Chrissy Stroop Profile picture
May 12, 2018 24 tweets 16 min read Read on X
1. Gather round, people of Twitter! It's time for How the #MartyredMajority Lives!

Returning to the last episode's theme of #WhiteChristiansBeingPersecuted, today's episode takes us to Hillsdale, Michigan.

(Credit to @NutMeg897 for the amazing hashtag #MartyredMajority!)
2. Now Hillsdale is home to a hardline conservative Christian "liberal arts" school called Hillsdale College. Incidentally, one of my high school friends from youth group went there. And guess who was invited to give this year's commencement address? Why, none other than @VP.
3. You can see Mike Pence's own thread relating his speech here:

In what follows, I am going to analyze (okay, mock) it blow-by-blow using screenshots. But first, a bit about Hillsdale College, where being persecuted is definitely #HowToEvangelical.
4. Hillsdale is one of those Christian "liberal arts" schools, that, like its cousin Wheaton, loves to play up its early history of doing decent things like admitting and graduating women and African-Americans. It's a great way to deflect from their more recent history.
5. Fun Facts:

Did you know that Hillsdale College has refused to take federal funding since the 1980s in order to avoid having to participate in affirmative action programs? It's true!

More recently, Hillsdale President Larry Arnn called minority students "dark ones."
6. Indeed, Hillsdale is the kind of place that even the evangelical-friendly @NYTimes is forced to describe as follows:

"Not surprisingly, the school’s “race blind” admissions policy results in an overwhelmingly white student body."

nytimes.com/2017/02/01/edu…

#EmptyThePews
7. In short, Hillsdale College is the perfect place for Vice President Mike Pence, or, as I like to call him, #VPDeplorable, to show up and be persecuted with his fellow white evangelicals. If you don't know how you can both be VP and be persecuted, please read on! #EmptyThePews
8. Alright, let's begin to break down Pence's speech itself.

Your education at Hillsdale has taught you to be a #MartyredMajority, and today, you will receive a diploma that has been minted in independence from non-discrimination laws and tempered with #ChristianAltFacts.
9. Even though we white Christians are severely persecuted, at the moment we are also extremely optimistic! I am going to lie and say that that means that America is optimistic and that that world is optimistic about America, because that's the #GoodChristian™ thing to do.
10. Faith, you see, is rising in America again, just like the South, and also a part of my anatomy that mother prefers I not mention in mixed company. Or, really, at all. But it's kind of hard not to when we persecuted white Christians are fucking America over (in a no homo way).
11. On the world stage, you've seen America disgraced and discredited by leading international institutions and our traditional allies, but I'm going to call that U.S. leadership and a win, because that's what #WhiteChristiansBeingPersecuted do!

#WhiteChurchQuiet #EmptyThePews
12. We can unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel if we want to. Remember, it's very likely that the Antichrist will use the UN to create a one-world government, so their oh-so-persecutory vote against our decision is just demonic influence. Plus they're jelly.
13. There are more job openings across America than any time in the history of this country [citation needed], but those of you not connected enough to work in the Christian-Industrial complex will be in fast food/retail, or maybe your uncle will finagle you something at his firm
14. The Trump admin has "been advancing the very principles that you learned here," which spurs disaffiliation from religion. psmag.com/news/is-the-ch…

Revelation 21:8 says liars go to hell, but ours is a God of infinite Mulligans for powerful persecuted white men.

#EmptyThePews
15. We live in a time when people are being really mean to the #MartyredMajority by demanding equal rights. This persecution shall not stand! We are both a persecuted minority and a moral majority, and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Faith is rising, dagnabbit!
16. Here I will throw in some more baseless #ChristianAltFacts to make us #WhiteChristiansBeingPersecuted feel better. I know, I know, lying is a sin, but see that thing about infinite Mulligans again.

#EmptyThePews #HowToEvangelical #WhiteChurchQuiet #Exvangelical
17. You can tell how fervently I believe this point about (radical white Christian) faith in America by how often I repeat it. I'm not insecure at all. Also, once we consolidate power, we will just force this to be true. Think we wouldn't? #YouDontKnowEvangelicals

#EmptyThePews
18. Yes, yes, a lot of Americans have always believed in God and been Christians. But #SorryNotSorry faith is only the "foundation of freedom" if you mean authoritarian, positive liberty, which deprives others of freedom of and from religion. Which of course you do. #EmptyThePews
19. I encourage you to fight the culture wars on behalf of us #PersecutedWhiteChristians. Go out there and take other people's rights away as the good Lord intended! That's what making America great again means!

#HowToEvangelical #Exvangelical #EmptyThePews #WhiteChurchQuiet
20. Your education in the (white far Right Christian version of) the "liberal arts" has empowered you to destroy the foundations of freedom for anyone but right-wing white Christians in America. I believe you have a calling from God to do this, because I really am that deplorable
21. The most heroic acts and greatest feats aren't the stuff of headlines and fame. You see, you work quietly within the system legally to deprive others of their rights. That's the smoothest and most preferable path to Gilead. Live what you've learned and we'll get there.
22. Congratulations to the Hillsdale College Class of 2018! Please work fast to take back this country for Christ, because if I'm being honest, which I usually prefer not to, a huge plurality of your generation is godless and a vast majority opposed to making America great again.
23. I hope this somewhat flippant little "translation" of #VPDeplorable's commencement speech at Hillsdale has been edifying. If you like my work and have the means to support it, please check out my Patreon! patreon.com/cstroop

#Exvangelical #EmptyThePews /end thread
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More from @C_Stroop

Oct 1, 2018
1. I just sent out this month's newsletter for all @Patreon patrons who support me with a $5 or higher monthly pledge. If you find my work valuable and would like the inside Stroop scoop, please consider joining them!

patreon.com/cstroop

#Exvangelical #SundayThoughts
2. At the end of the last academic year, I faced a choice--move back in with my parents in Indiana to pursue the freelance writing and speaking opportunities I was getting more of, or adjunct at the University of South Florida for low pay and no benefits. Or find something new.
3. Here's a thread with some of my life story up to the present. The travel to Austria next spring to do a semester of research mentioned in it fell through despite me having been promised it for years.

Read 15 tweets
Sep 29, 2018
Another reversal of an improvement for LGBTQ acceptance in an evangelical institution (World Vision is the other one I have in mind). Evangelicalism doesn’t change its patriarchal ways. It just casts out the people who would make it better.

#Exvangelical #EmptyThePews #Resist
Of course Wheaton might be the more direct parallel.

time.com/4233666/wheato…

#Exvangelical #EmptyThePews
For more on the authoritarian enforcement of hardline conservative orthodoxy at evangelical colleges, see my latest for @Playboy:

playboy.com/read/want-to-k…

#Exvangelical #EmptyThePews #SaturdayThoughts
Read 4 tweets
Sep 19, 2018
I also RT requests for financial help fairly often. Unfortunately, many in the #Exvangelical community have needs and are hampered by lack of education, meaningless degrees, or lack of professional experience outside evangelical institutions. The social costs of leaving are high.
I don’t want or expect anyone who can’t afford it to give, and I don’t want anyone to feel obligated; even just RTing those requests is immensely helpful. It is my hope that someday we’ll have some kind of foundation to fund #Exvangelical projects and meet needs. #EmptyThePews
Sometimes crowdfunding is all that stands between an #Exvangelical and homelessness, or being forced to return to a toxic, abusive living situation. That’s the uncomfortable reality. I do make small donations myself to almost every fundraising request I amplify.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 13, 2018
“We have to put citizens at the heart of our response to disinformation.” - Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) at the Indiana Council on World Affairs.
One thing social media sites should be doing is providing a simplified approach to their terms of service so that users can provide informed consent.

Enforcement of terms of service also needs to be consistent, and cannot he left to algorithms alone.
Social media platforms should step up to pay for human processes re: terms of service violations and appeals. Democracy is at stake.

They can also embrace more of an educational role with respect to information literacy.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 7, 2018
September is a big month! I’m at the airport on my way Florida for The #Exvangelical Community: Paths, Projects, Prospects. In the last two days I’ve filed two pieces with editors, and this week I did podcasts w/ @NiceMangos and @kitchencultpod (@haettinger and @mxdarkwater). #FF
Next weekend I’ll be in Charleston, South Carolina to give a talk for @CHShumanists, and am very much looking forward to that! October is also pretty full!



#Exvangelical #EmptyThePews #FridayFeeIing #FF
And next week I’ll also be doing a second podcast episode with @TwistedSisterds! It’ll be my second time on, and I sure had fun last time!

twistedsisterds.podbean.com

#Exvangelical #FF
Read 4 tweets
Aug 28, 2018
1. A few thoughts on Trump's dinner in honor of evangelicals, which I'll be discussing with @RickSmithShow later. Key context to consider is that fascism is concerned with defining who belongs to "the nation" or "the people," and who doesn't. Internal enemies (Others) are needed.
2. This dovetails neatly with the way in which fundamentalist believers police who does and does not count as a member of their religious confession. This is critical to understanding the Christian Right's politics of "religious freedom":

3. Indeed, as I have written elsewhere, "Fundamentalism is authoritarianism in microcosm, or on the margins. Fascism is essentially fundamentalism in power." The vast majority of white evangelicals are authoritarian and fundamentalist.

chrisstroop.com/2017/03/06/edu…

#EmptyThePews
Read 25 tweets

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