumi
I don’t see that happening. I’m with commenters from previous comics saying that if one of the two were to become agnostic or atheist, it would be Joyce, though I don’t see that happening at least in the timeline of this comic.
Deathjavu
Agreed, I was making a joke. Becky doesn’t seem to need the…consistency of message and logical cohesion (?must be a better way to phrase that?) that Joyce does, which makes her apparently fine with gay-hating fundie church but keeps leading Joyce to these awkward internal conflics, as in panel 5.
Honestly though, changes in core beliefs take years, so yeah, not in the timeline of this comic.
Actually, I feel that Joyce very well could become an atheist in the timeline of this comic. I think its already been hinted at that she is struggling with faith issues, she’s just doing her best to ignore them. For instance, in the strip when Becky surprised Joyce in her room, Joyce was asking God to give her a sign, saying his voice had been very quiet recently. (Sorry, I don’t know how to create links).This phenomenon is something I’ve heard happens to some people as they are on the brink of leaving their faith. Becky turning up just then may have helped her stave of those doubts, but they are probably still there in the back of her mind. I don’t see why Willis would foreshadow something like that if he isn’t going to follow through on it eventually.
Sure, in real life changes in core beliefs like this do generally take years, but this is not real life. This is a comic, the main story line of which centres on a fundamentalist Christian having her beliefs challenged by her first experience of secular life. Not exploring her feelings towards deconverting would seem like a missed opportunity to me, when her changing many of her beliefs is a running theme of the comic. Besides, if she can have changed her deeply held beliefs about gay people in such a short space of time, I see no reason why she couldn’t become an atheist unusually quickly either.
Mr. Bulbmin
I can’t speak to Joyce, given that this comic has done tons of things I never expected, but I know that my own experience with losing religion was a very quick process. I just looked at all the pomp and unnecessary ceremony of the Catholic Church that Is grown up with, the ridiculous “trying-too-hard” nature of evangelical churches my cousins were gravitating towards, and several other religions that I was introduced to through other people, and I got the creeping suspicion that it was all just pointless scrabbling for any sense of community that people would accept just about anything . . . which triggered my quick egress from religion almost entirely. So . . .
thejeff
I’d be shocked if Joyce didn’t become atheist by the end – at least if the comic comes to a proper conclusion. Assuming that’s where she’s headed, it’s the necessary end of her character arc. You don’t leave that kind of thing hanging as “yeah, she’s still struggling with it, but she leaves the church some years later”.
It’s certainly possible she’ll go in a different direction, but some kind of resolution will be needed.
And frankly, Joyce’s faith is such that a break can’t really be a gradual process. It’s all tightly tied together in a way that makes it strong, but brittle. Undo a couple threads and the whole thing falls apart. She had a rant earlier on about how if evolution is true, everything she’s been taught is a lie. Evolution->no Adam and Eve -> no Original Sin
drs
Many think the reverse is more likely: Becky seems flexible in her religion, while Joyce is rigid, and also semi-autobiographical of Willis. Which leads to athesit Joyce.
319 thoughts on “How you really feel”
Ana Chronistic
“I’m gonna get inta Heaven no matter what, so of COURSE I want the cushiest ride”
King Daniel
Gravatar is fitting.
Doctor_Who
Becky’s attitude is wonderful. #1 Role Model.
Deathjavu
Is it though? She’s actively choosing the religion that doesn’t think she’s people.
Deathjavu
I meant in this strip in particular, not in general. In general Becky is awesome.
Stella
My vibe is that, Becky is trying to let Joyce off the hook. Like, if what Joyce needs right now is to attend a church that has the cultural and ritual elements she’s familiar with, even if that church is anti-LGBT, Becky is trying to give her permission. Which seems incredibly kind, if maybe not necessarily wise.
I suspect that Becky is a Theist– that is, she believes in God, but not any particular religion, not deep down. She was unworried about the spiritual consequences of coming out as gay and leaving her Christian college; she’s not threatened by evolution; none of the ritual’s in Bryan’s church bothered her.
Becky wants what’s best for Joyce, and, as she sees it, what is best for Joyce might be attending an evangelical church and tuning out the anti-gay stuff. I don’t really agree that that’s best for Joyce (or anyone). But, I can see why Becky might think that, and it speaks of her love of Joyce that she tries to offer this permission.
Stella
Dunno why I typed “Bryan,”; I meant Jacob. >.<
Time Sage
Wait, that’s a thing? *Suddenly has a word for his beliefs now*
Yumi
I agree with this interpretation of Becky’s comment, and it also makes me wonder how she’s feeling. When I was their age and had friends who were finding themselves religiously, I was definitely like, “If this is what you want, I will support the heck out of you” even when it was somewhat breaking my heart.
Durandal_1707
Isn’t that what a Deist is? I always understood “theist” as a general term for anyone that believes in *any* deity.
Stella
Oh, sorry! I thought they were synonyms.
Dandi_Andi
Deism is a belief in a non-interventionist God. God exists, but does not or cannot interact with our lives or the world in any way. Believing that God answers lesbian prayers (or any prayers at all) means she is probably not a deist.
Theist may be the closest word there is to describe Becky simply because, while she believes in a theistic God, she doesn’t have any particular doctrinal beliefs to put her in a more specific category. She may find herself at home among Unitarian Universalists, but she may just find a UU church to be just another place to go on a Sunday.
thejeff
A little more complicated, since I’m sure Becky’s conception of God is still a very Christian one, while Theist goes beyond that to cover pretty much anything religious.
I mean, she is a theist, but so are Joyce, Jacob and Raidah. She might not have specific enough doctrinal beliefs to pick a specific Christian denomination, but I’d be shocked if they weren’t specific enough to rule out Hinduism or Islam or Judaism.
Even among Christian sects, you’d think she’d want to find one that didn’t conflict over her only known doctrine – God answers lesbian prayers. Preferably one with guitars.
Kryss LaBryn
See, and I figure pretty much all gods are real; but I only follow my Norse ones. 😀
TemperaryObsessor
If you live in the Stargate universe that’s the way to go. I remember one episode where there was debate whether the million to one chance thing the main characters did actually worked or if it was close enough to working that the Norse gods could intervene.
Deathjavu
I think you’ve pretty much nailed Becky’s motivation, but I am 100% sure Joyce herself would not be ok with “attending an evangelical church and tuning out the anti-gay stuff.” She’s way too invested in the expressed beliefs of her religion.
Stella
I think you’re right.
thejeff
Seems right to me. I can’t really imagine Becky attending an anti-gay church on her own for long, but she’d do it for Joyce.
(I can kind of see a montage of Becky standing up and yelling “I am a lesbian” in the middle of services and being run out of church after church until she finds one where they just accept her. All with guitars, of course.)
Deathjavu
Are they running her out because she’s a lesbian, or because she was shouting during the sermon? 😛
TheHeroesOfCRASH
If it were a Quaker meeting, Becky would totally be allowed to shout “I am a lesbian!” in the middle of the service. That’s actually kind of a thing that Quakers do; they sit throughout most of the service in total silence, but they stand up when they feel “moved by the spirit” to say something that they’ve been feeling strongly – whether it’s a thought, a question, or an answer. If she felt a spiritual need to let her community know she’s a lesbian, they’d probably accept it.
Songs and music aren’t terribly frequent in Quaker services, but they’re not forbidden either. Becky might have to bring her own guitar, or settle for joining some Quakers as they play retro protest songs at a peace rally or anti-pollution protest. Not kidding; my Quaker meeting has had a bunch of events where they protested a pipeline, prayed for peace, and spoke out against Donald Trump, and guitar music happened at all of those. Quakers are pretty much less-ostentatious hippies.
Deanatay
Some churches (southern Baptist, for example) _expect_ people to shout during the sermon – it’s kind of a ‘filled with fervor’ kind of thing.
Deanatay
What Heroes said – ‘moved by the spirit’. Quakers do it, too, huh?
Terry
You have a good interpretation. I saw her comment another way. To me, it sounded more like: “I believe that God loves me no matter what anyone else says about it and I can put up with narrow-minded people if I have to. And to be quite honest- your church is boring.” I agree that it was likely said for Joyce’s benefit, but more to let her know that feeling connected to God doesn’t mean that she has to feel connected to his congregation. I think it was encouragement for Joyce to find a church that speaks to her and worry less about the beliefs of the individuals.
I also agree, though, that Joyce probably will less and less find comfort in an anti-LGBT church because the sermons that address the topic will make her feel frustrated and uncomfortable the more she grows in tolerance. I think what she needs to do is keep exploring her options of churches until she finds one that has the tolerance of Jacob’s and the celebratory tone of her old one.
truk2
You guys are over thinking Becky. She’s not talking about selecting and support faith groups. She’s simply saying which activities she likes better. She’d rather be hearing some rock than get stuck kneeling. doctrine and supportiveness is also good and important, but that’s not going to make her enjoy the music any better.
Becky. It is what it is, so live in the moment.
Doctor_Who
She’s choosing guitars over no guitars. She explicitly says that the religion itself is wrong about her, and that she and God are cool, no matter what anyone says.
Yumi
Yeah, but the guitars in this case come with a whole bunch of other stuff. Personally, I think Becky might be saying what she is in part to comfort Joyce.
I do hope, though, that Becky can find an inclusive church with guitars some day.
Deathjavu
She’s choosing guitars and rejection over no guitars and inclusion, in response to Jacob posing that dichotomy. And…choosing the guitars and rejection is a weird, seemingly self-disrespecting choice. Extra weird given how self-confident she is in her personal religious views.
Doctor_Who
I don’t think the guitars and inclusion are mutually exclusive, though.
Joyce likes the message that Jacob’s church has, but dislikes how formal it was. Jacob thinks that the message is the important thing.
Becky isn’t literally saying “I’m going back to my old church where I can be hated by everyone”, because she clearly isn’t. She’s just saying that she doesn’t like the formality either.
Deathjavu
The guitars and inclusion aren’t mutually exclusive, but that’s how they were being discussed and that’s what Becky responded to with her choice. It’s hard not to take it that way in this context.
Stella
But it’s not really about guitars. Joyce says she didn’t “feel God in it.” The dichotomy might be, “a place where you feel God, but your friend is rejected,” versus, “a place where your friend is accepted, but feels spiritually empty to you.” Becky is being flippant, but she’s trying to give Joyce the option to attend the former without guilt.
GoblinScribe
Nawww, Becky is saying “I don’t care about the community of church.” That’s what this is really about. She doesn’t seem to feel any close connection to any church communities right now, so she prefers to just worship and have fun doing it.
Shiro
What Becky secretly wants is to be at a rock concert, not a church.
Agemegos
There’s a lot of it about.
J
Looking for God at a rock concert.
Because God rocks!
Jed!
I don’t study religion, so I may be overgeneralizing, but most religions have various sects, including Christianity, and each sect has a different opinion on what their religion is about. They decide what they believe and how they worship. Becky’s a Christian- she believes God exists and loves her (and presumably most, if not all other people), and she doesn’t believe that God is homophobic, or believe in Creationism. And you might say that she’s just picking and choosing what being a Christian is, but so is everybody else.
Woobie
“What do you mean you have musical instruments accompanying the singing?!”
Deanatay
Most religions have at least one – pipe organ is the ‘traditional’ one.
Stu
I think it’s just that she likes the “fun” church better than the one that stands on ceremony. Nothing wrong with that, either – she’d just need to find one that wouldn’t believe she’s condemned to Hell for not being straight.
Pylgrim
She has already chose a religion (or more exactly an interpretation) that suits her. All she is choosing here are the trappings she prefers.
Lorien Inksong
She’s choosing her religion, which does not actually include the homophobia*, and rejecting mainstream US Christianity as unimportant. I’d say that’s pretty damn good. Hell, as a queer Christian/ Christian-adjacent, reading that speech bubble made me feel a little better too.
*I’m talking about what’s actually in the religion, not what the mainstream US Church has turned it into. Because I think its the former she’s referring to, with the whole (“God loves me no matter what”)
Becky has shown us pretty clearly she’s not going to return to her abusive and cult-like Christian community.
Jon Rich
It’s a lot more than just the mainstream US Church. Homophobia is deeply ingrained in Christianity around the world. There are more and more branches that are getting past that, but there’s been an anti-homosexual crusade in the Church for a long, long time.
Jon Rich
I’m amused, because both Mary and I would agree on that point, but for different objectives. Having her as my grav is actually pretty funny.
Lorien Inksong
Well…. duh? There’s been lots of gross stuff done in the name of Christianity over the years which either directly contradicts the Bible or takes a passage from it and twists it up into something hateful. And it still goes on, just like when people do hateful violent things in the name of other religions. (Even though I don’t think those religions actually support those actions either. Its why I get so mad when people act afraid of Muslims. They’re nice people and what I know of their religion is pretty darn positive.)
I’m just here to talk about the comic and how I relate to it, so I specified US because that’s where both Becky and my experiences are. And I still believe that the religion itself isn’t inherently homophobic, just that there are too many people who use any opportunity to be selfish and violent.
Stella
Homophobia is such a frustrating aspect to many religions. I read a textbook once that was a comparison of nine major world religions teachings on sexuality, family structure, and gender; each chapter gave overviews of stances and scriptural bases for stances, then how those beliefs played out in different countries (for example, places where that religion is majority vs. minority). The nine religions were Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Other Polytheism.
While there were differing beliefs about the purpose of sexuality, all of the eight most mainstream either expressly condemned same-sex relationships, or did not officially sanctify them. The only sanctified same-sex relationships were in the scriptures of some “Other Polytheism” religions.
In terms of the thousands-of-years-old histories of these religions, there were no theological movements to sanctify same-sex relationships until the past 100 years or so, often far less.
It’s so baffling to me, even though I can somewhat understand the rationales. But, still–so few commonalities across the board, but anti-same-sex relationships is one of them.
Irredentist
I mean the whole reason Evangelical churches use electric guitars is to lure in the youth. So I’m not sure buying into it is really the best idea.
Wright
I completely agree with you.
This is a little odd for me to say, but I’m kinda getting the feeling that Joyce’s faith is really shallow. I know she lives it and breathes it completely, but her life before college was so sheltered that I kind of feel like her college experience is the first time she’s ever questioned any of this – that it’s the first time she’s ever thought that maybe, just MAYBE, her faith wasn’t what she thought it was.
It seems pretty clear to me that Becky went through that a long time ago, probably back when she was realizing herself that she wasn’t straight. And she seems to have her head on her shoulders. She knows what she believes and has a rock-solid foundation. Jacob, also, seems pretty comfortable and confident with his faith.
Joyce… she grew up sheltered, with a skewed understanding of Christianity and a lot of wrong theology. She was taught to be ashamed of her sexuality and fear any sin, among many other things. Heck, she even says here that she’s defining her experience not by the teaching or by the devotion or fellowship, but by her -feelings-. I thought she had a solid foundation, but the paint on her rock-solid foundation has been removed, and it’s all styrofoam underneath.
… I’m assuming I know where this is going, as Willis has stated that Joyce’s experience is somewhat autobiographical. And I’m sad. I’ve been through something like this when I started college; I realized that the God I thought I believed in was nothing but fluff and fancy words and empty rituals. But it drove me to try to get a REAL relationship with God and actually understand Him for who He is without any skewed church telling me what to think. And Joyce… well…
Her Christianity is core to her identity; it literally makes her the adorable little cinnamon bun that we all love. And if she loses that, then this becomes an even darker, more unhappy story. Maybe with its moments of light here and there. But losing faith in everything that you ever believed in really isn’t a cheerful subject, regardless of your religion.
Hannah
I wouldn’t really say that Joyce’s Christianity is at the core of her identity. Its obviously a huge part of her life, but her sense of justice,determination, and loyalty seem to be more important to her. Just look at how she reacted to Becky coming out to her. When she saw that telling Becky she had made a mistake made her friend feel worse, she changed tact and embraced her for who she was, regardless of whether God was ok with it or not. Afterwards she found a way to reconcile her God with Becky’s sexuality through research, but she made it pretty clear before then that she was loyal to her friend before her religion.
I’m not saying that becoming an atheist wouldn’t be horribly traumatic for Joyce, but I think she’ll be able to come through with her cheerful optimistic personality in tact. Dorothy could help fix her up with atheist friendly philosophies to give her a reason to get up in the morning, and she’ll probably adopt social justice or something like that as her new passion to fill the gap left by Christianity.
CJ
Isn’t religion all about feelings, mainly the feeling of belonging? Of being part of something greater than yourself?
And right now, Joyce gets that feeling not with her old church and we saw her freaking out with the service she just attended so there weren’t many moments where a feeling of belonging could come up.
Evangelical churches are good in creating movements of connection that’s a mayor part of their success.
I think Becky recognizes this, and she seems to find it more important to have the connection (which has no relation to the words being said) than the right words.
Wright
No, not really; at least, not at a foundational level. You could argue that worship is based off of feelings, but again, that’s a bit shallow, and only a small portion of one’s experience as a Christian.
When it comes down to it, a religion is very close to a philosophy: a way that you see the world and interpret what is around you, with the main difference being that the religion is based off of a metaphysical understanding of the world, and philosophical being purely physical. A church (or temple, mosque, etc.) is essentially a group of like-minded people who agree on the same basic philosophy and who wish to gather together in order to pay respect, honor, serve, and learn about the deity they serve. As a result of doing these tasks, the worshipper may feel fulfilled. But the purpose of going to church, being with those believers, and doing those actions isn’t self-motivated; it’s outwardly motivated. You do these things for the deity you serve, not for some personal reward.
This usually seems extremely strange and awkward to an outsider (Dorothy wondering where she should look while singing to the invisible man in the sky), and oftentimes people try to rationalize it by saying that religion is a means to some other end – feeling good about oneself, feeling like they have a place in the world, inner peace and calm, a greater community, et cetera. And all of those things are good and should not be discounted. But to think of them as the end and the purpose of the action, instead of simply as the outcome of a life genuinely lived with a purpose for one’s god or one’s belief, is to put the cart before the horse. The Christian ‘feels good’ because they believe in God; they don’t believe in God in order to ‘feel good.’
Aesin
I’d say this *can* be true but usually isn’t: that for each person who’s thought about their faith and what it means to them, and their community, there are a hundred who are blindly going through the motions because that’s what they’ve done their whole life. Their sense of community comes from sharing space with people who share their social norms, and then their religion is a thin veneer of deity over those social norms.
thejeff
And yet, from the outside, it very much looks like many churches try to create that good feeling, through well known psychological tactics – that’s what all the ritual, affirmation, singing etc does.
Jenny Islander
This debate has been going on for generations in the Church. One side: “Stop chasing a feeling. Seriously, stop it. Holy rollering and falling down in the aisles and everybody with their hands in the air and the preacher up there pacing back and forth and yelling? Anybody can make a big noise, but y’all are missing a lot of actual content. The liturgy is there so that we can do things as a group that reinforce our beliefs, and it also reminds us of stuff we might otherwise leave out. Being transported in the Spirit will happen on its own schedule.” Other side: “Why are you sitting there reading words out of a book? Why do all your hymns sound so formal? What’s with all the doctrine talk from the pulpit? Is there no spontaneity, is there no joy? Why can’t people just speak from the heart? Why can’t we unite in joyful worship?”
Personally I’m on the formal side because I really dislike it when music and preaching try to make me feel something on cue.
Wright
Same here. Music and lyrics are intended specifically to produce a specific emotion. If my religious experience is no deeper than that of a ten-year-old watching Elsa belt out “Let It Go,” then it’s nothing but manufactured emotion.
thejeff
Which is the point. Whatever the internal debates about it, it works. It gets butts in the seats. Churches that do so have more members, more power, more influence. Pretty much regardless of theology.
StClair
The thing is, IMO (as an occasionally-cynical non-believer), that’s exactly the experience that a lot of believers are chasing and that some churches are selling. They don’t want to contemplate the details of scripture, they just want to feel. To be swept up in literal religious ecstasy. A lot of them, again IMO, do actually believe in some deity or another, but they’ve connected the worship of Him with gettin’ high and being part of a community.
CJ
I beg to differ on the “agree on the same basic philosophy” part.
The church offers some sort of explanation of the world and how one should conduct oneself theirin, but where I grew up, people went to church because that was something you did. And my catholic relatives in Ireland came in the flavours of “more catholic than the pope” and “Jesus never said anything about birth control” and they all attended the same church.
To my mind, organized religion is a thing that organizes life (from what I read, in the more rural areas of the US, the churches are involved in anything from village festivals to providing food for people in need and there is not really anything else that might provide social,cohesion). Without religion helping to organize life, organization of people might not have gone beyond city level.
In my mind, the wish to belong and be secure (and safe) are the needs that drive religion, and how this is actually done and which tenets one believes in used to be a matter of not too much choice. This has changed with faster communication and stuff, where you might learn about other churches or religions and chose one that fits your life more. But that’s a thing that’s rather recent in history. Before, most people tried to find a place within the framework of their religion because being outside of it had severe social punishments. Some who felt (again: feeling) strongly about something might have started and tried to reform their church, but that was uphill work. Maybe the US developed this slightly differently because most of the early settlers were dissenting sects of Christiandom so they had a stronger tendency when not of the same opinion to start a new church than the people who remained in Europe?
Wright
From what you’re talking about, you’re referring to religion as a mostly civic institution, that has a purpose specifically for social organization, and castigation for those who are outside of it. And from a certain perspective, I can see where you’re coming from. Certainly, in the more Bible-belt areas of the US, there’s a certain society that expects you to go to church as the “thing you do.” And I can’t argue the fact that in those societies, there might be absolutely nothing more to being a member of a faith then just hanging out with your social circle.
And there’s certainly a large amount of history, especially with the Catholic church before the reformation, in which Christianity was used as a method of social organization and control for a society that just didn’t have much in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire. So what you’re saying certainly has merit.
But for many professing believers, they don’t do it because they ‘feel’ they need to do it or because society dictates it. If that was the case, then you wouldn’t have those small pockets of persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria and India and China, or people who go to churches in more left-leaning regions in which Christianity is the exception, rather than the rule. To them, the religion -is- a complete worldview, how they define existence and how they orient the direction of their life. A church is more than just a social organization; it’s where you spend the most important time of the day.
And feelings only have a small portion of it. Martin Luther and the other reformers didn’t take on the Catholic church because they ‘felt bad’, they argued for reformation and later splintered specifically due to intelligent criticisms and critiques of the Church; areas in which it was contradicting its own teachings or the words of Jesus. It was intense logical theological debate, which continues to this day between numerous religious denominations and sects. And while Europe has cooled in the last three hundred years into essentially being set in its religious ways, it once was the hotbed of intense theological debate; where people regularly fought and died for what they believe. America is such a turmultous mixing pot of every different religious belief specifically because those people who felt extremely different than others left Europe and settled in the New World.
You don’t become a martyr for a source of civic organization, or for an emotional connection to a band with guitars. You become a martyr for a cause that you believe in so strongly that it’s worth more than yourself to uphold it.
Joyce is realizing that not all beliefs that people hold dear are good and right, and that a good number of them reside with the doctrines that she currently (or used to) hold dear. Yet she’s already been trained to believe that there’s only one way to feel close to God: specifically from the type of church that she grew up in. That’s the kind of feeling you get when your parents are so over-concerned about the specific doctrine that they believe that they jump from church to church just to get the perfect one. She’s left with this feeling not that her God is the only way, but that this extremely narrow way of understanding Him is the only way. And if that’s removed, she has nothing.
Bravo to Jacob for trying to broaden Joyce’s horizons. But if she isn’t able to reconcile his church and his faith as being the same as the one she had, and quite probably more grounded and ‘correct’ then what she grew up in, then all of her parents’ teaching essentially is driving her to NOT be a Christian.
Good job, Mom and Dad!
thejeff
Instead you get religious wars about trivial aspects of doctrine. Which pretty much proves the point: even then for most people, the religions are about identity and tribalism. Those emotional connections are what people fight for. They’re what unscrupulous leaders use to motivate their followers.
Those pockets of persecuted Christians (or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or ….) aren’t there because they looked around and researched and debated various doctrines and picked one that stood up to their most rigorous scrutiny: They’re their because that’s their identity. That’s the culture and the religion they were born into. Persecution makes the persecuted group cling more closely to its identity and traditions.
And that’s the way it’s been throughout most of history, in nearly every culture. The culture has its overwhelmingly dominant religion, with only a few outsider groups following their own traditions. Actual religious pluralism is actually a pretty modern (post-Enlightenment?) thing, at least in the West.
Stella
I dunno, I’m kinda with CJ on this one.
I’m a Christian, with pretty specific beliefs that I arrived at over years of study and prayer and thought. I was pretty sure I was an atheist for a while, and I studied the tenets of Jainism and other non-monotheistic religions that rang true to me in some ways, before ultimately coming back to Christianity (albeit one with quite a serious theological difference than the one I was raised in). I currently attend an Episcopalian church even though I don’t agree with 100% of their doctrine.
Aaaaaand MOST people I know, at every single church or temple I’ve ever been too, don’t think all that much about cosmology or theology. Church is a place where they feel they belong. Temple provides resources and does good work in their community. A thoughtful sermon in their pov illustrates how to be a good person more than it answers “why”.
I get along with these people! But it’s also why I’ll go for months or even a year without attending a church; instead, I’ll listen to sermons online and pray on my own. I feel guilty for skipping out on eucharist service so often, which is what usually motivates me to go back. But I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and the community aspect of church is the main draw for most.
By my estimate, more people have left churches over interpersonal conflict or not fitting in than because they had a serious doctrinal disagreement. This is the norm, not the exception.
timemonkey
I’d sneak in my own grape juice.
JessWitt
In a flask in a hollowed-out hymn book.
Opus the Poet
Your grav is so on for that comment,
JessWitt
And to think I wanted to change it today.
Stephen Bierce
*plays Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel” on the stereo of a nearby parked car*
Dudewhotalkswaytoomuch
Go home Walky.
Deathjavu
It’s interesting that Joyce looks like she’s considering this a lot harder than Becky
JessWitt
Yeah, Becky seems really flippant about going to any religious service, even if they could accost her for her sexuality. I wouldn’t feel safe attending just any service myself.
Briny
There’s something about having the church you grew up in and trusted tell you that you ought not to exist that will shear off a whole bunch of reverence for religion in general.
Deathjavu
She is dating Dina…
I look forward to new variants of Joyce Freak-Out-Face ™ when Becky becomes agnostic, and then atheist.
Yumi
I don’t see that happening. I’m with commenters from previous comics saying that if one of the two were to become agnostic or atheist, it would be Joyce, though I don’t see that happening at least in the timeline of this comic.
Deathjavu
Agreed, I was making a joke. Becky doesn’t seem to need the…consistency of message and logical cohesion (?must be a better way to phrase that?) that Joyce does, which makes her apparently fine with gay-hating fundie church but keeps leading Joyce to these awkward internal conflics, as in panel 5.
Honestly though, changes in core beliefs take years, so yeah, not in the timeline of this comic.
Hannah
Actually, I feel that Joyce very well could become an atheist in the timeline of this comic. I think its already been hinted at that she is struggling with faith issues, she’s just doing her best to ignore them. For instance, in the strip when Becky surprised Joyce in her room, Joyce was asking God to give her a sign, saying his voice had been very quiet recently. (Sorry, I don’t know how to create links).This phenomenon is something I’ve heard happens to some people as they are on the brink of leaving their faith. Becky turning up just then may have helped her stave of those doubts, but they are probably still there in the back of her mind. I don’t see why Willis would foreshadow something like that if he isn’t going to follow through on it eventually.
Sure, in real life changes in core beliefs like this do generally take years, but this is not real life. This is a comic, the main story line of which centres on a fundamentalist Christian having her beliefs challenged by her first experience of secular life. Not exploring her feelings towards deconverting would seem like a missed opportunity to me, when her changing many of her beliefs is a running theme of the comic. Besides, if she can have changed her deeply held beliefs about gay people in such a short space of time, I see no reason why she couldn’t become an atheist unusually quickly either.
Mr. Bulbmin
I can’t speak to Joyce, given that this comic has done tons of things I never expected, but I know that my own experience with losing religion was a very quick process. I just looked at all the pomp and unnecessary ceremony of the Catholic Church that Is grown up with, the ridiculous “trying-too-hard” nature of evangelical churches my cousins were gravitating towards, and several other religions that I was introduced to through other people, and I got the creeping suspicion that it was all just pointless scrabbling for any sense of community that people would accept just about anything . . . which triggered my quick egress from religion almost entirely. So . . .
thejeff
I’d be shocked if Joyce didn’t become atheist by the end – at least if the comic comes to a proper conclusion. Assuming that’s where she’s headed, it’s the necessary end of her character arc. You don’t leave that kind of thing hanging as “yeah, she’s still struggling with it, but she leaves the church some years later”.
It’s certainly possible she’ll go in a different direction, but some kind of resolution will be needed.
And frankly, Joyce’s faith is such that a break can’t really be a gradual process. It’s all tightly tied together in a way that makes it strong, but brittle. Undo a couple threads and the whole thing falls apart. She had a rant earlier on about how if evolution is true, everything she’s been taught is a lie. Evolution->no Adam and Eve -> no Original Sin
drs
Many think the reverse is more likely: Becky seems flexible in her religion, while Joyce is rigid, and also semi-autobiographical of Willis. Which leads to athesit Joyce.