Jesus shows up and, like me is very confused by this communion ceremony where is the wine (or “wine”). I really was not prepared to be surprised by another churches communion.
The churches when I was a kid were much more formal. No passing around, lots of kneeling up front, being fed wafers and wine, then blessed. Me, I never liked kneeling to other people and prefer a dry red.
The Episcapalian church I went to was like this. The church was hilariously scripted, you could read all the words the Priest was going to say in the paper hand out that week.
Well, that’s true for a lot of the churches that started as state churches (for instance, the Anglican/Episcopalian church, the churches of Denmark, Sweden and Norway). Only the sermon is unscripted, because the structure of the liturgical year is determined by a top-down process.
The last time I went to the Episcopalian church my parents attend (Infrequently, mostly just for Easter) the entire sermon was written down, word for word. I actually spent more time that sermon seeing if he deviated at all. He did not.
I’ve only been to two churches (a total of 4 times) and they both did that. I kinda assumed every church was like that. Man, is it easy to generalize stuff when you don’t have any knowledge of something’
I’ve been to a couple different denominations over the years, since I really started having an interest in Christianity late high school. Very few are actually scripted outside the Catholic churches and the off-shoots of Catholicism.
The church I went to in college was the least scripted one I’ve ever been to. I felt bad for the worship team (playing the instruments and whatnot) because the Pastor would decide every now and again to forego a typical message in favor of extended worship time. Being in college this annoyed me because the cafe was only open for lunch for a limited time and the longer he went on, the less time I had to eat.
In normal roman catholic masses, you typically only get a communion wafer, unless it’s a special occasion like Holy Thursday or you’re doing some job at the altar.
The one catholic mass in Byzantine rite had a kind of fnny commnion, though. They put a lot of bread pieces in a large chalice of wine and then it’s teamwork of three persons to give you the communion: one is holding the chalice, a second is snipping the wine-soaked bread pieces into your open mouth with a spoon, and the third is holding a dish beneath your chin on the off chance that something might fall down.
I have been to several Roman Catholic churches, and there has been wine at every Sunday mass. Not everyone drinks it– in fact often the wine-drinkers are the minority– but it is always offered. Also noteworthy, the bread and wine are held by different people and offered, usually at the front of the church, and never just passed around.
the church has every thing written out in the book of common prayer. It's a way to say we are different people leading unique lives, but these are the core ideas that bring us together.
As far as the homily, that's personal style for the priest. Probably so the congregation can do sick/invalid outreach without a loss of community.
in my church there was no wine. Wine was the devil’s vine and many times more potent than in the time of christ. So we had grape juice instead. even the adults.
I was curious if our church used wine or grape juice, then one day after service I saw my friend and fellow church member emptying the unused “wine” into his daughter’s sippy cup. Pretty sure it’s grape juice.
I’ve been to several Catholic churches as I’ve moved from place to place.
None of them offered wine except on special holy days.
Our family went with my mother-in-law (hold the jokes, she was a WONDERFUL person) to her Baptist church and there was wine in a little vial at the pew. Also the host was a cube of bread rather than the round wafer I was used to.
I grew up going to a Lutheran church, and for communion, they’d bring each row up near the altar where you’d kneel, and be fed a communion wafer. Then they’d bring the wine around. The left side drank from a chalice, the right side they had a tray of shots, so you could choose which one you were more comfortable with.
At our Methodist church, we have two methods of doing Communion. Most people kneel down at the chancel rail, get a small, individual disposable plastic cup of grape juice, and a square wafer that one or more of the church ladies bake. A few line up to take communion by intinction. Taking a piece of bread that’s torn off of a common loaf, dipping it into a chalice (pewter, I suspect,) and then, if they desire, kneeling for a few moments in prayer. The loaf and chalice serve before the service as, well, I’m sure there is a better term, but I can only think of the term “props”. They’re the ones that the preacher holds up while going through “the cup from which we drink/the bread that we eat”
I’ve gone through both forms of communion. I’m more comfortable with the kneeling and individual elements, as it’s what I’ve always known, but the intinction line is much shorter, and sometimes I need to get through quickly.
Also, our liturgy, with the exception of the Sermon, is typed out, and you can read it out of the bulletin or off the screens, except our current liturgist tends to take the prepared liturgy as more of a suggestion, and an unwelcome one at that, and ad-libs better than half the time for anything that’s not a responsive reading.
Jesus shows up and is very confused because his crucifix time machine took him 2 millennia into the future instead of 3 days. He readjusts his spacetime coordinates.
An Angel of the Lord appears in a grey silk suit and alligator Ferregamo Oxfords, carrying a wafer-thin attaché case. He floats through the pews, coming to a halt in front of Carol. From his case he draws a packet of papers with a blue cover sheet and hands it to Carol. With a voice like distant thunder, he speaks, “Carol, the Lord Jesus Christ herewith orders you to cease and desist all uses of His illustrious name in attempts to justify your personal prejudices. In brief, STFU. And close your mouth—you’re beginning to drool.” Then he disappears in a cloud of righteousness.
Ours is a truck driver. She’s very versatile. Her son is an excavator (professional ditch digger ) and sometimes covers for our preacher when he’s away.
I’m guessing that if Jesus appeared in that church, looking like Jesus probably would have looked IRL, half the congregation would start screaming “AAAAHH!! TERRORIST!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!”
Only half? I think you’re being overly optimistic. Even Carol acknowledged racism in her neighborhood; Joyce not hating black people was something to brag about.
Completely off topic Ember, but your grav is both awesome and terrifying… i have never seen a train made into a cyclops that looks like it’s cow catcher is the really bad beards from Disney’s Hercules. What is that from?
The webcomic paranatural! I want to provide more context than that, but part of the fun in reading paranatural is the wtf we find along the way. Excellent read, delightful art, if you haven’t read it yet go and remedy that posthaste!
Thanks Neeks, i’ll definitely check it out soon, already have the homepage bookmarked 😀 just have to finish reading my current book, can’t seem to binge webcomics and read novels at the same time anymore lol.
Man, if there’s only one thing I envy Catholics for, it’s that they usually get actual BOOZE for Communion (raised Presbyterian, now nondenominational and non-literalist)
From a Methodist who went to Catholic school perspective, both the grape juice in those little pre packaged IHOP jelly looking containers and the communion wine were trash. There was only like, two drops of grape juice and drinking out of the same cup of wine as your mean, smelly teachers (read: enemies) was too gross to get past.
Our Anglican church had a really sweet red wine that I really liked (also kneeling and the priest places a round tasteless wafer directly in your mouth for you; passing it around like a collection plate looks really weird to me. And you know at least one kid went and touched it all). Years later I ran into a cheap , low-alcohol blackberry Merlot that was very similar.
I’m technically Catholic and I’ve been to a few masses with communion… only the Priest gets booze. Everybody else just gets a wafer. And you have to wait in line and there’s actually a whole decorum of what you need to say and how you place your hands and the one you then use to eat… or the older way was just get on your knees and to stick out your tongue and the person in charge of distribution would just slap the wafer there!
Yeah, communion “under both species” (I think that’s the term) is usually reserved for special occasions. IDK if it’s the cost of wine, the fear of germs being spread mouth to cup to mouth, or what.
Hm? I’m serious. I’m pretty sure some people in the Catholic Hierarchy even encourage dipping the Communion wafer in the wine, rather than making people drink from the cup directly.
This also has the added benefit of making the wine last longer.
Our priest told me one of the reasons the communion cup was always silver or gold was that germs couldn’t live on those metals. So the priest would give someone a drink, wipe the cup, turn it slightly, and by the time the next person got to that same spot, between the metal and the alcohol in the wine, any germs would be dead.
Some truth to that. Silver compounds tend to be anti-microbial. I don’t think gold would do anything, though.
However, the whole reason for wine in the original sense, of being the common drink during biblical times, is alcohol kills germs. Water can be unsafe to drink.
Also, Silly Name is describing Communion by Intinction, and we do that as an option at our Methodist church…where we use grape juice, that doesn’t has any anti-microbial properties whatsoever.
Some denominations address the germs thing by using stronger wine and having little plastic communion cups of wine for people who don’t want to drink out of the communal cup.
I haven’t been to a Catholic mass in about 40 years. I remember getting both at one time, but before that only getting the wafer. I remember when we just got the wafer, the priest would say “The body of Christ”, and IIRC we were supposed to say “Amen”. This one elderly priest we had used to drag out the word “body”, which I always thought was a little creepy.
I haven’t taken communion in a few years, but any service I’ve been to offers wine and wafers. Is that just the particular Church you went to or did that happen elsewhere in the Diocese? Sorry, blows my mind you’re not getting the blood of Christ.
I haven’t been to many ceremonies with eucharist in years…mostly funerals actually…but I don’t recall anyone getting the Blood of Xhrist. The whole thing is symbolic to begin with so the priest drinks it for the whole audiance? Something something transubstantiation I guess??
It differs by diocese and even by individual church. Mine had body and blood at every mass, but separate. Some only offer body, some dip body in blood. No one does just blood, because we’re Catholics, not vampires, I assume.
We never got wine either and no church I know of in my area does. In fact, the entire thing was exactly the same as what you described – the lining up, etc. (I do remember a priest getting tipsy/drunk at a funeral once, because HE was allowed to drink the wine and oh, he did.)
OK. Communion under both species isn’t something special, but it does require more work. Hence, most Sunday masses provide it. Funerals often don’t, nor do weekday services. Yes it was different 30 years ago, but both species is more original and in keeping with the text. Jesus shared the cup, he didn’t go to Costco and buy individual servings for everybody.
Some churches are liturgical, with a set rite based heavily on biblical texts. Not just the readings but most of the prayers are lifted right from the N.T. Scripted by Jesus in a way. . This includes catholic, Lutheran and many mainline. The readings run in a three year cycle, which covers the high points and is similar to synagogue practice when Jesus lived. Most modern synagogues cover their entire scripture in one or three year cycles.
Churches like this one are only mildly liturgical. Very little from the bible and a lot of interpretation and bad theology in songs. Mileage varies wildly. Very literal, except when it comes to communion, when they get metaphorical and use grape juice.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in my parish we didn’t. We didn’t even get grape juice, just the “death cookie.” (Definitely NOT cubes, Michael I.)
…regarding DW’s Twitter, I’m trying to cup my hands correctly, but it doesn’t look right… almost 12 years… apparently they’ve retranslated the Nicene Creed?
One of the Episcopalian churches I attended (we moved around a lot, like Joyce) gave the option of some cheap boxed rosé wine or regular grape juice.
I never took the wine… fearing I would be taking communion as an excuse to try alcohol. At the time, I was pretty sure sinning *during* communion would land me in hell, so I erred on the side of caution.
That fresh baked bread though. That’s gotta be holier than the tasteless crackers we got at the non-denominational church.
I briefly attended a church where the Eucharist was (I’m not kidding) oyster crackers and Cran-Grape juice.
Of course, of the dozens (hundreds?) of churches in the town, it was the only church that ran a food bank or homeless shelter. And the church had maybe a dozen members at its biggest. I suspect that had something to do with my eventual disdain for Jesus, Inc. and my eventual enlightenment and atheism.
(By “town” here I mean the town itself and its surrounding areas, not just the area within the city limits. I probably should’ve just said “the county” instead, since there’s really only one major town in the county.)
My understanding was that Welch’s, and grape juice in general, only became a thing in the first place because American winemakers needed something to do with all those grapes during Prohibition.
At mine you went up to the front and knelt, and they would tag team the task with a helper person to pass out wafers, then the reverend would come and you could dip or sip while they said their little thing to each person.
Though pretty sure they didn’t refer to the move as a ‘dip or sip’
Former episcopalian here. That’s what we did. Seeing them pass around a plate here seems weird.
Or.
“Back in my day we had to line up for jesus carb and booze”
My church actually has two ways of doing it. On the first Sunday of the month we do a call-and-response sort of deal, and then everyone goes up, kneels, is passed little cups of juice and a bread cube, and prays before they go down.
On any other Sunday of the month we do intinction with whoever wants to, before you go down to pray at the rail.
Interestingly enough, though, I always thought of Communion as something to help absolve your sins and bring you closer to God. Apparently it’s the other way around in this church? I know this is non-denominational but this is a surprising take on it for me.
The further afield one gets from Orthodox and Catholic practice the wider the views get on different theological, liturgical and practical considerations. Carol’s stated view, accepted by Becky as though normal rote teaching, here is a common lay misconception in many “high church” views which leads me to think that this particular Church is among those that divided from such a tradition between the start of the Great Awakening and the 1960s, but the bread used suggests a “low church” version of the rite so they were probably a mix drawn from several other congregations over time with various influences coming in and gaining prominence here and there. That above noted misconception is common due to many “high church” traditions denying the Eucharist to those that they don’t know to be absolutely of their tradition, or at least not offering it, and several also extending that treatment to those they know to be of other denominations and/or religions.
There’s every possibility that Carol’s view is not a “misconception” at all, but an accurate reflection of how that particular church has decided Communion works.
Raised Catholic, I was under the impression that if you had committed a major sin (like adultery), you were not to receive the rite of communion until you’d gone to confession.
Carol’s making a passive-aggressive application of 1 Cor 11: “Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.”
Because if Becky truly examined herself, she’d know just how fallen and unworthy she is. ‘Cept Becky’s way way way sharper than Carol is ready for, and instead of falling for the trap, or of maybe being passive-aggressive in return, she stands by her belief, shows the reasons for her belief, and dares Carol to prove her wrong. Which she can’t. Because Becky’s a lot better at examining herself than Carol is, quite likely as a side-effect of being brought up by someone committed to undermining her.
And more subtly: the flavour of church that Toedad, Carol, and the muppets we saw/heard in the lobby suggest we’re dealing with (along with what Willis has said of his own experience) is the sort that’s very heavily into prosperity: if God loves you, He provides, and help won’t be there if you aren’t worth loving. Except Becky is exhibit A for the impossible happening, so, om. nom. nom. nom. nom.
Been a long while, but I remember just getting the wafer. The priest was the only one who took the wine. But, I could be wrong. Maybe I should go back someday.
Our old priest was an alcoholic. No, seriously he actually died because of it. The new one is a complete douchbag.
He always goes on about how religion has to be connected with pain and sacrifice.
Or so I’m told. I don’t go there any more.
i think i’ve done, like, five different styles. communion “wine” tends to be the same, but the bread differs. i was at a church for a while that had big honking loaves of bread that were torn off into chunks and you were supposed to dip it into the wine. that was pretty cool. and then there were others who had cardboard wafers with a lamb printed on the side, that was pretty gross. 0/10, do not recommend. and then there’s also the cracker variant which is like the least gross unhappy medium.
i’m not sure i’ve seen the bread piled up like described here, but i don’t think i’ve seen the communion plates change substantially. the church i’m going to now does a thing where it stacks two communion cups on top of each other and puts the bread underneath, which strikes me as very efficient/hygienic.
That’s another reason to sit in the back, so you don’t have to hold on to that wafer for 10 minutes while they’re being passed around. By the time the people in back get theirs, the guy in front has a handful of semi-liquidified paste.
The bread is made by a specific recipe, imprinted with a stamp and blessed — in my church, someone had responsibility for the bread each week, and they’d either bake it or (more often these days) buy it from a bakery that we had an agreement with. Some bread was crumbled in the chalice with the wine (real wine, but a super-sweet red) and everyone goes up to the front and gets served a tiny spoonful of wine and bread by the priest. Then you get some bread on the way back to your seat as well. It’s traditional to bring bread back to people who didn’t/couldn’t* take communion.
Orthodoxy, as one might infer from the name, goes hardcore.
*By “couldn’t” I mean ecumenically(?) couldn’t, hadn’t done confession in a while, etc. – if someone physically couldn’t come up the aisle, the priest would take the chalice out to them.
My parents never did church, but if I stayed at my grandparents’ houses on Saturday night, I was expected to go with them to church on Sunday. I don’t recall denominations (I could probably look it up but…), but each set was a different one. Both passed plates around for communion, just like here. They usually did it by having a few people take the plates to places throughout the pews and pass it across to the person handing out on the other side. Wafers first, then the little glasses of juice (which I was always impressed that they had a plate with a rack just the right size for the little glasses, like what company makes such a specific thing to sell to churches? I think both churches even had really similar or the same plates). It was pretty much the same way that they collected money (which I think came after the juice).
I actually gotta see where they made up communion once. My grandma had clean-up duty one time I went with her, and they had a little secret door behind the altar with a little kitchenette and huge bags of the little cups filling up the cabinets.
I think that one church did communion every Sunday, but the other one only did it like once a month and holidays?
When I was attending a Christian church, long before I escaped and became a Pagan, we were given Vanilla (‘Nilla) Wafers. I don’t really have anything to add, except we have bacon and coffee at our Yuletide celebrations, but it’s not symbolic of anything except bacon and coffee, and they’re fine for anyone we’ve invited to have, with no spiritual attachments nor requirements.
This reminds me of one of the final scenes in Stranger in a Strange Land. The punchline was something like, “Well, Mike always did need some seasoning.”
It’s not really passive-aggressive if you JUST put them in their place directly, succinctly, and effectively nuked their passive-aggressiveness from orbit.
It’s gloating. Delicious, delicious gloating.
I know communion usually isn’t delicious, but you have to consider the garnish of Awesome.
Coincidentally, “Delicious, delicious gloating” is Passive-Aggressive Symbolic Cannibalism’s first big hit single. [Off the album “A Garnish of Awesome”]
When asked about how they felt about their success, the band simply had their song play as a response as they smirked.
“Becky, I know things are sucky for you right now. But I promise you, when you get up here, I’m gonna let you f’-ing RUN the place, I swear to Me. Also, there will be reconciliation that makes perfect scientific sense between yours and Dina’s beliefs, and atheists don’t automatically go to hell.”
Around here you can buy entire uncut wafer sheets in convinience store in this super cheap-o wax paper packaging. The ingredients are flour and water… and nothing else. Communion wafers are basically dried up paste. No wonder it’s tasteless. Augh. Who buys those things?!
Here. You open the package and it’s basically a pile of 8×11 sheets of wafers with a big circular hole in the middle where the actual communion wafer was cut out. Apparently it’s selling with the health crowd since it’s basically nothing it makes for a healthy snack. Huh.
Yyyup. Hooray for looking for healthy snacks that are both actually healthy and actually pleasant. Just filling your stomach so you feel less hungry does little good for your blood sugar. D:
(Scorn scorn.)
Yeah, I was wondering about that. I heard lots of people expecting something aweful to happen with the sermon, and frankly I was expecting a terrible sermon too. But here they are, having communion. Are there any churches that have communion before the sermon?
As far as I know, no, but, in my experience, priests use the wind down after communion but before dismissal to talk about church news/business/fundraisers
Let us all pray for our deceased, for those who in the course of following God’s laws have been sent to prison, and may God have mercy on those who have fallen to the temptations of unnatural sin.
The Lord has suffered for us so that we may become insufferable.
In the Church of Christ, communion is before the sermon 98% of the time. From what Willis has said about his nondenominational church, I get the sense their practices were somewhat similar to the CofC, with the obvious exception of instrumental music (vs. a cappella singing).
Having been to lots of different varieties of evangelical churches over the years, I can say that while communion is almost always at the end, I’ve been to some that did it at other times.
For those wondering about the details of evangelical communion:
Usually they pass around the bread, then the pastor reads some verses and everybody eats the bread together. Then they pass around the juice and the pastor reads more verses and everybody drinks the juice together.
Bread: Everything from giant fluffly loaves of bread that everybody tears a chunk off of to torn up wonder bread to oyster crackers to club crackers to matzeh to the same communion wafers the liturgical denominations use. If it’s cracker-ish or bread-like it’s fair game.
Juice: Almost always juice (usually Welch’s in my experience). This goes back to prohibition (esp. for the Methodists), but usually the explanation given is that we don’t want to risk providing temptation to any recovering alcoholics in the congregation. Juice is usually in tiny individual sized cups.
My brother-in-law is a youth pastor at one of the places that uses the styrofoam ones. Ours are much better. Sometimes they’re a little salty.
In fact, Communion will be day after tomorrow, first Sunday of the month.
I haven’t been to church since I was a kid, and even at my church we didn’t do this very often – certainly not every Sunday – but I still remember being amazed that they were the most tasteless things I’d ever eaten. I was kind of impressed at how they made them taste of absolutely NOTHING. But then you’d wash it down with a little teeny plastic cup of grape juice.
The church I attended in my youth actually used matzah crackers for awhile. I probably wasn’t the only one ever so slightly confused/amused by that, because a few years later, they’d switched to little wafers that I’m guessing were meant for communion.
Eh, still don’t like Becky that much. Like, I get where she comes from and don’t have a problem with how she’s written but she doesn’t -click- with me.
I imagine that’s why a lot of people who don’t like her feel that way. She’s a very all or nothing character.
I know a guy who does sound for gigs. The singer in some local teenage band kicked over the mic stand at the end of their set. My friend harangued this kid until his daddy offered to pay for a new mic. Rock and roll, Yorkshire-style.
Actually nowadays, mics are designed to be able to take the damage from a drop. The biggest thing the sound guy has to worry about is feedback when it hits the floor, but that’s why the person dropping said mic holds it out for half a second before letting go — the sound guy gets the cue and mutes everything for a moment.
…That’s so weird to me. When I was a kid, everyone took communion the same way. As an adult, I know it’s terribly watered down wine, but it was always wine.
Sans the Episcapalian church I went to as a kid, the churches I’ve gone to have done the pass and take as an option. It really depends on if they want to focus on the symbolism of approaching the altar in order to receive a cracker.
Carol would probably end up saying something along the lines that Satan actually did that, to continue he down her lost path and to lead others astray or some other bs like that.
By the brilliant chariot of Helios! Taunting one’s enemies is a fine and excellent thing to do, but I’ve never seen a religious ritual performed sneeringly. Has Becky heard of the moral high ground?
If you’ve never seen a religious ritual performed sneeringly, you probably haven’t seen all that many of them!
And no, Becky still has the moral high ground. She’s not doing anything wrong, she’s eating Jesus like she’s supposed to. Carol is wrong for being so dang judgmental to suggest that Becky’s not right with Jesus.
I have seen tribute paid the sublime forest. I have seen hundreds of libations burnt unto the moon. The fire of comradeship I have thrilled to kindle in the hearts of men!
These speak worthily of literal “communion” with one’s god. If Becky’s god is on her mind at all, petty triumph ought to ring hollow.
Need I remind you of that sacrifice at Mekone? When the mortals got the meat and your daddy got stuck with just the bones? I bet Prometheus was sneering his FACE off that day.
Had Prometheus been sneering during the actual ceremony, the deception would not have passed and life for a devout Greek would have been tremendously more difficult. Once the ceremony was set in stone, as a holy agreement between man and god, even the Father himself durst not change it.
In addition, it’s been a fair while, but I believe mortals have only one liver.
Are you telling me that titan didn’t start giggling immediately after the ceremony was set in stone? He must have had a tremendous amount of self-control.
Carol turned a solemn religious ritual into a “You must be at least this holy to pass” test, one where Becky would get sneered at no matter what. Becky’s response is as good an answer as anyone could be expected to give. Being smug while she gives it is perfectly justified, and it’s not like Carol can be more pissed at her than she already is.
Ah, so that’s why Neil Gaiman put the riders of the apocalypse on motorbikes 😉
If you haven’t read Good Omens yet, do. I only got half of the jokes because a come from a non-fundie background.
Carol is worried about Joyce because Becky no longer is willing to stay in the closet, and her friend Dorothy is an atheist. But if she thinks that’s bad just wait until she learns her daughter is fangirling a former juvenile delinquent who spent years in a Catholic boarding school, dresses in leather, drives a motorcycle, and hangs out with roller derby players.
I don’t think it was about the drama though. It was about Becky saying “this is where I belong and you can’t shame me out of what I believe.” And it’s about her reclaiming what power she can, where she can, after being denied it for so long.
What Jason said. The drama got ramped up in the -first- panel, not the last. Carol is and has always been the one starting things with Becky. Always. Becky simply responds to what Carol is doing, and they are pretty much always perfect responses.
Take Communion, everybody judges you for taking it when you’re a sinner. (isn’t that the point, though?) Don’t take Communion, everybody judges you for rejecting God. Don’t you just love social pressure as a weapon?
Once I attended a Catholic wedding as the guest of my mother’s sister-son. At one point, spake the priest that all who desired communion ought to proceed forward, then file around back into their pews via the outside.
Neither my cousin nor I partook of their offerings. In the entire assembly, we were the only ones. I beheld the priest’s momentary glare with amusement, for after all, the joke was on him: I got enjoyably smashed at the reception, in good cheer and not forced solemnity.
Went to a Catholic wedding earlier in the year. I was the only one there, to my knowledge, who didn’t take Communion. The only person who commented was the 5 y/o next to me in the pew, who asked his aunt why I wasn’t.
A long time ago, I was invited to a Catholic wedding. I am a vocal atheist. I knew almost none of the people (save my girlfriend and her family,) and I wasn’t even from the area. I was the outsider-iest outsider that ever was outside. I felt like Jane Goodall, but not as smart.
It’d be actually quite disrespectful to take Communion at Catholic Mass if you haven’t received the Sacrament of Eucharist. So, you actually did the socially acceptable thing by standing in your pew.
I always have to resist doing some kind of joke now. Choke on a wafer, Holy Water hurts, things like that. `Bout the only thing stopping me it would be disrespectful to those I’m there with. They’re nice enough not to insult my religion, I guess I could suffer for an hour.
Loudly announce that God provably loves you, because he went above and beyond to answer your prayers and save your lesbian butt? I don’t know what happens, but I’m fucking glad she picked that choice.
I just remembered – when I was a JW, we did that for “The Lord’s Evening Meal”, which is a once a year event that is the closest thing to a holiday for JW’s. They pass around a glass of wine and matzo crackers, but only the Annointed partake of it. Those are the 144,000 that will ascend to Heaven as angels while the rest of the saved will live on Earth when God cleanses it of the wicked and remakes it into a paradise.
Nah, this sect of Christianity considers Catholics to be idolaters. They like to refer to Catholics as the “cult of Mary” if I remember Protestant services correctly.
In fairness, my understanding is that all Christian official doctrine views Catholics as breaking God’s First Commandment when they pray to the saints, asking them to pray to God for their sakes.
Now not all *Christians* might hold this view, but my understanding is that it’s the official doctrine.
“Christian official doctrine” isn’t really a thing. By the most sensible definition of “Christian”, Catholics of all stripes qualify (there are, like, three or four of those, I think), as do all the many and diverse varieties of Protestantism, with the possible exception of Unitarian Universalist (because I’m unsure how UU feels about the whole “divinity of Yeshua ben Yosef” thing). And every last one of them has a different “official doctrine”.
UU is an all faith now, including non-faith. I’ve always viewed it as “religion distilled”, taking the positives of it: community, uplifting stories; without the negatives, see comic.
Subsitutionary Atonement is a semi-modern heresy. Many Christians don’t believe God tortured the one he loved most so that he bring himself to forgive someone else. The writer of the Fourth Gospel wouldn’t be a Christian by the definition. There simply is no one standard that defines a Christian, just ones that define groups of Christians.
I once asked my Irish (catholic) aunt about the different Protestant churches in northern Ireland (because Ian Paisley, the most promeninent hate mongerer on the Protestant side belonged to one that was just slightly differently named than another and I wondered what might be the difference) but she said, she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned there was just one church.
Having just read the Wikipedia-article on him, he was even grosser and damaging to peace than I though.
I am sooooo thankful I grew up in northern Germany where protestant church was something you attended but it wasn’t busy with hating, or stirring up great emotions. Very much of a head thing. No fundamentalism at all. Sometimes, someone would to a service for people belonging to both Catholics and Protestants and that one old either have no communion (when organized with many Catholics on the team) or some Catholics wouldn’t go to communion. Took me ages to get that this was because of the Catholic idea of transsubstination.
Whenever the subject comes up, I truthfully tell people that I’m a lapsed unitarian, and am sometimes rewarded with a little laugh in return from someone who gets it.
The modern UU church’s only dogma is the rejection of dogma. If, upon reflection, you have decided that you hold traditional Christian beliefs regarding Jesus, then as far as the church is concerned, that is right for you. (But it would probably make you an outlier as a UU.)
As far as the UU’s go, the Christian ones presumably believe Jesus existed and was divine, but the pagan/buddhist/atheist/agnostic/other ones probably have their own opinions.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this come up already, but I was always taught that catholic pertained to all Christians, that it means universal. What people are usually referring to when they say catholic is the Roman catholic Church.
So according to my (predominately protestant) educationeducation, this statement is appropriate.
Becky, I love you.
And since you aren’t technically dependent on her for shit, you can totally do this! GOOD JOB BECKY, and know that your sisters are probably both wishing they had the confidence and ability to do that.
Also, does that last panel Becky look odd to anyone else? Not bad, exactly, but her expression doesn’t really seem to fit Willis’s style. I’d expect it on other artists, but not him, and I can’t put my finger on why.
Curse you Drs… now I can’t unsee the “transparent hair” and how weird it looks… Forever more shall I see that the eyes look like they are on top of the hair. You hath ruined anime for me…
You know how Willis sometimes adds whites to a dot-eyed character’s eyes to emphasize emotion? He’s doing it here; Becky just happens to be narrowing her eyes at the moment.
Walky had a similar expression at one point during his talk with Billie in the beginning of Book 4.
Huh, so they pass out a plate of communion wafers. I guess that must because part of their religious doctrine. We would just form a line and go to the front of the church to get ours if we wanted to.
Me, too! And if you don’t want to take communion, you can get a blessing from the pastor instead. (If you don’t want a blessing or communion, you just remain in your pew.)
Also as surprising for me: Becky and Joyce’s church has wafer pieces, rather than the full thing.
As a former member of the Disciples of Christ sect of Christianity, this is how we did it in the church I went to. we also used grape juice to represent Jesus’ blood.
Yeah there are a variety of ways to handle it, based on congregation size and special events. Hell you talk about wafers being used, but all the church services I have attended have only used actual bread… and only one church ever used actual wine as well, though they also supplied grape juice for those conscientious about consuming alcohol.
Oh, man this is going to go very poorly regarding Carol’s willingness to believe that Becky isn’t a bad influence for Joyce. At the same time however this is my favorite Becky moment. I’m conflicted
I’m usually fairly harsh with Becky, but nah, in this situation she didn’t have another option. Revelling in it isn’t going to make things worse, so may as well have some fun while you wait for the shoe to drop.
I just can’t wait for Carol to break. You know she can’t take that much rebellion right in her face while she is completely impotent to do anything about it. And you know how in their circle the first to get ’emotional’ automatically lose the argument… it’ll be delicious irony.
However, I have to ask, how is there anything on her fingers to lick up? I’ve had my fair share of communion waffers/crackers/whatever the frig they’re called, and there has never been so much as a speck left to tide me over till lunch!
She got a juicy part of Christ’s body. “I’m good enough to save you when you’re taken hostage, so let me at least show you what you are missing out on.”
As a Christian (admittedly of the variety that actually thought Jesus was serious when he said “love thy neighbor”) I have to say this is a practice I’m unfamiliar with. Granted my Church has never been huge on the whole literal transfiguration idea, but Communion has always struck me as a way to try and be closer to God, rather than some sort of “You must be this holy to pass” test.
Strikes me that even if you didn’t feel right with God, taking Communion would be a good way to get back in touch with him and figure yourself out.
Or maybe Carol just figured that communion wafers are poison to Lesbians, like Vampires.
I always sort of thought that was less ‘you are not holy enough for communion’ and more ‘whatever you have done is bad enough that we are denying you this blessing.’
Of course, ‘bad’ was pretty subjective back when the church was still excommunicating people…looking at you, science.
…The Church still excommunicates people. There was a particularly heinous case a few years back, actually. A twelve year old girl was raped by her stepfather, and got pregnant with twins. Her body was not developed enough to carry the pregnancy to term, and her mother found a doctor willing to perform the abortion. The Church excommunicated the mother, the child, the doctor.
But not the stepfather. Apparently acting to save an innocent life gets you kicked out of heaven, but violating said innocent life gets a pass.
“In response, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil declared that no one was excommunicated in the case, and in an article published on L’Osservatore Romano a Vatican bioethicist rebuked the archbishop for his public statement. ”
Okay, so, no, one local bishop said a dumbass thing and the entire rest of the Church said he was dumb as shit.
Except I did not keep up with the case, just heard the initial part. After that, it died on my newsfeed. I’m glad to hear the Vatican overturned the bishop’s decision.
And I was raised Catholic. I still sit through Midnight Mass and the rest of it for my grandparents’ peace of mind.
The Pope is the only one who can really excommunicate anyone, though sometimes he can temporarily give others the power to do that. This was not one of those times.
No, a bishop cannot, but the way the case was originally framed, it seemed like he had the Pope’s approval. By then, I had already been kicked out myself, and wasn’t feeling very warm and fluffy towards Catholic newsfeeds. I was actually feeling bitter as fuck because that happened around the time I was denied communion in front of the whole congregation, and finally just gave up on faith.
Which is why I didn’t know the decision was overruled. I was wrong, and I apologise for spreading false information.
Also, “As for the rapist, he said that a rapist “is outside of communion” and “in grave mortal sin”, even though rape is not listed among the crimes that give rise to automatic excommunication.”
I’m fuzzy on the details, but I think if a girl got raped inside of the city limits, you were supposed to stone her since she apparently was not shouting loud enough. And if she was raped outside, the rapist had to marry her and was not allowed to divorce her.
Something like that. Though how the girl was to prove the rape when she was not in hearing distance of anybody willing to interfere, I don’t remember.
At any rate, did not sound like a rape victim had a lot of recompensation to look forward to.
Biblical law on how to treat rape victims is… “wonky”, to use an euphemism.
For example, since a woman’s word was worth only half a man’s word in court, the rape victim would need two men to testimony for her saying she was raped. But that would mean these two men witnessed the rape and did nothing, which means the woman didn’t call for help, which means she was consentient, which means it wasn’t rape.
It was basically engineered so that the woman always got the short end of the stick.
And the reason the rapist was required to marry his victim was to “pay back” her parents, since now that the girl had been “spoiled” nobody would marry her.
Sure, the as written laws are messed up, which is why Judaism and Catholocism are both really big on having errata for those laws, and rabbis/priests to make sure they’re being understood in a semi-reasonable context that recognizes the specifics of the incident rather than as a blanket law.
That’s not at all to say that the system is anywhere near perfect (there’s a TOOOOOON of rabbis/priests who still say stupid shit, and the idea of “automatic excommunication” is already incredibly presumptuous for a mortal to claim), but it’s why these two are -relatively- calmer, compared to literalists who see no need for the concept of context.
I was misinformed and did not keep up with this particular case due to a personal fight with the church. I apologise for spreading misinformation. However, do not dismiss me out of hand. I still consider myself culturally Catholic, and still sit my ass through Midnight Mass every year. It’s boring, there’s too many hymns, and I would rather be on Tumblr with a bottle of wine at my side, but it makes my grandmother happy.
That’s actually a thing. Where those who “aren’t right with God” (because they’re gay or because they got divorced or because they had sex outside of the bounds of holy matrimony) get glared at and condescended to about how “maybe they should get right with the Lord” before “partaking of his blessing”.
In fundie circles or at least the ones my friends all grew up in, this manifested itself in a “call to get saved and rededicate themselves to the Lord” where they’d be encouraged to go up, speak in tongues a bit, show their penitence to the Lord and all that and promise never to sin no more and then the person who shat on them would smugly smile and let them partake of the communion.
But that could just be the flavor my friends grew up in. From all I could tell from the times they invited me, it was super passive-aggressive and suburban white hell.
My family did a lot of the “looking for a new church every week because of doctrinal disputes/b-words”, and what you describe was typical in almost all of them. Sermon, call for rededication, then communion.
Having grown up in the United Church of Christ, I think it definately has to vary by church, since there was never anything approaching “You must be This Holy To Ride The Communion Train.”
Buuuutt I’ve also come to realize my religious upbringing was really, reaaaaalllyyy far from typical in this country, I suspect. My pastors also never mentioned hell as a motivation for Doing The Right Thing (instead emphasising that one should strive to be good *because it was good*,)-or, really, mention hell *at all*, now that I think of it. Nor did they suggest one should love god for Magic Afterlife Brownie Points. And before Obgerfell (but when non-hetero marriage was still legal in some parts of the country), they frequently traveled out-of-state to officiate such marriages, to, in their words “Abuse the HELL out of Full Faith and Credit Clause and *dare* the state to do anything about it.”
I think the pope di give power to local priests and bishops to get more people who no longer qualified for communion to start taking it again, like divorcees’ and such. If you want to receive the blessing of God, then you should.
I’m Lutheran, which is kind of the weird, “don’t try to figure it out, just trust Jesus on this one” in between school of thought. The bread and wine don’t *change* because of a specific set of words, but they aren’t just a representation, either. They are both bread and body, wine and blood. “In, with, and under” was the phrase hammered into our heads from catechism. (Oh, and while individual congregations practiced differently, doctrine was “closed communion,” or no outsiders.) The other thing hammered into our heads? If you take communion without understanding what it is, you “eat and drink to your own damnation.”
Am I the only one who got the Doobie Brother’s reference?
Also, garsh-diddly-darn-it I can’t stand communion deniers. The sacrament of communion should be made available to all who seek God and wish to take him into their lives. Becky deserves that host more than anyone in that church!
The plural of a name, no matter how that name is spelled, is [the name]+s. This is to avoid confusion between a horde of Marys and a horde of Maries (both of which are most definitely possible)
Thirty panels later, every pair of eyes for five miles in every direction are inexplicably narrowed to a pair of slits, looking askance at their neighbors.
God sent her Ross to make her turn from her wicked ways, but when she did not relent, he still saved her for another chance of redeeming herself. Because otherwise it would have been hellfire for her, yessirree and no mistake. And the Lord is a gracious and merciful Lord, even to wrecked sinners who should have been stamped out from the midst of the believers so that the weed does not overgrow the harvest and rip it out and kill kill kill kill bloody kill.
God had plans for Becky, but Becky rejected those plans and defied his “love” by falling in with Satan and choosing the homosexual lifestyle. Dear brave Ross, defender of the Toe race, tried to intervene to save her soul, but evil nasty Becky, drunk on Satanism, rejected him and ran off to corrupt my daughter with filthy heresy. Then, Ross, full of so much love and righteousness, searched high and low for his wayward daughter who was living in sin in order to bring her home and make her right with the Lord, but the forces of Satan are rife on college campuses today what with their ess-jay-doubleu anti-christian bigotries and they swarmed and destroyed that poor man who was just trying so hard to save his daughter (but let his passion to do right cloud his judgment, because oh yeah, I’m supposed to be condemning his actions at some point because gun at my daughter). And so Becky and the corrupt Antichrist minions in the police took him away for the “crime” of loving his daughter so much because the cost of Becky’s sin is the destruction of her family. And now her all-powerful Satanic forces are out to steal my daughter away if I am not firm and resolute in my faith. And now the dirty little sinner is claiming it was God’s hand not Satan’s that saved her, thus proving she’s a Satanist.
Boom, all packaged out with a nice little bow so she doesn’t have to grow or adapt or in any way reconsider her biases and bigotries. I grew up with Carols, they are very good at twisting every scenario into a reinforcement for their awful beliefs.
Very good example of the tortured logic one has to use to justify certain beliefs. I haven’t seen anything like it since that video of the Carol-like woman trying to prove Monster Energy Drinks are satanic.
I grew up around a lot of Carols so I know the “logic” strings well and can mimic it on the fly. Often had it used against me because I was essentially the Satanist’s (my mom was wiccan) kid who was probably gay but “he” gets good grades, so I dunno, maybe you can save “him”.
I’m pretty sure that penguin care time is over once a young one turns lesbian. No more breastfeeding for you, little one. How can you turn yourself against your God-given nature and press cloaca against cloaca?
Wait. Bad example. But, uh, ducks! Not penguins, ducks! Exploding corkscrew penis! Rape culture! Ducks have the thing. Well, drakes do.
Yeah, they do, though Protestants tend to believe in consubstantiation or memorialism, not transubstantiation. I.E. That the bread and wine consumed do not become the literal body of Christ but rather are either only metaphysically embodied or purely symbolic.
People have been killed for advocating all of these things in different times and places, and plenty a rumour started of Catholics being cannibals who used real flesh and blood in their communions.
Yes. They just do it differently. The ‘heresy’ is that Protestants don’t (usually) believe in transubstantiation (wherein the the wafer actually becomes the body of Christ), whereas Catholics do. I think. My only experience with religion was my mother’s Episcopalianism, so I could be switching things around.
I had to take religion classes in college (it was a Jesuit university), and I talked to my grandma about what we were going over a couple of times (she always wanted to, I think because she was hoping I’d become religious?). It was always funny, though, cause I’d start talking about transubstantiation and the Trinity, which I knew were very Catholic things, and I’d ask about her church and she’d just kinda go ‘um, yeah, we just… kinda ignore that?’
Woooow, Carol, wow. The only time I can think of witnessing someone actively encourage another person to not take communion (outside of a Catholic wedding that included communion, but only for the Catholics, and we were to consider ourselves lucky just for being able to attend) was when they were sick. They’d get the wafer, but instead of sipping the wine, they had the option of the wafer being dipped or getting an additional blessing.
Like. One of my pastors had a story of how part of what brought her back to faith was that during her stint as an agnostic, she would ask for just the blessing, and after a couple weeks, her pastor asked why. When she explained, he told her that while he was more than willing to continue her a blessing instead, that he thought doubts shouldn’t keep her from communion.
I mean, I know I shouldn’t be surprised? People like Carol exist. (My aunt is one of them.) But every time I encounter this sort of thing, I am astonished and horrified all over again. It makes me incredibly grateful to have grown up in a faith where my orientation is considered irrelevant to my relationship with God. Even if I know there are individuals within my church who believe as Carol does, I at least have the comfort of knowing they’re in the minority overall.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that this strip rings true to me. Panels three and five warm my heart all the way through. Yay, Becky.
Alright… I’d sooner spend a year living across the hall from Mary, than a single weekend under the same roof as Carol. If there weren’t gun wielding toes, mentally abusive psychopaths, and drink spiking rapists in this comic, she’d probably qualify to be the worst person.
How different is she from Danny’s and Ethan’s parents? I mean, I feel like Danny’s are much more the passive-aggressive type, but I doubt they’ll be much more welcoming if he brings a guy home -and I don’t think they believe in bisexuality. Not that they really care much about the “unfavorite son”, but… And Ethan’s parents straight-up reject the idea of him being gay -and blame Amber for it. Ruth’s uncle hasn’t appeared in-comic, but I seem to remember her saying some stuff about her home environment to Billie that was…. not encouraging about him as a guardian. Carol’s got some competition, beyond the four people you mentioned, unfortunately.
You’re right, I suppose I can’t say for certain that she’s the worst since we’ve probably seen more of her and Hank than any other parent who hasn’t, yet, openly assaulted their child. The thing I loath so much about Carol isn’t just that she’s a bigot, but that she’s so cold hearted as to harass and shame Becky, who she’s seen grow up from a kid in diapers to a woman, right after the latter has been kidnapped by her own fucking dad at gun point. All because Carol’s sanctimonious, horrid social politics are more important to her than the well being of others; even, apparently, her own child.
That’s interesting, though, that this seems more like a Catholic concept of communion, the “must be this worthy to pass” kind of thing. In my limited experience, I’ve only seen that with Catholics. (The Presbyterian church where I grew up preferred that you be old enough to understand what communion meant if you were gonna take it, but even that wasn’t really a rule.)
Actually, under Catholic doctrine, you’re required to take communion unless you’re Excommunicated (in which case you’re not supposed to enter a church until you’ve done penance) or have committed a mortal sin. Or you haven’t been to Confession in some span of time, typically more than three months, but it varies by priest and they can’t really deny you communion on those grounds anyway. The only people explicitly barred regardless are protestants, since there’s the whole difference in the belief of Transubstantiation (it IS the body and blood of Christ) and Consubstantiation (it REPRESENTS the body and blood of Christ.)
Actually, anybody who hasn’t received the Eucharist under the Catholic Church isn’t allowed to partake in Communion, according to Catholic doctrine.
Of course, as with Last Rites and Baptism, exception is made when one is close to death and desires to make peace with God, so the Sacraments can even be administered by a layman/laywoman if no priest is available, and being a member of the Catholic Church isn’t a necessity in these extreme conditions.
Also, if you’re “under grave sin” (meaning having committed a mortal sin), you should abstain from Mass as a whole until you Confess. You’re allowed to partecipate in Mass and take the Holy Communion if you aren’t capable of confessing prior to it, but only under the understanding the first thing you do once Mass is over is confessing your sin(s) to the priest and make amends to God.
Official practice for Catholics is more akin to recent culture. Early practice was to receive weekly. Middle Ages was once or twice a year. Post Vatican II is as frequently as you want.
Current Pope considers it help for the sick and weary (such as himself), but that has varied.
As for attending a Catholic wedding and receiving communion, I would respect local practice. I wouldn’t stand up to lead a prayer in a mosque or synagogue. Just stand and sit when others do and sing if you know the tune. Weddings are not about you and your beliefs anyway.
But, hypothetically, let’s say, there’s a woman in this church who raised a girl in her household as practically another daughter, made the girl believe she loved her. A girl whose own actual mother committed suicide. A girl who was disowned by her father, and then held at gunpoint by said father. The father who pointed this gun at the woman’s own daughter, and endangered her daughter’s life as well. Let’s say this woman decided to blame this girl for this traumatic event, despite this girl being the victim, and even look down on her own daughter for doing something incredibly brave and stopping the kidnapping and saving the girl.
This hypothetical woman should maybe reconsider taking communion this week. And every week.
Seriously though, I think this moment says everything about the Gods the two worship.
Becky’s God is love, a character who answers lesbian prayers and doesn’t care about doctrine or religion or any of that, but just is a genuine positive force.
Carol’s God is wrath, a tyrant to stay just on the right side of, who will look down on someone who dares show empathy to a “sinner” no matter what she’s suffered, who thinks its more important that your daughter be “right with the lord” in her deeds than be alive. Someone to appease for just a bit longer so the Rapture can come and wipe it all away.
And it really manifests in how they are affected by this faith. Carol becoming mean and abusive and no longer even seeing people for all she feels she has to embody her faith and Becky just happily living her faith, knowing that God answers lesbian prayers and sends superheroines and motorcycle chicks in her darkest moments.
Except Carol doesn’t see that as “wrath”. She views her god as a righteous one, and herself as upholding his standards and rules, thus, she is righteous as well. Becky stepping away from the standards and rules makes her a sinner. In Carol’s mind, the world is black and white. She cannot comprehend grey.
Becky stepping away from the rules, and not being punished, and in fact, happy and thriving, confuses her. That’s not how her world works. Becky will suffer, should suffer, because Becky has defied the rules. Carol is just waiting for the suffering and regret and penance, and the longer Becky goes without paying for her infractions, the more Carol gets pissed off.
This was basically the culture outlined in the New Testament that Jesus butted heads with. Disregard the crucifixion and whatnot, the religious leaders at the time basically said “This is what we believe in and how things should be, everyone who deviates is WRONG” then came along Jesus, who basically said “You are basically right, but maybe reel it in a bit about the righteous contempt and hard line laws.”
Carol’s the old way, Becky’s the new – the focus less on laws, and more focus on love and relationship. Sometimes laws need to be broken to do what is good. After all, Jesus broke a LOT of laws according to the New Testament.
Oh yeah, very much. In Carol’s view, that abusive wrath and receipt-keeping is love. Is the truest love there could ever be. And just like a loving parent “should” “discipline” an unruly child, so a loving God “disciplines” humanity when we have strayed from his “love”.
Content Warning: Domestic Violence metaphor
To Carol, letting people be is a sign of a fallen world that has fallen out of rhythm with God and rejected him and like a spurned lover, he “naturally” grows angry at the burnt dinner humanity offers him and bellows in rage and sends blows of hurricanes and natural disasters to show just how frustrated he is that all of his hard work keeping the planet going is not being respected by tasty dinner on time. And so it is on the “good wife” of humanity to respond to that and stay on his good side and serve as a faithful right hand, reinforcing his will so as to avoid his righteous temper.
Content Warning: Racism
And that also gets mixed in with what you were saying about the world being black and white. My best friend growing up tried to explain his church’s moral stance thus. There is black and there is white. Black is sin and white is purity. Gray isn’t a legitimate stance. Gray is just white that’s got black in it. And once you’re gray you can never go back to being white, you can only get blacker, so it’s important to stop the first instance of sin.
And if the frame of that argument feels awkward in terms of racial identities, well, that was somewhat intentional as he went on to explain that this relates to skin color, with black people being weighed down by the historical sin of Cain (did I mention the church I grew up surrounded by was hella racist, cause holy fuck was it racist). He eventually detoxed from all of these beliefs but it was a long Joyce-like process.
That’s one thing that always struck me as weird: Christians looking down on sinners. I mean, Jesus hung around with prostitutes, beggars and -shock and bewilderment- tax collectors, not the beautiful elite. And he didn’t act as if they were below him (despite being literally God), but treated them with love and respect and helped them and protected them from persecution and harm.
Some Christians believe they’re better than Jesus: I can’t decide if it’s hilarious or depressing.
No no, they are not better than Jesus, but weaker than Jesus. You need to root out the evil from your midst so that it may not overpower you eventually. What does Jesus care about that? He can bend over and take the evil without protection since he’s dying for our sins anyway and the devil holds no power over him.
But what a lot of denominations point out that one should aspire to be Christ-like, aka act, think and be like Jesus in every conceivable way.
And what Jesus did was spreading the Good Word to everyone who was willing to listen and helping the poor, the destitute and the outcasts. By singling out sinners and shaming them you’re not being Christ-like: you’re driving the “lost sheep” even further away.
Matthew 25, 44-45: “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”
Mind you, I’m not complaining about how Willis represents Christians in the comic (that seems to be the latest craze ’round here=, but rather about hypocritical Christians.
I guess this could be seen as a young generation/ old generation clash. I’ve noticed the older generations in Christian circles tend to be more closed, reserved. Younger generations aren’t as dogmatic and more free to mingle outside religious circles.
According to my friends growing up, you’re supposed to overlook that because of one random line in Matthew 5:7 where he talks about not coming to abolish the law, but rather fulfill it, so that means Jesus was 100% on board with all the hateful stuff of the pharisees (whose real crime was being jewish (their church was fuuuuuuuun) according to them). You’re then not supposed to look to the previous line about glorifying God through deeds, but instead look to a random series of other Jesus lines that suggest he’s a hardliner and then quote a bunch of Paul’s letters, because that’s also the words of Jesus, or close enough because God wouldn’t have let them in the Bible if they weren’t.
Hell, when I tried to understand the whole rigmarole and read the Bible myself and attended a few Bible groups, it all clicked when I noticed that the style of studying the Bible was being told to read a single line of the Bible, then told to close the Bible and stop reading while an older person explained what that meant.
Which is how you get the weird out-of-order narrative of Rapturist beliefs and a worldview in which Jesus the trans guy who hung out with a bunch of gay fishermen on the docks and dished with sex workers and had “views” about divorce amidst some good stuff about deeds and loving people and communist revolution and the world ending any day now becomes Aryan rule-monger, hater of gays and abortions.
I think most Christian circles sort of close themselves off because of the victim mentality – that “liberals” are out to get everything they believe in and sanitize it in government.
Personally, I’m fine with this. Government has no business defining what you should believe in – unless your beliefs result in the harm of another of course.
What you have to remember is that a lot of sects don’t actually care about the New Testament. They like the names of the New Testament and the rules of the Old Testament… except for the rules that would inconvenience them personally, like the ones about shrimp and mixed fabrics. They get to ignore those.
This is basically the comparison of Jesus versus the Pharisees that the first books of the New Testament are all about. I know, from your comments the other day, it’s best not to use that ancient spice all the time – I just cannot help but think of how things going on in the New Testament sort of repeat even today – in fiction and non.
I just want to say your comments and analysis of each comic (and the characters, and their beliefs) are really, really enjoyable, and I thank you for ’em.
I know you get this *a lot*, just wanted to add my voice to the chorus.
Had to track indentation back a lot to figure out you probably mean “Cerberus” here. It’s sort of amusing that there apparently is spiritual value in comic strip exegesis. Take a piece of scripture and talk about it.
Because, frankly, the creator is still quite alive. One feels if anybody should be talking confidently about it, it would be him. But probably nobody would want to hear it. Like you don’t want to hear a good pitcher lecture about aerodynamics.
It would rob you of illusions about both aerodynamics and the pitcher.
So yes: if Jesus turned up in a current-day church, he’d probably be politely escorted out, even before throwing a fit at the church sale tables. He may have started a religion or rather a sect of an existing one, but coming back from the dead was really overdoing it and it was a good move that he moved back to corporate central after a few weeks.
My church had round disk wafers but didn’t do the wine. You also had to line up to get it. If you didn’t want communion but wanted a blessing you crossed your arms in an X over your chest.
At the last wedding I attended (different, in fact, than one of my previous emissaries), this option was offered. Having earlier declined to kneel during certain parts of the ceremony, I left my corpus at ease. Neither does Herakles kneel before nor ask blessings of other men’s gods!
My grandparents’ Lutheran church did the “cross your arms for a blessing” thing. (I don’t remember if they had wine as well as wafers.) I stayed in my seat because I believe in neither blessings nor ritual cannibalism; I was only there because of my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.
That service was so creepy. My grandmother’s funeral was less creepy than their usual service. Actually Lutherans seem to hold a good funeral; the entire service was about my grandmother and her life, which was a far cry from the… Methodist? I think?… funeral for a friend I had unfortunately attended a few years prior, which had five minutes about her and over an hour about how none of it was “God’s” fault.
As someone who grew up in the Episcopal church (“Anyone who wants communion, come on up!”) it is so hard for me to really understand the viewpoint of someone like Carol here. Isn’t part of communion MAKING you right with Jesus?
Good points, Becky! Good to see her holding her own in this whole mess.
It ends up depending on the denomination. Technically, in the Catholic Church at least, even without being excommunicated there are situations in which you are not allowed to take communion as a Catholic. Usually they have to deal with having committed a mortal sin.
As for making you right with Jesus, again, at least in the Catholic church, taking communion is an indulgence, which is less “get into heaven free” and more “Hey, here’s time off purgatory!”
Carol’s being spiteful which is probably born from some grudge she has. Maybe she liked Ross more as a person then Hank did? She’s also very protective of her daughter, and definitely sees Becky as a bad influence now. She’s just being passive aggressive.
Most churches I’ve gone to don’t bar you from communion (Non Catholic ones I’ve gone to. I’ve only gone to a few Catholic churches so I cannot really say much there). Typically they see communion as a symbolic show of good will, as a way of saying “I’ll try harder”.
I absolutely love the absolute certainty Becky has in her faith. She knows her God loves her. She knows it, because the God she prays to is good. And a good God, in her mind, wouldn’t hate her because of her sexuality or ask her to believe in fake things about how the world works or demand people live in misery and repression.
She was told that God despised people like her and made the conclusion that the problem must be the church, must be the doctrine. That that didn’t reflect on God, just the church she was raised in. And so she not only believes in God, but knows he’s got her back. And in her head, she has proof. Proof in her lack of injuries, proof in not being in some reparative therapy camp right now, proof in her girlfriend’s kisses, proof in her best friend doing so much to support her and her best friend’s sister helping her get some of her documents.
And so, the only points in which Becky gets angry or upset are the moments when someone tries to suggest that God does not approve of her or what she is doing. That she is somehow out of favor with her God. That’s where she gets extra snarky, where she snaps at people and drops the mask a bit.
And I think it’s not just defending her faith, but also her defending her God. When people say to her, well maybe God hates people like you, what she hears is people calling her God an asshole who would be so narrow-minded and evil to hate people for what they are.
And that upsets her, so much so that she feels she needs to step to and counter. Because in her mind, God is love. And nothing will shake that.
It’s just a lovely character touch. She knows she belongs in a church on Sunday morning and what anybody says to her about it matters not one bit, because she has the faith that is rock certainty and genuine comfort rather than a tool of hate and exclusion.
Reading this strip I suspect that even if Becky hadn’t been outed that sooner or later she would have begun to become more vocal about her increasing dissatisfaction with the religious environment she grew up in. Perhaps at some point she would have been told to consider another congregation.
Behold, POSITIVE CHRISTIAN CHARACTERS AND FAITH BEING A POSITIVE IN SOMEONE’S LIFE AND NOT A NEGATIVE!
Take THAT, assholes complaining we don’t have any!
Seriously though, I’m glad that Becky managed to come through things and still manage to find religion as something comforting. It’s not for me (because any god who’d look at my brain and the frankly terrifying neuroses I inflicted on myself during that period and say “Yeah I’m going to hold it against you for not trying to believe me after realizing all you internalized was fear anyway” is not a god worth the trouble,) but I’ve known enough people for whom it WAS a wholly positive and non-dickish force that I know they do exist and Becky sure as hell doesn’t need that scar tissue on her psyche with everything else.
Sadly to the hateful assholes who post that crap about how “Willis doesn’t have any good Christian characters”, Becky doesn’t count because “she’s never seemed religious” i.e. they don’t believe one can be gay and be Christian because in their mind God hates gay people.
And *hugs* on that last paragraph. And yeah, that’s my general stance as well. Any “god” in my mind that would care more that I’m an atheist than anything I’ve done is not only not worth my time, but someone I’d spend my afterlife fighting if it turned out I was wrong.
The issue isn’t that there are no good christian characters. The issue is that there are too many terrible people that are christian. The two really horrible events of the comic have both been inflected by Christians. First Joyce’s rape and secondly Toedad. Mary is also an antagonist and is also a christian. The non-christian assholes have been almost entirely harmless.
4 out of 5 people in Indiana (and the US) are Christian, and you name three characters you believe to be bad Christians. Heck, that means I get to have like two more before it’s unbalanced, and for every non-Christian villain I introduce, I get to have FOUR more Christian villains! I’ll get right on it.
Yup. This is the first time today Becky answers back at Carol, and it’s not in defense of herself, but of God. Don’t trashtalk Becky’s God in his own church, Carol.
She’s rock solid on her belief that God loves her, but the teachings of the church definitely are slipping away faster for her then they are for Joyce. Big example of this is how Joyce and Becky differ on the opinion of evolution. Joyce sees it as undermining everything she believes in, because the concept of evolution takes a jackhammer to her belief’s foundations. Becky basically just doesn’t think of it and just pursues understanding the science over belief.
Honestly, I think this is why Becky will still be of faith at the end of the comic, but Joyce will likely end up atheist.
Largely because Becky has found it very easy to strip the trappings of what she was taught from her image of God and so she’s shed all that nonsense and toxicity without losing her iron-clad faith.
But Joyce still links the two, still views her God as stemming from all those trappings, so every encounter that forces her to acknowledge the toxicity of her church and how she was raised makes her feel less capable of loving and worshipping a God that stems from that.
I doubt Joyce will become an Atheist – maybe Agnostic. I think instead she’ll shed most the dogma of Christianity, but keep to heart the foundations. Her journey is certainly going to be more rough though.
I haven’t bothered to check that thing out since the time someone linked to the Shortpacked! one and it tried to argue that trans ace people were something that didn’t exist that Willis invented out of thin air for “diversity reasons”.
I also recall them saying that Robin and Leslie reconciling and having children was Willis thinking that abusive relationships are healed by children, and not, say, a long process of time where Robin learns to forgive herself for doing wrong by Leslie, and Leslie realizes that she does miss Robin and she’s ready to try again, and the two of them want kids because they’re planning on getting married long, long after the two of them actually got back together and want to build a new family because that’s Leslie’s dream.
Basically it’s a cesspool, is what I’m getting at. It’s not even real criticism, it’s just “bluh too pc.”
Well to put it briefly, the reviewer offered to build Willis a Solid Gold Temple if he killed off Becky so . . . yeah . . .
Look. I have problems with this comic. But that’s because I have problems with everything. I am not happy unless I am perennially dissatisfied.
That said, I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying something that I believe is flawed. If I didn’t I would be going through life a very unhappy curmugeon.
I also want to say that not every review on the site is actually that awful. It just suffers from terrible quality control.
There are legitimate kernels of critique in almost every review. Undeniable strenghts in terms of artstyle or idea are often acknowledged.
But overall, and I think partly because it is a community written review with weaving in and out to add and edit rather than an uncyclopedia entry like on Wikipedia, the tone of articles becomes a confused mess of dispassioned critique, hot blooded opinion, and angry old man shouting at clouds.
This is why, personally, I like Webcomic Overlook and other dedicated blogs curratted by single or small groups of reviewers.
I don’t think this fully explains my feeling on the matter so I’m going to start lengthening it now. Gimme about half an hour.
The problem with that… ‘wiki’ is that it is a place that explicitly fosters hate and disdain of what they ‘review’. It obviously creates bad reviews because they’re never done in a neutral way.
Also, don’t they state that spewing acid on webcomics they dislike is “a mission” for them? Yeah, whoever feels so self-entitled on the internet is better stood away from.
How dare the free entertainment you give to the world free of charge not cotton to my specific list of prejudices! This offends me and I must spend my life stopping it!
Ah, hyper-entitled man-babies, what would the internet and geek culture be without them? (less shit, prolly)
I’m going to keep this brief and sweet and try to avoid talking about anything but nuts and bolts since this really quite a bit of tangent :
On the Bad Webcomic Wiki –
After thinking about it I really believe the fact that the site is attempting to be both a wiki and an archive of criticism, and only criticism, is its biggest problem.
A normal wiki relies on the assumption that non-proffessionals can curate articles because they are collecting the best understood concensus from the relevant academic fields. Or in the case of fiction wikis collecting the creator’s ‘word of god’ into a single source. Most of the hard work has been done for you and what is left is simply to caerfully follow a procedure.
The Bad Webcomic Wiki, on the other hand, is an archive of opinions. And the problem with opinions is that everyone has one, they’re all different, and we’re mostly terrible at expressing them to other people or sometimes even to ourselves.
The mark of a good critic is being able to separate out the ‘mechanical’ nuts and bolts part of their opinion and the emotional response and express them both thoughtfully side by side. Most people are not good critics. Nor can they sustain the concentration to thoughtfully criticize or praise something they feel strongly about.
Seriously, being a critic is hard work.
Compounding this problem is that the wiki seems to use a system of votes to determine if a comic is regarded as suitably awful to be included in the archive at which point it is up to whoever volunteers first to write the review.
This leads two things. First, it creates a situation where dissenters will feel immediately outnumbered and in hostile territory when in reality most of the voters probably just don’t care for a given comic. And it allows the person who volunteers to review, who probably feels strongly to volunteer their time, to set the tone which any future edits or additions will follow.
But probably more important than that. The site’s sole purpose is to currate bad webcomics. That sets a tone which greatly limits how much any article can fairly express criticism because the assumption is that, if your comic is already here it is because it is bad.
I believe this last part is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of ‘critic entertainment’ (critertainment?) produced by people like Doug Walker, Ben Croshaw, or even Jim Sterling.
Also reviewing webcomics shouldnt be the same s reviewing a standard comic, like something from marvel
alot of the time webcomics are a hobby and they arent actively getting paid for it (there are exceptions) and more oftyen then not someones first webcomic is a way for them to practice their artist skills and storywriting. Plus since most of them are NOT getting paid they dont really have an obligation to do it every day or have a concrete schedule which is unliked mainstream comic artists.
alot of webcomics start off with bad artwork because as i said its usually someone starting out. But the thing with that is there is almost always improvement that is noticeable.
Even Willis who has been doing webcomics for a long a while, you look at the first page of dumbing of age with this one you WILL notice a difference.
I feel judging webcomics on the same format as comics from marvel and dc is not right, they are a different medium with different artists and you should always take that into consideration.
thats not to say webcomic are above criticism, far from it you should definantely criticize story elements, but dont be vitriolic like the wiki does. Since again more often then not they are starting out, or its their first story so it wont be perfect so give criticism on points they could improve.
Willis had those crtiticisms when he started with “Roomies!” and his has improved alot over the years. His writing i mean. (artwork too obviously)
But since you rarely ever PAY for a webcomic i find getting angry at them for being bad is pointless. If you see a bad movie you wasted your money and time
if you see a bad comic you wasted your money and time and they dont change much from start to finish
if a paperback comics artwork is bad its usually bad from start to finish, if a movies story or acting is bad, its bad from start to finish (there are exceptions but thats how it generally goes)
webcomics are unique in that they always improve over time
even cntrl alt del which is pretty bad storywise from start to finish its artwork does improve.
I feel reveiwing webcomics while definantely a great idea needs to be done differently from other forms of media.
I just read both the reviews for shortpacked and dumbing of age… Why did I did that?! Am I a masochist?! There was so much bad in that, like seriously calling people who like these comments bigots because “we don’t accept christians or white men enough”. Calling this comic completely anti religious. So many gendered slurs and they even said they were glad when Becky’s father tried to kidnap her. All lgbt characters and atheists (and a lot of Ross) had their every action scrutinized and criticized while Mary, Ross, and Joyce when she was still total funds were defended all the way through. The whole thing was shit
Don’t a lot of the “angry reviewer” genre actually love the works they critique on their shows or at least the genres they belong to? Like, they can rip it apart because either they love the works and so can stand to spend the hours and multiple viewings it takes to take them apart and keep doing their angry rants about the works that do disappoint them without getting burned out?
Like, nearly everyone you named has at least one series or run they’ve done where they’ve gushed about things they’ve genuinely loved to keep themselves invested in what they’re doing.
Man, Becky really riles up the shitlords, doesn’t she? Her and Carla. Now if there was only some aspect to their characters that could explain this…
I know! It’s that they’re both red-heads, isn’t it? Boom, nailed it, anti-redhead prejudice raises its ugly head again*.
*Seriously, though, with geek culture more or less absorbing South Park’s anti-“ginger” jokes and semi-ironically repeating them, I do wonder if the veneer of irony is allowing anti-Irish prejudice to come back (especially since bigots seem stuck in the 19th century) under the guise of being “ironic, you guyzz”. Normally I wouldn’t suspect this, but with the rise of literal nazis and Klansmen everywhere, well…
oh, it’s also Kids in the Hall and a lot of other places.
You’re right about the irony factor – it’s seen by most as a very silly thing to be -ist about, at least these days, but there’s always that person who nods and repeats it a little too earnestly.
Once I found that place existed, I immediately made a mental note to ever open it: one, it’s an horribly toxic place with no quality control on its entries. Two, “bad webcomics” is a lie: they attack every webcomic ever.
For example, they “reviewed” xkcd. It boiled down to “stick figures suck” and “Randall Munroe has Asperger’s”. That’s all there was to it, and if there was legitimate critique of the comic, it was buried under heaps of vitriol and hate.
Why? People can have horrible taste in the company they keep and the bad. Especially online. And they can get off on being mean spirited jerks. That doesn’t mean all or even most of them are actually homophobic.
The reasoning was, I kid you not, “stick figures don’t have faces. People with Asperger’s have trouble with faces. Ergo, Randall Munroe has Asperger’s.”
But the fact is that it was meant as an insult, a joke made at Randall’s expense. “durr durr he’s autistic lol” is how that ‘review’ read to me. In fact, I am pretty sure 50% of the site is ad hominem attacks aimed at the creators of the comics they don’t like.
Just skimmed, and yes. Apparently Becky’s the most obnoxious character in the comic. No haircuts were mentioned. Also, apparently the comic treats Billie and Ruth’s relationship as an unambiguously good thing because it’s a same sex relationship. Which is news to me.
The reviewer says they read Dumbing of Age 3.4 times for the review, which strikes me as a remarkably unbalanced approach to hate reading. Like, surely that’s an exhausting amount of time to devote to reading something they hate. It’s not entirely surprising, given the premise of the wiki, but I can’t help but think that sort of approach is going to seriously warp your ability to give a balanced critique.
She won’t 🙂 Her father couldn’t change her with a gun. Her mother’s ghost couldn’t. Carol most certainly can’t change her with a dress and some underhand comments.
Never change in the face of hostility and bigotry, that I agree with!
But for Becky’s sake, I would wish her to allow herself to be “weak” with people she trusts. That she could fully open up emotionally, have an hour or even a day of not putting on her fighting face, to just let it all out; oddly secure in that this will not cause the people around her to think any less of her.
Of course, there are reasons why she can’t do that, at least not yet. but maybe one day, Becky…
Ugh. I can’t stand it when Willis writes these incredibly unrealistic scenarios. I mean, who would do that? No real Christian would EVER do that.
Those communion crackers are INSANELY dry. You don’t suck your fingers and make “Mmmn nmmm num mmm” sounds! You’re too busy trying not to choke to death before you get your swallow of grape juice!
It looks like the little hard oyster-cracker-but-worse things we had in my church to me. But to be honest, I was just making a joke at the expense of people who keep saying Willis misrepresents Christians. So whatever. 🙂
Of course you are. You received your express tickets from The Agenda, didn’t you? We’re supposed to get primo suites, for really flaunting God with, like, everything.
If someone told me that Jesus said I couldn’t have some of the communion, I would not only take like a handful of what ever. I would make the most inappropriate noises while eating it, no matter how gross, dry or stale. Because SPITE is amazing when you can shove it in someone’s face.
Also yeah that’s bread which is always intrinsically yummy.
If they’re following the way communion wafers are supposed to be, that’s unleavened bread, which is intrinsically not yummy. But then again, I had a friend who got wheat thins for communion. dang Baptists
In the Methodist church we got like yummy homemade baked bread. It was the only good thing about the 2 hour long self masturbatory ceremony that is communion
The way Becky puts together that list of those who saved her, it can be interpreted in two ways. We all see it as a list of three people, because we all saw the climactic moment. But, it could also be read as a list of two people, with “my girlfriend” being elaborated on as “my best friend on a motorcycle”.
And most people wouldn’t assume that, but take someone paranoid and already scared that her daughter is being seduced into the lesbianic arts and convinced that homosexuality is some demon recruitment service? Who’s looking to see the worst in Becky no matter what?
There’s a distinct possibility that Carol could interpret things that way, especially with the congregation members whispering pointed comments about Joyce and Becky being “together”.
And that could be a very dangerous thing if Carol gets of the mindset that she “needs to save her daughter” from the lesbian corrupting her to “an unhealthy lifestyle”.
You said “lesbianic”. So now I’m thinking “lesbotic tendencies”. And now I’m realizing that inside Carol’s brain there must be a tiny Stephen Fry accusing others of being an “active, promiscuous, and voracious lesbite”.
Audibly, it’s very unlikely that Carol would make that mistake. There are tonal differences between the way you list different people and relative clauses that are easy to make jokes about when written down (because commas are multipurpose) but if you’re actually listening to someone, they sound very different.
Y’know, they actually sell them at the grocery stores. They’re apparently supposed to be for practicing before you take your first Communion. I find it somewhat amusing that they’re all different colors of the rainbow.
It’s all about timing. Eat it too soon, and the priest can’t turn it into Jesus flesh, so you don’t get his blessing. Eat it too late, and it turns into Jesus flesh in your mouth, or worse, your hand, and you have to choke down this disgusting lump of raw meat. At least, I think that’s how it works. I’ve never partaken, as you can probably tell.
I think it is for people who have an issue with unfamiliar tastes and textures. When I was a kid, my folks got me practice wafers because else there was a big possibility I might gag and spit it out on the day.
I am both impressed by and afraid for Becky right now, and I really love that that’s her perspective, assuming it is. That is high-level faith, strength, and gumption, and with her humor still intact too… dang.
Honestly Carol, God created everyone just how they’re supposed to be, right? Because God is Perfect and makes no mistakes. Therefore, God made Becky a badass lesbian, and if God made her so, he clearly does not look down upon lesbians.
Geez, Carol, why would lesbians even exist if they weren’t supposed to
Ah, the fundamental flaw there is that God doesn’t make gay people.
Gay people choose to be the way we are because…because we just like Satan and being contrary, I guess? Never quite understood where the stops on that logic train were.
It’s why so many of them cling so desperately to the “it’s a choice” framing and why the “born this way” rhetoric is powerful (albeit flawed in certain respects).
Because they do believe God doesn’t make mistakes and so there must be a reason that gay people and trans people and ace people and bi people and so on keep happening. And believing that it is all some sort of sick test on God’s part to see if people resist it tends to sit poorly with a lot of people…
So instead, it’s all about denying it’s something you are and making it about choosing “unhealthy” “godless” lifestyles that everyone understands are fake and all about making Christian folk uncomfortable about their beliefs. Because everything in the Universe is all about their personal spiritual journey.
those are the communion breads of a non-Catholic church. A lot of churches have communion, just Catholic is the only (I believe) religion who believes that the bread and wine is the Actual Body and Blood of Jesus. Other churches believe in metaphorical representation.
Communion is used in some Non Denominational churches as well, but typically it’s not an every Sunday affair. It’s usually introduced depending on the sermon.
On the subject of using grape juice and bread instead of wine and crackers:
A friend of mine who is a church choir director refers to this as the Heresy of Displaced Fermentation. This happens when you take the yeast out of the wine, where it belongs, and put it into the bread, where it doesn’t.
The motorcycle is a part of Sal in Becky’s mind. She hasn’t really gotten a chance to have significant interactions with her, and she was in Motorcycle Gear, so in her mind they are one connected unit to which Joyce in all her righteous fury attached herself.
Also in Becky’s mind I’m pretty sure Joyce really just came charging in on the motorcycle, fist aloft, straight into Toedad’s face. Don’t think about the physics or timeline involved for that one it won’t hold up, but the image is sound.
Except Becky has now spent… what, about a week?… as Sal’s roommate. How implausible would it be to spend that long sharing the same dorm room and still having no contact whatsoever?
also, Becky is trying to sway Joyce’s mom here. Her best friend, girlfriend, a motorcycle, and a superhero mean something to the mom. “Sal” or “a cool girl who drives a motorcycle would have little meaning to the mom
Of all the people involved in that crisis Sal is the only one who actually prevented a death, but ironically, Becky didn’t list her as Heaven sent, because Sal was also non-violent. Sal is the only one who didn’t physically attack Ross.
And it occurred at a moment when she was focused on her seatbelt and trying to grab the wheel to not die in a car spinning out of control, so she was probably a little distracted. So she probably was a minor part of the rescue to her largely because her presence for the parts of the rescue Becky was present at was very small.
Not to mention Joyce was wearing yellow but Sal was in all blue against the background of a blue truck and probably was just a flash of something. It’s legitimately possible she only knows about the motorcycle because Joyce mentioned it afterwards as the explanation of how she was able to catch up.
Granted she should probably have put two and two together on who is the one person they both know who has a motorcycle, so really, Becky should probably get on that, but it’s understandable why Sal wouldn’t feature prominently in Becky’s memory.
And, I mean, I think we can give Amber a pat on the back for the whole “prevented Ross’ escape” thing, even if it was running on superhero logic to work (like how Sal was able to catch Amber with one arm by leaping six feet in the air on her motorcycle).
Last panel cracks me up every time I look at it. And my favorite part is that the fingers we see her licking weren’t even in contact with the bread/wafer/cracker/whatever.
Since people are sharing their varieties of communion, figure I’ll add mine in. I was raised Lutheran, and at our church, communion was of the (voluntary) “line up at the front, one row at a time” type deals, where children too young to partake (I think that started 5th grade?) could get a blessing. We used real wine but had white grape juice alternatives, and you could either get a tiny glass or drink from the goblet or do intinction (dipping the bread in the goblet). And we used pita bread, for which I’m retroactively thankful, now that I know the alternatives. Also, if attendance was low, you might get a massive chunk! …Communion might’ve been my favorite part of religion, come to think of it…
She’s not taking this shit lying down anymore. If Carol’s gonna be hostile anyway, and she’s stuck there, may as well fight back. Take the cracker Becky, Carol will take her L.
It will be interesting to see if Carol’s piety (and her need to appear perfect to her peers) is sufficient to stop her from exploding and hysterically denouncing Becky in the middle of the service!
As far as I know, all Christians take communion. There’s a few extreme sects that believe practically no one is pure enough to partake, but even they hold communion services (once every three months: the other services are just singing, bible readings and a sermon).
At least two churches I’ve gone to have used Communion selectively, depending on the sermon. They’ve used it as a show of dedication, to show wanting to get closer to Jesus relationship wise.
That name now makes me wish to try one of the wafers with cheese wiz.
She’s got a point. If there is a god and that kind of team not only leaped to the rescue, but successfully rescued a kidnapping victim, then said god has to be on board with the whole thing.
All thanks to David Willis, who brings both frustrations and catharsis.
Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
No people yelling that Becky is ‘so awful’ for doing this yet in the comments as far as I can tell. I am cautiously optimistic.
(Like seriously while I get disliking Becky when she treats Dorothy like crap or the utterly tasteless nazi joke from earlier- she can be obnoxious and annoying and even offensive after all: it just really gets up my nose some of the other times, like when she’s responding to people like Carol or whoever, usually hiding it behind ‘picking your battles’- because apparently they want people to act like a complete and utter saint/ a complete doormat, letting bigots trample all over her and she’s being soooo difficult to be accepted.)
Because she can totally be accepted by pieces of human refuse like Carol so easily if she plays the respectability game. Somehow. As Carol would get to snip and snip and be passive aggressive even if she did do that. But if Becky once responds she’s in the wrong somehow. Like if Carol doesn’t want Becky to make such responses she just has to learn to shut her trap and realise little barbs aren’t going to be allowed from her either.
(Seriously, I’m not out to anyone, but my aunt always looks scandalised when I actually /disagree/ with her on politics, as if me quitely accepted her opinions is the polite thing to do even if I disagree and think they’re ridiculous/awful/biogted/whatever and I can basically see people shifting uncomfortably)
People like Carol however deserve no respect, they do not deserve to be entertained or coddled like a fucking baby for their opinions. She’s an adult. She should grow the fuck up and face reality for once in her life. If her own daughter’s life being risked, as well as her daughter’s best friend- wasn’t enough of a wake up call to shake things up, I don’t think anything will be though. Not Becky being the quite demure perfect little girl/victim. Not anything. She’s just that evil. Some people will never admit they are wrong.
Like I get it can be a difficult thing to admit, but I really see no layers of doubt from Carol. I don’t even see her y’know, /begrudgingly/ doing this because she believes it’s what the lord wants (there isn’t even a ‘This is what I have to do, even if it feels wrong to me’ vibe- which would still be wrong, and pretty cowardly, but at least remotely understandable because these are folks scared into compliance with hellfire for themselves and loved ones. Hell it’s how I was as a teenager deeply in the closet).
I kind of think sometimes it’s not what you believe which always fully defines you, as belief isn’t always a fully conscious choice you make- there’s too many outside factors at work, and as Jocelyn said you are sometimes your own experiences: but rather (sometimes) your emotional/logical response to what you’ve been raised to believe. If things like hellfire or homophobia make you uncomfortable or bigotry doesn”t seem to make too much sense to you as morally a-ok when you really think on it deeply for the first time- at the very least you have the building blocks to /become/ a decent person. There is hope for you.
Those who are gleeful of hell (say like Mary) do not. Granted Carol probably like had 1 point on that from Mary since she doesn’t seem /happy/ at least. But like I said- there’s no doubt or struggle evident with Carol at all as of now. Maybe that will change, maybe we’ll get new insight but I really doubt it.
And even then, until such time, she shouldn’t be coddled like an utter child. Carol, Christ I know Jesus said for you to come like a child but you should use basic adult reasoning in some areas. Like I’m pretty sure back when I went to church there were things about ‘growing’ in faith and how remaining spiritually stunted was a bad thing. Like the whole kid things was supposed to be how you first came to Jesus (joyful and ready to learn) but then you grew the hell up.
That being said I’m guessing Carol doesn’t know about Dina- probably assumes Joyce is the girlfriend. Oh boy.
(Sorry is this too long? It probably is. I have a lot of feelings.)
The thing is that what Becky says here isn’t a snark, it’s a genuine expression of faith! That Becky’s faith has survived her experiences is, I think, more offensive to Carol than anything else. However, from our ‘outside’ perspective, it is difficult to fault her words without looking like idiots.
This this this. Carol (and her ilk) see very clearly that there is obviously One True Right Way To Believe, and if you believe (or, y’know, are) something outside of that structure, then you are an Evil Heathen.
The fact that Becky is very clearly “sinning” but still claims to be worthy of God’s love is infuriating to them, because it’s denial of their authority as the Ultimate Arbiters Of What Is Christian. Becky isn’t saying to them “you and your God are wrong and I am leaving,” she is saying “you are wrong about God,” and that’s much more harmful to their mindsets (and position of social authority in a small town).
I love that Becky points out the various ways God answered her prayers, she emphasises the fact that Toedad kidnapped her. She reminds Carol that he held Becky and Joyce at gunpoint, and kidnapped her , and that this is the guy Carol is siding with, just to emphasise the cheek Carol has in trying to suggest Becky’s the one who needs to make herself “right with God”.
Joyce did tell Hank that Dina is Becky’s girlfriend, so that information may have filtered through to Carol.
*clap hands* That was amazingly worded and stated and definitely not too long! And I agree so much with all of that.
Hell, I think that’s part of why Becky resonates with me a lot is that I tried so hard to fit into respectability politics and be the “perfect” victim and politely argue my right to existence with my parents, going slow so as to make it “easier” on them and they just used that respectability presentation as an excuse to dismiss my identity and like it was fully acceptable to argue against it.
So I have a lot of respect for her fearlessness, the way she never presents her lesbianism as something it is remotely okay for her to be apologetic for. Instead, it is something to be celebrated, something that she knows is celebrated by her God. And doesn’t let the dishonest arguments that she should “tone it down” or “hide herself away” or admit her lesser nature because of it (and they are dishonest, the people in her church do not care that she is “too out”, they care that she is gay and not apologizing and repenting for it) get her down or roll over her.
BECKYYYYYYYYYYYY! LLOK AT THAT LOOOOOOOOKK AAAAAAATT THAAAAAAAT YOU GLORIOUS GLORIOUS CREATURE YEAH YEAH DAMN STRAIGHT YOU EAT THAT LORD ON HIGH! YOU EAT HIM!
AUGH you perfect girl. how you so tuff. you so tuff. ok carol so you don’t like me but GOD DO
willis loves you girl
Ha HA! Bless Becky and her amazing ability to snark on her feet.
I’ve been thinking that a variant of this logic would be useful to Joyce in standing up to her mother, if Joyce were up to doing that: “I felt confused and lost as to how I was supposed to be treating gay people, and prayed to God for guidance – and He sent me Becky!” It’s neat to see Becky using it in her own defense.
Actually yeah, I mean if we’re going for the whole “the gods strengthen the hand of the just” deal then Joyce’s beatdown of Toe-dad more or less proves which side he’s on.
Jut so we’re clear on how much mean ol’ SJWillis hates Christians and this entire comic is just a way to snipe back at them, we just had an old white Fundamentalist begin reevaluating his entire life’s beliefs because he’s trying to do right by his daughter and her best friend, the latter upon learning she’s one of those sex weirdos who go to hell for existing, and here we have Becky, who has actually suffered at length at the hands of her religion, fight back against Carol for the first time this entire weekend because she dared to insist that Becky does not belong in her faith, like Dina, Sal, Joyce and Amazi-Girl rescuing her life when her dad kidnapped her at gunpoint wasn’t very clearly God’s love working through them.
but none of that counts, because…
um…
hang on, let me find a verse that proves I’m right and all you sinners are wrong (and going to Hell for being wrong).
And I’m 99% sure Willis was referring to the dc Talk version (rather than Doobie Brothers), considering his Tumblr background is straight outta this video!
I’m somewhat surprised how niche knowledge of Protestant/Evangelical communion practices appears to be, judging by the confusion among my fellow commenters. Of course we take communion (but we always call it that, never “Eucharist”, and it was memorial/metaphoric), and my Church [of Christ] did it every week, although some denominations did it less often, and it was passed in plates like this — first the “bread” (usually Matzo crackers you’d break a tiny piece off of, but sometimes the tiny Oyster cracker-type things) then the “wine” (tiny cups of grape juice). Usually the offering plate was passed afterwards — I guess they figured, while we’re passing plates around, it’s a good a time as any! There was generally an announcement about it being an open communion — i.e. you did not need to be a member of this church to partake, but any Christian could partake if they felt right doing so.
I assume the church depicted here is similar, but Carol is taking exactly the wrong lesson from it — it’s supposed to be a personal/spiritual introspection, not something to judge your neighbor over! (Not saying my childhood church was great, or would accept Becky — I could totally see some people giving here the side-eye, or even trying to pass the plate around her — just that Carol is wrong, and Becky’s response is awesome!)
Before I say what I’m about to say, I want everyone to be clear that I agree entirely with Becky’s reaction here and I’m her place I PROBABLY would have done the same. That said…
While I get and agree with her, shouldn’t she not have partaken in communion out of respect for Joyce ‘s family? I mean, she might not agree but the rest of the community still thinks homosexuality is a sin. I mean, for example my sister is still very religious while I’m not and my dad is an a prime horrid example of an atheist (what I’m saying is he’s douchenozzle atheist who treats any spiritual person like garbage) and when we ended up going to a church function for my sister, I didn’t partake of the communion since I’m considered to be sinner in their eyes and told my dad not to out of respect for the church (he wanted to eat it and then do something horrid like spit it back out. He’s horrible). I mean, I took it as a “I’m visiting so let me behave” kind of thing. So shouldn’t Becky have done something similar here? If only to avoid backlash from the rest of the church?
Again, I actually applaud her action mind you. I just wonder if it was the best course of action as a whole.
Exactly. If she did skip it out of respect for bigoted people’s beliefs, she’s validating them. Besides, she’s not a visitor. She grew up with these people. I’ve always taken communion when offered because I won’t wear their shame. That’s how it sinks in to your being and I have enough internally that bothers me without assimilating it from other people too…
This. It’s her church. She’s not an atheist guest coming along with the family. She’s an active member, she grew up in this church and she’s done nothing wrong and views herself in no way as being out of sync with her God.
To refuse would be to either insult herself by admitting that she is not “right with God” i.e. that her lesbianism is a sin she should be ashamed of or to insult her God by not showing that she recognizes how He had her back.
So yeah, there’s no reason for her to refuse and every reason for her to partake.
Carol or her family dont get to decide wether becky should eat the wafer. Besides christianity tends to preach that “EVERYONE is a sinner” so not letting her eat the bread because of one “supposed” sin is stupid.
Also your family not wanting you to eat the communion bread is pretty rude and uncalled for! They dont get to decide wether you do or not.
Well… She’s part of some unspecified Protestant church. They tend to emphasize the exploration of one’s personal relationship with God, and also the fact that *everyone* is a sinner (not meaning “sinner” as in “bad person” necessarily; it’s just an active acknowledgement that human beings are imperfect and need to work at being good). So sinners take communion all the time. Being “right with God” is more about whether or not you’ve done something you feel guilty for, or which you know to be wrong.
Becky does not feel guilty for being herself, nor does she feel it’s wrong. And assuming she’s not being sarcastic, she feels God saved her. So taking Communion very well may not be going against her church’s theology.
No. Carol spelled out the exact criteria you need to take communion. You weren’t supposed to take it because you weren’t right with God–you didn’t even believe He exists. So, out of respect for their beliefs, you don’t take it.
Becky is a Christian. She believes she is right with God. So she gets to take it. She isn’t doing anything wrong.
There is a scripture that hints at what you suggest: Romans 14:19-21, which basically says “Don’t do something that your brother thinks is sinful right in front of them, even if you know it’s right.” But the context of the rest of the chapter is saying that Carol is the one in the wrong in casting judgment on Becky. And Communion is not a spectator sport. It is Carol who interjected herself on what should have been a private decision for Becky.
It’s not as if Becky said “I’m a lesbian, and I know you think that is sinful, but I’m gonna take communion anyways!” If anything, she actually explained why she was not sinning the way Carol thought she was.
When I still believed, but was first getting sick of the evangelical horseshit surrounding me (not my family, but my culture), my usual answer was “My relationship with God is between me and God.”
trlkly has it right — Communion, and in fact faith as well, is not a spectator sport. Nobody else gets to decide what you’re allowed to believe. The congregation can decide if someone is welcome or not, but Carol is most certainly not the personal arbiter of that.
Of course not. And she wasn’t actually saying Becky shouldn’t take communion.
She was just reminding her that if she could skip it if she wasn’t right with God.
Which is true and definitely not meant to imply anything. Really.
my family wasnt religious at all, but i was born in ireland so catholicism was a pretty big part of everyones life and you couldnt even attend most schools if you werent baptised, plus the schools would force us to mass every now and then, and your first holy communion and your confirmation were big deals in the country.
honestly the only reason i was ever excited for the my first communion because i was just curious what the damn things tasted like.
plain bread.
they just taste like plain bread i was super dissapointed.
Yeah, pretty much. It’s a shortcut meaning that her hair is just thinly in front of her eyes, and that she can still see through it. And it’s been part of the comic’s style for a long while.
I went to a Russian Orthodox service once in boot camp. They had a whole loaf of bread that they dunked some of into the wine and fed to the recruits that were allowed to take communion. The rest of the bread was given to us normal folk. We devoured it, being half starved and all.
My church did the crackers and grape juice thing, too, but I never took it. It just didn’t feel right, and my parents were always harping about how if I was baptised, I didn’t deserve communion. I mean, I guess I could have bullshitted my way through it, like I did everything else, to fit in– Felt wrong to lie about it, though, so everyone else in the youth group just stared at me like I personally sold out Jesus.
People are not going to take that well. My church (which is never particularly serious about anything) takes communion very seriously. Good for Becky though.
Good for Becky. Despite the judgment put upon her by the churchies, despite the psycho dad and everything else, she still sees God at work in her life. I really appreciate that.
I go to a congregationalist church and we have people walk down the aisles and hand the ttray filled with a bunch of little plastic cups of grape juice to reach row. Then we did the exact same thing with the tray of bread. This may only be possible with a small church.
We used to have wine but we switched to grape juice when one of our members was an acholic and never bothered switching back when he left. As for the bread, it’s a different type every week and is cut into cubes exactly like the bread in the comic.
I recognized all of this. What I didn’t recognize was the Burger King joint area. I live in the Northeast. My church is at least 150 years old, probably closer to 200. Nothing looks like a Burger King.
The Baptist church I went to when I was young used broken up tortilla chips and grape juice. The chips were referred to as unleavened bread. Woe be unto a child that picked up a piece that was considered too big. That was greedy and sinful. As an adult, the phrase “Take and eat, these are my Doritos” comes to mind when I hear about communion.
When I was in methodist church choir, we made a game of eating the passed around communion bread (we used legit bread), as long as humanly possible…. It got a little weird.
Why. Why whyyy did you have to remind me that the last time I set foot in church was communion?
It was actually years after my life as a child fundie baptist/anointed prophet. I was seventeen and missing the certainty in my life, and decided that a more liberal church for my gay ass was a compromise to the dogma of what I had, so I started attended the ultra liberalism of…the United Methodist Church. For weeks I attended this foreign heathen church, marvelling at the contrast of this stone-and-stained-glass structure in the city to my country house-like wooden structure out in the middle of nowhere, gaping at how the money in the collection plate went to buy mosquito netting in malaria-stricken countries as opposed to building a gym that only church members could use, and how I’d attended two months worth of sermons and yet not a single mention of lepers and outcasts had been mentioned, let alone burning in the fires of hell. And so far, no creepy youth pastors setting of alarm bells in my head.
So I’m there for about two months, but being the social awkward bipolar fuck I am, I speak to no one outside of the standard “Hi, I’m Benjy!” during the “turn to your neighbor and introduce yourselves” in the middle of the sermon. I’m just diagnosed with celiac at this point so I can’t participate in the donut social, I don’t know whether to fill out “member” or “guest” when filling out donation things, and for the most part I just sit there quietly and then leave when it’s over.
Then comes communion. Now, Baptists don’t drink. I can’t emphasize enough that they don’t drink we don’t drink alcohol is bad and Jesus turned water into grape juice and I swear there have been attempts to rewrite the bible saying as much. Except Baptists totally drink except we totally don’t wink wink except you’ll burn in hell if you drink. So I grew up with that mentality, on top of having Crohn’s disease and the prevailing theory at the time was that drinking while having Crohn’s would lead to seizures because of a rapid loss of sugar in the gut or something. (I have since downed bourbon with no ill effects.) On top of that I’m 17 and despite my last five years of rebellion against god I’m still scared shitless by Baptist dogma, and I have no idea if Methodist communion is wine like Catholic or sugarless grape juice like Baptists. So I’m freaking out because I’m fairly certain communion wafers aren’t gluten free, I’m not certain if the blood is wine or juice.
On top of everything, I’m not feeling a communion with God. I’ve been going for two months. I’m not feeling the holy spirit. I’m lonely, but I’m not feeling a sense of community with the people around me. I don’t know their names. I don’t even remember if I knew the pastor’s name. But I’m literally the only person NOT taking communion, so holy fuck peer pressure. But I’m terrified that within two seconds of me ingesting the flesh and blood of Christ Our Savior, I’m going to shit myself in front of everyone, then I’m going to have a seizure in front of everyone, then I’m going to die in front of everyone, and because I took communion under false pretenses, I’m going to go to hell. In front of everyone.
So I start to make a scene. I’m freaking out. Full-on panic. You’re really not supposed to make a sound during communion, you’re supposed to be in deep prayer and meditation on God. But I’m fidgeting, sweating, squeaking, turning around to ask the people beside me, behind me, “Is that wine? I’m not supposed to drink wine! Is there a gluten free wafer? Um, I don’t know what to do!” The two women behind me were scandalized and glared at me. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t that big a deal and no one really noticed, but to me, it was oooooooooh bad. Really bad. So then the plate comes, I panic, down the wafer and blood (it was juice) before we’re supposed to, I’m choking back tears and burning up and I want to cry and scream and then as SOON as the service was concluded I BOLTED out of there and never came back and that’s how I devoted my life to atheism.
Ican’t help but feel like “not being right with God” is the opportune time to take communion. Isn’t the point of communion that we ask for forgiveness for our sins and thus jesus takes them upon himself? Then again, I was raised Lutheran and I don’t know about other churches, but I was raised with the opinion that “Whatever two consenting adults of any combination of sexes and genders want to do in the privacy of their own homes is no particular business of mine.” I subsequently changed it to “any number of,” but I doubt the rest of the lutheran church is quite as liberal as me.
As an aside… communion always confused me. It is, in all respects a ritual, and ritual is exactly what the bible speaks out against… yet every christian church I’ve ever visited partakes of this ritual… like they NEED it, like something bad is going to happen if they don’t. I dunno, Even Jehova’s Witness’ do the communion thing, though in their temples its only the ‘important’ people that are allowed to partake, making it feel even more wrong.
I’m no christian, and honestly it was reading the bible and watching the ‘church’ that made me see why.
I’ll never bash someone for their faith, I’ve been on the receiving end of that for too long myself, but I wish a lot of people would really sit down and understand what it is they are ACTUALLY in belief of.
I would argue that the Bible does not condemn ritual itself, but meaningless ritual. Communion was meant to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, nothing more.
Ironically tho, you’re still one hundred percent right about communion being stupid, as I’m pretty sure Jesus meant it more like a “when you eat or drink, remember me” thing rather than a big ceremony shabang with procedures and rules and stuff. I dunno
Assuming of course that Jesus actually said those words and they weren’t something that accrued or got distorted passing through oral tradition in the generation or so before the Gospels were written.
The Doobie Brothers song is a good choice, but at some point I’d like the hear Joyce and Becky sing a little Stealers Wheels. “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”
Becky, you are deceived. Satan clearly sent all those people, Joyce included, to trick you into thinking God is cool with your gayness. This proves that Hank is wrong and Joyce is even more out of control than Carol originally thought. Joyce needs to be pulled out of IU immediately and enrolled in Bible College. By force if necessary. Or better yet, married off to a congregant so she can put all this liberal, Satanic independent woman/education nonsense behind her.
for all the people upthread discussing communion practice, I’m an English atheist, but I’ve been to at least a dozen different churches and joined in with their services – because I had a crack at being devout when I was a small child, because family were in attendance, and finally because I thought Sunday School was interesting. At all the services I’ve been to in England offering communion, it’s always been a dish of small white wafers, and red wine in a silver goblet, wiped and turned between each sip. You go to the front to receive it, and elderly or infirm people are usually seated at the front, so can go up without queueing (we are CHAMPION queuers). Left to right, front to back, no more than a queue of about a dozen at any given time. People who don’t want to receive communion are often invited to go up for a blessing – I was taught two things, here. One, that it was generally accepted shorthand to not put out ones hands – that holding your order of service instead was a good signal to just get a blessing. Two, that the reason I shouldn’t partake in communion was that I wasn’t confirmed into the faith, though I was baptised at birth.
An entirely neutral view – I do happen to be queer, but my atheism is very natural and not born of trauma or any particular persecution.
Ah, communion. And how different churches, and people, treat it.
I became a Catholic prior to my marriage, because my fiancee and her entire family were Catholic and she really, really wanted to have a church ceremony. So I went through the little mini-school they require prior to your baptism. I learned a lot, although I had had to sit through Catholic church any time I visited my paternal grandparents anyway. My father, thank the non-existent God, was an atheist.
1) Playboy is just fine. But Penthouse? That is perversion! This from the 80ish year old pastor of the church who related the story of his visit to the Playboy mansion.
2) Taking communion (in a Catholic church) if you are not a Catholic is theft. Hellfire awaits you if you take communion and are not a Catholic, or take communion knowing that you are not in a state of grace (as in, have not been to confession. Thankfully my wife never went to confession despite her faith, and so I also did not. If I had it might have been fun though, as I could have come up with a lot of things for tweaking the priests) you will rot in Hell forever. This might have surprised my devout Catholic grandparents and the priests at their church, since they had me line up for communion and I recall that the first time I took the wafer and just kinda stood there, and the priest, who must have known by that point that this was all new to me and that I wasn’t a Catholic said “Put it in your mouth and consume it.”
That theft/grace thing came back a few times. It was an infrequent but consistent theme in the church my wife and I would go to. I always wondered why they were so hard up on it, since Jesus gave to the poor, instructed people that giving to the poor was a Good Thing(tm), and accepted prostitutes, thieves and taxpayers (which were not terribly different in those times) into his cult with regularity. Perhaps with a baptism, but certainly not with an 8 week once-a-week night class.
Then I went to the wedding of a Baptist couple. That priest, when it came time for communion, took pains to let people know that regardless of their church affiliation or lack thereof that they were quite welcome to take communion in his church.
A night and day difference, within the ranks of people who both claim to be following the works of Jesus.
Gotta say, as someone that was raised a godless heathen (well, agnostic, but “godless heathen” is a hell of a lot more fun to say), it’s interesting to read the responses in here.
Not the “Go becky wooo” stuff, although that’s always fun. But just people discussing the raw mechanics of how their childhood church did Communion, what they ate, how the rules on when not to take it worked, that sorta thing. Peering into something I never experienced, ya know?
Raised Episcopalian. I never took any spiritual meaning behind the whole ritual…it was like a mid church snack for me.
I’m an agnostic atheist now, occasionally I go to a presbyterian church because of the preschool my kids go to. I still look at it that way…of course they use grape juice instead of wine which I find to be asinine — if you want me to sit through your sermon, you better be buying.
Your experience is only slightly different than mine. My mother passed when I was 6, so church as a family ended then. As I recall there was a neighbor lady who picked me up for a few years, probably a friend of my mother’s who she asked to do this. But then she moved or my father told her to stop. I was young enough to just go along without questioning things.
And both sets of grandparents were religious. Catholic for the paternal and Seventh Day Adventist for the maternal. And since as a single parent my father didn’t want to be saddled with three kids all summer long, me and my sisters spent a lot of summers at the grandparents, and so went to church with them.
But while my sisters maintained their church-going even into adulthood, it never ‘took’ with me, and I did not. I did read the Bible*, the Quran, and parts of the Tanakh, all while ripping through my father’s library as a child. So I knew a lot about them but considered them to be just another fable like the stories about Thor and Beowulf and Isis and such.
And that remains my feelings about religion today: Fables, myths, just as all the prior religions are considered to be by people who follow one of the three major faiths today.
* This is an almost endless source of amusement for me, because it has been my experience that most people who call themselves Christians have not bothered to read the Bible.
Okay, if Becky wasn’t my favorite before, she is now.
I am DELIGHTED that Becky’s version of Christianity is so different than Joyce’s, even though they were raised in the same church and the same homeschooling program. I’m guessing that this is because Joyce never before had to ideal with a world in which the dogma of her church and her sense of what was right were at odds, but Becky ALWAYS did. Becky had to wrestle with that early on, and hash out a way to believe in God AND believe in herself, so she has no problem kicking the dogma to the curb but keeping her faith in herself and in her God.
Being brought up to believe that you can’t have God without the religious dogma makes for a pretty fragile faith; the first time you encounter reality outside of the dogma bubble, you have no tools available for handling the resultant cognitive dissonance. It can cause people to try to argue away reality, or it can cause people to lose their faith. Some people manage to work their way through it and come through the other side without the dogma they grew up with, but others spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid thinking about it.
I don’t know if Joyce is going to be able to handle ditching the dogma without ditching God, too. I’m guessing at best… agnostic.
This comic reminded me (and a bunch of others, apparently) that Becky is still a Christian.
I think that means she should (as in, it would be awesome if she did, not if that she has to) start preaching a message of opening one’s heart to Christ, hearing his message of not judging others, repent of pride, and be saved.
Specifically, she should start preaching this message to Carol. Like, sometime in the next ten seconds.
Carol pulls the wig from her horns and gores those members of the congregation who don’t do likewise. Four of the demons rend out Becky’s limbs while Carol bites off her head then balances it on a gargled-up fountain of blood and gore.
Well you did ask for the worst that could happen. This would be a good start.
OH those are bread pieces that the whole churches sweaty fingers have touched?? i thought it was poridge and assumed they had breakfast there, so i was confused when becky had a popcorn???
Oh, hey, look. The new comic is about to post and we’re at EXACTLY 700 posts. How rarely do we get a nice large round number like that? I hope no one posts something else and screws it up.
In my church there is bourbon, hookers, and blackjack. Because Calsberg doesn’t make churches, but if they did they would be the best churches in the world.
My head cannon is that the glare is only because at this moment she realized that Becky was dating a none Christian xD
I’m hoping for a conflict there at some point–Becky’s Christianity against Dina’s belief in only science supported things. I wonder what will give way first–Becky’s faith, diana’s spiritual abstinence, or their relationship?
(Hint: knowing this comic–I doubt the middle one T_T)
Every time I re-read this comic I just get madder and madder at Carol, which I guess I’ll use as proof that Willis is such a good story-teller that it affects me this way.
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*Jesus appears*
“John 8:7, and gosh, Becky, why don’t you have this nice rock I found!”
Better- *jesus appears, says nothing, throws rock at Carol, leaving her to figure it out*
Jesus shows up and, like me is very confused by this communion ceremony where is the wine (or “wine”). I really was not prepared to be surprised by another churches communion.
The cup(s) are generally passed around after the bread at this type of communion.
The churches when I was a kid were much more formal. No passing around, lots of kneeling up front, being fed wafers and wine, then blessed. Me, I never liked kneeling to other people and prefer a dry red.
The Episcapalian church I went to was like this. The church was hilariously scripted, you could read all the words the Priest was going to say in the paper hand out that week.
Well, that’s true for a lot of the churches that started as state churches (for instance, the Anglican/Episcopalian church, the churches of Denmark, Sweden and Norway). Only the sermon is unscripted, because the structure of the liturgical year is determined by a top-down process.
The last time I went to the Episcopalian church my parents attend (Infrequently, mostly just for Easter) the entire sermon was written down, word for word. I actually spent more time that sermon seeing if he deviated at all. He did not.
I’ve only been to two churches (a total of 4 times) and they both did that. I kinda assumed every church was like that. Man, is it easy to generalize stuff when you don’t have any knowledge of something’
I’ve been to a couple different denominations over the years, since I really started having an interest in Christianity late high school. Very few are actually scripted outside the Catholic churches and the off-shoots of Catholicism.
The church I went to in college was the least scripted one I’ve ever been to. I felt bad for the worship team (playing the instruments and whatnot) because the Pastor would decide every now and again to forego a typical message in favor of extended worship time. Being in college this annoyed me because the cafe was only open for lunch for a limited time and the longer he went on, the less time I had to eat.
In normal roman catholic masses, you typically only get a communion wafer, unless it’s a special occasion like Holy Thursday or you’re doing some job at the altar.
The one catholic mass in Byzantine rite had a kind of fnny commnion, though. They put a lot of bread pieces in a large chalice of wine and then it’s teamwork of three persons to give you the communion: one is holding the chalice, a second is snipping the wine-soaked bread pieces into your open mouth with a spoon, and the third is holding a dish beneath your chin on the off chance that something might fall down.
Every Roman Catholic church I’ve been to had wine as an option, but not everyone drank it.
I have been to several Roman Catholic churches, and there has been wine at every Sunday mass. Not everyone drinks it– in fact often the wine-drinkers are the minority– but it is always offered. Also noteworthy, the bread and wine are held by different people and offered, usually at the front of the church, and never just passed around.
<—- Son of a Episcopalian priest.
the church has every thing written out in the book of common prayer. It's a way to say we are different people leading unique lives, but these are the core ideas that bring us together.
As far as the homily, that's personal style for the priest. Probably so the congregation can do sick/invalid outreach without a loss of community.
in my church there was no wine. Wine was the devil’s vine and many times more potent than in the time of christ. So we had grape juice instead. even the adults.
I was curious if our church used wine or grape juice, then one day after service I saw my friend and fellow church member emptying the unused “wine” into his daughter’s sippy cup. Pretty sure it’s grape juice.
Can’t speak for other denominations…but catholics down here use exactly that. It’s wine only in name.
They always had us get up to pick up a Wafers and a cup of Grape Juice at my Church.
I’ve been to several Catholic churches as I’ve moved from place to place.
None of them offered wine except on special holy days.
Our family went with my mother-in-law (hold the jokes, she was a WONDERFUL person) to her Baptist church and there was wine in a little vial at the pew. Also the host was a cube of bread rather than the round wafer I was used to.
I grew up going to a Lutheran church, and for communion, they’d bring each row up near the altar where you’d kneel, and be fed a communion wafer. Then they’d bring the wine around. The left side drank from a chalice, the right side they had a tray of shots, so you could choose which one you were more comfortable with.
At our Methodist church, we have two methods of doing Communion. Most people kneel down at the chancel rail, get a small, individual disposable plastic cup of grape juice, and a square wafer that one or more of the church ladies bake. A few line up to take communion by intinction. Taking a piece of bread that’s torn off of a common loaf, dipping it into a chalice (pewter, I suspect,) and then, if they desire, kneeling for a few moments in prayer. The loaf and chalice serve before the service as, well, I’m sure there is a better term, but I can only think of the term “props”. They’re the ones that the preacher holds up while going through “the cup from which we drink/the bread that we eat”
I’ve gone through both forms of communion. I’m more comfortable with the kneeling and individual elements, as it’s what I’ve always known, but the intinction line is much shorter, and sometimes I need to get through quickly.
Also, our liturgy, with the exception of the Sermon, is typed out, and you can read it out of the bulletin or off the screens, except our current liturgist tends to take the prepared liturgy as more of a suggestion, and an unwelcome one at that, and ad-libs better than half the time for anything that’s not a responsive reading.
Jesus shows up and is very confused because his crucifix time machine took him 2 millennia into the future instead of 3 days. He readjusts his spacetime coordinates.
His calibration was thrown way off by all the time travelers trying to come back and see, prevent, or unprevent the crucifixion.
“Jesus, he who is without sin. You’re intemperate and besides, you carry the sin of the world.” “Oh, right.” [Hands the rock over to Mary]
Boom.
An Angel of the Lord appears in a grey silk suit and alligator Ferregamo Oxfords, carrying a wafer-thin attaché case. He floats through the pews, coming to a halt in front of Carol. From his case he draws a packet of papers with a blue cover sheet and hands it to Carol. With a voice like distant thunder, he speaks, “Carol, the Lord Jesus Christ herewith orders you to cease and desist all uses of His illustrious name in attempts to justify your personal prejudices. In brief, STFU. And close your mouth—you’re beginning to drool.” Then he disappears in a cloud of righteousness.
I believe the proper reply for this is…
HALLELUJAH!! 😛
Wait, so there are lawyers in heaven?
Gotta be at least a few over the centuries who made it.
Our church pianist is a judge. He’s a very good pianist. I hope never to have to see how good a judge he is.
Ours is a truck driver. She’s very versatile. Her son is an excavator (professional ditch digger ) and sometimes covers for our preacher when he’s away.
Religious law and tribunals used to be a thing in catholic countries.
“Jesus has spoken” *rock drop*
Carol wouldn’t know that authority-questioning hippy if he bit her in the behind. “That guy was Jesus? Guess he got what was coming to him.”
I’m guessing that if Jesus appeared in that church, looking like Jesus probably would have looked IRL, half the congregation would start screaming “AAAAHH!! TERRORIST!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!”
Only half? I think you’re being overly optimistic. Even Carol acknowledged racism in her neighborhood; Joyce not hating black people was something to brag about.
Well the other half would just chase out the obviously Jewish person who did not belong there.
That moment you realize you have nothing to say, but still want be part of the conversation.
mmm pizza
and for some reason i just thought of this thing my brother would say at times
“jesus loves you, but i’m his favorite.”
I used to have that on a t-shirt, I don’t think anyone at my church got offended by it, hopefully…
I think you should have this card: http://www.thoughtviper.com/inexob/arch72.html
(I, uh, mean to give out of course!)
God works in awesome ways.
I just know joyce/becky are gonna get crucified.
Always look on the bright side of life. *whistles*
I thought that said whittles…as in you were making the crosses.
Completely off topic Ember, but your grav is both awesome and terrifying… i have never seen a train made into a cyclops that looks like it’s cow catcher is the really bad beards from Disney’s Hercules. What is that from?
The webcomic paranatural! I want to provide more context than that, but part of the fun in reading paranatural is the wtf we find along the way. Excellent read, delightful art, if you haven’t read it yet go and remedy that posthaste!
Thanks Neeks, i’ll definitely check it out soon, already have the homepage bookmarked 😀 just have to finish reading my current book, can’t seem to binge webcomics and read novels at the same time anymore lol.
Also the tropes. Be prepared to laugh out loud on, like, every page.
I was wondering the same thing! 😀
Then why is it that CAROL’s the one getting cross?
*rimshot*
Nailed it!
If a verbal conflict starts, they could try to solve it with canons.
Carol’s host is all dry and crumbly and she lacks cheez whiz to fix it.
Come on guys this is a really thorny situation, this could be Carol’s crowning moment to improve as a person.
I feel like we need a contingency plan, you know, incase things get to serious.
😀
huh they eat it as they get it? my churches always waited for the pastor to say a thing after we all had it.
Same here. Also we just got cubes of white bread and tiny glasses of Welch’s grape juice, so it didn’t really feel biblical.
Man, if there’s only one thing I envy Catholics for, it’s that they usually get actual BOOZE for Communion (raised Presbyterian, now nondenominational and non-literalist)
Just from an ex-Catholic perspective, it wasn’t very good wine
From a Catholic perspective, it wouldn’t have been wine at all.
From a Scottish perspective, communion wine is really popular among students. Not that I know any church that would actually use Buckfast.
From a Methodist who went to Catholic school perspective, both the grape juice in those little pre packaged IHOP jelly looking containers and the communion wine were trash. There was only like, two drops of grape juice and drinking out of the same cup of wine as your mean, smelly teachers (read: enemies) was too gross to get past.
Also an ex-Catholic, sometimes it was pretty good.
Ours was white wine. They did a great job of really selling that transubstantiation at my church!
“This is the white blood cells of Christ.”
Plasma of Christ, donated for thee.
These are good replies. I like these replies.
It was really bitter, if I remember correctly. Just like my experiences whenI was Catholic.
Our Anglican church had a really sweet red wine that I really liked (also kneeling and the priest places a round tasteless wafer directly in your mouth for you; passing it around like a collection plate looks really weird to me. And you know at least one kid went and touched it all). Years later I ran into a cheap , low-alcohol blackberry Merlot that was very similar.
Oh behave!
I’m technically Catholic and I’ve been to a few masses with communion… only the Priest gets booze. Everybody else just gets a wafer. And you have to wait in line and there’s actually a whole decorum of what you need to say and how you place your hands and the one you then use to eat… or the older way was just get on your knees and to stick out your tongue and the person in charge of distribution would just slap the wafer there!
Yeah, communion “under both species” (I think that’s the term) is usually reserved for special occasions. IDK if it’s the cost of wine, the fear of germs being spread mouth to cup to mouth, or what.
The germs problem can be solved by dunking the wafer into the wine. That’s how I always saw it happen during Communion.
Nice try, Mike.
Hm? I’m serious. I’m pretty sure some people in the Catholic Hierarchy even encourage dipping the Communion wafer in the wine, rather than making people drink from the cup directly.
This also has the added benefit of making the wine last longer.
Our priest told me one of the reasons the communion cup was always silver or gold was that germs couldn’t live on those metals. So the priest would give someone a drink, wipe the cup, turn it slightly, and by the time the next person got to that same spot, between the metal and the alcohol in the wine, any germs would be dead.
Certainly I never got sick from it myself.
Some truth to that. Silver compounds tend to be anti-microbial. I don’t think gold would do anything, though.
However, the whole reason for wine in the original sense, of being the common drink during biblical times, is alcohol kills germs. Water can be unsafe to drink.
Also, Silly Name is describing Communion by Intinction, and we do that as an option at our Methodist church…where we use grape juice, that doesn’t has any anti-microbial properties whatsoever.
How was that supposed to work, get the germs drunk and confuse them?
Some denominations address the germs thing by using stronger wine and having little plastic communion cups of wine for people who don’t want to drink out of the communal cup.
It’s because wine is much easier to spill, and you definitely don’t want to spill the body and blood of Jesus on the floor!
Especially if you have carpeted floors.
I haven’t been to a Catholic mass in about 40 years. I remember getting both at one time, but before that only getting the wafer. I remember when we just got the wafer, the priest would say “The body of Christ”, and IIRC we were supposed to say “Amen”. This one elderly priest we had used to drag out the word “body”, which I always thought was a little creepy.
Did we go to the same church? Because I can still hear Msgr. Connolly’s voice thirty years later.
Brrrr…
I’m imagining him as Lurch from The Aadams Family.
I haven’t taken communion in a few years, but any service I’ve been to offers wine and wafers. Is that just the particular Church you went to or did that happen elsewhere in the Diocese? Sorry, blows my mind you’re not getting the blood of Christ.
I haven’t been to many ceremonies with eucharist in years…mostly funerals actually…but I don’t recall anyone getting the Blood of Xhrist. The whole thing is symbolic to begin with so the priest drinks it for the whole audiance? Something something transubstantiation I guess??
It differs by diocese and even by individual church. Mine had body and blood at every mass, but separate. Some only offer body, some dip body in blood. No one does just blood, because we’re Catholics, not vampires, I assume.
Catholic vampires.
enough said.
We never got wine either and no church I know of in my area does. In fact, the entire thing was exactly the same as what you described – the lining up, etc. (I do remember a priest getting tipsy/drunk at a funeral once, because HE was allowed to drink the wine and oh, he did.)
OK. Communion under both species isn’t something special, but it does require more work. Hence, most Sunday masses provide it. Funerals often don’t, nor do weekday services. Yes it was different 30 years ago, but both species is more original and in keeping with the text. Jesus shared the cup, he didn’t go to Costco and buy individual servings for everybody.
Some churches are liturgical, with a set rite based heavily on biblical texts. Not just the readings but most of the prayers are lifted right from the N.T. Scripted by Jesus in a way. . This includes catholic, Lutheran and many mainline. The readings run in a three year cycle, which covers the high points and is similar to synagogue practice when Jesus lived. Most modern synagogues cover their entire scripture in one or three year cycles.
Churches like this one are only mildly liturgical. Very little from the bible and a lot of interpretation and bad theology in songs. Mileage varies wildly. Very literal, except when it comes to communion, when they get metaphorical and use grape juice.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in my parish we didn’t. We didn’t even get grape juice, just the “death cookie.” (Definitely NOT cubes, Michael I.)
…regarding DW’s Twitter, I’m trying to cup my hands correctly, but it doesn’t look right… almost 12 years… apparently they’ve retranslated the Nicene Creed?
Wafers for Roman Catholic; cubes for Greek Orthodox
Wafers for Anglicans as well (at least, my church back when), which makes sense, since they copied so much directly from the Catholics.
One of the Episcopalian churches I attended (we moved around a lot, like Joyce) gave the option of some cheap boxed rosé wine or regular grape juice.
I never took the wine… fearing I would be taking communion as an excuse to try alcohol. At the time, I was pretty sure sinning *during* communion would land me in hell, so I erred on the side of caution.
That fresh baked bread though. That’s gotta be holier than the tasteless crackers we got at the non-denominational church.
probably cost effective.
I briefly attended a church where the Eucharist was (I’m not kidding) oyster crackers and Cran-Grape juice.
Of course, of the dozens (hundreds?) of churches in the town, it was the only church that ran a food bank or homeless shelter. And the church had maybe a dozen members at its biggest. I suspect that had something to do with my eventual disdain for Jesus, Inc. and my eventual enlightenment and atheism.
(By “town” here I mean the town itself and its surrounding areas, not just the area within the city limits. I probably should’ve just said “the county” instead, since there’s really only one major town in the county.)
Fun fact: the original reason Welch made his grape juice was to replace wine at communion.
I want to believe you…
That would explain why quality is never something Welch’s concerned themselves with.
Those poor fruits deserved better.
My understanding was that Welch’s, and grape juice in general, only became a thing in the first place because American winemakers needed something to do with all those grapes during Prohibition.
The only thing I liked about the contemporary church we attended later was that they used Jimmy Johns bread for communion. Num num num
At mine you went up to the front and knelt, and they would tag team the task with a helper person to pass out wafers, then the reverend would come and you could dip or sip while they said their little thing to each person.
Though pretty sure they didn’t refer to the move as a ‘dip or sip’
Purple drank, I’m a grip and sip
Former episcopalian here. That’s what we did. Seeing them pass around a plate here seems weird.
Or.
“Back in my day we had to line up for jesus carb and booze”
Excuse you, the Doctrine of Transubstantiation makes it very clear that it’s not a carb. 🙂
or booze.
Wait, where do Episcopalians stand on the Jesus flesh issue?
Not a thing with them.
Thank you.
My church actually has two ways of doing it. On the first Sunday of the month we do a call-and-response sort of deal, and then everyone goes up, kneels, is passed little cups of juice and a bread cube, and prays before they go down.
On any other Sunday of the month we do intinction with whoever wants to, before you go down to pray at the rail.
Interestingly enough, though, I always thought of Communion as something to help absolve your sins and bring you closer to God. Apparently it’s the other way around in this church? I know this is non-denominational but this is a surprising take on it for me.
The further afield one gets from Orthodox and Catholic practice the wider the views get on different theological, liturgical and practical considerations. Carol’s stated view, accepted by Becky as though normal rote teaching, here is a common lay misconception in many “high church” views which leads me to think that this particular Church is among those that divided from such a tradition between the start of the Great Awakening and the 1960s, but the bread used suggests a “low church” version of the rite so they were probably a mix drawn from several other congregations over time with various influences coming in and gaining prominence here and there. That above noted misconception is common due to many “high church” traditions denying the Eucharist to those that they don’t know to be absolutely of their tradition, or at least not offering it, and several also extending that treatment to those they know to be of other denominations and/or religions.
There’s every possibility that Carol’s view is not a “misconception” at all, but an accurate reflection of how that particular church has decided Communion works.
Raised Catholic, I was under the impression that if you had committed a major sin (like adultery), you were not to receive the rite of communion until you’d gone to confession.
Carol’s making a passive-aggressive application of 1 Cor 11: “Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.”
Because if Becky truly examined herself, she’d know just how fallen and unworthy she is. ‘Cept Becky’s way way way sharper than Carol is ready for, and instead of falling for the trap, or of maybe being passive-aggressive in return, she stands by her belief, shows the reasons for her belief, and dares Carol to prove her wrong. Which she can’t. Because Becky’s a lot better at examining herself than Carol is, quite likely as a side-effect of being brought up by someone committed to undermining her.
And more subtly: the flavour of church that Toedad, Carol, and the muppets we saw/heard in the lobby suggest we’re dealing with (along with what Willis has said of his own experience) is the sort that’s very heavily into prosperity: if God loves you, He provides, and help won’t be there if you aren’t worth loving. Except Becky is exhibit A for the impossible happening, so, om. nom. nom. nom. nom.
Dammit Willis, I’m loving this so much.
I read your “before they go down” and immediately thought: “Boy, you go to a very interesting church”. I am sorry, I have a very strange mind.
Been a long while, but I remember just getting the wafer. The priest was the only one who took the wine. But, I could be wrong. Maybe I should go back someday.
Man priests have all the fun.
On a completely unrelated topic, I eff-ing love your avatar, it’s awesome 😀
Our old priest was an alcoholic. No, seriously he actually died because of it. The new one is a complete douchbag.
He always goes on about how religion has to be connected with pain and sacrifice.
Or so I’m told. I don’t go there any more.
i think i’ve done, like, five different styles. communion “wine” tends to be the same, but the bread differs. i was at a church for a while that had big honking loaves of bread that were torn off into chunks and you were supposed to dip it into the wine. that was pretty cool. and then there were others who had cardboard wafers with a lamb printed on the side, that was pretty gross. 0/10, do not recommend. and then there’s also the cracker variant which is like the least gross unhappy medium.
i’m not sure i’ve seen the bread piled up like described here, but i don’t think i’ve seen the communion plates change substantially. the church i’m going to now does a thing where it stacks two communion cups on top of each other and puts the bread underneath, which strikes me as very efficient/hygienic.
That’s another reason to sit in the back, so you don’t have to hold on to that wafer for 10 minutes while they’re being passed around. By the time the people in back get theirs, the guy in front has a handful of semi-liquidified paste.
And don’t anybody go there.
I love DoA’s commenters. One short comic, and we get a long and very interesting discussion about people’s experiences with religion. <3
Raised Antiochan Orthodox here.
The bread is made by a specific recipe, imprinted with a stamp and blessed — in my church, someone had responsibility for the bread each week, and they’d either bake it or (more often these days) buy it from a bakery that we had an agreement with. Some bread was crumbled in the chalice with the wine (real wine, but a super-sweet red) and everyone goes up to the front and gets served a tiny spoonful of wine and bread by the priest. Then you get some bread on the way back to your seat as well. It’s traditional to bring bread back to people who didn’t/couldn’t* take communion.
Orthodoxy, as one might infer from the name, goes hardcore.
*By “couldn’t” I mean ecumenically(?) couldn’t, hadn’t done confession in a while, etc. – if someone physically couldn’t come up the aisle, the priest would take the chalice out to them.
I guess I’ll add my experience here.
My parents never did church, but if I stayed at my grandparents’ houses on Saturday night, I was expected to go with them to church on Sunday. I don’t recall denominations (I could probably look it up but…), but each set was a different one. Both passed plates around for communion, just like here. They usually did it by having a few people take the plates to places throughout the pews and pass it across to the person handing out on the other side. Wafers first, then the little glasses of juice (which I was always impressed that they had a plate with a rack just the right size for the little glasses, like what company makes such a specific thing to sell to churches? I think both churches even had really similar or the same plates). It was pretty much the same way that they collected money (which I think came after the juice).
I actually gotta see where they made up communion once. My grandma had clean-up duty one time I went with her, and they had a little secret door behind the altar with a little kitchenette and huge bags of the little cups filling up the cabinets.
I think that one church did communion every Sunday, but the other one only did it like once a month and holidays?
“jesus is alright with me but between you and me he could use some tabasco sauce or something”
preferably tapatio
Cheez Whiz.
Damn, shoulda scrolled down further. I totally lose at the EZ Cheeze comments.
Don’t worry, that wafer should be well-seasoned from all the salt coming from Carol right now, lol.
carol’s salt is breaking the fourth wall so hard im tasting it
i know you cant sweet talk ur way up into heaven, but i feel like jesus would go down better with some butter
i feel like there is a non-dairy spread pun in here but it would take a miracle for me to whip it out at this hour
i cant believe its not christ
I can!
I can’t believe he’s NOT the messiah!
“He’s a very naughty boy!”
………there’s so many opportunities for dirty jokes in there I literally do not know where to begin.
How about a Big Butter Jesus?
When I was attending a Christian church, long before I escaped and became a Pagan, we were given Vanilla (‘Nilla) Wafers. I don’t really have anything to add, except we have bacon and coffee at our Yuletide celebrations, but it’s not symbolic of anything except bacon and coffee, and they’re fine for anyone we’ve invited to have, with no spiritual attachments nor requirements.
Y’know, I’ve never really considered foods that would go well with communion crackers before, but… hummus. Red pepper hummus would be Amazing with it
Seven layer dip.
“His body, these sweet nachos, and his blood, this Cuervo. Amen.”
“I put that shit on everything.”
This reminds me of one of the final scenes in Stranger in a Strange Land. The punchline was something like, “Well, Mike always did need some seasoning.”
… I’m just imagining her continuing this for the next hour.
Two weeks from now we see a speech bubble in the background of just “nom nom nom”.
aaaand adding this to my top 10 fav Becky moments.
I assume the double-birds-to-Ross is in there. What are some of the others?
I’m thinking dinner conversation with Carol back on Friday.
Becky does have some zingers. 😀 This is a very good moment.
Kept it to ten, good on you.
Hank and Joyce better hurry, who knows what other crap Carol may say.
I think that may be the most passive-aggressive symbolic cannibalism I’ve ever seen.
Passive-Aggressive Symbolic Cannibalism is a great band name
It’s not really passive-aggressive if you JUST put them in their place directly, succinctly, and effectively nuked their passive-aggressiveness from orbit.
It’s gloating. Delicious, delicious gloating.
I know communion usually isn’t delicious, but you have to consider the garnish of Awesome.
With a hint, a soupçon, if you will, of Righteous Indignation.
Coincidentally, “Delicious, delicious gloating” is Passive-Aggressive Symbolic Cannibalism’s first big hit single. [Off the album “A Garnish of Awesome”]
When asked about how they felt about their success, the band simply had their song play as a response as they smirked.
After landing her with Toedad as a father, God owes her a few miracles.
A few? Heck, He should be in her debt forever through what she went and still goes through.
“Becky, I know things are sucky for you right now. But I promise you, when you get up here, I’m gonna let you f’-ing RUN the place, I swear to Me. Also, there will be reconciliation that makes perfect scientific sense between yours and Dina’s beliefs, and atheists don’t automatically go to hell.”
From what kind of religious fanfiction did you get that?
Well the last part is from the Pope, so if you subscribe to a Christian belief where he’s in charge on Earth, that one.
Damn RIGHT, Becks!
(Oh god, my statement that she’d be fine til the sermon may have been a bit…optimistic.)
Also, they use actual bits of bread? My dad’s church just uses these tasteless little circular wafers.
Around here you can buy entire uncut wafer sheets in convinience store in this super cheap-o wax paper packaging. The ingredients are flour and water… and nothing else. Communion wafers are basically dried up paste. No wonder it’s tasteless. Augh. Who buys those things?!
Ummm… Churches?
No I mean the uncut onesin convinience store. The churches probably get them in bulk.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcalearmarketing/2726481788
Here. You open the package and it’s basically a pile of 8×11 sheets of wafers with a big circular hole in the middle where the actual communion wafer was cut out. Apparently it’s selling with the health crowd since it’s basically nothing it makes for a healthy snack. Huh.
You’re thinking diet crowd. The health crowd would scorn something like that. 😛
Yyyup. Hooray for looking for healthy snacks that are both actually healthy and actually pleasant. Just filling your stomach so you feel less hungry does little good for your blood sugar. D:
(Scorn scorn.)
Oh. Huh. Well, that’s inefficient.
Communion is after sermon.
Yeah, I was wondering about that. I heard lots of people expecting something aweful to happen with the sermon, and frankly I was expecting a terrible sermon too. But here they are, having communion. Are there any churches that have communion before the sermon?
As far as I know, no, but, in my experience, priests use the wind down after communion but before dismissal to talk about church news/business/fundraisers
Let us all pray for our deceased, for those who in the course of following God’s laws have been sent to prison, and may God have mercy on those who have fallen to the temptations of unnatural sin.
The Lord has suffered for us so that we may become insufferable.
That last line is pure gold.
In the Church of Christ, communion is before the sermon 98% of the time. From what Willis has said about his nondenominational church, I get the sense their practices were somewhat similar to the CofC, with the obvious exception of instrumental music (vs. a cappella singing).
Having been to lots of different varieties of evangelical churches over the years, I can say that while communion is almost always at the end, I’ve been to some that did it at other times.
For those wondering about the details of evangelical communion:
Usually they pass around the bread, then the pastor reads some verses and everybody eats the bread together. Then they pass around the juice and the pastor reads more verses and everybody drinks the juice together.
Bread: Everything from giant fluffly loaves of bread that everybody tears a chunk off of to torn up wonder bread to oyster crackers to club crackers to matzeh to the same communion wafers the liturgical denominations use. If it’s cracker-ish or bread-like it’s fair game.
Juice: Almost always juice (usually Welch’s in my experience). This goes back to prohibition (esp. for the Methodists), but usually the explanation given is that we don’t want to risk providing temptation to any recovering alcoholics in the congregation. Juice is usually in tiny individual sized cups.
It really depends, I’ve had it where the Pastor of the church I go to decided to do communion before the sermon.
You go baby! Savor that flavorless actually-pretty-gross cracker thing!
Do they taste like matzah? I always imagined they taste like matzah.
no….?? they taste more like styrofoam
blech, Rice Cake Jesus. At least they can pass around some wine to wash it down.
red or white?
For those denominations that do use wine, it’s red wine.
I think it’s often just grape juice in Protestant churches. At least, it was in both sets of granparents’ churches.
i guess catholics walk on the wild side, with the glass of wine someone holds out for people to drink, even a child by accident
Depends on which kind, 5/6 ECLA churches I’m familiar with do wine
In the Netherlands, Roman Catholics often use white wine. And lay people (and trespassing protestants) as often as not don’t get any.
So, exactly like matzah.
I’ve never tried styrofoam, How’s it compare to cardboard? I know how cardboard compares to matzah.
(I was one of those kids who eats EVERYTHING, okay?)
okay so communion wafers, styrofoam, cardboard, and matzah are essentially the same food
Oh god no, Matzah tastes better than communion wafers. Though I’ve always likened the taste to newspaper.
Nah, usually the box is better than the matzah. More flavor, and not as dry.
Wait, who’s matzah have you been eating?
My brother-in-law is a youth pastor at one of the places that uses the styrofoam ones. Ours are much better. Sometimes they’re a little salty.
In fact, Communion will be day after tomorrow, first Sunday of the month.
I haven’t been to church since I was a kid, and even at my church we didn’t do this very often – certainly not every Sunday – but I still remember being amazed that they were the most tasteless things I’d ever eaten. I was kind of impressed at how they made them taste of absolutely NOTHING. But then you’d wash it down with a little teeny plastic cup of grape juice.
The church I attended in my youth actually used matzah crackers for awhile. I probably wasn’t the only one ever so slightly confused/amused by that, because a few years later, they’d switched to little wafers that I’m guessing were meant for communion.
Since the Last Supper was during Passover, matzah is the most historically correct thing to use.
Even drier and blander.
Communion wafers are made of flour and water. That’s it. It’s basically dried paste.
You’ll EAT JESUS, but you WON’T LIKE IT.
I’m dying. +1000
They are unleavened bread for literal reasons, hence hot tasty by design
Savor the Flavor of Savior
+3
first time I can recall liking Becky, and more power to her for that awesome comeback!
Eh, still don’t like Becky that much. Like, I get where she comes from and don’t have a problem with how she’s written but she doesn’t -click- with me.
I imagine that’s why a lot of people who don’t like her feel that way. She’s a very all or nothing character.
You tell her, Becky.
In the middle of the night, in the shrouded darkness of the house, I let out a loud ‘HA!’
Such a perfect comeback!
Mic drop!
Noooo! You keep the mic and make omnomnoming sounds into it!
Why do people insist on dropping the mic? Those things cost money. Money that could go to other things, like Jesus.
I know a guy who does sound for gigs. The singer in some local teenage band kicked over the mic stand at the end of their set. My friend harangued this kid until his daddy offered to pay for a new mic. Rock and roll, Yorkshire-style.
Actually nowadays, mics are designed to be able to take the damage from a drop. The biggest thing the sound guy has to worry about is feedback when it hits the floor, but that’s why the person dropping said mic holds it out for half a second before letting go — the sound guy gets the cue and mutes everything for a moment.
I always assumed the guy dropping the mike just turned it off first.
YES THIS STRIP ALWAYS FOREVER YES
HELL YES, HELL FRIGGIN’ YES, BECKY IS MY FUCKING HERO, FUCK YOU CAROL, YES.
huh…you know she’s got a point
God in this strip is literally David Willis, so…
I mean, yeah, not diegetically, but he’s the person putting everything together and keeping the spheres humming.
Which makes Becky doubly blessed, considering Willis’s usual levels of compassion.
those communion wafers were super bland
Surprised she didn’t just scarf the whole thing to spite Carol.
its more satisfying taking time to eat the whole thing, like “yes, im taking in the body of christ bit by bit and nothing bad is happening”
“Oh my god Becky buried her face in Jesus!”
And she survived the mother of all car crashes unscaved Whole her dad got totaled, if that’s not a miracle I don’t know what is.
mmmmm….. body of christ….
What the heck kind of church passes the communion wafers around on a plate? We always used to line up single file for the priest to hand them to us.
Presbterians do it that way. Mostly because the elderly are unable to move very wlel.
It’s also actual bread, in my experience. And grape juice instead of wine because kids take communion as early as possible.
…That’s so weird to me. When I was a kid, everyone took communion the same way. As an adult, I know it’s terribly watered down wine, but it was always wine.
For three months straight at my old church the terrible wine they used tasted like feet.
Maybe their Jesus had circulation problems.
The church I went to as a kid does it that way, and we used grape juice as well. I was a member of the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ.
I’m a polytheistic pagan now.
Sounds about right.
Sans the Episcapalian church I went to as a kid, the churches I’ve gone to have done the pass and take as an option. It really depends on if they want to focus on the symbolism of approaching the altar in order to receive a cracker.
God answers lesbian prayers!
Go Becky. She’s not going to let that mean old lady push her around.
When God sends a superhero to save you, you KNOW he doesn’t hate you. (Carol certainly isn’t preaching hate-the-sin, is she? Jerk.)
Carol would probably end up saying something along the lines that Satan actually did that, to continue he down her lost path and to lead others astray or some other bs like that.
Carol is more into hating the sinner. But she hasn’t converged yet to a good self-righteous sermon to preach about that, so she’s merely insinuating.
When you’re Carol, you insinuate. It’s what you do.
It’s fair to say God doesn’t hate anyone really. Sin and Him are water and oil though.
By the brilliant chariot of Helios! Taunting one’s enemies is a fine and excellent thing to do, but I’ve never seen a religious ritual performed sneeringly. Has Becky heard of the moral high ground?
If you’ve never seen a religious ritual performed sneeringly, you probably haven’t seen all that many of them!
And no, Becky still has the moral high ground. She’s not doing anything wrong, she’s eating Jesus like she’s supposed to. Carol is wrong for being so dang judgmental to suggest that Becky’s not right with Jesus.
I have seen tribute paid the sublime forest. I have seen hundreds of libations burnt unto the moon. The fire of comradeship I have thrilled to kindle in the hearts of men!
These speak worthily of literal “communion” with one’s god. If Becky’s god is on her mind at all, petty triumph ought to ring hollow.
Ah yes, good old Tannhäuser Gate and tears in rain. In fact, Tannhäuser is a pretty good reference for Carol’s popetartiness towards Becky.
Need I remind you of that sacrifice at Mekone? When the mortals got the meat and your daddy got stuck with just the bones? I bet Prometheus was sneering his FACE off that day.
Has your reason deserted you?
Had Prometheus been sneering during the actual ceremony, the deception would not have passed and life for a devout Greek would have been tremendously more difficult. Once the ceremony was set in stone, as a holy agreement between man and god, even the Father himself durst not change it.
In addition, it’s been a fair while, but I believe mortals have only one liver.
Are you telling me that titan didn’t start giggling immediately after the ceremony was set in stone? He must have had a tremendous amount of self-control.
The liver is, possibly, the one part of your body you can regenerate from a fragment.
Becky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnuGC3reAkc
Carol turned a solemn religious ritual into a “You must be at least this holy to pass” test, one where Becky would get sneered at no matter what. Becky’s response is as good an answer as anyone could be expected to give. Being smug while she gives it is perfectly justified, and it’s not like Carol can be more pissed at her than she already is.
Huh. most of the churches I’ve gone to have the “Must be this holy” thing laid out before every communion.
Then again, that’s when I was drinking their kool-aid.
In more respects than one.
Your church used Kool-Aid for communion?
“Must be this holy to chide.”?
Well, from a militaristic standpoint, the high ground is a actually pretty good place to launch an attack from
1 Kings 18:25
Sneering at tightasses is part of the game, yo.
So which book was the quote “Don’t hate the playa” from?
And Carol now knows that Joyce was on a motorcycle! Oh no!
Remember kids every religious person knows that the motorcycle are like the devil’s bike.
While the conveyances of Purgatory are merely mopeds.
Ah, so that’s why Neil Gaiman put the riders of the apocalypse on motorbikes 😉
If you haven’t read Good Omens yet, do. I only got half of the jokes because a come from a non-fundie background.
Such a rebel!
Good cripes, Becky could have left that out and it was a near spotless response.
Carol is worried about Joyce because Becky no longer is willing to stay in the closet, and her friend Dorothy is an atheist. But if she thinks that’s bad just wait until she learns her daughter is fangirling a former juvenile delinquent who spent years in a Catholic boarding school, dresses in leather, drives a motorcycle, and hangs out with roller derby players.
I think what will make Carol freak out is the “Catholic school” part. XD
We need a Carol version of the Joyce-Freak-Out panel!
http://imgur.com/jYukg3i
that eye contact was v crucial.
You know, I think it’d actually work better without the last panel. Ramp up the drama.
I don’t think it was about the drama though. It was about Becky saying “this is where I belong and you can’t shame me out of what I believe.” And it’s about her reclaiming what power she can, where she can, after being denied it for so long.
What Jason said. The drama got ramped up in the -first- panel, not the last. Carol is and has always been the one starting things with Becky. Always. Becky simply responds to what Carol is doing, and they are pretty much always perfect responses.
I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT HER RESPONSE!
“…Make like a communion wafer and tran-sub-stan-ti-ate!!”–Harley Quinn on GOTHAM GIRLS
“…Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!”
-Tom Lehrer, “The Vatican Rag”
Ohhh, SNAP!
Broke your wafer?
Take Communion, everybody judges you for taking it when you’re a sinner. (isn’t that the point, though?) Don’t take Communion, everybody judges you for rejecting God. Don’t you just love social pressure as a weapon?
Once I attended a Catholic wedding as the guest of my mother’s sister-son. At one point, spake the priest that all who desired communion ought to proceed forward, then file around back into their pews via the outside.
Neither my cousin nor I partook of their offerings. In the entire assembly, we were the only ones. I beheld the priest’s momentary glare with amusement, for after all, the joke was on him: I got enjoyably smashed at the reception, in good cheer and not forced solemnity.
Went to a Catholic wedding earlier in the year. I was the only one there, to my knowledge, who didn’t take Communion. The only person who commented was the 5 y/o next to me in the pew, who asked his aunt why I wasn’t.
“He isn’t Catholic, dear.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A long time ago, I was invited to a Catholic wedding. I am a vocal atheist. I knew almost none of the people (save my girlfriend and her family,) and I wasn’t even from the area. I was the outsider-iest outsider that ever was outside. I felt like Jane Goodall, but not as smart.
It’d be actually quite disrespectful to take Communion at Catholic Mass if you haven’t received the Sacrament of Eucharist. So, you actually did the socially acceptable thing by standing in your pew.
I always have to resist doing some kind of joke now. Choke on a wafer, Holy Water hurts, things like that. `Bout the only thing stopping me it would be disrespectful to those I’m there with. They’re nice enough not to insult my religion, I guess I could suffer for an hour.
I have always thought it would be very funny to pretend that the holy water was burning me. However I have never had the balls to actually do it.
It would be a Dick move.
But it’d be truly Rich if you sucked them in with the performance.
I like your avatar.
I don’t think we could tell.
All the churches I’ve gone to, nobody cared if you did or didn’t take Communion. Basically it was treated as just a Thing some people would do.
Loudly announce that God provably loves you, because he went above and beyond to answer your prayers and save your lesbian butt? I don’t know what happens, but I’m fucking glad she picked that choice.
Jesus saves,
passes to Moses…
He shoots! HE SCORES!!
Jesus saves,
and only takes half damage.
Jesus saves, but can’t bring himself to respond for a few days.
*Respawn
Jesus saves often, just in case of a sudden power outage.
Jesus saves, and after a few months has enough money for that new guitar he wanted
Jesus saves by extreme couponing.
Jesus saves because he’s filled with determination.
I’ve always seen it: Jesus Saves, Moses invests!
Satan’s the better coder,
But, Jesus saves.
Jesus saves, but Pavelski scores on the rebound.
Jesus saves, takes a folding chair to that mofo.
Jesus saves, Gretzky gets the rebound, he shoots HE SCORES!!!
Damn these black-clad stagehands wandering about >=|
Jesus saves, and can’t solve his hoarding problem.
Jesus Saves.
The rest of you take damage.
Jesus saves, because there’s a tough boss ahead.
Mormons have the same judgy side-eye during sacrament. This reaction is fan-TASTIC.
gods love, now flavored with more spite1
*wrath sold seperatly
Spite is my favorite lemon-lie soda! I love that spackling taste!
Get dunked on, you passive-aggressive everything-wrong-with-American-Protestantism old woman.
Today’s DoA is brought to you by the letter “oooooooooooooooooooh!”
the real joke here is that becky seems to be enjoying the taste of that bread
Ironically, the first and only time Becky will get satisfaction from the body of a male is in front of a huge congregation of Catholics.
They are soooo not Catholic.
I thought only Catholics did the whole “eat the body of Christ in wafer/bread/cracker” form thing?
I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, so my knowledge of Catholicism is limited.
I just remembered – when I was a JW, we did that for “The Lord’s Evening Meal”, which is a once a year event that is the closest thing to a holiday for JW’s. They pass around a glass of wine and matzo crackers, but only the Annointed partake of it. Those are the 144,000 that will ascend to Heaven as angels while the rest of the saved will live on Earth when God cleanses it of the wicked and remakes it into a paradise.
They’re not Catholics. They probably think Catholics are the dupes of Satan.
Nah, this sect of Christianity considers Catholics to be idolaters. They like to refer to Catholics as the “cult of Mary” if I remember Protestant services correctly.
In fairness, my understanding is that all Christian official doctrine views Catholics as breaking God’s First Commandment when they pray to the saints, asking them to pray to God for their sakes.
Now not all *Christians* might hold this view, but my understanding is that it’s the official doctrine.
“Christian official doctrine” isn’t really a thing. By the most sensible definition of “Christian”, Catholics of all stripes qualify (there are, like, three or four of those, I think), as do all the many and diverse varieties of Protestantism, with the possible exception of Unitarian Universalist (because I’m unsure how UU feels about the whole “divinity of Yeshua ben Yosef” thing). And every last one of them has a different “official doctrine”.
There’s like ten to twenty different Catholic churches, only 1 of which can elect a pope.
UUs haven’t been a part of any Christianity for decades now, I believe.
Do they believe Jesus Christ was the son of god, and died to take on the sins of humans, as the sacrificial lamb for all humankind?
If so, they are Christians.
Some do, some don’t. There’s a lot of diversity in beliefs among individual UUs.
UU is an all faith now, including non-faith. I’ve always viewed it as “religion distilled”, taking the positives of it: community, uplifting stories; without the negatives, see comic.
Subsitutionary Atonement is a semi-modern heresy. Many Christians don’t believe God tortured the one he loved most so that he bring himself to forgive someone else. The writer of the Fourth Gospel wouldn’t be a Christian by the definition. There simply is no one standard that defines a Christian, just ones that define groups of Christians.
I once asked my Irish (catholic) aunt about the different Protestant churches in northern Ireland (because Ian Paisley, the most promeninent hate mongerer on the Protestant side belonged to one that was just slightly differently named than another and I wondered what might be the difference) but she said, she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned there was just one church.
Having just read the Wikipedia-article on him, he was even grosser and damaging to peace than I though.
I am sooooo thankful I grew up in northern Germany where protestant church was something you attended but it wasn’t busy with hating, or stirring up great emotions. Very much of a head thing. No fundamentalism at all. Sometimes, someone would to a service for people belonging to both Catholics and Protestants and that one old either have no communion (when organized with many Catholics on the team) or some Catholics wouldn’t go to communion. Took me ages to get that this was because of the Catholic idea of transsubstination.
Whenever the subject comes up, I truthfully tell people that I’m a lapsed unitarian, and am sometimes rewarded with a little laugh in return from someone who gets it.
The modern UU church’s only dogma is the rejection of dogma. If, upon reflection, you have decided that you hold traditional Christian beliefs regarding Jesus, then as far as the church is concerned, that is right for you. (But it would probably make you an outlier as a UU.)
As far as the UU’s go, the Christian ones presumably believe Jesus existed and was divine, but the pagan/buddhist/atheist/agnostic/other ones probably have their own opinions.
Correction, Protestant.
Wasn’t the original reason Protestantism was ever a thing the rampant corruption in the Catholic Church though ?
Catholics are the OG Christians (not /really/, just the original structure) Protestants and their offshoots are breakaways from the Catholic Church.
Technically, would Catholics and Orthodox all be the OG Christians?
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this come up already, but I was always taught that catholic pertained to all Christians, that it means universal. What people are usually referring to when they say catholic is the Roman catholic Church.
So according to my (predominately protestant) educationeducation, this statement is appropriate.
HA!
Becky, I love you.
And since you aren’t technically dependent on her for shit, you can totally do this! GOOD JOB BECKY, and know that your sisters are probably both wishing they had the confidence and ability to do that.
Also, does that last panel Becky look odd to anyone else? Not bad, exactly, but her expression doesn’t really seem to fit Willis’s style. I’d expect it on other artists, but not him, and I can’t put my finger on why.
Maybe he’s trying on a new pair of drawing shoes that he saw someone else wearing, to see if he likes them!
The eyes have a bit of Picasso look, and aren’t in the usual style. And of course there’s the “transparent hair” thing that bugs me here and in anime.
Curse you Drs… now I can’t unsee the “transparent hair” and how weird it looks… Forever more shall I see that the eyes look like they are on top of the hair. You hath ruined anime for me…
And for that, I also bless you drs!
You know how Willis sometimes adds whites to a dot-eyed character’s eyes to emphasize emotion? He’s doing it here; Becky just happens to be narrowing her eyes at the moment.
Walky had a similar expression at one point during his talk with Billie in the beginning of Book 4.
Huh, so they pass out a plate of communion wafers. I guess that must because part of their religious doctrine. We would just form a line and go to the front of the church to get ours if we wanted to.
Same! I figured that was the norm.
Me, too! And if you don’t want to take communion, you can get a blessing from the pastor instead. (If you don’t want a blessing or communion, you just remain in your pew.)
Also as surprising for me: Becky and Joyce’s church has wafer pieces, rather than the full thing.
Yeah, as someone who was raised in the Catholic Church, I reallllllly don’t get this.
As a former member of the Disciples of Christ sect of Christianity, this is how we did it in the church I went to. we also used grape juice to represent Jesus’ blood.
Yeah there are a variety of ways to handle it, based on congregation size and special events. Hell you talk about wafers being used, but all the church services I have attended have only used actual bread… and only one church ever used actual wine as well, though they also supplied grape juice for those conscientious about consuming alcohol.
Oh, man this is going to go very poorly regarding Carol’s willingness to believe that Becky isn’t a bad influence for Joyce. At the same time however this is my favorite Becky moment. I’m conflicted
I’m usually fairly harsh with Becky, but nah, in this situation she didn’t have another option. Revelling in it isn’t going to make things worse, so may as well have some fun while you wait for the shoe to drop.
I just can’t wait for Carol to break. You know she can’t take that much rebellion right in her face while she is completely impotent to do anything about it. And you know how in their circle the first to get ’emotional’ automatically lose the argument… it’ll be delicious irony.
Mmmm, irony. 🙂
Preach, Becky! Good on you, grrl!!
she said heck instead of hell
She’s in god’s house. What do you expect?
If have to behave nice if you want Jesus’s body and blood.
Hmmm… The alt text has DC Talk stuck in my head now.
I can’t decide if this is okay. #DamnYouWillis
But yes, this is why Becky is the best. She says the things I wish I had the balls to say when I was her age.
50 shades of rekt.
However, I have to ask, how is there anything on her fingers to lick up? I’ve had my fair share of communion waffers/crackers/whatever the frig they’re called, and there has never been so much as a speck left to tide me over till lunch!
I’m pretty sure a taunt doesn’t have to make sense.
“Mic drop…oh, wait, lemme go get a microphone, be right back.”
She got a juicy part of Christ’s body. “I’m good enough to save you when you’re taken hostage, so let me at least show you what you are missing out on.”
As a Christian (admittedly of the variety that actually thought Jesus was serious when he said “love thy neighbor”) I have to say this is a practice I’m unfamiliar with. Granted my Church has never been huge on the whole literal transfiguration idea, but Communion has always struck me as a way to try and be closer to God, rather than some sort of “You must be this holy to pass” test.
Strikes me that even if you didn’t feel right with God, taking Communion would be a good way to get back in touch with him and figure yourself out.
Or maybe Carol just figured that communion wafers are poison to Lesbians, like Vampires.
Vampires are poison to lesbians? Man, I’ve seen a few WoD campaigns that might have gone differently if we’d known that.
They’re not Catholic, but AIUI it is a doctrine that exists in Catholicism – “excommunicate” literally means ban from taking communion.
I always sort of thought that was less ‘you are not holy enough for communion’ and more ‘whatever you have done is bad enough that we are denying you this blessing.’
Of course, ‘bad’ was pretty subjective back when the church was still excommunicating people…looking at you, science.
…The Church still excommunicates people. There was a particularly heinous case a few years back, actually. A twelve year old girl was raped by her stepfather, and got pregnant with twins. Her body was not developed enough to carry the pregnancy to term, and her mother found a doctor willing to perform the abortion. The Church excommunicated the mother, the child, the doctor.
But not the stepfather. Apparently acting to save an innocent life gets you kicked out of heaven, but violating said innocent life gets a pass.
“In response, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil declared that no one was excommunicated in the case, and in an article published on L’Osservatore Romano a Vatican bioethicist rebuked the archbishop for his public statement. ”
Okay, so, no, one local bishop said a dumbass thing and the entire rest of the Church said he was dumb as shit.
But yeah, those Cuuuuraaaazy Catholics, amirite?
Except I did not keep up with the case, just heard the initial part. After that, it died on my newsfeed. I’m glad to hear the Vatican overturned the bishop’s decision.
And I was raised Catholic. I still sit through Midnight Mass and the rest of it for my grandparents’ peace of mind.
I thiiiink every excommunication has to be Pope-approved. So a Bishop can’t really do it?
The Pope is the only one who can really excommunicate anyone, though sometimes he can temporarily give others the power to do that. This was not one of those times.
No, a bishop cannot, but the way the case was originally framed, it seemed like he had the Pope’s approval. By then, I had already been kicked out myself, and wasn’t feeling very warm and fluffy towards Catholic newsfeeds. I was actually feeling bitter as fuck because that happened around the time I was denied communion in front of the whole congregation, and finally just gave up on faith.
Which is why I didn’t know the decision was overruled. I was wrong, and I apologise for spreading false information.
@March: Nah, I wasn’t critiquing you. I just wanted to make sure if I remembered it correctly.
Also, “As for the rapist, he said that a rapist “is outside of communion” and “in grave mortal sin”, even though rape is not listed among the crimes that give rise to automatic excommunication.”
I’m fuzzy on the details, but I think if a girl got raped inside of the city limits, you were supposed to stone her since she apparently was not shouting loud enough. And if she was raped outside, the rapist had to marry her and was not allowed to divorce her.
Something like that. Though how the girl was to prove the rape when she was not in hearing distance of anybody willing to interfere, I don’t remember.
At any rate, did not sound like a rape victim had a lot of recompensation to look forward to.
Biblical law on how to treat rape victims is… “wonky”, to use an euphemism.
For example, since a woman’s word was worth only half a man’s word in court, the rape victim would need two men to testimony for her saying she was raped. But that would mean these two men witnessed the rape and did nothing, which means the woman didn’t call for help, which means she was consentient, which means it wasn’t rape.
It was basically engineered so that the woman always got the short end of the stick.
And the reason the rapist was required to marry his victim was to “pay back” her parents, since now that the girl had been “spoiled” nobody would marry her.
Sure, the as written laws are messed up, which is why Judaism and Catholocism are both really big on having errata for those laws, and rabbis/priests to make sure they’re being understood in a semi-reasonable context that recognizes the specifics of the incident rather than as a blanket law.
That’s not at all to say that the system is anywhere near perfect (there’s a TOOOOOON of rabbis/priests who still say stupid shit, and the idea of “automatic excommunication” is already incredibly presumptuous for a mortal to claim), but it’s why these two are -relatively- calmer, compared to literalists who see no need for the concept of context.
I was misinformed and did not keep up with this particular case due to a personal fight with the church. I apologise for spreading misinformation. However, do not dismiss me out of hand. I still consider myself culturally Catholic, and still sit my ass through Midnight Mass every year. It’s boring, there’s too many hymns, and I would rather be on Tumblr with a bottle of wine at my side, but it makes my grandmother happy.
Yes, that’s very much the idea on the churchs i have gone to. But they were al Catholic ones, i don’t know how things work for crentes.
That’s actually a thing. Where those who “aren’t right with God” (because they’re gay or because they got divorced or because they had sex outside of the bounds of holy matrimony) get glared at and condescended to about how “maybe they should get right with the Lord” before “partaking of his blessing”.
In fundie circles or at least the ones my friends all grew up in, this manifested itself in a “call to get saved and rededicate themselves to the Lord” where they’d be encouraged to go up, speak in tongues a bit, show their penitence to the Lord and all that and promise never to sin no more and then the person who shat on them would smugly smile and let them partake of the communion.
But that could just be the flavor my friends grew up in. From all I could tell from the times they invited me, it was super passive-aggressive and suburban white hell.
Human-shaped towers of excrement are not uncommon in religious circles, denizen of Hades! Take, for example, EVERY SINGLE PRIEST OF HERA!
Mother-in-law troubles there, mate? Or still holding a grudge about everything else?
Could be one of his half siblings. The only mortal that could’ve given Zeus a run for his money was Genghis Kahn.
My family did a lot of the “looking for a new church every week because of doctrinal disputes/b-words”, and what you describe was typical in almost all of them. Sermon, call for rededication, then communion.
I knew of groups that were like that. When I was in Italy I was told unless you are actually Catholic, you shouldn’t partake in communion.
Having grown up in the United Church of Christ, I think it definately has to vary by church, since there was never anything approaching “You must be This Holy To Ride The Communion Train.”
Buuuutt I’ve also come to realize my religious upbringing was really, reaaaaalllyyy far from typical in this country, I suspect. My pastors also never mentioned hell as a motivation for Doing The Right Thing (instead emphasising that one should strive to be good *because it was good*,)-or, really, mention hell *at all*, now that I think of it. Nor did they suggest one should love god for Magic Afterlife Brownie Points. And before Obgerfell (but when non-hetero marriage was still legal in some parts of the country), they frequently traveled out-of-state to officiate such marriages, to, in their words “Abuse the HELL out of Full Faith and Credit Clause and *dare* the state to do anything about it.”
I think the pope di give power to local priests and bishops to get more people who no longer qualified for communion to start taking it again, like divorcees’ and such. If you want to receive the blessing of God, then you should.
I’m Lutheran, which is kind of the weird, “don’t try to figure it out, just trust Jesus on this one” in between school of thought. The bread and wine don’t *change* because of a specific set of words, but they aren’t just a representation, either. They are both bread and body, wine and blood. “In, with, and under” was the phrase hammered into our heads from catechism. (Oh, and while individual congregations practiced differently, doctrine was “closed communion,” or no outsiders.) The other thing hammered into our heads? If you take communion without understanding what it is, you “eat and drink to your own damnation.”
Shots fired… wait… shit…
becky has 3 more shots to fire
That smug becky gives me many feelings I don’t know what to do with.
Now Make out…….
Am I the only one who got the Doobie Brother’s reference?
Also, garsh-diddly-darn-it I can’t stand communion deniers. The sacrament of communion should be made available to all who seek God and wish to take him into their lives. Becky deserves that host more than anyone in that church!
Jesus: Well, look Becky, I’m in your corner and I’m flattered, but really Willis deserves all the credit for that. It is his story.
“God answered my prayers, but He seems to be ok with making you have to deal with me… Maybe I’m not the one that needs to skip.”
“What must you have done, that your God would curse you with me?” -Genghis Khan, I think.
And now I’m imagining a horde of Beckys (Beckies?) riding dinosaurs down the steps of colleges across the world to go forth and stamp out prejudice.
The plural of a name, no matter how that name is spelled, is [the name]+s. This is to avoid confusion between a horde of Marys and a horde of Maries (both of which are most definitely possible)
Tell that to the Chriss
Okay, fine, -es may be added when when the name ends in a sibilant, but other than that it’s true!
First step: Apply cold water on the burned area.
You win
Now I do. http://i.imgur.com/SCl4Oga.png
THIS Becky is giving me many feels I don’t know what to do with.
Avatar checks out.
Thirty panels later, every pair of eyes for five miles in every direction are inexplicably narrowed to a pair of slits, looking askance at their neighbors.
“What are you looking at dear?”
“I’m not pretty sure.”
FLAWLESS LOGIC!
Becky should start carrying a mic with her just so she can drop it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqGBwGuxsYk
TURN DOWN FOR WHAT
*jams*
To be fair, using that same logic, he also sent your dad.
Becky’s logic is “God answers lesbian prayers”. She didn’t pray for Ross to kidnap her, she prayed to be rescued, and she was.
I’m just enjoying all the people in the comments section learning about different denominations’ take on communion.
i am too
It’s really interesting!
Fo sure!
I’d love to see Carol try to deny THAT one.
God sent her Ross to make her turn from her wicked ways, but when she did not relent, he still saved her for another chance of redeeming herself. Because otherwise it would have been hellfire for her, yessirree and no mistake. And the Lord is a gracious and merciful Lord, even to wrecked sinners who should have been stamped out from the midst of the believers so that the weed does not overgrow the harvest and rip it out and kill kill kill kill bloody kill.
Sorry where was I?
Yeah, Carol’s denial would be very simple.
God had plans for Becky, but Becky rejected those plans and defied his “love” by falling in with Satan and choosing the homosexual lifestyle. Dear brave Ross, defender of the Toe race, tried to intervene to save her soul, but evil nasty Becky, drunk on Satanism, rejected him and ran off to corrupt my daughter with filthy heresy. Then, Ross, full of so much love and righteousness, searched high and low for his wayward daughter who was living in sin in order to bring her home and make her right with the Lord, but the forces of Satan are rife on college campuses today what with their ess-jay-doubleu anti-christian bigotries and they swarmed and destroyed that poor man who was just trying so hard to save his daughter (but let his passion to do right cloud his judgment, because oh yeah, I’m supposed to be condemning his actions at some point because gun at my daughter). And so Becky and the corrupt Antichrist minions in the police took him away for the “crime” of loving his daughter so much because the cost of Becky’s sin is the destruction of her family. And now her all-powerful Satanic forces are out to steal my daughter away if I am not firm and resolute in my faith. And now the dirty little sinner is claiming it was God’s hand not Satan’s that saved her, thus proving she’s a Satanist.
Boom, all packaged out with a nice little bow so she doesn’t have to grow or adapt or in any way reconsider her biases and bigotries. I grew up with Carols, they are very good at twisting every scenario into a reinforcement for their awful beliefs.
Very good example of the tortured logic one has to use to justify certain beliefs. I haven’t seen anything like it since that video of the Carol-like woman trying to prove Monster Energy Drinks are satanic.
I grew up around a lot of Carols so I know the “logic” strings well and can mimic it on the fly. Often had it used against me because I was essentially the Satanist’s (my mom was wiccan) kid who was probably gay but “he” gets good grades, so I dunno, maybe you can save “him”.
I get the feeling that you really wanted to be a lumberjack.
Or a Mason?
That Pastor Dave hidden comic text was great
At my first communion I recall telling my mother that I thought the host could use some salt.
Approximate amount of fucks given on Becky’s part: 0
I just want Morgan Freeman to randomly be standing on the other side of Becky.
“She’s right you know.”
“Morgan Freeman?! But..how?”
“Please darling, I see everything.”
“Like that penguin over there. See how she cares for her young? You can learn something from that.”
I’m pretty sure that penguin care time is over once a young one turns lesbian. No more breastfeeding for you, little one. How can you turn yourself against your God-given nature and press cloaca against cloaca?
Wait. Bad example. But, uh, ducks! Not penguins, ducks! Exploding corkscrew penis! Rape culture! Ducks have the thing. Well, drakes do.
Catholic Here: Wait, non-catholics do communion?
Catholic snob here: they do “communion.”
(Catholic snob low-five)
Yeah, they do, though Protestants tend to believe in consubstantiation or memorialism, not transubstantiation. I.E. That the bread and wine consumed do not become the literal body of Christ but rather are either only metaphysically embodied or purely symbolic.
People have been killed for advocating all of these things in different times and places, and plenty a rumour started of Catholics being cannibals who used real flesh and blood in their communions.
Yes. They just do it differently. The ‘heresy’ is that Protestants don’t (usually) believe in transubstantiation (wherein the the wafer actually becomes the body of Christ), whereas Catholics do. I think. My only experience with religion was my mother’s Episcopalianism, so I could be switching things around.
You’re correct with what you have here.
Right, and consubstantiation says it’s both bread and the body, and wine and blood at the same time. “In, with, and under.”
I had to take religion classes in college (it was a Jesuit university), and I talked to my grandma about what we were going over a couple of times (she always wanted to, I think because she was hoping I’d become religious?). It was always funny, though, cause I’d start talking about transubstantiation and the Trinity, which I knew were very Catholic things, and I’d ask about her church and she’d just kinda go ‘um, yeah, we just… kinda ignore that?’
Woooow, Carol, wow. The only time I can think of witnessing someone actively encourage another person to not take communion (outside of a Catholic wedding that included communion, but only for the Catholics, and we were to consider ourselves lucky just for being able to attend) was when they were sick. They’d get the wafer, but instead of sipping the wine, they had the option of the wafer being dipped or getting an additional blessing.
Like. One of my pastors had a story of how part of what brought her back to faith was that during her stint as an agnostic, she would ask for just the blessing, and after a couple weeks, her pastor asked why. When she explained, he told her that while he was more than willing to continue her a blessing instead, that he thought doubts shouldn’t keep her from communion.
I mean, I know I shouldn’t be surprised? People like Carol exist. (My aunt is one of them.) But every time I encounter this sort of thing, I am astonished and horrified all over again. It makes me incredibly grateful to have grown up in a faith where my orientation is considered irrelevant to my relationship with God. Even if I know there are individuals within my church who believe as Carol does, I at least have the comfort of knowing they’re in the minority overall.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that this strip rings true to me. Panels three and five warm my heart all the way through. Yay, Becky.
adjflakjsdf Sorry, GaoShiki, this was meant to be its own comment, not a reply.
I fucking love you, Becky.
Alright… I’d sooner spend a year living across the hall from Mary, than a single weekend under the same roof as Carol. If there weren’t gun wielding toes, mentally abusive psychopaths, and drink spiking rapists in this comic, she’d probably qualify to be the worst person.
How different is she from Danny’s and Ethan’s parents? I mean, I feel like Danny’s are much more the passive-aggressive type, but I doubt they’ll be much more welcoming if he brings a guy home -and I don’t think they believe in bisexuality. Not that they really care much about the “unfavorite son”, but… And Ethan’s parents straight-up reject the idea of him being gay -and blame Amber for it. Ruth’s uncle hasn’t appeared in-comic, but I seem to remember her saying some stuff about her home environment to Billie that was…. not encouraging about him as a guardian. Carol’s got some competition, beyond the four people you mentioned, unfortunately.
You’re right, I suppose I can’t say for certain that she’s the worst since we’ve probably seen more of her and Hank than any other parent who hasn’t, yet, openly assaulted their child. The thing I loath so much about Carol isn’t just that she’s a bigot, but that she’s so cold hearted as to harass and shame Becky, who she’s seen grow up from a kid in diapers to a woman, right after the latter has been kidnapped by her own fucking dad at gun point. All because Carol’s sanctimonious, horrid social politics are more important to her than the well being of others; even, apparently, her own child.
I’d say Carol is probably the worse character who has yet to commit a crime.
Damn good response, there, Becky.
That’s interesting, though, that this seems more like a Catholic concept of communion, the “must be this worthy to pass” kind of thing. In my limited experience, I’ve only seen that with Catholics. (The Presbyterian church where I grew up preferred that you be old enough to understand what communion meant if you were gonna take it, but even that wasn’t really a rule.)
The idea with Catholic Communion is that one must be “pure” before partaking of it, which translates into “have you Confessed this week?”, usually.
I feel confident she did the required amount of “Hail Marys” before hand.
Actually, under Catholic doctrine, you’re required to take communion unless you’re Excommunicated (in which case you’re not supposed to enter a church until you’ve done penance) or have committed a mortal sin. Or you haven’t been to Confession in some span of time, typically more than three months, but it varies by priest and they can’t really deny you communion on those grounds anyway. The only people explicitly barred regardless are protestants, since there’s the whole difference in the belief of Transubstantiation (it IS the body and blood of Christ) and Consubstantiation (it REPRESENTS the body and blood of Christ.)
Actually, anybody who hasn’t received the Eucharist under the Catholic Church isn’t allowed to partake in Communion, according to Catholic doctrine.
Of course, as with Last Rites and Baptism, exception is made when one is close to death and desires to make peace with God, so the Sacraments can even be administered by a layman/laywoman if no priest is available, and being a member of the Catholic Church isn’t a necessity in these extreme conditions.
Right, that slipped my mind, it was really early in the morning.
Also, if you’re “under grave sin” (meaning having committed a mortal sin), you should abstain from Mass as a whole until you Confess. You’re allowed to partecipate in Mass and take the Holy Communion if you aren’t capable of confessing prior to it, but only under the understanding the first thing you do once Mass is over is confessing your sin(s) to the priest and make amends to God.
Official practice for Catholics is more akin to recent culture. Early practice was to receive weekly. Middle Ages was once or twice a year. Post Vatican II is as frequently as you want.
Current Pope considers it help for the sick and weary (such as himself), but that has varied.
As for attending a Catholic wedding and receiving communion, I would respect local practice. I wouldn’t stand up to lead a prayer in a mosque or synagogue. Just stand and sit when others do and sing if you know the tune. Weddings are not about you and your beliefs anyway.
Girl has a legit fucking point, Carol.
But, hypothetically, let’s say, there’s a woman in this church who raised a girl in her household as practically another daughter, made the girl believe she loved her. A girl whose own actual mother committed suicide. A girl who was disowned by her father, and then held at gunpoint by said father. The father who pointed this gun at the woman’s own daughter, and endangered her daughter’s life as well. Let’s say this woman decided to blame this girl for this traumatic event, despite this girl being the victim, and even look down on her own daughter for doing something incredibly brave and stopping the kidnapping and saving the girl.
This hypothetical woman should maybe reconsider taking communion this week. And every week.
Aaaand there it is. Comment of the night!
Nah, that’s clearly all God approved… totes.
Seriously though, I think this moment says everything about the Gods the two worship.
Becky’s God is love, a character who answers lesbian prayers and doesn’t care about doctrine or religion or any of that, but just is a genuine positive force.
Carol’s God is wrath, a tyrant to stay just on the right side of, who will look down on someone who dares show empathy to a “sinner” no matter what she’s suffered, who thinks its more important that your daughter be “right with the lord” in her deeds than be alive. Someone to appease for just a bit longer so the Rapture can come and wipe it all away.
And it really manifests in how they are affected by this faith. Carol becoming mean and abusive and no longer even seeing people for all she feels she has to embody her faith and Becky just happily living her faith, knowing that God answers lesbian prayers and sends superheroines and motorcycle chicks in her darkest moments.
And dino chicks! Rawr!
Except Carol doesn’t see that as “wrath”. She views her god as a righteous one, and herself as upholding his standards and rules, thus, she is righteous as well. Becky stepping away from the standards and rules makes her a sinner. In Carol’s mind, the world is black and white. She cannot comprehend grey.
Becky stepping away from the rules, and not being punished, and in fact, happy and thriving, confuses her. That’s not how her world works. Becky will suffer, should suffer, because Becky has defied the rules. Carol is just waiting for the suffering and regret and penance, and the longer Becky goes without paying for her infractions, the more Carol gets pissed off.
This was basically the culture outlined in the New Testament that Jesus butted heads with. Disregard the crucifixion and whatnot, the religious leaders at the time basically said “This is what we believe in and how things should be, everyone who deviates is WRONG” then came along Jesus, who basically said “You are basically right, but maybe reel it in a bit about the righteous contempt and hard line laws.”
Carol’s the old way, Becky’s the new – the focus less on laws, and more focus on love and relationship. Sometimes laws need to be broken to do what is good. After all, Jesus broke a LOT of laws according to the New Testament.
Oh yeah, very much. In Carol’s view, that abusive wrath and receipt-keeping is love. Is the truest love there could ever be. And just like a loving parent “should” “discipline” an unruly child, so a loving God “disciplines” humanity when we have strayed from his “love”.
Content Warning: Domestic Violence metaphor
To Carol, letting people be is a sign of a fallen world that has fallen out of rhythm with God and rejected him and like a spurned lover, he “naturally” grows angry at the burnt dinner humanity offers him and bellows in rage and sends blows of hurricanes and natural disasters to show just how frustrated he is that all of his hard work keeping the planet going is not being respected by tasty dinner on time. And so it is on the “good wife” of humanity to respond to that and stay on his good side and serve as a faithful right hand, reinforcing his will so as to avoid his righteous temper.
Content Warning: Racism
And that also gets mixed in with what you were saying about the world being black and white. My best friend growing up tried to explain his church’s moral stance thus. There is black and there is white. Black is sin and white is purity. Gray isn’t a legitimate stance. Gray is just white that’s got black in it. And once you’re gray you can never go back to being white, you can only get blacker, so it’s important to stop the first instance of sin.
And if the frame of that argument feels awkward in terms of racial identities, well, that was somewhat intentional as he went on to explain that this relates to skin color, with black people being weighed down by the historical sin of Cain (did I mention the church I grew up surrounded by was hella racist, cause holy fuck was it racist). He eventually detoxed from all of these beliefs but it was a long Joyce-like process.
That’s one thing that always struck me as weird: Christians looking down on sinners. I mean, Jesus hung around with prostitutes, beggars and -shock and bewilderment- tax collectors, not the beautiful elite. And he didn’t act as if they were below him (despite being literally God), but treated them with love and respect and helped them and protected them from persecution and harm.
Some Christians believe they’re better than Jesus: I can’t decide if it’s hilarious or depressing.
No no, they are not better than Jesus, but weaker than Jesus. You need to root out the evil from your midst so that it may not overpower you eventually. What does Jesus care about that? He can bend over and take the evil without protection since he’s dying for our sins anyway and the devil holds no power over him.
But what a lot of denominations point out that one should aspire to be Christ-like, aka act, think and be like Jesus in every conceivable way.
And what Jesus did was spreading the Good Word to everyone who was willing to listen and helping the poor, the destitute and the outcasts. By singling out sinners and shaming them you’re not being Christ-like: you’re driving the “lost sheep” even further away.
Matthew 25, 44-45: “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”
Mind you, I’m not complaining about how Willis represents Christians in the comic (that seems to be the latest craze ’round here=, but rather about hypocritical Christians.
I guess this could be seen as a young generation/ old generation clash. I’ve noticed the older generations in Christian circles tend to be more closed, reserved. Younger generations aren’t as dogmatic and more free to mingle outside religious circles.
Content Warning: antisemitism
According to my friends growing up, you’re supposed to overlook that because of one random line in Matthew 5:7 where he talks about not coming to abolish the law, but rather fulfill it, so that means Jesus was 100% on board with all the hateful stuff of the pharisees (whose real crime was being jewish (their church was fuuuuuuuun) according to them). You’re then not supposed to look to the previous line about glorifying God through deeds, but instead look to a random series of other Jesus lines that suggest he’s a hardliner and then quote a bunch of Paul’s letters, because that’s also the words of Jesus, or close enough because God wouldn’t have let them in the Bible if they weren’t.
Hell, when I tried to understand the whole rigmarole and read the Bible myself and attended a few Bible groups, it all clicked when I noticed that the style of studying the Bible was being told to read a single line of the Bible, then told to close the Bible and stop reading while an older person explained what that meant.
Which is how you get the weird out-of-order narrative of Rapturist beliefs and a worldview in which Jesus the trans guy who hung out with a bunch of gay fishermen on the docks and dished with sex workers and had “views” about divorce amidst some good stuff about deeds and loving people and communist revolution and the world ending any day now becomes Aryan rule-monger, hater of gays and abortions.
I think most Christian circles sort of close themselves off because of the victim mentality – that “liberals” are out to get everything they believe in and sanitize it in government.
Personally, I’m fine with this. Government has no business defining what you should believe in – unless your beliefs result in the harm of another of course.
What you have to remember is that a lot of sects don’t actually care about the New Testament. They like the names of the New Testament and the rules of the Old Testament… except for the rules that would inconvenience them personally, like the ones about shrimp and mixed fabrics. They get to ignore those.
This is basically the comparison of Jesus versus the Pharisees that the first books of the New Testament are all about. I know, from your comments the other day, it’s best not to use that ancient spice all the time – I just cannot help but think of how things going on in the New Testament sort of repeat even today – in fiction and non.
I just want to say your comments and analysis of each comic (and the characters, and their beliefs) are really, really enjoyable, and I thank you for ’em.
I know you get this *a lot*, just wanted to add my voice to the chorus.
Had to track indentation back a lot to figure out you probably mean “Cerberus” here. It’s sort of amusing that there apparently is spiritual value in comic strip exegesis. Take a piece of scripture and talk about it.
Because, frankly, the creator is still quite alive. One feels if anybody should be talking confidently about it, it would be him. But probably nobody would want to hear it. Like you don’t want to hear a good pitcher lecture about aerodynamics.
It would rob you of illusions about both aerodynamics and the pitcher.
So yes: if Jesus turned up in a current-day church, he’d probably be politely escorted out, even before throwing a fit at the church sale tables. He may have started a religion or rather a sect of an existing one, but coming back from the dead was really overdoing it and it was a good move that he moved back to corporate central after a few weeks.
The mic has been dropped
My church had round disk wafers but didn’t do the wine. You also had to line up to get it. If you didn’t want communion but wanted a blessing you crossed your arms in an X over your chest.
At the last wedding I attended (different, in fact, than one of my previous emissaries), this option was offered. Having earlier declined to kneel during certain parts of the ceremony, I left my corpus at ease. Neither does Herakles kneel before nor ask blessings of other men’s gods!
My grandparents’ Lutheran church did the “cross your arms for a blessing” thing. (I don’t remember if they had wine as well as wafers.) I stayed in my seat because I believe in neither blessings nor ritual cannibalism; I was only there because of my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.
That service was so creepy. My grandmother’s funeral was less creepy than their usual service. Actually Lutherans seem to hold a good funeral; the entire service was about my grandmother and her life, which was a far cry from the… Methodist? I think?… funeral for a friend I had unfortunately attended a few years prior, which had five minutes about her and over an hour about how none of it was “God’s” fault.
As someone who grew up in the Episcopal church (“Anyone who wants communion, come on up!”) it is so hard for me to really understand the viewpoint of someone like Carol here. Isn’t part of communion MAKING you right with Jesus?
Good points, Becky! Good to see her holding her own in this whole mess.
It ends up depending on the denomination. Technically, in the Catholic Church at least, even without being excommunicated there are situations in which you are not allowed to take communion as a Catholic. Usually they have to deal with having committed a mortal sin.
As for making you right with Jesus, again, at least in the Catholic church, taking communion is an indulgence, which is less “get into heaven free” and more “Hey, here’s time off purgatory!”
Carol’s being spiteful which is probably born from some grudge she has. Maybe she liked Ross more as a person then Hank did? She’s also very protective of her daughter, and definitely sees Becky as a bad influence now. She’s just being passive aggressive.
Most churches I’ve gone to don’t bar you from communion (Non Catholic ones I’ve gone to. I’ve only gone to a few Catholic churches so I cannot really say much there). Typically they see communion as a symbolic show of good will, as a way of saying “I’ll try harder”.
I absolutely love the absolute certainty Becky has in her faith. She knows her God loves her. She knows it, because the God she prays to is good. And a good God, in her mind, wouldn’t hate her because of her sexuality or ask her to believe in fake things about how the world works or demand people live in misery and repression.
She was told that God despised people like her and made the conclusion that the problem must be the church, must be the doctrine. That that didn’t reflect on God, just the church she was raised in. And so she not only believes in God, but knows he’s got her back. And in her head, she has proof. Proof in her lack of injuries, proof in not being in some reparative therapy camp right now, proof in her girlfriend’s kisses, proof in her best friend doing so much to support her and her best friend’s sister helping her get some of her documents.
And so, the only points in which Becky gets angry or upset are the moments when someone tries to suggest that God does not approve of her or what she is doing. That she is somehow out of favor with her God. That’s where she gets extra snarky, where she snaps at people and drops the mask a bit.
And I think it’s not just defending her faith, but also her defending her God. When people say to her, well maybe God hates people like you, what she hears is people calling her God an asshole who would be so narrow-minded and evil to hate people for what they are.
And that upsets her, so much so that she feels she needs to step to and counter. Because in her mind, God is love. And nothing will shake that.
It’s just a lovely character touch. She knows she belongs in a church on Sunday morning and what anybody says to her about it matters not one bit, because she has the faith that is rock certainty and genuine comfort rather than a tool of hate and exclusion.
Excellent points all. And also, YOU GO, BECKY!!
Reading this strip I suspect that even if Becky hadn’t been outed that sooner or later she would have begun to become more vocal about her increasing dissatisfaction with the religious environment she grew up in. Perhaps at some point she would have been told to consider another congregation.
Behold, POSITIVE CHRISTIAN CHARACTERS AND FAITH BEING A POSITIVE IN SOMEONE’S LIFE AND NOT A NEGATIVE!
Take THAT, assholes complaining we don’t have any!
Seriously though, I’m glad that Becky managed to come through things and still manage to find religion as something comforting. It’s not for me (because any god who’d look at my brain and the frankly terrifying neuroses I inflicted on myself during that period and say “Yeah I’m going to hold it against you for not trying to believe me after realizing all you internalized was fear anyway” is not a god worth the trouble,) but I’ve known enough people for whom it WAS a wholly positive and non-dickish force that I know they do exist and Becky sure as hell doesn’t need that scar tissue on her psyche with everything else.
Sadly to the hateful assholes who post that crap about how “Willis doesn’t have any good Christian characters”, Becky doesn’t count because “she’s never seemed religious” i.e. they don’t believe one can be gay and be Christian because in their mind God hates gay people.
And *hugs* on that last paragraph. And yeah, that’s my general stance as well. Any “god” in my mind that would care more that I’m an atheist than anything I’ve done is not only not worth my time, but someone I’d spend my afterlife fighting if it turned out I was wrong.
The issue isn’t that there are no good christian characters. The issue is that there are too many terrible people that are christian. The two really horrible events of the comic have both been inflected by Christians. First Joyce’s rape and secondly Toedad. Mary is also an antagonist and is also a christian. The non-christian assholes have been almost entirely harmless.
4 out of 5 people in Indiana (and the US) are Christian, and you name three characters you believe to be bad Christians. Heck, that means I get to have like two more before it’s unbalanced, and for every non-Christian villain I introduce, I get to have FOUR more Christian villains! I’ll get right on it.
Blaine – almost entirely harmless.
Huh, I never knew!
Yup. This is the first time today Becky answers back at Carol, and it’s not in defense of herself, but of God. Don’t trashtalk Becky’s God in his own church, Carol.
Really, that whole thing with the carchase was a nice gesture of God, but Becky got all the proof she needed back here. God is good, and God has her back.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/pit/
becky at everyone: YOU DON’T OWN GOD I GOT HIS BACK
She’s rock solid on her belief that God loves her, but the teachings of the church definitely are slipping away faster for her then they are for Joyce. Big example of this is how Joyce and Becky differ on the opinion of evolution. Joyce sees it as undermining everything she believes in, because the concept of evolution takes a jackhammer to her belief’s foundations. Becky basically just doesn’t think of it and just pursues understanding the science over belief.
Honestly, I think this is why Becky will still be of faith at the end of the comic, but Joyce will likely end up atheist.
Largely because Becky has found it very easy to strip the trappings of what she was taught from her image of God and so she’s shed all that nonsense and toxicity without losing her iron-clad faith.
But Joyce still links the two, still views her God as stemming from all those trappings, so every encounter that forces her to acknowledge the toxicity of her church and how she was raised makes her feel less capable of loving and worshipping a God that stems from that.
I doubt Joyce will become an Atheist – maybe Agnostic. I think instead she’ll shed most the dogma of Christianity, but keep to heart the foundations. Her journey is certainly going to be more rough though.
Maybe. But, at the same time, Joyce is a pseudo-Willis analogue, so…
Just gotta add: Cerberus, you rock.
wooo ella es genial
Somebody call the paramedics … we got a severe burn victim here.
I can’t help but read this as a response to a rant on the Awful Webcomic Wiki even though I know it’s probably not. It’s just too on the nose.
I haven’t bothered to check that thing out since the time someone linked to the Shortpacked! one and it tried to argue that trans ace people were something that didn’t exist that Willis invented out of thin air for “diversity reasons”.
Have they been ranting about Becky too?
My first time reading them they said the Patriarchy didn’t exist. Never went back.
*Looks at previous comments* Um what.
Not even remotely kidding.
I also recall them saying that Robin and Leslie reconciling and having children was Willis thinking that abusive relationships are healed by children, and not, say, a long process of time where Robin learns to forgive herself for doing wrong by Leslie, and Leslie realizes that she does miss Robin and she’s ready to try again, and the two of them want kids because they’re planning on getting married long, long after the two of them actually got back together and want to build a new family because that’s Leslie’s dream.
Basically it’s a cesspool, is what I’m getting at. It’s not even real criticism, it’s just “bluh too pc.”
Well to put it briefly, the reviewer offered to build Willis a Solid Gold Temple if he killed off Becky so . . . yeah . . .
Look. I have problems with this comic. But that’s because I have problems with everything. I am not happy unless I am perennially dissatisfied.
That said, I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying something that I believe is flawed. If I didn’t I would be going through life a very unhappy curmugeon.
I also want to say that not every review on the site is actually that awful. It just suffers from terrible quality control.
There are legitimate kernels of critique in almost every review. Undeniable strenghts in terms of artstyle or idea are often acknowledged.
But overall, and I think partly because it is a community written review with weaving in and out to add and edit rather than an uncyclopedia entry like on Wikipedia, the tone of articles becomes a confused mess of dispassioned critique, hot blooded opinion, and angry old man shouting at clouds.
This is why, personally, I like Webcomic Overlook and other dedicated blogs curratted by single or small groups of reviewers.
I don’t think this fully explains my feeling on the matter so I’m going to start lengthening it now. Gimme about half an hour.
The problem with that… ‘wiki’ is that it is a place that explicitly fosters hate and disdain of what they ‘review’. It obviously creates bad reviews because they’re never done in a neutral way.
Also, don’t they state that spewing acid on webcomics they dislike is “a mission” for them? Yeah, whoever feels so self-entitled on the internet is better stood away from.
How dare the free entertainment you give to the world free of charge not cotton to my specific list of prejudices! This offends me and I must spend my life stopping it!
Ah, hyper-entitled man-babies, what would the internet and geek culture be without them? (less shit, prolly)
I’m going to keep this brief and sweet and try to avoid talking about anything but nuts and bolts since this really quite a bit of tangent :
On the Bad Webcomic Wiki –
After thinking about it I really believe the fact that the site is attempting to be both a wiki and an archive of criticism, and only criticism, is its biggest problem.
A normal wiki relies on the assumption that non-proffessionals can curate articles because they are collecting the best understood concensus from the relevant academic fields. Or in the case of fiction wikis collecting the creator’s ‘word of god’ into a single source. Most of the hard work has been done for you and what is left is simply to caerfully follow a procedure.
The Bad Webcomic Wiki, on the other hand, is an archive of opinions. And the problem with opinions is that everyone has one, they’re all different, and we’re mostly terrible at expressing them to other people or sometimes even to ourselves.
The mark of a good critic is being able to separate out the ‘mechanical’ nuts and bolts part of their opinion and the emotional response and express them both thoughtfully side by side. Most people are not good critics. Nor can they sustain the concentration to thoughtfully criticize or praise something they feel strongly about.
Seriously, being a critic is hard work.
Compounding this problem is that the wiki seems to use a system of votes to determine if a comic is regarded as suitably awful to be included in the archive at which point it is up to whoever volunteers first to write the review.
This leads two things. First, it creates a situation where dissenters will feel immediately outnumbered and in hostile territory when in reality most of the voters probably just don’t care for a given comic. And it allows the person who volunteers to review, who probably feels strongly to volunteer their time, to set the tone which any future edits or additions will follow.
But probably more important than that. The site’s sole purpose is to currate bad webcomics. That sets a tone which greatly limits how much any article can fairly express criticism because the assumption is that, if your comic is already here it is because it is bad.
I believe this last part is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of ‘critic entertainment’ (critertainment?) produced by people like Doug Walker, Ben Croshaw, or even Jim Sterling.
Also reviewing webcomics shouldnt be the same s reviewing a standard comic, like something from marvel
alot of the time webcomics are a hobby and they arent actively getting paid for it (there are exceptions) and more oftyen then not someones first webcomic is a way for them to practice their artist skills and storywriting. Plus since most of them are NOT getting paid they dont really have an obligation to do it every day or have a concrete schedule which is unliked mainstream comic artists.
alot of webcomics start off with bad artwork because as i said its usually someone starting out. But the thing with that is there is almost always improvement that is noticeable.
Even Willis who has been doing webcomics for a long a while, you look at the first page of dumbing of age with this one you WILL notice a difference.
I feel judging webcomics on the same format as comics from marvel and dc is not right, they are a different medium with different artists and you should always take that into consideration.
thats not to say webcomic are above criticism, far from it you should definantely criticize story elements, but dont be vitriolic like the wiki does. Since again more often then not they are starting out, or its their first story so it wont be perfect so give criticism on points they could improve.
Willis had those crtiticisms when he started with “Roomies!” and his has improved alot over the years. His writing i mean. (artwork too obviously)
But since you rarely ever PAY for a webcomic i find getting angry at them for being bad is pointless. If you see a bad movie you wasted your money and time
if you see a bad comic you wasted your money and time and they dont change much from start to finish
if a paperback comics artwork is bad its usually bad from start to finish, if a movies story or acting is bad, its bad from start to finish (there are exceptions but thats how it generally goes)
webcomics are unique in that they always improve over time
even cntrl alt del which is pretty bad storywise from start to finish its artwork does improve.
I feel reveiwing webcomics while definantely a great idea needs to be done differently from other forms of media.
I just read both the reviews for shortpacked and dumbing of age… Why did I did that?! Am I a masochist?! There was so much bad in that, like seriously calling people who like these comments bigots because “we don’t accept christians or white men enough”. Calling this comic completely anti religious. So many gendered slurs and they even said they were glad when Becky’s father tried to kidnap her. All lgbt characters and atheists (and a lot of Ross) had their every action scrutinized and criticized while Mary, Ross, and Joyce when she was still total funds were defended all the way through. The whole thing was shit
Comics not comments
Seriously? Wow! Well, at least now we know where all the commenters Willis bans go.
…thats probably totally where they go holy shit
Don’t a lot of the “angry reviewer” genre actually love the works they critique on their shows or at least the genres they belong to? Like, they can rip it apart because either they love the works and so can stand to spend the hours and multiple viewings it takes to take them apart and keep doing their angry rants about the works that do disappoint them without getting burned out?
Like, nearly everyone you named has at least one series or run they’ve done where they’ve gushed about things they’ve genuinely loved to keep themselves invested in what they’re doing.
Man, Becky really riles up the shitlords, doesn’t she? Her and Carla. Now if there was only some aspect to their characters that could explain this…
I know! It’s that they’re both red-heads, isn’t it? Boom, nailed it, anti-redhead prejudice raises its ugly head again*.
*Seriously, though, with geek culture more or less absorbing South Park’s anti-“ginger” jokes and semi-ironically repeating them, I do wonder if the veneer of irony is allowing anti-Irish prejudice to come back (especially since bigots seem stuck in the 19th century) under the guise of being “ironic, you guyzz”. Normally I wouldn’t suspect this, but with the rise of literal nazis and Klansmen everywhere, well…
oh, it’s also Kids in the Hall and a lot of other places.
You’re right about the irony factor – it’s seen by most as a very silly thing to be -ist about, at least these days, but there’s always that person who nods and repeats it a little too earnestly.
Once I found that place existed, I immediately made a mental note to ever open it: one, it’s an horribly toxic place with no quality control on its entries. Two, “bad webcomics” is a lie: they attack every webcomic ever.
For example, they “reviewed” xkcd. It boiled down to “stick figures suck” and “Randall Munroe has Asperger’s”. That’s all there was to it, and if there was legitimate critique of the comic, it was buried under heaps of vitriol and hate.
Oh, they apparently hold Gunnerkrigg as a sacred cow.
Considering there are canon lesbians there, that surprises me.
Why? People can have horrible taste in the company they keep and the bad. Especially online. And they can get off on being mean spirited jerks. That doesn’t mean all or even most of them are actually homophobic.
WE that’s odd. I wonder what made them think he has a form of Autism.
*Well
The reasoning was, I kid you not, “stick figures don’t have faces. People with Asperger’s have trouble with faces. Ergo, Randall Munroe has Asperger’s.”
But the fact is that it was meant as an insult, a joke made at Randall’s expense. “durr durr he’s autistic lol” is how that ‘review’ read to me. In fact, I am pretty sure 50% of the site is ad hominem attacks aimed at the creators of the comics they don’t like.
I’m insulted. Not really surprised about the quailty of reviews, just sounds like a place for trolls to hate on webcomics.
*quality
Just skimmed, and yes. Apparently Becky’s the most obnoxious character in the comic. No haircuts were mentioned. Also, apparently the comic treats Billie and Ruth’s relationship as an unambiguously good thing because it’s a same sex relationship. Which is news to me.
The reviewer says they read Dumbing of Age 3.4 times for the review, which strikes me as a remarkably unbalanced approach to hate reading. Like, surely that’s an exhausting amount of time to devote to reading something they hate. It’s not entirely surprising, given the premise of the wiki, but I can’t help but think that sort of approach is going to seriously warp your ability to give a balanced critique.
The awful webcomic wiki is a prime example of people who dont know any idea of what they are talking about.
the only time i agreed with them was like cntrl alt del and i didnt even need that wiki to tell me its bad.
stopped clock :/
Panel 4 and 5 must be the best two panels in the whole comic.
oh becky. never change. <3
She won’t 🙂 Her father couldn’t change her with a gun. Her mother’s ghost couldn’t. Carol most certainly can’t change her with a dress and some underhand comments.
Never change in the face of hostility and bigotry, that I agree with!
But for Becky’s sake, I would wish her to allow herself to be “weak” with people she trusts. That she could fully open up emotionally, have an hour or even a day of not putting on her fighting face, to just let it all out; oddly secure in that this will not cause the people around her to think any less of her.
Of course, there are reasons why she can’t do that, at least not yet. but maybe one day, Becky…
Ugh. I can’t stand it when Willis writes these incredibly unrealistic scenarios. I mean, who would do that? No real Christian would EVER do that.
Those communion crackers are INSANELY dry. You don’t suck your fingers and make “Mmmn nmmm num mmm” sounds! You’re too busy trying not to choke to death before you get your swallow of grape juice!
If that’s the group I think it is they don’t use crackers, they use actual bread (tiny pieces of bread, but “real” (white) bread.
It looks like the little hard oyster-cracker-but-worse things we had in my church to me. But to be honest, I was just making a joke at the expense of people who keep saying Willis misrepresents Christians. So whatever. 🙂
Heh, unintentional symbolism: their bread is white, just like their Jesus.
And just like their Jesus, they had to bleach something brown to get there. 😀
(yes, yes, I’m firmly aware I’m going to hell)
Of course you are. You received your express tickets from The Agenda, didn’t you? We’re supposed to get primo suites, for really flaunting God with, like, everything.
Now I am picturing the SkyBoxes of Hell.
If someone told me that Jesus said I couldn’t have some of the communion, I would not only take like a handful of what ever. I would make the most inappropriate noises while eating it, no matter how gross, dry or stale. Because SPITE is amazing when you can shove it in someone’s face.
Also yeah that’s bread which is always intrinsically yummy.
If they’re following the way communion wafers are supposed to be, that’s unleavened bread, which is intrinsically not yummy. But then again, I had a friend who got wheat thins for communion.
dang BaptistsIn the Methodist church we got like yummy homemade baked bread. It was the only good thing about the 2 hour long self masturbatory ceremony that is communion
Becky is acting like that to make a point to Carol.
Carol clearly doesnt think Becky is worthy of taking communion. Becky is telling her to bugger off. Metaphorically.
Interesting side note:
The way Becky puts together that list of those who saved her, it can be interpreted in two ways. We all see it as a list of three people, because we all saw the climactic moment. But, it could also be read as a list of two people, with “my girlfriend” being elaborated on as “my best friend on a motorcycle”.
And most people wouldn’t assume that, but take someone paranoid and already scared that her daughter is being seduced into the lesbianic arts and convinced that homosexuality is some demon recruitment service? Who’s looking to see the worst in Becky no matter what?
There’s a distinct possibility that Carol could interpret things that way, especially with the congregation members whispering pointed comments about Joyce and Becky being “together”.
And that could be a very dangerous thing if Carol gets of the mindset that she “needs to save her daughter” from the lesbian corrupting her to “an unhealthy lifestyle”.
You said “lesbianic”. So now I’m thinking “lesbotic tendencies”. And now I’m realizing that inside Carol’s brain there must be a tiny Stephen Fry accusing others of being an “active, promiscuous, and voracious lesbite”.
What is going through Carol’s head over and over right now
That can be extremely ugly, but honestly, I doubt that Carol needs to be further convinced of that scenario.
heck
i feel like carol spent like ONE SECOND THERE in almost sympathy and then she then boom back to the garbage pile that is her life
Audibly, it’s very unlikely that Carol would make that mistake. There are tonal differences between the way you list different people and relative clauses that are easy to make jokes about when written down (because commas are multipurpose) but if you’re actually listening to someone, they sound very different.
Way to Eleanor Roosevelt your way through that, Becky
Fuck you, Carol.
“Your petty, manipulative mind tricks of guilt don’t work on me.”
Just our Daily reminder that Becky is the best.
I’ll take a communion wafer…and EAT IT!
Y’know, they actually sell them at the grocery stores. They’re apparently supposed to be for practicing before you take your first Communion. I find it somewhat amusing that they’re all different colors of the rainbow.
… practice?
Jesus Christ, all you have to do is eat it! What kind of practice do you need?!
It’s all about timing. Eat it too soon, and the priest can’t turn it into Jesus flesh, so you don’t get his blessing. Eat it too late, and it turns into Jesus flesh in your mouth, or worse, your hand, and you have to choke down this disgusting lump of raw meat. At least, I think that’s how it works. I’ve never partaken, as you can probably tell.
I think it is for people who have an issue with unfamiliar tastes and textures. When I was a kid, my folks got me practice wafers because else there was a big possibility I might gag and spit it out on the day.
Well that gives me this odd mental image of Light Yagami attending mass, writing in his notebook while the Priest teaches.
I am both impressed by and afraid for Becky right now, and I really love that that’s her perspective, assuming it is. That is high-level faith, strength, and gumption, and with her humor still intact too… dang.
Honestly Carol, God created everyone just how they’re supposed to be, right? Because God is Perfect and makes no mistakes. Therefore, God made Becky a badass lesbian, and if God made her so, he clearly does not look down upon lesbians.
Geez, Carol, why would lesbians even exist if they weren’t supposed to
Ah, the fundamental flaw there is that God doesn’t make gay people.
Gay people choose to be the way we are because…because we just like Satan and being contrary, I guess? Never quite understood where the stops on that logic train were.
It’s why so many of them cling so desperately to the “it’s a choice” framing and why the “born this way” rhetoric is powerful (albeit flawed in certain respects).
Because they do believe God doesn’t make mistakes and so there must be a reason that gay people and trans people and ace people and bi people and so on keep happening. And believing that it is all some sort of sick test on God’s part to see if people resist it tends to sit poorly with a lot of people…
So instead, it’s all about denying it’s something you are and making it about choosing “unhealthy” “godless” lifestyles that everyone understands are fake and all about making Christian folk uncomfortable about their beliefs. Because everything in the Universe is all about their personal spiritual journey.
I’m confused. This isn’t a catholic church. Why are there communion wafers?
Looks like chunks of bread to me, like what we had in the United Methodist church.
Huh I wonder if it is drawn so vaguely so that we can project our memories onto it, rather than because it’s quicker.
Spriteless, I went to a United Methodist church once, and it was the same stale oyster crackers I had at the baptist church.
Were they gluten free? I mean, that’s very inclusionary don’t you think? Fits in with United Methodist Doctrine.
those are the communion breads of a non-Catholic church. A lot of churches have communion, just Catholic is the only (I believe) religion who believes that the bread and wine is the Actual Body and Blood of Jesus. Other churches believe in metaphorical representation.
Some Protestants believe in Transubstantiation, iirc, but I’m not sure which ones.
The church I used to go to was Low Church of England. They used to have Wafers and Wine – great name for a snack by the way.
There were rumblings of discontent when I went to the other church when they wanted to go High church – altar boys that kind of stuff.
It all seems a bit strange remembering this stuff after all these years.
Communion is used in some Non Denominational churches as well, but typically it’s not an every Sunday affair. It’s usually introduced depending on the sermon.
On the subject of using grape juice and bread instead of wine and crackers:
A friend of mine who is a church choir director refers to this as the Heresy of Displaced Fermentation. This happens when you take the yeast out of the wine, where it belongs, and put it into the bread, where it doesn’t.
And I just noticed that, once again, Sal gets exactly zero kudos.
The motorcycle is a part of Sal in Becky’s mind. She hasn’t really gotten a chance to have significant interactions with her, and she was in Motorcycle Gear, so in her mind they are one connected unit to which Joyce in all her righteous fury attached herself.
Also in Becky’s mind I’m pretty sure Joyce really just came charging in on the motorcycle, fist aloft, straight into Toedad’s face. Don’t think about the physics or timeline involved for that one it won’t hold up, but the image is sound.
So, as far as Becky’s concerned, Sal’s the coolest centaur ever?
Except Becky has now spent… what, about a week?… as Sal’s roommate. How implausible would it be to spend that long sharing the same dorm room and still having no contact whatsoever?
Ask Billie…
i dont think she spoke to her much
Sal doesn’t really talk to people unless she has to or they’re Marcie. It’s a bit of a plot point.
yup
you could read sal as the superhero but. i d k
also, Becky is trying to sway Joyce’s mom here. Her best friend, girlfriend, a motorcycle, and a superhero mean something to the mom. “Sal” or “a cool girl who drives a motorcycle would have little meaning to the mom
Eventually Becky will remember someone else was involved but she ends up thinking it was Walky.
Of all the people involved in that crisis Sal is the only one who actually prevented a death, but ironically, Becky didn’t list her as Heaven sent, because Sal was also non-violent. Sal is the only one who didn’t physically attack Ross.
Sal is also the one she saw the least in the encounter, Sal basically grabbed Amber, let Joyce off the bike, and bolted off as soon as she could:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/counterbalance/
And it occurred at a moment when she was focused on her seatbelt and trying to grab the wheel to not die in a car spinning out of control, so she was probably a little distracted. So she probably was a minor part of the rescue to her largely because her presence for the parts of the rescue Becky was present at was very small.
Not to mention Joyce was wearing yellow but Sal was in all blue against the background of a blue truck and probably was just a flash of something. It’s legitimately possible she only knows about the motorcycle because Joyce mentioned it afterwards as the explanation of how she was able to catch up.
Granted she should probably have put two and two together on who is the one person they both know who has a motorcycle, so really, Becky should probably get on that, but it’s understandable why Sal wouldn’t feature prominently in Becky’s memory.
And, I mean, I think we can give Amber a pat on the back for the whole “prevented Ross’ escape” thing, even if it was running on superhero logic to work (like how Sal was able to catch Amber with one arm by leaping six feet in the air on her motorcycle).
Oh, I’m not blaming Becky for not remembering that. I’m just adding it to the “world unfair to Sal” folder.
(My comment about being Sal’s roommate was more an ironic allusion to how easy it is not to run into her when living in the same room.)
Last panel cracks me up every time I look at it. And my favorite part is that the fingers we see her licking weren’t even in contact with the bread/wafer/cracker/whatever.
Since people are sharing their varieties of communion, figure I’ll add mine in. I was raised Lutheran, and at our church, communion was of the (voluntary) “line up at the front, one row at a time” type deals, where children too young to partake (I think that started 5th grade?) could get a blessing. We used real wine but had white grape juice alternatives, and you could either get a tiny glass or drink from the goblet or do intinction (dipping the bread in the goblet). And we used pita bread, for which I’m retroactively thankful, now that I know the alternatives. Also, if attendance was low, you might get a massive chunk! …Communion might’ve been my favorite part of religion, come to think of it…
Best Becky moment ever!!!
And whoop there it is.
Becky… you are the best.
“What’s that Carol? I can’t hear you over how delicious your savior is and how much he loves me! Num num num! Yo give me my blood already!”
Jesus saves, everyone else takes fire damage from that sick burn.
Becky and God are cool with each other.
I love how she came out of this whole ordeal with her faith intact. The church abandoned her, not God. God answers Lesbian prayers, after all.
She’s not taking this shit lying down anymore. If Carol’s gonna be hostile anyway, and she’s stuck there, may as well fight back. Take the cracker Becky, Carol will take her L.
Haha, we need Jesus to show up…
It will be interesting to see if Carol’s piety (and her need to appear perfect to her peers) is sufficient to stop her from exploding and hysterically denouncing Becky in the middle of the service!
This is satisfying. Very satisfying.
“Wait, my daughter did what for you?”
She probably already knows I think
yep. that was a fairly solid shut down. that said, they should probably leave before something horrible happens.
Number 1: What kind of evangelicals take any form of communion
Number 2: I always thought that the Catholic Church should market their own snack crackers called, “Jeez-Its.”
All of the ones who aren’t Quakers.
Do you know how hard you’ve now made it for me to not refer to communion wafers like that?
As far as I know, all Christians take communion. There’s a few extreme sects that believe practically no one is pure enough to partake, but even they hold communion services (once every three months: the other services are just singing, bible readings and a sermon).
I’ve never heard of an Evangelical church that didn’t do communion….
At least two churches I’ve gone to have used Communion selectively, depending on the sermon. They’ve used it as a show of dedication, to show wanting to get closer to Jesus relationship wise.
That name now makes me wish to try one of the wafers with cheese wiz.
She’s got a point. If there is a god and that kind of team not only leaped to the rescue, but successfully rescued a kidnapping victim, then said god has to be on board with the whole thing.
All thanks to David Willis, who brings both frustrations and catharsis.
It’s like the helicopter tale but going the other way!!! 😀 Yay Becky!!!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who caught that.
Definitely not.
This one was smart enough to recognize and accept what was provided.
I believe communion should not be taken with spite actively being nurtured in one’s heart.
But even if I’m right, I’m sure God will forgive Becky for this one.
I’d argue at it being spite. assertion of faith has a pretty solid standing in god’s favourite things.
No probably not. It shouldn’t be used as a tool for guilt monger int either. I’d say both are a bit in the wrong here.
Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Yeah, I’d say that ball is in Carol’s court as well.
No people yelling that Becky is ‘so awful’ for doing this yet in the comments as far as I can tell. I am cautiously optimistic.
(Like seriously while I get disliking Becky when she treats Dorothy like crap or the utterly tasteless nazi joke from earlier- she can be obnoxious and annoying and even offensive after all: it just really gets up my nose some of the other times, like when she’s responding to people like Carol or whoever, usually hiding it behind ‘picking your battles’- because apparently they want people to act like a complete and utter saint/ a complete doormat, letting bigots trample all over her and she’s being soooo difficult to be accepted.)
Because she can totally be accepted by pieces of human refuse like Carol so easily if she plays the respectability game. Somehow. As Carol would get to snip and snip and be passive aggressive even if she did do that. But if Becky once responds she’s in the wrong somehow. Like if Carol doesn’t want Becky to make such responses she just has to learn to shut her trap and realise little barbs aren’t going to be allowed from her either.
(Seriously, I’m not out to anyone, but my aunt always looks scandalised when I actually /disagree/ with her on politics, as if me quitely accepted her opinions is the polite thing to do even if I disagree and think they’re ridiculous/awful/biogted/whatever and I can basically see people shifting uncomfortably)
People like Carol however deserve no respect, they do not deserve to be entertained or coddled like a fucking baby for their opinions. She’s an adult. She should grow the fuck up and face reality for once in her life. If her own daughter’s life being risked, as well as her daughter’s best friend- wasn’t enough of a wake up call to shake things up, I don’t think anything will be though. Not Becky being the quite demure perfect little girl/victim. Not anything. She’s just that evil. Some people will never admit they are wrong.
Like I get it can be a difficult thing to admit, but I really see no layers of doubt from Carol. I don’t even see her y’know, /begrudgingly/ doing this because she believes it’s what the lord wants (there isn’t even a ‘This is what I have to do, even if it feels wrong to me’ vibe- which would still be wrong, and pretty cowardly, but at least remotely understandable because these are folks scared into compliance with hellfire for themselves and loved ones. Hell it’s how I was as a teenager deeply in the closet).
I kind of think sometimes it’s not what you believe which always fully defines you, as belief isn’t always a fully conscious choice you make- there’s too many outside factors at work, and as Jocelyn said you are sometimes your own experiences: but rather (sometimes) your emotional/logical response to what you’ve been raised to believe. If things like hellfire or homophobia make you uncomfortable or bigotry doesn”t seem to make too much sense to you as morally a-ok when you really think on it deeply for the first time- at the very least you have the building blocks to /become/ a decent person. There is hope for you.
Those who are gleeful of hell (say like Mary) do not. Granted Carol probably like had 1 point on that from Mary since she doesn’t seem /happy/ at least. But like I said- there’s no doubt or struggle evident with Carol at all as of now. Maybe that will change, maybe we’ll get new insight but I really doubt it.
And even then, until such time, she shouldn’t be coddled like an utter child. Carol, Christ I know Jesus said for you to come like a child but you should use basic adult reasoning in some areas. Like I’m pretty sure back when I went to church there were things about ‘growing’ in faith and how remaining spiritually stunted was a bad thing. Like the whole kid things was supposed to be how you first came to Jesus (joyful and ready to learn) but then you grew the hell up.
That being said I’m guessing Carol doesn’t know about Dina- probably assumes Joyce is the girlfriend. Oh boy.
(Sorry is this too long? It probably is. I have a lot of feelings.)
The thing is that what Becky says here isn’t a snark, it’s a genuine expression of faith! That Becky’s faith has survived her experiences is, I think, more offensive to Carol than anything else. However, from our ‘outside’ perspective, it is difficult to fault her words without looking like idiots.
+1
If Becky had come out as an atheist, then that would probably have been less offensive.
This this this. Carol (and her ilk) see very clearly that there is obviously One True Right Way To Believe, and if you believe (or, y’know, are) something outside of that structure, then you are an Evil Heathen.
The fact that Becky is very clearly “sinning” but still claims to be worthy of God’s love is infuriating to them, because it’s denial of their authority as the Ultimate Arbiters Of What Is Christian. Becky isn’t saying to them “you and your God are wrong and I am leaving,” she is saying “you are wrong about God,” and that’s much more harmful to their mindsets (and position of social authority in a small town).
Er, sorry I mucked that up into a wall of italics.
I enjoyed your rant.
I love that Becky points out the various ways God answered her prayers, she emphasises the fact that Toedad kidnapped her. She reminds Carol that he held Becky and Joyce at gunpoint, and kidnapped her , and that this is the guy Carol is siding with, just to emphasise the cheek Carol has in trying to suggest Becky’s the one who needs to make herself “right with God”.
Joyce did tell Hank that Dina is Becky’s girlfriend, so that information may have filtered through to Carol.
*clap hands* That was amazingly worded and stated and definitely not too long! And I agree so much with all of that.
Hell, I think that’s part of why Becky resonates with me a lot is that I tried so hard to fit into respectability politics and be the “perfect” victim and politely argue my right to existence with my parents, going slow so as to make it “easier” on them and they just used that respectability presentation as an excuse to dismiss my identity and like it was fully acceptable to argue against it.
So I have a lot of respect for her fearlessness, the way she never presents her lesbianism as something it is remotely okay for her to be apologetic for. Instead, it is something to be celebrated, something that she knows is celebrated by her God. And doesn’t let the dishonest arguments that she should “tone it down” or “hide herself away” or admit her lesser nature because of it (and they are dishonest, the people in her church do not care that she is “too out”, they care that she is gay and not apologizing and repenting for it) get her down or roll over her.
She’s the type of survivor I strive to be.
Good thing that God sent a gosh darned hero, because if God had sent a God-Damned hero that would just be paradoxical.
Since said superhero is an atheist, by her belief system it would be a God-damned superhero.
The right tool for the right job either way.
Suck on that, Carol! 😛
I would have preferred “Jesus is still alright with me. Jesus is still alright Oh yeah.” Doobie Brothers is cool, but I just like DC Talk lol
BECKYYYYYYYYYYYY! LLOK AT THAT LOOOOOOOOKK AAAAAAATT THAAAAAAAT YOU GLORIOUS GLORIOUS CREATURE YEAH YEAH DAMN STRAIGHT YOU EAT THAT LORD ON HIGH! YOU EAT HIM!
AUGH you perfect girl. how you so tuff. you so tuff. ok carol so you don’t like me but GOD DO
willis loves you girl
Somehow it tastes sweeter than she remembered it.
Communion bread is a dish that is best served cold.
“Drops the mic”
and another one!
I wonder if she’s charging her lazers…
Communion taste better with her tears, right Becky?
This is such a satisfying strip. Well said Becky
Ha HA! Bless Becky and her amazing ability to snark on her feet.
I’ve been thinking that a variant of this logic would be useful to Joyce in standing up to her mother, if Joyce were up to doing that: “I felt confused and lost as to how I was supposed to be treating gay people, and prayed to God for guidance – and He sent me Becky!” It’s neat to see Becky using it in her own defense.
So it’s finger lickin’ good?
That last panel is the best Becky Face ever.
i want someone to edit becky’s hand to flip off carol
that will make it even better
Actually yeah, I mean if we’re going for the whole “the gods strengthen the hand of the just” deal then Joyce’s beatdown of Toe-dad more or less proves which side he’s on.
Boom. Shaka. Laka.
Once a Ginger burns someone, it will never heal.
OOoooh burn!
Jut so we’re clear on how much mean ol’ SJWillis hates Christians and this entire comic is just a way to snipe back at them, we just had an old white Fundamentalist begin reevaluating his entire life’s beliefs because he’s trying to do right by his daughter and her best friend, the latter upon learning she’s one of those sex weirdos who go to hell for existing, and here we have Becky, who has actually suffered at length at the hands of her religion, fight back against Carol for the first time this entire weekend because she dared to insist that Becky does not belong in her faith, like Dina, Sal, Joyce and Amazi-Girl rescuing her life when her dad kidnapped her at gunpoint wasn’t very clearly God’s love working through them.
but none of that counts, because…
um…
hang on, let me find a verse that proves I’m right and all you sinners are wrong (and going to Hell for being wrong).
Church must have budget problems. Those are tiny little crackers.
I am now just picturing God as Willis with a Santa Claus Beard on himself.
Taste the power in every morsel of the Lord.
What, no music video link today? Here, I’ll help you out.
And I’m 99% sure Willis was referring to the dc Talk version (rather than Doobie Brothers), considering his Tumblr background is straight outta this video!
I’m somewhat surprised how niche knowledge of Protestant/Evangelical communion practices appears to be, judging by the confusion among my fellow commenters. Of course we take communion (but we always call it that, never “Eucharist”, and it was memorial/metaphoric), and my Church [of Christ] did it every week, although some denominations did it less often, and it was passed in plates like this — first the “bread” (usually Matzo crackers you’d break a tiny piece off of, but sometimes the tiny Oyster cracker-type things) then the “wine” (tiny cups of grape juice). Usually the offering plate was passed afterwards — I guess they figured, while we’re passing plates around, it’s a good a time as any! There was generally an announcement about it being an open communion — i.e. you did not need to be a member of this church to partake, but any Christian could partake if they felt right doing so.
I assume the church depicted here is similar, but Carol is taking exactly the wrong lesson from it — it’s supposed to be a personal/spiritual introspection, not something to judge your neighbor over! (Not saying my childhood church was great, or would accept Becky — I could totally see some people giving here the side-eye, or even trying to pass the plate around her — just that Carol is wrong, and Becky’s response is awesome!)
Wrong lyrics for DC talk (technically) but that’s kind of what I figured too lol
DC Talk was a very interesting group with strange song titles
Before I say what I’m about to say, I want everyone to be clear that I agree entirely with Becky’s reaction here and I’m her place I PROBABLY would have done the same. That said…
While I get and agree with her, shouldn’t she not have partaken in communion out of respect for Joyce ‘s family? I mean, she might not agree but the rest of the community still thinks homosexuality is a sin. I mean, for example my sister is still very religious while I’m not and my dad is an a prime horrid example of an atheist (what I’m saying is he’s douchenozzle atheist who treats any spiritual person like garbage) and when we ended up going to a church function for my sister, I didn’t partake of the communion since I’m considered to be sinner in their eyes and told my dad not to out of respect for the church (he wanted to eat it and then do something horrid like spit it back out. He’s horrible). I mean, I took it as a “I’m visiting so let me behave” kind of thing. So shouldn’t Becky have done something similar here? If only to avoid backlash from the rest of the church?
Again, I actually applaud her action mind you. I just wonder if it was the best course of action as a whole.
She took Communion because she’s still a Christian.
Exactly. If she did skip it out of respect for bigoted people’s beliefs, she’s validating them. Besides, she’s not a visitor. She grew up with these people. I’ve always taken communion when offered because I won’t wear their shame. That’s how it sinks in to your being and I have enough internally that bothers me without assimilating it from other people too…
This. It’s her church. She’s not an atheist guest coming along with the family. She’s an active member, she grew up in this church and she’s done nothing wrong and views herself in no way as being out of sync with her God.
To refuse would be to either insult herself by admitting that she is not “right with God” i.e. that her lesbianism is a sin she should be ashamed of or to insult her God by not showing that she recognizes how He had her back.
So yeah, there’s no reason for her to refuse and every reason for her to partake.
Carol or her family dont get to decide wether becky should eat the wafer. Besides christianity tends to preach that “EVERYONE is a sinner” so not letting her eat the bread because of one “supposed” sin is stupid.
Also your family not wanting you to eat the communion bread is pretty rude and uncalled for! They dont get to decide wether you do or not.
Well… She’s part of some unspecified Protestant church. They tend to emphasize the exploration of one’s personal relationship with God, and also the fact that *everyone* is a sinner (not meaning “sinner” as in “bad person” necessarily; it’s just an active acknowledgement that human beings are imperfect and need to work at being good). So sinners take communion all the time. Being “right with God” is more about whether or not you’ve done something you feel guilty for, or which you know to be wrong.
Becky does not feel guilty for being herself, nor does she feel it’s wrong. And assuming she’s not being sarcastic, she feels God saved her. So taking Communion very well may not be going against her church’s theology.
No. Carol spelled out the exact criteria you need to take communion. You weren’t supposed to take it because you weren’t right with God–you didn’t even believe He exists. So, out of respect for their beliefs, you don’t take it.
Becky is a Christian. She believes she is right with God. So she gets to take it. She isn’t doing anything wrong.
There is a scripture that hints at what you suggest: Romans 14:19-21, which basically says “Don’t do something that your brother thinks is sinful right in front of them, even if you know it’s right.” But the context of the rest of the chapter is saying that Carol is the one in the wrong in casting judgment on Becky. And Communion is not a spectator sport. It is Carol who interjected herself on what should have been a private decision for Becky.
It’s not as if Becky said “I’m a lesbian, and I know you think that is sinful, but I’m gonna take communion anyways!” If anything, she actually explained why she was not sinning the way Carol thought she was.
When I still believed, but was first getting sick of the evangelical horseshit surrounding me (not my family, but my culture), my usual answer was “My relationship with God is between me and God.”
trlkly has it right — Communion, and in fact faith as well, is not a spectator sport. Nobody else gets to decide what you’re allowed to believe. The congregation can decide if someone is welcome or not, but Carol is most certainly not the personal arbiter of that.
Of course not. And she wasn’t actually saying Becky shouldn’t take communion.
She was just reminding her that if she could skip it if she wasn’t right with God.
Which is true and definitely not meant to imply anything. Really.
my family wasnt religious at all, but i was born in ireland so catholicism was a pretty big part of everyones life and you couldnt even attend most schools if you werent baptised, plus the schools would force us to mass every now and then, and your first holy communion and your confirmation were big deals in the country.
honestly the only reason i was ever excited for the my first communion because i was just curious what the damn things tasted like.
plain bread.
they just taste like plain bread i was super dissapointed.
Oh, fuck you, Carol.
I am so freaked out by the eyeball hair right now. Have I been missing it before?
Yeah, pretty much. It’s a shortcut meaning that her hair is just thinly in front of her eyes, and that she can still see through it. And it’s been part of the comic’s style for a long while.
Oh Carol, I think it’s time for running for cover.
I went to a Russian Orthodox service once in boot camp. They had a whole loaf of bread that they dunked some of into the wine and fed to the recruits that were allowed to take communion. The rest of the bread was given to us normal folk. We devoured it, being half starved and all.
My church did the crackers and grape juice thing, too, but I never took it. It just didn’t feel right, and my parents were always harping about how if I was baptised, I didn’t deserve communion. I mean, I guess I could have bullshitted my way through it, like I did everything else, to fit in– Felt wrong to lie about it, though, so everyone else in the youth group just stared at me like I personally sold out Jesus.
Man, am I glad we stopped going.
If you were baptised, you don’t deserve communion?
*wasn’t
I was very tired when I wrote this comment.
The body of Christ. Finger Lickin’ good!
Made with our special blend of 12 followers & disciples.
Remember, Carol. You’re not required to be a putz. You can skip if you fear God might not be right with you.
People are not going to take that well. My church (which is never particularly serious about anything) takes communion very seriously. Good for Becky though.
It’s probably just “symbolic” anyways.
Good for Becky. Despite the judgment put upon her by the churchies, despite the psycho dad and everything else, she still sees God at work in her life. I really appreciate that.
And those angry Joyce mom eyes? Wow. They do NOT belong in a church. Who’s not right with God now!
becky is amazing and this strip is amazing and i needed a great moment like this to revel in today so thank you for this.
They should modernise the ceremony, pass around quacomole to go with the wafer.
Call it the brain of christ, if you will.
Mmmm, God, nom, nom, nom.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Having an exclusive Holier-Than-Thou sacrament is what Jesus preached against. Communion is for sinners, not hypocrites.
Go, Becky.
I go to a congregationalist church and we have people walk down the aisles and hand the ttray filled with a bunch of little plastic cups of grape juice to reach row. Then we did the exact same thing with the tray of bread. This may only be possible with a small church.
We used to have wine but we switched to grape juice when one of our members was an acholic and never bothered switching back when he left. As for the bread, it’s a different type every week and is cut into cubes exactly like the bread in the comic.
I recognized all of this. What I didn’t recognize was the Burger King joint area. I live in the Northeast. My church is at least 150 years old, probably closer to 200. Nothing looks like a Burger King.
What did she say?
The Baptist church I went to when I was young used broken up tortilla chips and grape juice. The chips were referred to as unleavened bread. Woe be unto a child that picked up a piece that was considered too big. That was greedy and sinful. As an adult, the phrase “Take and eat, these are my Doritos” comes to mind when I hear about communion.
the body of Jesús?
When I was in methodist church choir, we made a game of eating the passed around communion bread (we used legit bread), as long as humanly possible…. It got a little weird.
Why. Why whyyy did you have to remind me that the last time I set foot in church was communion?
It was actually years after my life as a child fundie baptist/anointed prophet. I was seventeen and missing the certainty in my life, and decided that a more liberal church for my gay ass was a compromise to the dogma of what I had, so I started attended the ultra liberalism of…the United Methodist Church. For weeks I attended this foreign heathen church, marvelling at the contrast of this stone-and-stained-glass structure in the city to my country house-like wooden structure out in the middle of nowhere, gaping at how the money in the collection plate went to buy mosquito netting in malaria-stricken countries as opposed to building a gym that only church members could use, and how I’d attended two months worth of sermons and yet not a single mention of lepers and outcasts had been mentioned, let alone burning in the fires of hell. And so far, no creepy youth pastors setting of alarm bells in my head.
So I’m there for about two months, but being the social awkward bipolar fuck I am, I speak to no one outside of the standard “Hi, I’m Benjy!” during the “turn to your neighbor and introduce yourselves” in the middle of the sermon. I’m just diagnosed with celiac at this point so I can’t participate in the donut social, I don’t know whether to fill out “member” or “guest” when filling out donation things, and for the most part I just sit there quietly and then leave when it’s over.
Then comes communion. Now, Baptists don’t drink. I can’t emphasize enough that they don’t drink we don’t drink alcohol is bad and Jesus turned water into grape juice and I swear there have been attempts to rewrite the bible saying as much. Except Baptists totally drink except we totally don’t wink wink except you’ll burn in hell if you drink. So I grew up with that mentality, on top of having Crohn’s disease and the prevailing theory at the time was that drinking while having Crohn’s would lead to seizures because of a rapid loss of sugar in the gut or something. (I have since downed bourbon with no ill effects.) On top of that I’m 17 and despite my last five years of rebellion against god I’m still scared shitless by Baptist dogma, and I have no idea if Methodist communion is wine like Catholic or sugarless grape juice like Baptists. So I’m freaking out because I’m fairly certain communion wafers aren’t gluten free, I’m not certain if the blood is wine or juice.
On top of everything, I’m not feeling a communion with God. I’ve been going for two months. I’m not feeling the holy spirit. I’m lonely, but I’m not feeling a sense of community with the people around me. I don’t know their names. I don’t even remember if I knew the pastor’s name. But I’m literally the only person NOT taking communion, so holy fuck peer pressure. But I’m terrified that within two seconds of me ingesting the flesh and blood of Christ Our Savior, I’m going to shit myself in front of everyone, then I’m going to have a seizure in front of everyone, then I’m going to die in front of everyone, and because I took communion under false pretenses, I’m going to go to hell. In front of everyone.
So I start to make a scene. I’m freaking out. Full-on panic. You’re really not supposed to make a sound during communion, you’re supposed to be in deep prayer and meditation on God. But I’m fidgeting, sweating, squeaking, turning around to ask the people beside me, behind me, “Is that wine? I’m not supposed to drink wine! Is there a gluten free wafer? Um, I don’t know what to do!” The two women behind me were scandalized and glared at me. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t that big a deal and no one really noticed, but to me, it was oooooooooh bad. Really bad. So then the plate comes, I panic, down the wafer and blood (it was juice) before we’re supposed to, I’m choking back tears and burning up and I want to cry and scream and then as SOON as the service was concluded I BOLTED out of there and never came back and that’s how I devoted my life to atheism.
Ican’t help but feel like “not being right with God” is the opportune time to take communion. Isn’t the point of communion that we ask for forgiveness for our sins and thus jesus takes them upon himself? Then again, I was raised Lutheran and I don’t know about other churches, but I was raised with the opinion that “Whatever two consenting adults of any combination of sexes and genders want to do in the privacy of their own homes is no particular business of mine.” I subsequently changed it to “any number of,” but I doubt the rest of the lutheran church is quite as liberal as me.
As an aside… communion always confused me. It is, in all respects a ritual, and ritual is exactly what the bible speaks out against… yet every christian church I’ve ever visited partakes of this ritual… like they NEED it, like something bad is going to happen if they don’t. I dunno, Even Jehova’s Witness’ do the communion thing, though in their temples its only the ‘important’ people that are allowed to partake, making it feel even more wrong.
I’m no christian, and honestly it was reading the bible and watching the ‘church’ that made me see why.
I’ll never bash someone for their faith, I’ve been on the receiving end of that for too long myself, but I wish a lot of people would really sit down and understand what it is they are ACTUALLY in belief of.
I would argue that the Bible does not condemn ritual itself, but meaningless ritual. Communion was meant to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, nothing more.
Ironically tho, you’re still one hundred percent right about communion being stupid, as I’m pretty sure Jesus meant it more like a “when you eat or drink, remember me” thing rather than a big ceremony shabang with procedures and rules and stuff. I dunno
Assuming of course that Jesus actually said those words and they weren’t something that accrued or got distorted passing through oral tradition in the generation or so before the Gospels were written.
The Doobie Brothers song is a good choice, but at some point I’d like the hear Joyce and Becky sing a little Stealers Wheels. “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”
Yeah, that’ll totally slice their ears off.
*aggressively nibbles*
Becky, you are deceived. Satan clearly sent all those people, Joyce included, to trick you into thinking God is cool with your gayness. This proves that Hank is wrong and Joyce is even more out of control than Carol originally thought. Joyce needs to be pulled out of IU immediately and enrolled in Bible College. By force if necessary. Or better yet, married off to a congregant so she can put all this liberal, Satanic independent woman/education nonsense behind her.
Hail Satan!
Carol is a bongo. This is so passive-aggressive, it’s almost not passive. I applaud Becky for shoving it in her face this time.
Hehe… forgot about the word-replacement. Sorry for the initial use of the language, but felt it appropriate.
(But I do love the replacement b-word)
Your current avatar is Joyce… I whole heartedly applaud bongo as the replacement curse here.
“Mmmm nmm hmm, yeah, that good Body of Christ right there. Might have to go back for seconds.”
SICK BURN
Dammit, Becky, you’re too awesome.
And Jesus’ body is Just. That. Good.
for all the people upthread discussing communion practice, I’m an English atheist, but I’ve been to at least a dozen different churches and joined in with their services – because I had a crack at being devout when I was a small child, because family were in attendance, and finally because I thought Sunday School was interesting. At all the services I’ve been to in England offering communion, it’s always been a dish of small white wafers, and red wine in a silver goblet, wiped and turned between each sip. You go to the front to receive it, and elderly or infirm people are usually seated at the front, so can go up without queueing (we are CHAMPION queuers). Left to right, front to back, no more than a queue of about a dozen at any given time. People who don’t want to receive communion are often invited to go up for a blessing – I was taught two things, here. One, that it was generally accepted shorthand to not put out ones hands – that holding your order of service instead was a good signal to just get a blessing. Two, that the reason I shouldn’t partake in communion was that I wasn’t confirmed into the faith, though I was baptised at birth.
An entirely neutral view – I do happen to be queer, but my atheism is very natural and not born of trauma or any particular persecution.
Are bland sacraments leaving you more ho-hum than humbled?
Try new Savior Thins! Now with More Salvation!
http://tinypic.com/r/z33nn/9
I love that last panel, that is perfect.
Ah, communion. And how different churches, and people, treat it.
I became a Catholic prior to my marriage, because my fiancee and her entire family were Catholic and she really, really wanted to have a church ceremony. So I went through the little mini-school they require prior to your baptism. I learned a lot, although I had had to sit through Catholic church any time I visited my paternal grandparents anyway. My father, thank the non-existent God, was an atheist.
1) Playboy is just fine. But Penthouse? That is perversion! This from the 80ish year old pastor of the church who related the story of his visit to the Playboy mansion.
2) Taking communion (in a Catholic church) if you are not a Catholic is theft. Hellfire awaits you if you take communion and are not a Catholic, or take communion knowing that you are not in a state of grace (as in, have not been to confession. Thankfully my wife never went to confession despite her faith, and so I also did not. If I had it might have been fun though, as I could have come up with a lot of things for tweaking the priests) you will rot in Hell forever. This might have surprised my devout Catholic grandparents and the priests at their church, since they had me line up for communion and I recall that the first time I took the wafer and just kinda stood there, and the priest, who must have known by that point that this was all new to me and that I wasn’t a Catholic said “Put it in your mouth and consume it.”
That theft/grace thing came back a few times. It was an infrequent but consistent theme in the church my wife and I would go to. I always wondered why they were so hard up on it, since Jesus gave to the poor, instructed people that giving to the poor was a Good Thing(tm), and accepted prostitutes, thieves and taxpayers (which were not terribly different in those times) into his cult with regularity. Perhaps with a baptism, but certainly not with an 8 week once-a-week night class.
Then I went to the wedding of a Baptist couple. That priest, when it came time for communion, took pains to let people know that regardless of their church affiliation or lack thereof that they were quite welcome to take communion in his church.
A night and day difference, within the ranks of people who both claim to be following the works of Jesus.
Gotta say, as someone that was raised a godless heathen (well, agnostic, but “godless heathen” is a hell of a lot more fun to say), it’s interesting to read the responses in here.
Not the “Go becky wooo” stuff, although that’s always fun. But just people discussing the raw mechanics of how their childhood church did Communion, what they ate, how the rules on when not to take it worked, that sorta thing. Peering into something I never experienced, ya know?
My note for this:
Raised Episcopalian. I never took any spiritual meaning behind the whole ritual…it was like a mid church snack for me.
I’m an agnostic atheist now, occasionally I go to a presbyterian church because of the preschool my kids go to. I still look at it that way…of course they use grape juice instead of wine which I find to be asinine — if you want me to sit through your sermon, you better be buying.
Your experience is only slightly different than mine. My mother passed when I was 6, so church as a family ended then. As I recall there was a neighbor lady who picked me up for a few years, probably a friend of my mother’s who she asked to do this. But then she moved or my father told her to stop. I was young enough to just go along without questioning things.
And both sets of grandparents were religious. Catholic for the paternal and Seventh Day Adventist for the maternal. And since as a single parent my father didn’t want to be saddled with three kids all summer long, me and my sisters spent a lot of summers at the grandparents, and so went to church with them.
But while my sisters maintained their church-going even into adulthood, it never ‘took’ with me, and I did not. I did read the Bible*, the Quran, and parts of the Tanakh, all while ripping through my father’s library as a child. So I knew a lot about them but considered them to be just another fable like the stories about Thor and Beowulf and Isis and such.
And that remains my feelings about religion today: Fables, myths, just as all the prior religions are considered to be by people who follow one of the three major faiths today.
* This is an almost endless source of amusement for me, because it has been my experience that most people who call themselves Christians have not bothered to read the Bible.
Well this satisfies my “Yes” quota for the day.
The more I look at Becky’s amug face in the last panel the more it cracks me up.
*smug
I think it’s more of “umm, suck on this yeh cow”
“Just because I’m a homosexual now doesn’t mean I’m not a Christian.”
Okay, if Becky wasn’t my favorite before, she is now.
I am DELIGHTED that Becky’s version of Christianity is so different than Joyce’s, even though they were raised in the same church and the same homeschooling program. I’m guessing that this is because Joyce never before had to ideal with a world in which the dogma of her church and her sense of what was right were at odds, but Becky ALWAYS did. Becky had to wrestle with that early on, and hash out a way to believe in God AND believe in herself, so she has no problem kicking the dogma to the curb but keeping her faith in herself and in her God.
Being brought up to believe that you can’t have God without the religious dogma makes for a pretty fragile faith; the first time you encounter reality outside of the dogma bubble, you have no tools available for handling the resultant cognitive dissonance. It can cause people to try to argue away reality, or it can cause people to lose their faith. Some people manage to work their way through it and come through the other side without the dogma they grew up with, but others spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid thinking about it.
I don’t know if Joyce is going to be able to handle ditching the dogma without ditching God, too. I’m guessing at best… agnostic.
LOL.
See 666 comments. Make one.
667: The neighbor of the Beast.
This comic reminded me (and a bunch of others, apparently) that Becky is still a Christian.
I think that means she should (as in, it would be awesome if she did, not if that she has to) start preaching a message of opening one’s heart to Christ, hearing his message of not judging others, repent of pride, and be saved.
Specifically, she should start preaching this message to Carol. Like, sometime in the next ten seconds.
WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Carol pulls the wig from her horns and gores those members of the congregation who don’t do likewise. Four of the demons rend out Becky’s limbs while Carol bites off her head then balances it on a gargled-up fountain of blood and gore.
Well you did ask for the worst that could happen. This would be a good start.
Yeah, but it’s not actually the worst that could happen. =)
Yeah, Mary’s not there so it definitely can’t be the worst that could happen.
I like the Doobie Brothers reference
“Mmmm…symbolic cannibalismmmmm…..”
(they are not Catholic, so I presume they do not claim Transubstantiation as part of their ceremony)
Hope Carol chokes on her body of Christ
That made me totally crack up! Good one!
I might be operating by odd standards, but for some reason I feel that this may be the worst thing Mrs. Brown has said in the entire comic.
Go Becky!
Greater love hath no man than this: that he send a gosh-darn real life superhero when you’re all like WHOAH HELP I AM KIDNAPPED BY A GIANT TOE
–Phlurpaduerpians 6:9
I prefer The Book Of Sal, even if it is heretical.
OH those are bread pieces that the whole churches sweaty fingers have touched?? i thought it was poridge and assumed they had breakfast there, so i was confused when becky had a popcorn???
Carol’s just like “Shit, I got no answer to that. She got me.”
…well, we can dream, right?
Oh, hey, look. The new comic is about to post and we’re at EXACTLY 700 posts. How rarely do we get a nice large round number like that? I hope no one posts something else and screws it up.
Pardon, I cannot hear you over screwing up this perfect post count.
Hands down my favorite strip so far. Go Becky <3
In my church there is bourbon, hookers, and blackjack. Because Calsberg doesn’t make churches, but if they did they would be the best churches in the world.
My head cannon is that the glare is only because at this moment she realized that Becky was dating a none Christian xD
I’m hoping for a conflict there at some point–Becky’s Christianity against Dina’s belief in only science supported things. I wonder what will give way first–Becky’s faith, diana’s spiritual abstinence, or their relationship?
(Hint: knowing this comic–I doubt the middle one T_T)
I created an account just to say that THIS IS MAGIC.
Why would you eat Jesus
Every time I re-read this comic I just get madder and madder at Carol, which I guess I’ll use as proof that Willis is such a good story-teller that it affects me this way.