RE: Stupid things religious people say
May 5, 2025 at 8:05 am
(This post was last modified: May 5, 2025 at 8:06 am by Fake Messiah.)
TikTok's "Jesus glow" trend exposes the emptiness of social media religion
The still-unbanned social media site is currently awash in before-and-after videos from people purporting to be recent converts, celebrating their physical transformation from alleged misfit to their current "Jesus glow" status. There's the former goth who now sports a prairie dress look.
Or a bodybuilder who has now shrunk herself into a more petite figure, complete with blonder hair.
![[Image: Jglow.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/SRxv4TpZ/Jglow.jpg)
A close watch of the videos suggests people looked fine in their former lives as heretics. They often rely on tricks like lighting and filters to exaggerate the contrast between then and now. Mostly, they're just dressing differently. These folks aren't objectively better-looking in their "after" images. They're just conforming more to a right-wing vision of proper gender presentation, often one with white supremacist overtones, as the "Jesus glow" effect on hair frequently requires the aid of a bleach bottle. It's a level of conformity that McCoy semi-joked verges on "gender religion."
It's also profoundly silly. The "proof" of one's connection to God is that you have good looks.
A lot of online Christian content is shallow self-help, presented in a way that's not so different from what beauty influencers or dating coaches offer. In my reporting on the popular "Girls Gone Bible" podcast, readers can see the same forces in action. Their podcast initially seems not just apolitical, but focused primarily on the self, with titles like "What Men Look For In A Wife" or "Honest Convo About Anxiety." It feels like another variation on the endless online content on self-improvement, but with a sprinkling of scripture on top of the talk about dating or improving your daily mood. But, of course, the hosts are selling a far-right agenda with this soft focus framing, as evidenced by their tight relationship with Donald Trump and the rigidly conservative dictates on sexual behavior they prescribe for their audience.
Its special MAGA flare comes from how it apes the imaginary victimization that characterizes Trump and his followers. These aren't just videos extolling the beautification powers of faith, but are posited as an angry rebuttal to an imagined hater who is denying the existence of the "Jesus glow." It's reminiscent of how anti-vaccine influencers rail against an amorphous "Big Pharma" that allegedly wants people to get autism for unspecified but evil reasons. In the "Jesus glow" videos, we're to imagine that atheists want people to be ugly or sad, again, for reasons that are never articulated.
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/05/tiktoks...-religion/
The still-unbanned social media site is currently awash in before-and-after videos from people purporting to be recent converts, celebrating their physical transformation from alleged misfit to their current "Jesus glow" status. There's the former goth who now sports a prairie dress look.
Or a bodybuilder who has now shrunk herself into a more petite figure, complete with blonder hair.
A close watch of the videos suggests people looked fine in their former lives as heretics. They often rely on tricks like lighting and filters to exaggerate the contrast between then and now. Mostly, they're just dressing differently. These folks aren't objectively better-looking in their "after" images. They're just conforming more to a right-wing vision of proper gender presentation, often one with white supremacist overtones, as the "Jesus glow" effect on hair frequently requires the aid of a bleach bottle. It's a level of conformity that McCoy semi-joked verges on "gender religion."
It's also profoundly silly. The "proof" of one's connection to God is that you have good looks.
A lot of online Christian content is shallow self-help, presented in a way that's not so different from what beauty influencers or dating coaches offer. In my reporting on the popular "Girls Gone Bible" podcast, readers can see the same forces in action. Their podcast initially seems not just apolitical, but focused primarily on the self, with titles like "What Men Look For In A Wife" or "Honest Convo About Anxiety." It feels like another variation on the endless online content on self-improvement, but with a sprinkling of scripture on top of the talk about dating or improving your daily mood. But, of course, the hosts are selling a far-right agenda with this soft focus framing, as evidenced by their tight relationship with Donald Trump and the rigidly conservative dictates on sexual behavior they prescribe for their audience.
Its special MAGA flare comes from how it apes the imaginary victimization that characterizes Trump and his followers. These aren't just videos extolling the beautification powers of faith, but are posited as an angry rebuttal to an imagined hater who is denying the existence of the "Jesus glow." It's reminiscent of how anti-vaccine influencers rail against an amorphous "Big Pharma" that allegedly wants people to get autism for unspecified but evil reasons. In the "Jesus glow" videos, we're to imagine that atheists want people to be ugly or sad, again, for reasons that are never articulated.
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/05/tiktoks...-religion/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
