Sex, Mom, and God by Frank Schaeffer

book jacket with family photo and Bible verseSex, Mom, and God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway by Frank Schaefer(2011)

I listened to most of this on CD so don’t have hard copy to illustrate how truly bizarre the author’s mother was in particular. It was interesting, even amusing in parts, but kind of tiresome after a certain point, so when it came due at the library I did not renew or seek out the hard copy.

Basically, among my chief recollections (from a few weeks ago now), was that he was 8 years old when his mother described the sex act to him and how she had to fuck his dad every night whether she wanted to or not because otherwise he would go elsewhere for sex. This was partly to explain why she had to travel with the dad to do evangelical work and leave the kids home, so the dad would not screw another woman. She also explained diaphragms and how they and the rest of the activity proceeded in clinical detail. While I have to admire that at least she didn’t tell him the stork story or cabbage patch, I am not sure that repeated deeply intimate matters were suitable discussion for him at that age and younger, or, for that matter, older!

It is shocking to me the kind of cognitive dissonance that has to take place in his mind to still “love Jesus” given this strange upbringing. But good for him for overcoming such circumstances. He is definitely a good writer, so it is interesting that he could find humor in such a childhood. But wow, between this and the Claire Conner book on her religious nut/John Bircher upbringing, and now with the Quiverfull crap selling children for brides meant to breed until they die starting when “breasts develop” (15 or younger!), one has to start accepting the fact that there is a difference between CULTS and RELIGION but not much. Just some are weirder and more personally harmful than others. Mormonism was a cult that survived a brief period of religious madness in the 1800s by moving west to isolation. And then the splinter Jehovah’s Witness group. And the infamous mass suicide group in recent decades. And the Waco cult. Plus anyone with a few bucks and a desire to become a tax free preacher and have a “seed” or prosperity gospel business to rake in millions for the preacher at the expense of the deluded believers.

Religion is poison.

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