Google tells me both ways are correct, it’s just a convention thing.
I live in Argentina and in school they would teach us that the americas can be counted as either one or three continents (counting central america), but the conception of them being two continents is not as common here.
Yes to all of the above, but it really, really depends. From the wiki article for “Americas”:
“In modern English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural, parallel to similar situations such as the Carolinas. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America.
In some countries of the world (including France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Greece, and the countries of Latin America), America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, as well as Central America.”
I’m in Argentina, therefore to us America means the continent as a whole, encompassing all of it. That was why I said “one” continent above, that’s all.
Also, Joyce, it could be worse. My break with Christianity ended up with me in an even hippier church, by which I mean a pagan one, by which I mean a fire circle at a campground where we passed around a bottle of mead. (And a bottle of whiskey. And a bottle of I don’t know what it was but damn if it didn’t taste like an alcoholic thin mint.)
I realized this like two days ago- they’d be a great pair, at least for now (I think Joyce does have to eventually come to terms with her sexuality, since it exists, and if Jacob is ace that might not work).
That link says “he’s not a sex addict”, it does not say he’s not ace. It doesn’t address the idea of being ace at all. (Ace people aren’t all “against sex”, in case that’s the angle you were going for.)
Ok, I was over-the-top with that part. I should have gone for “secretly …sexual subplot”. If you have a better way to formulate the same gist I’m all ears/eyes, I know this one ain’t perfect either.
You’re also right that Willis’ word is specificallly stating “not against sex” (which is indeed not the same as Ace. I know that. Still, thanks for the reminder), but it refers to a character who was way oversexed in his former iteration in Shortpacked, and who is now cast in a more realistic role.
@Ansel: that’s why I put this link. Thanks to you both I now see how something I thought was obvious in this message, is actually really not.
The way Jacob talks about sex though… I still think his sex-drive has been taken several notches down, but not removed entirely.
I really like the idea of her just finding a form of Christianity that works for her not just abandoning her religion all together. She doesn’t have to let go of God to successfully mature as a person and I say this as an atheist leaning agnostic. Religion isn’t the problem. How some people chose to use religion is. But there can be good progressive religious people just like their can be asshole atheists and vice versa. It’s more balanced and realistic story telling to show that.
I still think her path is going to lead to a total loss of faith rather than just finding a more liberal form of Christianity, but I like that she’s at least trying it out.
I did the same years back. After years attending Catholic mass I got into college and said goodbye to church altogether. After graduation, my life wasn’t going where I wanted so I started shopping around for a different faith, one that pertained to me. In the end I chose the Episcopal church as well. Only difference was my parents were very understanding, even supportive. And my sister is Methodist; not related, just an aside.
“But there can be good progressive religious people just like their can be asshole atheists and vice versa. It’s more balanced and realistic story telling to show that.”
I come so close to agreeing with you (there are absolutely plenty of asshole atheists), but then the last sentence.
– We literally already have good, progressive, religious characters. The comic is full of them, if not as full of them as the Walkyverse was. JOYCE doesn’t need to keep her faith in order for the comic to portray religious people in a “balanced and realistic” way.
For example, Becky’s faith isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t even been bruised. JOYCE is struggling to be both religious and a good person; Becky is not. Your balance already exists.
– It just… feels odd to imply that people losing their faith isn’t realistic or balanced. Really, really odd. It’s not like this is a slapdash comic where Joyce was devout last night and then woke up this morning and went “wait! all churchgoers are evil!” We’ve had a really nuanced progression to this point, and regardless of where it goes it will still be nuanced.
@Li I’m sorry that you feel I was implying that a story about someone losing their faith isn’t realistic. I wasn’t at all. I’m a formerly religious person who lost their faith. I’m aware that it something that happens and it’s a story that can be told and although I’m sure you didn’t mean to there’s something kind of insulting about the way you worded that last sentence. I am aware that this comic isn’t slapdash. Or that the characters aren’t that simple. I have faith that however this story goes it could be told realistically. I just personally have a hope for how this story can go because I feel like I’ve seen it more often than not the idea that in order to become a real adult religion is a thing that has to be given up. I’m not talking about Willis. I’m not even talking about the majority of fiction out there. I’m just talking about an idea I’ve come into contact with enough in my life I think it would be refreshing to see it go another way. I find it more interesting with it being Joyce because she’s (objectively) the main character. That’s the only reason I expressed the opinion I did.
I say I’m athiest leaning but still agnostic because I feel like the likeliest truth there isn’t a god but I don’t feel like anyone can ever know that to be true or untrue.
Ah. Thank you.
Also, I misunderstood you to mean Atheist, with Agnostic leanings, rather than Agnostic, with Atheist leanings.
You wrote it correctly, but I still saw the, nonexistent, comma.
I’m really invested in that too, actually! Her faith seems so important to her and I’d love for her to find a way to still feel like she’s living her faith while also loving and supporting her lgbtq+ friends and her new and expanded world view 🙂
My experience has long been that the vast majority of us who are atheist or areligious (I fall into the later camp for the record) don’t hold out and out antireligious or antitheist views but just want a world where we can all, regardless of religious views, live harmoniously and do right by each other.
Yes, but religion doesn’t need to be a part of that, even for someone like Joyce.
You’d think that I’d be rooting for her to find happiness without any church, but even if she eventually loses her faith entirely, I want her to experience a religious community that supports the morals that she’s been following, not simply demanding adherence to dogma.
I’m not agnostic at all. I was raised without any religious teachings at all. Churches were places you went for weddings and funerals. If I ever found religion, most people I know would probably think I was being blackmailed or something.
So it’s weird to me how invested I am in Joyce seeing the good side of organized religion.
While I do want her to start enjoying church again I’d rather her be ok with not going to church but speaking from experience I know how it can take a long time for stuff like that to get comfortable
Unfortunately Joycob sounds almost exactly like a North Queensland rural accent (think Meryl Streep in Evil angels aka “A cry in the dark”), and I have a nephew named Jace so that ones out as well. Dang, I may have to abandon this ship because of lack of a good name. Now that’s a first..
I’ve been shipping Joycob for at least a year, so it’s funny now to see some in-universe teasing for it. I always thought Jacob’s obvious interest in Joyce’s quirks was promising, and obviously they both want something very similar from a relationship. Frankly no one else in the male cast is remotely compatible for Joyce either. His incredible hotness also won’t hurt as her sexuality develops.
The only drawback is the likelihood of upsetting Sarah, which would be tragic. I think she’s realizing that only objectifying Jacob is a problem, and maybe that’ll help her move on to someone more appropriate. After Joe does some growing up (and I mean a lot of it; he’s seriously terrible right now) then I could see Sarah and him working really well together. What they want is far more compatible, and she’s the only one strong enough to keep his darker side in check. He’s moderately hot too, just not so much (as he noted) compared to Jacob there.
No, Joe growing up won’t do anything for Sarah not liking him that way. Sorry, but being attractive to girls isn’t a prize for character development. Sarah doesn’t want Joe. Maybe he’ll mature and they can be friends then.
Of course being attractive to girls is a prize for character development! At the end of every movie the guy gets the girl as his prize for surviving and learning the theme of the movie regardless of the girl’s feelings for him at the beginning of the movie.
In fiction, if you learn a lesson you get a girlfriend as a prize. It’s been this way since the beginning of fiction.
Actually I’m really curious as to what your “heh” meant. Through the Intertubes I interpreted it as “hah you are such a misogynistic fuck I feel sorry for you” and “owow that’s true.” Or did you mean something completely different?
Oh, sorry, this princess isn’t for you, but uuh, we have prepared another princess for you. But you have to earn her! and of course her feelings are completely irrelevant in this transaction.
Yeah, yeah! And also notice she’s a *prize*. He doesn’t just get a princess, he needs to travel through all the levels and murder a bunch of people to “save” her. And then as a reward, he gets the princess. This leaves a bunch of people asking, when they are around 26, “what the hell? I’ve been through all kinds of hardship, where the fuck is my princess? I deserve a fucking princesss.” And then they go shoot up a mall or something because once they kill enough people they get the princess like Mario right?
I agree, but it’s kind of a shame. Sarah is looking for fairly casual sex and eye candy. What they’re looking for is pretty compatible.
Except that Joe’s a predatory creep.
I feel like that’s a problem a lot of straight women run into when they want casual sex like Sarah. That there are a lot of creepers out there absolutely willing to make that search a miserable experience.
Please don’t misrepresent what I said, Liliet. I was talking from Sarah’s perspective, about a relationship that might work for her after she moves on from Jacob, and ideally when he’s with Joyce. Partly because it’s topical (they’re at the same table), I mentioned that after “a lot of growing up” it’s possible Joe could be a good match. I did NOT in any way say that women are a prize for character development, and I find that trope horribly offensive too. My point was that given the very limited pool of gynophilic males in the cast now, then a far-less-terrible Joe is the only option I see. Realistically finding someone outside the main cast would be better, but that’s not how fiction generally works. The simple fact for me is that Sarah deserves to be happy with someone, after she moves on from her unhealthy objectifying of Jacob. As Thejeff said too, what Sarah and Joe want is pretty compatible right now and that could develop into something more, but only if Joe gets a serious redemption arc like many people want. I am not in any way saying that Sarah would be a prize at the end. Instead, I want Sarah to have the prize (a consolation when things don’t work out with Jacob) and who else is there? If you can offer a better alternative for Sarah’s happiness then believe me I’m all ears.
I disagree with the absoluteness of that statement.
Growing more mature can make people more attractive to other people, so can getting a job, working out, etc.
Its actually reasonable given what we know about the characters to believe that if Joe’s immaturity wasn’t such a turn off, Sarah would find Joe attractive. They both generally seem to be looking for compatible things right now. Its really not such a stretch to say if Joe grew up a lot they could work out as benefits-friends. He might have missed his chance but he might not have.
What growing up doesn’t do is guarantee anybody will like you that way, yet alone whoever you happen to like that way returning your feelings.
What makes the negative message that growing up entitles you to your crush is that.
Movies all too often either make the first person the main character falls for either eventually fall the them or turn out to be a jerk. The problem is that this is a pattern. The fact that it happens all the time means the love interests of the main character is treated as having no real agency in who they want. Also men are more likely to be the main character so its like women have no agency in their love interests more often then men.
The first use of Venn Diagrams I can clearly remember coming upon was in Unitarian Sunday school, explaining Unitarian Universalisim’s relationship with Christianity.
Let me put it this way, my parents moved from a UU church to a Quaker meeting… because Quakers had more structure…. *headdesk* Quaker…structure… those two words don’t belong together.
There are Programmed and Unprogrammed Quakers. The Unprogrammed ones are really great, socially, politically, and personally – I’ve worshipped with five different groups and considered joining one of them (as a known atheist). They do have structure. The meeting for worship starts and ends at a certain time; they have a business meeting once a month; there are pretty clear expectations of how to conduct yourself in both.
The Programmed Quakers… I’ve never attended, but I hear their services are quite similar to traditional Christian services, with hymns and a sermon. Some of the Programmed organizations are openly anti-LGBTQA+.
In addition to all the good political and social stuff Unprogrammed Quakers do (e.g. fcnl.org), here’s a more individual story of how cool they can be. In the group I considered joining was a young teen who was trans. It wasn’t hidden, and it wasn’t gossiped about. It Just. Didn’t. Matter. I think I heard two conversations about his trans-ness in a year, and they were in the tone of “he’s gluten free” or “he’s good at math.”
There are still fundamentalist conservative elements to be found among the quaker church. Most of my family falls into that category. Even so, at least in my experience, if you don’t hold to their beliefs, they debate you rather than curse you. Or let it lie and accept that you think differently if you’re not interested in an argument. In short, don’t be a dick.
There is still a lot of room for harm, but a lot less of that harm comes from deliberate malice.
Becky: “You know, I’m realizin’ that a lot of what we learned ’bout sex from the Church was totally messed up.”
Joyce: “… yeah, okay, some of it is, I think…”
Becky: “An’ the stuff I don’t KNOW is bokers, I’m not sure I trust it any more, cuz of what it came with.”
Joyce: “Well… I can see how that might make you doubt, yes…”
Becky: “So I’ve gone and found another place to learn ’bout sex!”
Joyce: “Um… are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Becky: “‘sokay, still a church, just, you know, not one of those churches that hate me.”
Joyce: “Well, that’s good. And… they teach about sex? Even though you’re an adult now?”
Becky: “Yeah, I guess? Some program called OWL?”
Joyce: “Ooooh, they’ve got a wise cute owl mascot to teach us stuff? And it’s all nice and safe stuff from a church?”
Becky: “Sounds like.”
Joyce: “Yeah, okay, I’ll come along. I mean, it’s at a church. How naughty can it be?”
I went to IU and we checked out the Unitarian church just off of campus for one service. All I can say is wow. I’m extremely open minded and even I could not take it. The people that run the place are some of the nicest people I have ever met, however.
Look, Joyce is ready for many things, but unitarian universalism is not one of those things. From what I understand, their entire “standard doctrine” (as much as they have one) is “every religion is true, don’t think about it.”
…on second thought, Joyce is totally ready for unitarian universalism.
“Every religion is true” is a statement that a lot of UUs would agree with, but the second part is actually more, “and if you want to spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how that works then boy is this the church for you.”
The other major strain being, “we think ‘which metaphysical ideas are true?’ is a distraction from the actual work of religion.”
Not really. UU doesn’t HAVE doctrine. It comes down to, individuals explore the truth or falseness of religious propositions on their own, without being dictated to on the subject by the church, minister, or other members of the congregation. So it’s not that all those religions are right. It’s just that it’s everyone’s right to be right or wrong on their own without everyone else getting busy-body about it.
Joyce…. wouldn’t really do well in the don’t-be-a-busy-body department.
as a former Episcopalian I think the lesbian priest I had growing up would make Joyce’s head explode. “Hippie church” is pretty accurate actually, depending on the area.
It’s funny, but not all that surprising, to see Joyce think of Jacob’s church as a hippie church, since there were actual hippie Christians, sometimes referred to Jesus freaks, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Her parents might be just old enough to remember them.
Hmm…judging from John’s apparent age…it’s not unlikely their childhood overlapped with the early 70s. OTOH, I wouldn’t be surprised if their parents shielded them from knowledge of such ‘perversions of the message’. >_>
Old habits die hard I guess? But yeah, her world is changing [i]all things considered[/i] so hopefully she’ll get over this too. Own it Joyce!
Then again I know next to nothing about all the different branches of the chuch, so they might really be tree loving, pot smoking shoeless lazy burns…which would make Jacob a terrible member?
Seriously, I was raised Episcopalian and the services are pretty traditional. Depending on which church you go to, I guess. My dad likes to define Episcopalianism as “Catholic but without the Pope”.
Though not all Episcopalian congregations are cool with gay people, at least not in leadership positions. My mom’s church landed on the other side of that schism that happened a while back…:/
It’s kinda weird seeing Jacob praise Joyce’s aversion to sex as some sort of personal strength, given his full awareness of her upbringing and his own comments on her behaviour.
I mean, he’s not wrong to support someone’s decision to give a relationship time to develop before going to sex, but he’s really giving Joyce the benefit of the doubt when he assumes that’s her intention.
He doesn’t praise her aversion to sex, he supports her coping methods. It doesn’t matter WHY or HOW she’s averse, what matters is that it’s real and valid and finding solutions that work is not badevilwrong of her.
I’m thinking he might have had a convo with Ethan that went something like this:
“…You’re gay and have a girlfriend who hopes you will be converted that way? Uh… does she pressure you into having sex?”
“No, no she doesn’t, poor timid little thing. I think half the reason she’s with me is because she knows I won’t pressure HER. It works out for both of us”
“…Holy casseroli that’s GENIUS”
I have a suspicion, though, that Jacob figured it out pretty early and just didn’t see a need to talk about it. Ethan has not been particularly successful at hiding his gaiety from basically anyone.
I wonder what Joyce would think of Canada’s United Church. It’s the largest Protestant denomination here, and has become increasingly liberal in recent years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Canada
Dorothy – Atheist, raised areligiously by her Catholic mom and half Catholic, half Jewish dad.
Walky & Sal – Word of Willis said they were raised agnostically, and Sal was sent to a Catholic school on the idea religion is basically moral instruction and Sal needed some (and, tbf, that sounds about right for a juvenile court – reformatory or religious schools are sometimes used as alternatives for juvie. That plus therapy plus probably probation and a ton of social workers/juvenile workers/probation officers/etc.). Neither seem very religious and personally I’d be surprised if Sal believed in god period tbh, as she seems like she’d bristle at the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient authority controlling her life.
Billie – Christian, not very devout but believes in God.
Dina – Doesn’t seem like a believer, definitely would struggle with the scientific inaccuracies.
Amber – Catholic
Danny – Not sure what denomination, but Christian enough his mom nagged him about church.
Ethan – Jewish, not very religious.
Sarah – Not sure.
Ruth – Considering her age, area of Canada, and I believe some Willis comments, probably agnostic-atheist-y.
Mike – Whatever pisses you off.
Joe – Jewish, not very religious.
Roz – Catholic.
Carla – Dunno.
Marcie – Catholic
Jacob – Episcopalian.
Raidah is Muslim, Agatha is Mormon, Asma is Muslim, and Sierra’s Church of God.
Please correct me if I’m wrong about anything, Willis.
Yeah, I believe Willis described their upbringing as agnostic/atheist/apathetic. So, yeah, Walky’s irreverent to say the least. And, again, I’d be very surprised if Sal believed in God.
Let me tell you… if you REALLY wanna see a hippie church, check out a Quaker meeting. We’re essentially hippies, but less ostentatious. For example:
– Our big thing is peace/nonviolence; Quakers can cite their religious beliefs to be conscientious objectors and not be required to join the military.
– Quakers also don’t take oaths – we believe that everything we say is judged by God, not just stuff we want to say in front of Him – and so we don’t do the Pledge of Allegience or swear on Bibles in court.
– Our name is on oatmeal and rice cakes. How much more hippie-ish can you get?
– We have NO pastors, priests, or ministers; during Quaker Meeting, we all sit in silence to commune with God on a personal level, rather than listen to a sermon. If someone feels “moved by the spirit”, they may stand up and share their thoughts/beliefs/whatever they’ve been contemplating with everyone.
– My local Quaker meeting recently organized a protest against Trump’s climate change cabinet, and had a speaker discuss trying to keep fracking out of our community.
– I converted to Quakerism after attending a high school run with Quaker principles in mind. Students called all teachers and faculty – including the head of school – by their first names (Quakers value equality and respect), had mandatory community service (often helping in the cafeteria or with custodial duties), and attended the multi-cultural friendly Meeting for Worship (Since it’s mostly done in silence, you can pray to whomever or whatever you believe in, or just reflect on things personally). This school was also an international school, with kids of every race, religion (not just Quaker!), and sexual/gender identity (They had a gay-straight alliance on campus, which held a rather popular, annual, cross-dressing dance called the “Ru Paul Ball”).
And that’s just the tip of the hippie, liberal iceberg. 🙂
Quakers are probably the single continuously nicest Christian group I can think of. You’ve been pretty much about fifty years ahead of the rest of America for the past three to four centuries. I can honestly say I have never heard of a mean Quaker. It’s weird. You forgot to mention that when Quakers do serve in the military it’s often in extremely dangerous support roles like field medics and stretcher bearers, saving lives by running into literal hell zones, dragging people to safety, and then running back in to do it again, all without any form of weaponry. You guys rock!!
Yeah, Nixon’s not exactly our poster boy. We don’t brag about him. We’re more likely to mention William Penn, Dave Matthews (Yes, they guy from the band), and the guy who started Cadbury chocolates.
William Penn was an absolutely wonderful human being. Honestly, one of the few reasons I don’t personally become a Quaker myself is that I kinda like rituals and saints of my Catholic upbringing, and because, deep in my heart, I know I could never be a proper pacifist. However, I’m so liberal a Catholic the Pope would probably excommunicate me if he knew my views. But I do feel like the US would be a lot nicer if there were more Quakers and less fundie evangelicals.
Nixon ended a war and normalized diplomatic/trade relations with the largest country on earth, which has helped raise hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. Not bad for a guy everyone hates.
You obviously weren’t alive then. Nixon did not end the war. After running on an “end the war” platform in ’68 he continued pumping young bodies into the grinder for another four years, so that he could run in ’72 on a – you guessed it – “end the war” platform. Even then he didn’t end it – he just allowed it to peter out because the American public was done with it. If he could have mustered the support (and continued to conceal his criminal actions) he would have kept us fighting right up to ’76.
BTW, the first Quaker I ever encountered was a gorgeous young woman in a silver bikini at a Jimi Hendrix concert, soliciting signatures on an anti-war petition. At least I think it was an anti-war petition. She could have been agitating for wholesale slaughter of puppies and I still would have signed up!
Wow, that sounds remarkably inclusive and tolerant! The only thing I knew about Quakers were that they produced Quaker oats, and judging from the picture on the pack I just assumed Quakers were another strict puritan brand of Christianity. Thank you for sharing and dispelling that assumption.
Quakers have almost nothing to do with Quaker Oats. The company picked the name because Quakers were known for being trustworthy – that’s the only connection.
Wow. That sounds even cooler than I already thought Quakers were. I remember reading about the egalitarianism and opposition to war and being very impressed in about 4th or 5th grade. I mentioned that something along those lines, maybe something as simple as “I think I like the Quakers” to my Mom, and she goes “Oh God, he’s a Quaker now” in the tone other people would say “used car salesman.” I didn’t really get what was supposed to be wrong with that, and I was strangelg hurt by it, but lacked the capability, at nine years old, to say that or to phrase what I found appealing about Quaker doctrines. Not too many years later I became an atheist anyway, but I’ve still got a soft spot in me heart for Quakers, one that got a lot bigger from reading your comment.
I don’t think people many people really dislike Quakers (except for the usual asshats of various religions) but they do have the hippie reputation even among more liberal Christians. I think it’s mostly just because most moderate and liberal Christians tend to prefer to keep their faith personal, because we associate noticeable faith with religious fundamentalism.
Of course, when we encounter people that are noticeably religious but nicer than fundamentalists, we tend to think it’s odd, not necessarily distasteful, but just odd (kind of in the same way most non-asshole people view actual hippies, they’re not necessarily bad, but they’re just Odd to us.)
Odd just seems to be the word that is most accurate for describing these feelings. It almost feels like a spectrum of weirdness. Fundamentalists, cults, conspiracy theorists all tip off our internal weirdness alarms, and with only a little logic we can see why, and thus they come off as extremists to be avoided.
Meanwhile folks like Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Amish, Hippies, and some of the more benign Mormons and Fringe Religions all trip the same weirdness alarm, but try as we might there’s usually nothing we can actually find distasteful about them, so we largely just file them under “odd”, they’re not hurting anybody or themselves, but we’d probably feel a bit uncomfortable being invited to a formal ceremony with them (often just because we ourselves would feel out of place.)
It sometimes feels a bit like we’re jealous. Like I said, people don’t often show that much faith in public, and it’s often because we try not to think a ton about it, especially when we can see plenty of people giving faith a bad name through zealotry. So when we see someone who’s so blatantly a good person, nice, a pacifist, at peace with their faith, we feel less worthy in comparison. So we chuckle and file them as odd, rather than get out of our rut and consider being like them.
See, THAT’s the kind of religion I can respect. Believe in your higher powers all you want, just don’t shove it down everyone’s throats and don’t use it as an excuse to marginalize, abuse and/or straight up murder anyone who disagrees with or doesn’t fit your worldview.
I’ll be frank – everything I know about quakers, I learned from Diana Gabaldon books. I didn’t even know you were still around! Are you still addressing people as “friend?” Because that has been starting to replace a casual “bongo” and “motherfucker” when mentally addressing people.
You’re not the only one who’s surprised Quakers are still around; my Meeting actually gave away (Or maybe they sold them for charity… I forget) bumper stickers that said, “Quakers? Where?”. Heck, in college, when I told someone I was Quaker, he told me, “I thought you guys were extinct!”
And yes, Quakers still call each other “Friends” (Even if Steven Colbert thinks that sounds a bit needy, according to his I Am America and So Can You book). In fact, many Quaker-based elementary schools are called “Friends” schools (Each one is typically called “[Name of Town] Friends School”).
Not just the elementary ones! Mine went all the way PreK-12. A couple of the other schools in our sports league for middle and upper school (being from the Philly area, there were enough Quaker schools to form their own – called, of course, the Friends League) also had ‘Friends’ in the name. I’m not sure whether there was a pattern where only the schools with a lower school did though.
I worked for a bit at a non-Quaker (public) school…but their mascot was the Quaker. Granted, the school was located on a street called Pennsylvania…but I always found it an odd choice for a mascot.
Poor Joyce. She has yet to realize her true Lord and Savior lies sleeping beneath the waves in the Halls of R’lyeh. He does not require prayer nor will it help when the time comes but immortality awaits those who undergo the transformation. *pause* I’m sorry, what, was I channeling again?
My mind was blown when I realized Cthulhu was Lovecraft’s satire of Christianity, being a dead god who will rise from the dead to save the faithful and destroy the world as well as being worshiped by all races as well as classes across the world (which horrified poor poor ignorant HPL).
From the hell that is being a three dimensional being in a four dimensional existence, the endless suffering of reality, the mind numbing monotony of life in general, all fear and all hopelessness. For what is death if not the final and greatest mercy? What is destruction if not the replacing of one thing with another? And is not being able to witness such a great and remarkable change within one’s last moments a truly magnificent gift?
I know Episcopalians are a more progressive denomination of Christianity, but for some reason I never would have thought to use the word “hippie” to describe them until now.
Left and Right is a spectrum with Joyce’s church being on the other end from Lawful Lawful while Epicopalians are just Lawful. I go to a Presbyterian Church which is descended from John Calvin, who would die of apoplexy at the fact we’re pro-gay and women.
In Joyce’s home religion, anything to the right of Pat Robertson is considered “dangerously hippie”. It’s kind of used as a catch-all scare term for anything even vaguely liberal. Basically, just like “socialist”.
No, that’s how far to the right these worldviews are. Even vaguely moderate liberal things like “maybe we shouldn’t kill gay people” or “maybe folks shouldn’t be forced to starve to death” or “maybe rich people aren’t fundamentally better than other people” are seen as pure evil and a sign of America’s collapse.
Vaguely leftish things bring out a much more violent backlash.
I think they might actually BE Pat Robertson’s church given all the missionary work in India, or at least an affiliate. Throw in some worship of Reagan and we’ll know for sure.
Same. There are basically no religious people at my school because where I am, we kinda see any form of religion as dangerous brainwashing. We let them exist of course, but strongly, strongly discourage spreading any religion. yay liberal west coast…. i think?
I’m not really familiar with what all these churches are called in the US, but what Jacob is describing sounds like what my church I went to as a teen (and am still a not-really-practicing member of) was like. European Evangelical Protestants in generally non-religious Northern Germany. Super liberal. We had women pastors and lgbtq people all over the place, in official positions too (my youth group co-leader was a trans girl :D). That was really important to me as a young queer kid.
Probably why I liked it so much and stayed so long, despite literally no one else in my family being religious in any way, shape or form. I’m still a member, because I still very occasionally go to service and enjoy the ritual (and my faith is very complicated, but I know I believe in SOMETHING), but I don’t really subscribe to a doctrine anymore, or never really did, idk. But that doesn’t feel like a conflict to me. It’s always felt like a really chill church to me.
So I really like this. Jacob’s explanation of his church speaks to me. I am also totally a hippie, so there’s that xD
Oh ok! Yeah that makes sense. I’m just looking it up now and apparently Episcopalians practice some kind of middle ground between Protestantism and Catholicism. Which is very fascinating to me, those are the main two ones in my country and when I was young I always thought they were sooooo different lol. And they are different. But really, truly not as much as you are lead to believe as a kid :p
Episcopaleans actually broke off from the Church of England originally. So while it still has a very Anglican (and by extension Catholic) organization and flavor to it, they refuse to accept either the Monarch of England or the Pope as their spiritual leader, instead focusing on their own bishops, with dioceses that vary from place to place and from state to state. As a rule however, Episcopalean churches are more liberal than many other American churches, although the Catholic Church in North America has over the past few decades been deeply influenced by the Latin American doctrine of liberation theology, which was the outgrowth of the Catholic Church in Latin America following the second Vatican Council and the increasing popularity of socialist, communist, and Marxist ideologies in Latin America, which decided to put the emphasis of religion back onto social justice, and challenging systematic norms that were oppressive and kept people impoverished.
That is really interesting and cool, thanks for that explanation! So Episcopalian is probably still a little more Catholic-y (in spirit, if maybe not in practice) than my church, but overall pretty similar. Good to know. So I could probably totally go to an Episcopalian service and not be lost lol.
The Episcopacy is a governement of the Church by bishops and is another name for the Church of England, applied long before American churches were referred to as Episcopalian.
The American based Episcopalian churches remain members of the Worldwide Anglican Union. There was no fracture within the churches, they simply stopped recogising the monarch as their figurehead. Something that only lip service is paid to since the days of the Stewarts.
Protestant, yet Catholic refers to the actual, original meaning of the words. Catholic means Universal or all encompassing.
Yes, you will find many of the rituals familiar if you were raised Catholic. Confession is not observed, except as a liturgy during mass and Hail Mary etc are only practiced by the self described “High Church” Anglicans. Other small differences apply.
If I remember correctly the name change in America happened during the Revolutionary war with “Patriot” churches relabeling themselves as Episcopalean and “Loyalist” churches keeping the name Anglican…Until England decided to wash their hands of the thirteen colonies, at which point the Loyalist churches either switched to the Episcopalean name or joined the migration of the 80,000 loyalists who left the US after the Revolutionary War. Although at that point I believe we where still the Continental Congress of America.
Fun fact: because the church has become so liberal of late, some episcopalean churches are breaking off and calling themselves Anglican again so they can keep being predjudiced.
Like I said, Americans think they are conservative, wait until they butt heads with the African congregation. That’s the Hellfire n Brimstone end of the Anglicans.
Unfortunately the Episcopal church has already butted heads with the African congregations. During the last worldwide meeting of the Anglican Communion, there was a huge debate about whether or not it was OK that the American Episcopalian church decided to allow for gay marriages. The African congregations were all for kicking us out on our asses, while the Canadian congregation was very supportive. In the end they voted to punish us by essentially making us second class citizens of the Communion for a while, barring us from some key leadership positions, among other things. I am usre I am not alone in wondering whether it is really worth it to try and remain in full communion with these people. Still, the Anglican church as a whole was built on a foundation of attempting to unify two fundamentally different world views (at the time they were…), the Catholics and the Protestants, so maybe it is just part of our task to try and figure out how to worship with them.
Things really turned around for me when it comes to how I see Joyce’s character for the first time in a long time I’m just going to say it, Up yours Joyce.
As far as I recall they’re closer to Catholic then they are Non-denomination Christian – which makes their more lax beliefs that much more interesting.
The church has roots to King Henry VIII which is always fun. But it is a good church I think – except for the one I went to as a kid. I hated how scripted it was.
will Joyce’s head explode when she learns Radiah is Muslim? a lot of fundies are islamophobic but haven’t heard anything in that regard from Joyce or her circle yet
does she think that Muslims can be converted like she tried to convert Jewish Ethan? or are they Forever Lost in her mind?
I’m going to be honest here, I grew up Christian and ever since I was 10 this is the exact type of church I went to and I didn’t know there was a name that separated us from the Stero type of the Conservative Christian platform form that most people see Christians as.
Well, typically people distinguish between “mainline Protestantism” and various forms of “conservative” or “fundamentalist” or “Evangelical” Protestantism. Mainline churches are politically moderate to liberal denominations like Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists. The fundamentalists are denominations like Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Mega Churches, etc. The mainline/fundie split goes back about 100 years, IIRC.
Mainline is a category that includes a lot of fairly conservative churches – it doesn’t really go into the far right the way fundamentalists do, but there’s a lot of room on the conservative spectrum left of fundagelicals.
I like that Joyce is being presented with a non-shitty faith option. Well, I mean I don’t know much about Episcopalians, but being cool with gay people and female pastors sounds like not shitty anyway. So, maybe this could help Joyce with her self journey. It might not be where she ends up, but exploring the options could be good. I’ll be interested to see where it goes anyway.
Uh… depends on the Episcopalians. A ‘friend of the family’ is in an Episcopalian church in Virginia. When the Episcopalians allowed homosexuality they revolted against the hierarchy and left the church because they hate the idea of homosexuals. Lots of politicians funded them and they were able to buy their own building (because the Episcopalian church kept the building as it belonged to them.)
With many Christians they may seem nice but the facade of piety isn’t always real.
Oh, yeah, there’s a turd in every box of chocolates, no doubt. But I mean taken as a whole/their Official Church Stances on things. (I live in Mississippi, I know all about Good Christian Folk who are in fact terrible.)
I ended up parting ways with Christianity because the core tenet of “nonbelievers go to hell” invalidated way too many people I love. But if I were going to go back, I’d be Episcopalian.
Coming from a non-American background, it amuses me that Episcopalians (or Anglicans as they’re known outside the US) are seen as a hippie church. Yes all those filthy hippies like her majesty the queen of england.
Eh, they aren’t really. Episcopalians are seen as one of the “respectable” denominations that upper class people attend; they have pretty standard upper-class views. Actual hippies, if they attend anything, will be over at the UU or Quakers or Neopagans.
Joyce’s body language in this one is… kind of odd. I don’t know if she’s just responding to Jacob’s essential kindness or if his sex appeal is working its magic on her too!
That said… Joyce, you go to a church in town where attendees are encouraged to clap along with the music and dance in the pews. To someone like me, that’s a ‘hippie church’!
Uh, just because it’s a church doesn’t mean it’s the same church Ryan’s related to. There are at least 200+ different denominations within the US, and roughly 350,000 different congregations. And I would wager that Bloomington, Indiana has more than two churches near their college.
Yeah, it isn’t automatic but it is a nice way to catch up with him and would be broadly in line with the wider themes of the strip.
Because I’m a superhero story fan, it would be a great time for Joyce to find out that she’s telekinetic in this universe too and Force Choke the little rat in human skin.
You know what else is a nice way to catch up with Ryan? Some random driver recognising him while he’s out walking, and then deciding to act with integrity.
I don’t know about “nice”. And tbh, that just sounds like something to make Joyce lose even more faith in her religion, if she can’t even be safe going to a new church. Not everything has to relate back to Ryan.
Given the semi-autobiographical slant, I would not necessarily expect Joyce to keep her faith in this story, unless I’m forgetting something Willis has specifically said otherwise. Just… a ‘don’t get your hopes up’ note of caution. 🙁
One of my friends is Episcopalean, and they once joked “I’m just like you (I’m Catholic) but without the religiously mandated guilt complex or the guy in the funny hat.”
Hm…more and more I get the feeling that Jacob does not fit to the rest of the cast…because…well, he’s not dumb! At least not in the comical, slightly (or sometimes not-so-slightly) exaggerating way most characters are.
He is a sensible, insightful and respectful person, considerate in his words…that’s just so…I don’t know, imagine a comic full of people like Jacob! There wouldn’t be any drama, no misunderstandings…and it certainly wouldn’t be called “Dumbing of age”!
I’m curious to see where this is going!
Will Sarah wait until she and Joyce are alone, before she RAGES at her for being dragged into a booth, forced to listen to convos about sex, (while sitting beside “the hottest man on the planet” ™) and then having to watch the object of her lust/affections, to all intents and purposes, hit-on Joyce?
“You KNEW I liked him!”
… If Joyce’s upbringing was anything like mine, realizing that she has become what her parents would call a (in my case) “leftie pinko commie socialist” or (in Joyce’s case) a “hippie church” member would be a crisis of conscience on par with the crisis of faith she’s been experiencing for the past few weeks (in comic time anyway). It’s a huge, “Oh fuck” moment if you’ve been brought up to view something as Teh Ebil and then you realize that 1, it’s not, and 2, you actually kind of agree with it.
For me for a long time I had this thing of, “Well, socialism* had some good points but that doesn’t mean I agree with all of it!” Now I’m pretty comfortable with saying I’m for single-payer health care and a strong social safety net.
*Note: what far right households derisively call socialism is not actually socialism, but rather is a left-leaning mixed-market system with a strong social safety net.
Yeah, you’re trained so hard to be against “anything hippie or socialist” and to view that as a mortal sin that can’t be recovered from. So yeah, it’s hard to break away from that and realize “oh shit, this is actually the party or church that is align with my real beliefs”.
Or that moment when you realize that there is no organized political party, no philosophy or ideology or religion, no group or category, where your view of the world actually fits without major differences on issues they consider core.
I think that’s one her and her dad have shared recently. I recall his surprised looks on the Sunday strips, where people were more concerned about Becky’s hair then they were her father running around with a gun.
It’s funny how extremes meet. My dad was a proper Scottish socalist and a strong atheist. And he was extremely derisive of what he called “happy clappy” churches. If you were going to do religion, he felt, you might as well do it properly.
Of course, he was also derisive of the small-minded, conservative churches, but for different reasons. He got on very well with our minister, though, who said a nice piece at the funeral.
Panel 1: Head leaning forward on arms rested on the table, soft dreamy look… Joyce, my dear, are you starting to develop a slight bit of a crush?
Also, I like Joyce’s acknowledgment that her grip on her faith used to be is slipping. Because that’s a hard thing to admit even when it happens. Like, she’s been trained all her life that losing her faith is the single worst thing that could happen to a person and condemns them to an eternity in Hell and a life of immoral sinful activity that hurts man and God. And that that faith is all or nothing, not a buffet she can harvest the good parts from.
So to admit to another person that yeah, my faith is leaving, I don’t hold all those beliefs anymore or fight so strictly, is huge and shows the level of trust she has in Jacob thanks to his earlier comments about sex being scary.
Panel 2: Awkward glossing over the fact that Raidah is muslim. 🙁 And the sad part is we know he’s been really excited about learning stuff about her faith, so this is just a sign of the new normal. That because of the rise of nazis and islamophobia, it is not entirely safe to tell people that someone is muslim, especially someone who is known to be “of faith”.
And that recognition by Jacob that admitting Raidah is muslim to a full group beyond just Sarah who already knows her might be dangerous feels like an ominous part of where America is heading. And it’s the ominousness I don’t know how to handle. I know how to handle intense angry violent bigotry, but I don’t know how to handle nazis with an authoritarian leader who has multiple times noted his belief that camps can be a good thing for “undesirable” groups.
Like, I know how to fight against anything but that, cause I’m not privileged enough to expect I wouldn’t be in those camps if things go that way and so it makes it hard to figure out what to do or fully believe in a future. And that’s with me being lucky enough to be white and not muslim. For our muslim brethren that fear is a million times worse (I still remember my muslim former colleague who felt like he needed to personally apologize to me for the Pulse nightclub shooting simply because of how muslims are expected to accept universal guilt for anything any muslim person does anywhere).
Panel 3-4: 🙁 She’s remembering how triggering her attempt to reconnect with her old church was and is super wary of accepting an invitation she probably would have practically jumped at a few weeks ago.
Dunno about the crush… I think it’s just opening up to someone who has just confirmed her in an awesome way.
On the other hand, this is JOYCE who develops crushes faster than Walky eats nachos, so you might be onto something…
I really, really wish I had any comforting words about the current regime. I can at least say what I see from my comfort zone over in Socialist Utopia Sweden – I see a lot of very bright US citizens with very sensible values getting up in arms and learning everything they can about how to work a system they up to now have taken for granted.
Hang in their. You do tons of good for people who really need it.
I don’t know how to handle nazis with an authoritarian leader who has multiple times noted his belief that camps can be a good thing for “undesirable” groups.
Trump: “Not only will Guantanamo not be closing, but it’s going to be expanded into the best prison in the world. And Cuba will pay for it. A world class prison, with world class waterboarding and more! I am the best at building prisons. I am the best at imprisoning people.”
While most of us don’t know how to fight back against the Neo-Nazis, I’m ready and willing. I’ve been the token straight guy in my social group my whole life and if anyone is going to drag my friends or anyone in my community off to a camp, they’ll have to do it over my dead body. And we’ve already started fighting back. When they tried that bullshit with the ethics committee the uproar shut that down quick. And most of us have realized that the best way to fight is pay attention, and raise hell when bullshit like that gets proposed. The Orange bastard already has one of the lowest incoming approval ratings of all time, and the American public is now watching him like a hawk. There are people here who will not let that happen to LGBT people, and there are people who are willing to die before something like that happens. I know, that because of the Orange bastard, it might be hard to believe, but always remember, in a real democracy he would have lost big time. His supporters are the minority. And I know people (myself included) who will walk to hell and back before we let a minority group of bigoted whites oppress anyone. What I’m trying to say is, you have support. From a lot of us. On a slightly unrelated and much less serious note, my white guilt has become ten times worse over the past few weeks.
Oh, see, I read it differently. I thought Jacob was hinting at some tension that has developed between Raidah and him along religious lines. I wondered the same thing about his comments in yesterday’s strip about being seen as nothing but a sex object–maybe this something that’s been on the forefront of his mind lately because he’s dealing with it every day. Not sure.
Panel 5: I get a bit sad at how low a bar this is, but so hard to clear for so many, especially so many communities of faith. The sexism and homophobia just runs so deep (not that atheist communities are much better what with the MRAs, the Trump Libertarians, and the hate movement that spawned out of angry gamer bros).
Like it’s important, but I’m a bit older so I remember when Gene Robinson was first installed as the first gay bishop and how violent the reaction from some Episcopalian groups was, with some even threatening schism or split over the decision. And how inoffensive Gene had to be in response.
Panel 6: Which makes Joyce’s response all the more meaningful. Episcopalians are not the UU, are not neopaganism or wicca, are rather politically moderate and certainly not radicals.
But to Joyce’s training, that is beyond the pale, something to mock and deride as “hippie” because it isn’t an Evangelical movement that sold its soul to the far-right.
And yeah, that instant derision is what folks in those communities are trained in. It is seen as a mortal sin to support anything “hippie” or “socialist”. To do so is the equivalent of yelling Heil Satan and working in service to the Antichrist. And so you are supposed to automatically reject anything that even remotely smells of “hippiness” or “liberalism” in order to be a good person (creating a situation not unlike toxic masculinity or toxic whiteness, cause basically any identity that defines itself by what it must never be like rather than what it is quickly becomes a toxic dance of avoiding anything done by a group of people in reflexive bigotry or outright banning people of certain groups from participating in things you like).
And it’s that whole mess in parentheses that was responsible for the election being close enough to steal through all the means in which it was made unfair and undemocratic. Groups of people trained to reflexively backlash against anything tainted with woman cooties, to be reflexively against anything espoused by a black man, to angrily reject anything any Democrat says and fully marry oneself to being against empathy, kindness, fairness, or any other positive trait if the Democrats are for it.
Basically people finding it easier to fall into nazism or nazi-apologism in their headline quest to not be all the things they fear being too much alike for their self-images as Christians or white people or straight people or men.
That breaking away for a second from the Fox News/Alex Jones worldview will mean one’s complete loss of self.
And it’s sad that they, because of what they view themselves as having to be against, will never fully appreciate how many people close to me their angry tantrum will kill. Innocent, good people who just had the bad luck to be born different enough to be hated by people married to these toxic interpretations of what it means to be a dominant group member.
I dunno, it’s getting really hard at times with all this shit.
Panel 7: And that moment of intense painful awareness. Where the automatic response is questioned. I’ve seen that moment in folks and yeah, it can be downright painful and traumatic for them. When you are told all your life and devote so much of your life to that automatic rejection on lines like that, when your whole sense of self is predicated on that?
That’s a lot to let go. And here I think Joyce is realizing that automatic response or no, she isn’t holding to those conservative beliefs anymore about the inferiority of women, about the sinfulness of queer folks, and so on.
Panel 8: So yeah, I empathize with her crisis of faith here as she realizes that she can’t really reconnect with the faith she was raised in and so if she is going to remain Christian, she’s going to have better luck in a “hippie church” she was carefully taught to revile.
Cause, she knows too many of the people her old church rants about to be able to stomach that anymore and needs a space where gay people are accepted and the rules are softened. Whether that will be enough to save what remains of her faith is yet to be determined, but it’s nice she’ll be making the effort nonetheless and recognizes that where her faith is now is no longer in the type of church she was taught was right.
There are lot’s of people trapped in toxic cultures of one kind or another, just like you note. It takes serious amount of strength of character to see that and move out from that bubble.
Given historical patterns, a swing to a Democrat-controlled Senate in 2 years isn’t at all unlikely… especially if The Donald is as much of a total shitshow as I expect. If there’s a split government, his agenda grinds to a halt, and Senate investigations might start.
He may also alienate GOP Congresspeople (and for the love of dog, “Congress” includes both the House and the Senate) with his kneejerk Twitter-tantrums the first time they don’t go along with what he demands. Calling a Senator “a worthless loser and idiot” publicly isn’t going to help The Donald, regardless of policy affiliation.
Sadly, a swing to a Democratic Senate is going to be really hard in 2018. Barring retirements & the like, there are 25 Democrats up for re-election and only 8 Republicans – most of whom survived 2012 and the wave in 2006. Just holding ground will be a hard fight. Taking the Senate will require a serious wave election.
Which is possible, if things get bad enough fast enough.
I was balancing that against the tendency of the POTUS’s party to lose seats in midterms, especially if they have both houses. Senate is currently at 52-48, so it would be a gain of 3 for a majority.
Mid-terms aren’t just won by the party that isn’t in power — they’re specifically won by a party that’s angry or afraid (huge gains happened in 2002, for example), with a tendency to _otherwise_ go to Republicans, who are across the board more likely to show up (disproportionately so for their numbers) to _any_ given election.
I still don’t think Trump is a Republican.
I think a lot of traditional Republicans are going to be unpleasantly surprised by this in the coming weeks and months.
I think a lot of traditional Democrats are going to be pleasantly surprised by this in the coming weeks and months, if they can look up from their script of distaste long enough to notice.
I am NOT a supporter or Trump. I voted Johnson. I’m concerned by his stance on Eminent Domain, for starters.
i have been waiting so long to hear Joyce or Becky checking out the Universalist Church, considering they are the biggest LGBT-friendly Christian group in Bloomington; they are literally at every HIV March, Pride event, as well as often hosting the LGBT Youth group in Bloomington.
Seriously, bring Becky. I think it would be good for her to have experience with a church that accepts her, and it might also widen the resources available to her as a homeless lesbian teenager.
<3 Another Episcopalian reader here, happy for the shout-out! And, like Joyce, I was raised Baptist. I think I actually sent Willis a tumblr message a while ago asking if there were any liberal-leaning Christians in the DoA cast, and he pointed out Sierra (whom I believe is UU?) I didn't realize I was really missing Episcopalian representation in this comic until this strip though!
Also, while it's probably a coincidence, it was with an Episcopalian reverend, during counseling, where I first brought up, in tears, the idea that I don't want to have sex with anyone or get married, and might not ever be able to, and she was the first person who told me that, yeah, some people are asexual. It doesn't mean you're broken or missing out on some fundamental human experience. Sex can be scary, and there are sex therapists out there if you *do* want to try to become more sexual, but you never have to if you don't want to.
And it was a huge relief. It was amazing. Like, "Oh, I don't have to stress and worry about never being able to do this thing. I can just not do it. And then I can choose to try to do it later if I want to, on my own terms."
I know that's not exactly what Jacob was saying when he was empathizing with Joyce? And, er, probably encouraging a gay person to stay in the closet is never going to be a good thing. But the underlying message was really reassuring, especially coming from a writer that is sex-positive enough to write a NSFW version of his comic. Like it feels good to know that there are sex-positive people who nevertheless still respect people who find sex scary or uninteresting.
Glad to hear you were able to find a sympathetic figure to confide in.
I was already an introvert, raised Catholic (gave it up ages ago), and the idea of talking to one of the priests about such a personal issue, as an adolescent, would frighten the heck out of me. No small part of that was the whole authority thing in that denomination.
Er, I was 22 at the time, so, not exactly an adolescent. >.< Took me a while.
I actually find the, mm, I guess the ritual aspect of Episcopal services really reassuring. In that I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing–like having a script. Every week same prayers, etc, and you literally *can* read off a script if you want to. Whereas Baptist services I always felt like I was being yelled at and wasn't totally sure what I was supposed to be doing.
But, I can totally see how someone could find that needlessly authoritarian. It doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity or self-expression.
I love this! Because the main reason I’m not Episcopalian is that they are too rigid in formal for my tastes–Catholic lite, as some people call it.
I mean, I was ecstatic when I first heard of a church that was not homophobic. But I was raised Pentecostal, so I want a lot of active emotion in my church services. Anything else feels like legalism to me.
My wife had exactly the opposite approach. She was brought up Southern Baptist and was used to a lot of “active emotion” in her services. She was actually relieved when I took her to my RC church where everything was more reserved.
(Not that, of course, it doesn’t have an original, more precise meaning. Just like “fag” is technically a cigarette, but is used as a slur for homosexuals.)
(Also, sorry about the poor grammar in my previous post :p
HOOOOOOOLY shit, finally finished bingeing this comic after 2.5 weeks.
I don’t even know what to say. This is easily the most intelligent web comic I’ve ever read but how the hell do you summarize that in one comment?
I’m kinda just dazed dude
Panel One: Yeaaaaaaahhhhhhh, ‘being threatened with a gun by your best friend’s dad because you’re protecting your gay friend’ will kinda force a paradigm shift. It’s a hard thing to admit, considering her parents spent so much time driving it in, and she believed if she relinquished any part of her faith she’d go to hell, this must be hard to say out loud.
But Jacob is empathetic and encouraging and that matters. It makes her feel better confiding in him.
Panel Two: And yeah, Jacob CAN be discretionary. ‘Don’t out your gay roommate, even if you think someone’d be okay with it’ is probably lesser known than the whole ‘Muslims are evil terrorists with no business in America!’ bullshit (even though Muslims have lived there since 1716). That’s everywhere. And yeah, it’s probably wise not to talk to the fundie about Muslims, even if they seem to be accepting. Which is probably good, as Joyce still struggles with non-Christian non-atheist/agnostic/apathetic religions. She’s not malicious, but you don’t need to be to be bigoted. It’ll be a while before things like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Paganism get knocked out of her head.
That said, it’s sweet of Jacob to offer. He knows she’s gotta be struggling with her faith, and invites her to see a less strict interpretation. Cute!
Panel Three: There’s the pause, as she considers it. Her faith’s meant everything to her. Sure, her family searched around for the ‘right’ church with the ‘right’ interpretation, but they stopped when they found it. To willingly give it up when she’s ‘found’ it? This is rough. And that’s almost impossible given how omnipresent the threat of hell’s been in her life. Poor thing.
Panel Four: Of course, that doesn’t mean she’ll be a dick about it. This reads to me like she’s searching for a polite way to turn him down, because she doesn’t want to abandon her interpretation of faith, as rough as it is.
Panel Five: Oooh, Jacob’s Episcopalian church sounds sweet! I’m told Episcopalian churches largely decide those things individually, so that’s neat! Reminds me of United Canadian.
I find it interesting he’s concerned she won’t think it’s accepting enough – gay people are probably something Joyce would worry about if she were to search for a new denomination, but women ministers? My guess is it didn’t even cross her mind. Women don’t minister, silly! Unless they’re mothers teaching their children or missionaries or young, waiting for marriage, teachers. Silly Jacob! I’d think the first concern would be ‘oh shit, is this too much? Will she explode?”
Panel Six: And yeah, there’s the sneer she was raised to have. You don’t go to HIPPIE churches silly. The Jesus movement is probably something she was raised to break into hives at. And of course there are New Age followers (Dunno what they’re called) who believe a mishmash of things, and some of whom have created new forms of Christianity. All of which isn’t REAL Christianity, it’s pinko communist gay ‘Christianity’, hail Satan.
Panel Seven: Then there’s the pause. Thinking about Becky and her relationships with Dorothy and Ethan and how she’s been scared so many of her friends will go to hell. How much she’s grown. How alien her church felt and how shitty everyone was and how triggered she got.
Panel Eight: Aaaaand the hard rough realization that damn, I belong in that pinko communist gay friendly ‘Christian’ church, hail Satan. That’s gotta smash her upbringing with a hammer and will undoubtedly be the roughest realization she’s had today.
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And Then Joyce Was a Hippie.
Yes, I linked to TVTropes after midnight. I am indeed a monster.
better than a hipSTER church
“I believed before JESUS”
(comic was “early” tonight, I’m surprised)
Is that the Church of Jewish converts?
I liked Yahweh better when he still went by “El”.
That IS what Christianity was supposed to be, originally.
Must resist!
World doesn’t revolve around the USA. It’s a nice afternoon where I am. 😛
I’m sorry for the loss of your afternoon.
World doesn’t revolve around the USA, yet there’s a whole continent in roughly their same time zone.
Two, even!
True, I was counting The Americas as one.
Google tells me both ways are correct, it’s just a convention thing.
I live in Argentina and in school they would teach us that the americas can be counted as either one or three continents (counting central america), but the conception of them being two continents is not as common here.
Geologically, North America and South America are two separate continents.
Two continents separated by water. Thanks, Teddy!
FIFA seems to treat them as two….
Yes to all of the above, but it really, really depends. From the wiki article for “Americas”:
“In modern English, North and South America are generally considered separate continents, and taken together are called the Americas in the plural, parallel to similar situations such as the Carolinas. When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America.
In some countries of the world (including France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Greece, and the countries of Latin America), America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, as well as Central America.”
I’m in Argentina, therefore to us America means the continent as a whole, encompassing all of it. That was why I said “one” continent above, that’s all.
Three, technically.
(But also, y’know, several billion people who live in different time zones)
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK.
SLEEPING FOR A WEEK.
yes.
… I’m weak ZZZZZZZZ…
AND SPEED IS KEY!
…you know, first comment, and all that
Though, wouldn’t she be fearing becoming an atheist? (changing churches might only be a mild version of the trope – if that’s possible)
At least you warned us. It’s when you link it without warning to what it is that there’s a problem.
I see that Dr. Who is the only one who can beat Ana Chronistic at first post.
Seems legit.
before you know it, shell be wearing sandals!
Get that girl a tie-dyed t-shirt and some rose-colored sunglasses STAT!
Joyce is such a NERD!… and that’s why she’s best character
*extremely David Walkerton voice*
“You merely adopted the nerdiness, Joyce. I was born into it. Molded by it.”
Mmmm…. think that’s better in the Ethan-voice.
Begging your pardon, but there is absolutely zero nerdy about Joyce.
No, she’s pretty nerdy.
…yes, this is my new ship. Approve.
Also, Joyce, it could be worse. My break with Christianity ended up with me in an even hippier church, by which I mean a pagan one, by which I mean a fire circle at a campground where we passed around a bottle of mead. (And a bottle of whiskey. And a bottle of I don’t know what it was but damn if it didn’t taste like an alcoholic thin mint.)
You could be doing that instead.
Joyce would pass around Sprite.
That minty drink could be Creme de Menthe or one of a number of brands of schnapps.
Iirc, it was a personal recipe mixed drink from the guy who contributed it. Served out of a dried hollow gourd of some kind, by the way.
I don’t drink alcohol but the serving container of choice would make me consider it!
(I mean, I wouldn’t. But I would think it very cool.)
I know! How the heck did this slice of perfection suddenly drop into our laps?
Though I’m stiill holding out for JoJo tbh.
Why not ship both?
Not necessarily at the same time (unless you’re into that) but multi shipping is the way of the future.
JoJo = Jacob/Other Jacob?
I realized this like two days ago- they’d be a great pair, at least for now (I think Joyce does have to eventually come to terms with her sexuality, since it exists, and if Jacob is ace that might not work).
He’s not ace, he just waits for the right person/relationship. Simple as that. No “Secretly gay/ace/alien-reproducing-by-parthenogenesis” subplot here. Explained there by David Willis himself: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/81366789633/dumbing-of-age-the-new-normal-let-me-tell-you-a
That link says “he’s not a sex addict”, it does not say he’s not ace. It doesn’t address the idea of being ace at all. (Ace people aren’t all “against sex”, in case that’s the angle you were going for.)
Also, really? “gay/ace/alien”? C’mon. :\
Your last line, and also that’s why I said ‘if Jacob’s ace’, because I couldn’t remember it being mentioned or word of god.
Ok, I was over-the-top with that part. I should have gone for “secretly …sexual subplot”. If you have a better way to formulate the same gist I’m all ears/eyes, I know this one ain’t perfect either.
You’re also right that Willis’ word is specificallly stating “not against sex” (which is indeed not the same as Ace. I know that. Still, thanks for the reminder), but it refers to a character who was way oversexed in his former iteration in Shortpacked, and who is now cast in a more realistic role.
@Ansel: that’s why I put this link. Thanks to you both I now see how something I thought was obvious in this message, is actually really not.
The way Jacob talks about sex though… I still think his sex-drive has been taken several notches down, but not removed entirely.
Called it.
The progression of her face in the last three panels is pretty hilarious.
I think you could extend that across the strip, really.
Yes, that is true. I only noticed the last three at first because they were all in a row, but the entire progression is amazing.
Soooooo why don’t they do church together?
she hasnt really talked with jacob much so she didnt know he goes to church
nvm, checked archives, Raidah’s muslim
Heh, glad there is context, that avatar does not go well with that comment.
lol
Smart move Jacob. Super smart.
At least it isn’t a hifter or drippie church.
As an atheist, I am really surprised at how badly I want Joyce to have a positive experience going to church again
I know, right?
I really like the idea of her just finding a form of Christianity that works for her not just abandoning her religion all together. She doesn’t have to let go of God to successfully mature as a person and I say this as an atheist leaning agnostic. Religion isn’t the problem. How some people chose to use religion is. But there can be good progressive religious people just like their can be asshole atheists and vice versa. It’s more balanced and realistic story telling to show that.
I still think her path is going to lead to a total loss of faith rather than just finding a more liberal form of Christianity, but I like that she’s at least trying it out.
Now, now, just because it happened to Willis, doesn’t mean it will happen to Joyce. She’s not a COMPLETE copy of the artist.
For example, I’m PRETTY sure Willis is a guy…
It’s well known that Willis is a renegade AI preparing a way for the coming of the Cheese.
I did the same years back. After years attending Catholic mass I got into college and said goodbye to church altogether. After graduation, my life wasn’t going where I wanted so I started shopping around for a different faith, one that pertained to me. In the end I chose the Episcopal church as well. Only difference was my parents were very understanding, even supportive. And my sister is Methodist; not related, just an aside.
“But there can be good progressive religious people just like their can be asshole atheists and vice versa. It’s more balanced and realistic story telling to show that.”
I come so close to agreeing with you (there are absolutely plenty of asshole atheists), but then the last sentence.
– We literally already have good, progressive, religious characters. The comic is full of them, if not as full of them as the Walkyverse was. JOYCE doesn’t need to keep her faith in order for the comic to portray religious people in a “balanced and realistic” way.
For example, Becky’s faith isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t even been bruised. JOYCE is struggling to be both religious and a good person; Becky is not. Your balance already exists.
– It just… feels odd to imply that people losing their faith isn’t realistic or balanced. Really, really odd. It’s not like this is a slapdash comic where Joyce was devout last night and then woke up this morning and went “wait! all churchgoers are evil!” We’ve had a really nuanced progression to this point, and regardless of where it goes it will still be nuanced.
@Li I’m sorry that you feel I was implying that a story about someone losing their faith isn’t realistic. I wasn’t at all. I’m a formerly religious person who lost their faith. I’m aware that it something that happens and it’s a story that can be told and although I’m sure you didn’t mean to there’s something kind of insulting about the way you worded that last sentence. I am aware that this comic isn’t slapdash. Or that the characters aren’t that simple. I have faith that however this story goes it could be told realistically. I just personally have a hope for how this story can go because I feel like I’ve seen it more often than not the idea that in order to become a real adult religion is a thing that has to be given up. I’m not talking about Willis. I’m not even talking about the majority of fiction out there. I’m just talking about an idea I’ve come into contact with enough in my life I think it would be refreshing to see it go another way. I find it more interesting with it being Joyce because she’s (objectively) the main character. That’s the only reason I expressed the opinion I did.
I’m curious how you can be Atheist leaning Agnostic. Are you 90% certain there is no god?
I’m especially curious, as I once had a coworker who described Agnosticism, but professed Atheism.
I say I’m athiest leaning but still agnostic because I feel like the likeliest truth there isn’t a god but I don’t feel like anyone can ever know that to be true or untrue.
Ah. Thank you.
Also, I misunderstood you to mean Atheist, with Agnostic leanings, rather than Agnostic, with Atheist leanings.
You wrote it correctly, but I still saw the, nonexistent, comma.
I’m really invested in that too, actually! Her faith seems so important to her and I’d love for her to find a way to still feel like she’s living her faith while also loving and supporting her lgbtq+ friends and her new and expanded world view 🙂
My experience has long been that the vast majority of us who are atheist or areligious (I fall into the later camp for the record) don’t hold out and out antireligious or antitheist views but just want a world where we can all, regardless of religious views, live harmoniously and do right by each other.
Well, you want a person to have as nice a life as they can in the only life they can without harming others more than they have to, right?
Yes, but religion doesn’t need to be a part of that, even for someone like Joyce.
You’d think that I’d be rooting for her to find happiness without any church, but even if she eventually loses her faith entirely, I want her to experience a religious community that supports the morals that she’s been following, not simply demanding adherence to dogma.
I’m not agnostic at all. I was raised without any religious teachings at all. Churches were places you went for weddings and funerals. If I ever found religion, most people I know would probably think I was being blackmailed or something.
So it’s weird to me how invested I am in Joyce seeing the good side of organized religion.
While I do want her to start enjoying church again I’d rather her be ok with not going to church but speaking from experience I know how it can take a long time for stuff like that to get comfortable
I did not expect to be shipping Joyce and Jacob.
Joycob?
But if we call is Jayce, we can make Wheeled Warriors references!
Joycob is better because it sounds like you’re saying ‘Jacob’ in a funny accent.
Unfortunately Joycob sounds almost exactly like a North Queensland rural accent (think Meryl Streep in Evil angels aka “A cry in the dark”), and I have a nephew named Jace so that ones out as well. Dang, I may have to abandon this ship because of lack of a good name. Now that’s a first..
I’ve been shipping Joycob for at least a year, so it’s funny now to see some in-universe teasing for it. I always thought Jacob’s obvious interest in Joyce’s quirks was promising, and obviously they both want something very similar from a relationship. Frankly no one else in the male cast is remotely compatible for Joyce either. His incredible hotness also won’t hurt as her sexuality develops.
The only drawback is the likelihood of upsetting Sarah, which would be tragic. I think she’s realizing that only objectifying Jacob is a problem, and maybe that’ll help her move on to someone more appropriate. After Joe does some growing up (and I mean a lot of it; he’s seriously terrible right now) then I could see Sarah and him working really well together. What they want is far more compatible, and she’s the only one strong enough to keep his darker side in check. He’s moderately hot too, just not so much (as he noted) compared to Jacob there.
No, Joe growing up won’t do anything for Sarah not liking him that way. Sorry, but being attractive to girls isn’t a prize for character development. Sarah doesn’t want Joe. Maybe he’ll mature and they can be friends then.
Of course being attractive to girls is a prize for character development! At the end of every movie the guy gets the girl as his prize for surviving and learning the theme of the movie regardless of the girl’s feelings for him at the beginning of the movie.
In fiction, if you learn a lesson you get a girlfriend as a prize. It’s been this way since the beginning of fiction.
Heh.
Actually I’m really curious as to what your “heh” meant. Through the Intertubes I interpreted it as “hah you are such a misogynistic fuck I feel sorry for you” and “owow that’s true.” Or did you mean something completely different?
Oh Bob no! I was actually genuinely laughing because your post was genuinely clever.
🙁
:c
Sorry that it came across as mean-spirited.
Not your fault, hard to control tone through the intertubes.
“Sorry, Mario, your princess is in another castle”
Oh, sorry, this princess isn’t for you, but uuh, we have prepared another princess for you. But you have to earn her! and of course her feelings are completely irrelevant in this transaction.
So, most of human history?
Yeah, yeah! And also notice she’s a *prize*. He doesn’t just get a princess, he needs to travel through all the levels and murder a bunch of people to “save” her. And then as a reward, he gets the princess. This leaves a bunch of people asking, when they are around 26, “what the hell? I’ve been through all kinds of hardship, where the fuck is my princess? I deserve a fucking princesss.” And then they go shoot up a mall or something because once they kill enough people they get the princess like Mario right?
Its no good, really, but whatcha gonna do.
I agree, but it’s kind of a shame. Sarah is looking for fairly casual sex and eye candy. What they’re looking for is pretty compatible.
Except that Joe’s a predatory creep.
I feel like that’s a problem a lot of straight women run into when they want casual sex like Sarah. That there are a lot of creepers out there absolutely willing to make that search a miserable experience.
Please don’t misrepresent what I said, Liliet. I was talking from Sarah’s perspective, about a relationship that might work for her after she moves on from Jacob, and ideally when he’s with Joyce. Partly because it’s topical (they’re at the same table), I mentioned that after “a lot of growing up” it’s possible Joe could be a good match. I did NOT in any way say that women are a prize for character development, and I find that trope horribly offensive too. My point was that given the very limited pool of gynophilic males in the cast now, then a far-less-terrible Joe is the only option I see. Realistically finding someone outside the main cast would be better, but that’s not how fiction generally works. The simple fact for me is that Sarah deserves to be happy with someone, after she moves on from her unhealthy objectifying of Jacob. As Thejeff said too, what Sarah and Joe want is pretty compatible right now and that could develop into something more, but only if Joe gets a serious redemption arc like many people want. I am not in any way saying that Sarah would be a prize at the end. Instead, I want Sarah to have the prize (a consolation when things don’t work out with Jacob) and who else is there? If you can offer a better alternative for Sarah’s happiness then believe me I’m all ears.
Yeah, no, that sarcastic sorry is very rude, it seems they are just mad you ship a NOTP.
I disagree with the absoluteness of that statement.
Growing more mature can make people more attractive to other people, so can getting a job, working out, etc.
Its actually reasonable given what we know about the characters to believe that if Joe’s immaturity wasn’t such a turn off, Sarah would find Joe attractive. They both generally seem to be looking for compatible things right now. Its really not such a stretch to say if Joe grew up a lot they could work out as benefits-friends. He might have missed his chance but he might not have.
What growing up doesn’t do is guarantee anybody will like you that way, yet alone whoever you happen to like that way returning your feelings.
What makes the negative message that growing up entitles you to your crush is that.
Movies all too often either make the first person the main character falls for either eventually fall the them or turn out to be a jerk. The problem is that this is a pattern. The fact that it happens all the time means the love interests of the main character is treated as having no real agency in who they want. Also men are more likely to be the main character so its like women have no agency in their love interests more often then men.
Didn’t a bunch of us here in the comments suggest just such a church for Joyce a while back? I wonder how long Willis has had this planned! 😉
And I SO want to show this strip around at my church. I think most of the congregation would get a laugh out of the description of “a hippie church”.
Unitarians are going to make Joyce’s head explode, aren’t they?
The first use of Venn Diagrams I can clearly remember coming upon was in Unitarian Sunday school, explaining Unitarian Universalisim’s relationship with Christianity.
Let me put it this way, my parents moved from a UU church to a Quaker meeting… because Quakers had more structure…. *headdesk* Quaker…structure… those two words don’t belong together.
There are Programmed and Unprogrammed Quakers. The Unprogrammed ones are really great, socially, politically, and personally – I’ve worshipped with five different groups and considered joining one of them (as a known atheist). They do have structure. The meeting for worship starts and ends at a certain time; they have a business meeting once a month; there are pretty clear expectations of how to conduct yourself in both.
The Programmed Quakers… I’ve never attended, but I hear their services are quite similar to traditional Christian services, with hymns and a sermon. Some of the Programmed organizations are openly anti-LGBTQA+.
In addition to all the good political and social stuff Unprogrammed Quakers do (e.g. fcnl.org), here’s a more individual story of how cool they can be. In the group I considered joining was a young teen who was trans. It wasn’t hidden, and it wasn’t gossiped about. It Just. Didn’t. Matter. I think I heard two conversations about his trans-ness in a year, and they were in the tone of “he’s gluten free” or “he’s good at math.”
There are still fundamentalist conservative elements to be found among the quaker church. Most of my family falls into that category. Even so, at least in my experience, if you don’t hold to their beliefs, they debate you rather than curse you. Or let it lie and accept that you think differently if you’re not interested in an argument. In short, don’t be a dick.
There is still a lot of room for harm, but a lot less of that harm comes from deliberate malice.
If she drops in on a CUUPS meeting, then yes. And I say that as a UU Pagan.
Becky: “You know, I’m realizin’ that a lot of what we learned ’bout sex from the Church was totally messed up.”
Joyce: “… yeah, okay, some of it is, I think…”
Becky: “An’ the stuff I don’t KNOW is bokers, I’m not sure I trust it any more, cuz of what it came with.”
Joyce: “Well… I can see how that might make you doubt, yes…”
Becky: “So I’ve gone and found another place to learn ’bout sex!”
Joyce: “Um… are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Becky: “‘sokay, still a church, just, you know, not one of those churches that hate me.”
Joyce: “Well, that’s good. And… they teach about sex? Even though you’re an adult now?”
Becky: “Yeah, I guess? Some program called OWL?”
Joyce: “Ooooh, they’ve got a wise cute owl mascot to teach us stuff? And it’s all nice and safe stuff from a church?”
Becky: “Sounds like.”
Joyce: “Yeah, okay, I’ll come along. I mean, it’s at a church. How naughty can it be?”
Well, now I know about Our Whole Lives (thanks, Google). Or was she talking about Ordinary Wizarding Levels? Can’t dig any deeper, I’m at work ATM…
The former.
It’s a great program, but Joyce isn’t ready for it.
They have remedial courses for those brought up abstinence-only. Our church was one of the ones petitioning for that. We are located in TX.
No, of course they won’t.
There’s got to be something left or the Satanic Temple to have its way with.
I went to IU and we checked out the Unitarian church just off of campus for one service. All I can say is wow. I’m extremely open minded and even I could not take it. The people that run the place are some of the nicest people I have ever met, however.
What was there about it that you couldn’t take? I’m really curious.
Look, Joyce is ready for many things, but unitarian universalism is not one of those things. From what I understand, their entire “standard doctrine” (as much as they have one) is “every religion is true, don’t think about it.”
…on second thought, Joyce is totally ready for unitarian universalism.
We explicitly don’t have a creed or dogma or doctrine. We do, however, have seven meta-principles! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism#Seven_Principles_and_Purposes
“Every religion is true” is a statement that a lot of UUs would agree with, but the second part is actually more, “and if you want to spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how that works then boy is this the church for you.”
The other major strain being, “we think ‘which metaphysical ideas are true?’ is a distraction from the actual work of religion.”
Not really. UU doesn’t HAVE doctrine. It comes down to, individuals explore the truth or falseness of religious propositions on their own, without being dictated to on the subject by the church, minister, or other members of the congregation. So it’s not that all those religions are right. It’s just that it’s everyone’s right to be right or wrong on their own without everyone else getting busy-body about it.
Joyce…. wouldn’t really do well in the don’t-be-a-busy-body department.
Oh jeez, I gotta print this out and show it to all my gay and/or hippie Episcopalian friends.
Dang indeed, Joyce. Dang indeed.
daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang
Gotta love that cognitive dissonance
That’s not cognitive dissonance, so much as cognitive dissonance collapsing and the big reveal of the gap it was hiding.
as a former Episcopalian I think the lesbian priest I had growing up would make Joyce’s head explode. “Hippie church” is pretty accurate actually, depending on the area.
Dang you Willis and your strawman Episcopalians.
It’s funny, but not all that surprising, to see Joyce think of Jacob’s church as a hippie church, since there were actual hippie Christians, sometimes referred to Jesus freaks, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Her parents might be just old enough to remember them.
Hmm…judging from John’s apparent age…it’s not unlikely their childhood overlapped with the early 70s. OTOH, I wouldn’t be surprised if their parents shielded them from knowledge of such ‘perversions of the message’. >_>
So, wait. “Jesus Freak,” mentioned by that same DC Talk mentioned back at Joyce’s party, wasn’t just about some people being mean to Christians?
I think I like that song more, now. Unlike “Colored People,” which sounds horrible today.
It apparently started as a putdown, but some hippie-ish Christians adopted it.
They might remember them out in the streets, handing tickets out for God.
Old habits die hard I guess? But yeah, her world is changing [i]all things considered[/i] so hopefully she’ll get over this too. Own it Joyce!
Then again I know next to nothing about all the different branches of the chuch, so they might really be tree loving, pot smoking shoeless lazy burns…which would make Jacob a terrible member?
Please tell me that last line is the next book title because I love it so ^_^
Yeah, that would be a fun title.
…if she thinks of Episcopalians as “hippies,” she is in for a very rude awakening…
Hope she’s used to multiple forks.
Seriously, I was raised Episcopalian and the services are pretty traditional. Depending on which church you go to, I guess. My dad likes to define Episcopalianism as “Catholic but without the Pope”.
Though not all Episcopalian congregations are cool with gay people, at least not in leadership positions. My mom’s church landed on the other side of that schism that happened a while back…:/
My friend who was raised Episcopalian calls it Catholic-light
*plays “God Save The Queen” on a the radio of a Mini on the street passing the restaurant*
The Sex Pistols version or the guitar solo version which is either by Hendrix or by Brian May (I’m not sure)?
Or that really beautiful version from ZombieU? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsC7ILz7eIE
An instrumental version so the Episcopal lyrics can be used.
Or the Queen version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4zP0BGWNzI
It’s kinda weird seeing Jacob praise Joyce’s aversion to sex as some sort of personal strength, given his full awareness of her upbringing and his own comments on her behaviour.
I mean, he’s not wrong to support someone’s decision to give a relationship time to develop before going to sex, but he’s really giving Joyce the benefit of the doubt when he assumes that’s her intention.
To be fair, he doesn’t know any different and assuming the best of people is a wonderful character trait.
He doesn’t praise her aversion to sex, he supports her coping methods. It doesn’t matter WHY or HOW she’s averse, what matters is that it’s real and valid and finding solutions that work is not badevilwrong of her.
I’m thinking he might have had a convo with Ethan that went something like this:
“…You’re gay and have a girlfriend who hopes you will be converted that way? Uh… does she pressure you into having sex?”
“No, no she doesn’t, poor timid little thing. I think half the reason she’s with me is because she knows I won’t pressure HER. It works out for both of us”
“…Holy casseroli that’s GENIUS”
I think, though I might be wrong, that he didn’t find out Ethan was gay until after they’d broken up.
Ethan (and Danny) accidentally came out to Jacob here, which was well after Joyce broke up with Ethan.
I have a suspicion, though, that Jacob figured it out pretty early and just didn’t see a need to talk about it. Ethan has not been particularly successful at hiding his gaiety from basically anyone.
OTOH, his thoughts about their relationship make more sense to me if he was thinking about them that way before he learned Ethan was gay.
Bring along Sierra, too. Get the full hippie experience.
I seldom guffaw at anything these days even when I find it funny.
I guffawed at this.
That is all.
So Jacob is basically the perfect man?
There are many who believe so.
I wonder what Joyce would think of Canada’s United Church. It’s the largest Protestant denomination here, and has become increasingly liberal in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Canada
My uncle married his husband at a United Church, because his husband is a minister there.
Cute wedding, officiant/preacher/whatever was an awful nice lady.
damn you line break.
didn’t see “nice” for a whole second or two.
………no dark drama or discussions of complicated avenues of morality, sexuality or the like.
I just love those last three panels :D.
Let she who is without granola cast the first pet rock.
“I don’t have granola! Just a quinoa and wheat berry mix!
“… but I could never get blood on Rocky. Someone else go first.”
I’m beginning to wonder what each character’s religion is. I’m not even sure about Joyce.
Joyce’s has been on the About page for six years!
The kids on the main cast page
Joyce, Becky (And Mary!) – Nondenominational fundamentalist protestant.
Dorothy – Atheist, raised areligiously by her Catholic mom and half Catholic, half Jewish dad.
Walky & Sal – Word of Willis said they were raised agnostically, and Sal was sent to a Catholic school on the idea religion is basically moral instruction and Sal needed some (and, tbf, that sounds about right for a juvenile court – reformatory or religious schools are sometimes used as alternatives for juvie. That plus therapy plus probably probation and a ton of social workers/juvenile workers/probation officers/etc.). Neither seem very religious and personally I’d be surprised if Sal believed in god period tbh, as she seems like she’d bristle at the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient authority controlling her life.
Billie – Christian, not very devout but believes in God.
Dina – Doesn’t seem like a believer, definitely would struggle with the scientific inaccuracies.
Amber – Catholic
Danny – Not sure what denomination, but Christian enough his mom nagged him about church.
Ethan – Jewish, not very religious.
Sarah – Not sure.
Ruth – Considering her age, area of Canada, and I believe some Willis comments, probably agnostic-atheist-y.
Mike – Whatever pisses you off.
Joe – Jewish, not very religious.
Roz – Catholic.
Carla – Dunno.
Marcie – Catholic
Jacob – Episcopalian.
Raidah is Muslim, Agatha is Mormon, Asma is Muslim, and Sierra’s Church of God.
Please correct me if I’m wrong about anything, Willis.
Mike is Catholic, he confesses to having your mother, for a nickel.
“Confession implies penitence. I merely regret her accidental involvement.
I was planning to have your father for a nickel.”
“Well, on the down side, I banged Jesus’s mom for a nickel. On the up side, I said a few dozen Hail Mary’s while I did it, so I think I’m good.”
Mike says he is sorry…
…that he didn’t have a dime.
Walky may be an atheist. At the very least, he thinks religion is dumb as rocks.
Yeah, I believe Willis described their upbringing as agnostic/atheist/apathetic. So, yeah, Walky’s irreverent to say the least. And, again, I’d be very surprised if Sal believed in God.
Uh-oh, Raidah’s going to get a mad case of jealousy.
I kind of expected her to show up here to be honest.
Mm true. The day is still young. Or she left Jacob to his bromancing.
Let me tell you… if you REALLY wanna see a hippie church, check out a Quaker meeting. We’re essentially hippies, but less ostentatious. For example:
– Our big thing is peace/nonviolence; Quakers can cite their religious beliefs to be conscientious objectors and not be required to join the military.
– Quakers also don’t take oaths – we believe that everything we say is judged by God, not just stuff we want to say in front of Him – and so we don’t do the Pledge of Allegience or swear on Bibles in court.
– Our name is on oatmeal and rice cakes. How much more hippie-ish can you get?
– We have NO pastors, priests, or ministers; during Quaker Meeting, we all sit in silence to commune with God on a personal level, rather than listen to a sermon. If someone feels “moved by the spirit”, they may stand up and share their thoughts/beliefs/whatever they’ve been contemplating with everyone.
– My local Quaker meeting recently organized a protest against Trump’s climate change cabinet, and had a speaker discuss trying to keep fracking out of our community.
– I converted to Quakerism after attending a high school run with Quaker principles in mind. Students called all teachers and faculty – including the head of school – by their first names (Quakers value equality and respect), had mandatory community service (often helping in the cafeteria or with custodial duties), and attended the multi-cultural friendly Meeting for Worship (Since it’s mostly done in silence, you can pray to whomever or whatever you believe in, or just reflect on things personally). This school was also an international school, with kids of every race, religion (not just Quaker!), and sexual/gender identity (They had a gay-straight alliance on campus, which held a rather popular, annual, cross-dressing dance called the “Ru Paul Ball”).
And that’s just the tip of the hippie, liberal iceberg. 🙂
Hello Friend! I am also quaker I covered two years ago from catholicism.
converted* Sorry autocorrect
Hi, Friend! 😀
Quakers are probably the single continuously nicest Christian group I can think of. You’ve been pretty much about fifty years ahead of the rest of America for the past three to four centuries. I can honestly say I have never heard of a mean Quaker. It’s weird. You forgot to mention that when Quakers do serve in the military it’s often in extremely dangerous support roles like field medics and stretcher bearers, saving lives by running into literal hell zones, dragging people to safety, and then running back in to do it again, all without any form of weaponry. You guys rock!!
Mean Quaker…
Nixon ? Lyndon La rouche?
Well I’ll be damned…I never knew Nixon was a Quaker.
Yeah, Nixon’s not exactly our poster boy. We don’t brag about him. We’re more likely to mention William Penn, Dave Matthews (Yes, they guy from the band), and the guy who started Cadbury chocolates.
William Penn was an absolutely wonderful human being. Honestly, one of the few reasons I don’t personally become a Quaker myself is that I kinda like rituals and saints of my Catholic upbringing, and because, deep in my heart, I know I could never be a proper pacifist. However, I’m so liberal a Catholic the Pope would probably excommunicate me if he knew my views. But I do feel like the US would be a lot nicer if there were more Quakers and less fundie evangelicals.
Nixon ended a war and normalized diplomatic/trade relations with the largest country on earth, which has helped raise hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. Not bad for a guy everyone hates.
You obviously weren’t alive then. Nixon did not end the war. After running on an “end the war” platform in ’68 he continued pumping young bodies into the grinder for another four years, so that he could run in ’72 on a – you guessed it – “end the war” platform. Even then he didn’t end it – he just allowed it to peter out because the American public was done with it. If he could have mustered the support (and continued to conceal his criminal actions) he would have kept us fighting right up to ’76.
BTW, the first Quaker I ever encountered was a gorgeous young woman in a silver bikini at a Jimi Hendrix concert, soliciting signatures on an anti-war petition. At least I think it was an anti-war petition. She could have been agitating for wholesale slaughter of puppies and I still would have signed up!
Wow, that sounds remarkably inclusive and tolerant! The only thing I knew about Quakers were that they produced Quaker oats, and judging from the picture on the pack I just assumed Quakers were another strict puritan brand of Christianity. Thank you for sharing and dispelling that assumption.
Quakers have almost nothing to do with Quaker Oats. The company picked the name because Quakers were known for being trustworthy – that’s the only connection.
Wow. That sounds even cooler than I already thought Quakers were. I remember reading about the egalitarianism and opposition to war and being very impressed in about 4th or 5th grade. I mentioned that something along those lines, maybe something as simple as “I think I like the Quakers” to my Mom, and she goes “Oh God, he’s a Quaker now” in the tone other people would say “used car salesman.” I didn’t really get what was supposed to be wrong with that, and I was strangelg hurt by it, but lacked the capability, at nine years old, to say that or to phrase what I found appealing about Quaker doctrines. Not too many years later I became an atheist anyway, but I’ve still got a soft spot in me heart for Quakers, one that got a lot bigger from reading your comment.
I don’t think people many people really dislike Quakers (except for the usual asshats of various religions) but they do have the hippie reputation even among more liberal Christians. I think it’s mostly just because most moderate and liberal Christians tend to prefer to keep their faith personal, because we associate noticeable faith with religious fundamentalism.
Of course, when we encounter people that are noticeably religious but nicer than fundamentalists, we tend to think it’s odd, not necessarily distasteful, but just odd (kind of in the same way most non-asshole people view actual hippies, they’re not necessarily bad, but they’re just Odd to us.)
Odd just seems to be the word that is most accurate for describing these feelings. It almost feels like a spectrum of weirdness. Fundamentalists, cults, conspiracy theorists all tip off our internal weirdness alarms, and with only a little logic we can see why, and thus they come off as extremists to be avoided.
Meanwhile folks like Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Amish, Hippies, and some of the more benign Mormons and Fringe Religions all trip the same weirdness alarm, but try as we might there’s usually nothing we can actually find distasteful about them, so we largely just file them under “odd”, they’re not hurting anybody or themselves, but we’d probably feel a bit uncomfortable being invited to a formal ceremony with them (often just because we ourselves would feel out of place.)
It sometimes feels a bit like we’re jealous. Like I said, people don’t often show that much faith in public, and it’s often because we try not to think a ton about it, especially when we can see plenty of people giving faith a bad name through zealotry. So when we see someone who’s so blatantly a good person, nice, a pacifist, at peace with their faith, we feel less worthy in comparison. So we chuckle and file them as odd, rather than get out of our rut and consider being like them.
But that’s just my two cents.
That sounds super great 🙂 Especially the pacifism and the way meetings work really speaks to me. Yay for inclusive religions <3
I’ve always liked their refusal to swear oaths – they believe it’s hypocritical, as its their duty under God to ALWAYS be honest.
See, THAT’s the kind of religion I can respect. Believe in your higher powers all you want, just don’t shove it down everyone’s throats and don’t use it as an excuse to marginalize, abuse and/or straight up murder anyone who disagrees with or doesn’t fit your worldview.
I’ll be frank – everything I know about quakers, I learned from Diana Gabaldon books. I didn’t even know you were still around! Are you still addressing people as “friend?” Because that has been starting to replace a casual “bongo” and “motherfucker” when mentally addressing people.
You’re not the only one who’s surprised Quakers are still around; my Meeting actually gave away (Or maybe they sold them for charity… I forget) bumper stickers that said, “Quakers? Where?”. Heck, in college, when I told someone I was Quaker, he told me, “I thought you guys were extinct!”
And yes, Quakers still call each other “Friends” (Even if Steven Colbert thinks that sounds a bit needy, according to his I Am America and So Can You book). In fact, many Quaker-based elementary schools are called “Friends” schools (Each one is typically called “[Name of Town] Friends School”).
Not just the elementary ones! Mine went all the way PreK-12. A couple of the other schools in our sports league for middle and upper school (being from the Philly area, there were enough Quaker schools to form their own – called, of course, the Friends League) also had ‘Friends’ in the name. I’m not sure whether there was a pattern where only the schools with a lower school did though.
Also, *quaker school high five*
*Quaker school high five back!*
I worked for a bit at a non-Quaker (public) school…but their mascot was the Quaker. Granted, the school was located on a street called Pennsylvania…but I always found it an odd choice for a mascot.
Poor Joyce. She has yet to realize her true Lord and Savior lies sleeping beneath the waves in the Halls of R’lyeh. He does not require prayer nor will it help when the time comes but immortality awaits those who undergo the transformation. *pause* I’m sorry, what, was I channeling again?
My mind was blown when I realized Cthulhu was Lovecraft’s satire of Christianity, being a dead god who will rise from the dead to save the faithful and destroy the world as well as being worshiped by all races as well as classes across the world (which horrified poor poor ignorant HPL).
So how is he a Savior? What does he save people from?
Obviously dying last. His followers get to be eaten first.
From the hell that is being a three dimensional being in a four dimensional existence, the endless suffering of reality, the mind numbing monotony of life in general, all fear and all hopelessness. For what is death if not the final and greatest mercy? What is destruction if not the replacing of one thing with another? And is not being able to witness such a great and remarkable change within one’s last moments a truly magnificent gift?
Cthulhu worship: the ultimate nihilistic religion
I’m sorry, what, was I channeling again?
You were remembering that Joyce has Chick tracts at her disposalin her shoes.
Maybe she has also one of those!
I know Episcopalians are a more progressive denomination of Christianity, but for some reason I never would have thought to use the word “hippie” to describe them until now.
Left and Right is a spectrum with Joyce’s church being on the other end from Lawful Lawful while Epicopalians are just Lawful. I go to a Presbyterian Church which is descended from John Calvin, who would die of apoplexy at the fact we’re pro-gay and women.
As someone that grew up Episcopalean, or Anglican as most the world knows them: that really depends on which Episcople or Anglican Church you go into.
In Joyce’s home religion, anything to the right of Pat Robertson is considered “dangerously hippie”. It’s kind of used as a catch-all scare term for anything even vaguely liberal. Basically, just like “socialist”.
I think you meant ‘left’.
No, that’s how far to the right these worldviews are. Even vaguely moderate liberal things like “maybe we shouldn’t kill gay people” or “maybe folks shouldn’t be forced to starve to death” or “maybe rich people aren’t fundamentally better than other people” are seen as pure evil and a sign of America’s collapse.
Vaguely leftish things bring out a much more violent backlash.
Joyce’s church already is to the right of Pat Robertson, and they don’t call themselves hippies.
(Her old church, I mean. Maybe I should have said Carol’s church.)
I think they might actually BE Pat Robertson’s church given all the missionary work in India, or at least an affiliate. Throw in some worship of Reagan and we’ll know for sure.
Oh shoot, yeah, I see my typo now. My bad. *embarrassed look*
It could be worse Joyce it could be one of those evil papist Jesuit run churches where they secretly teach people pinko communism 😉
I am so West Coast, the only subgroup I struggle to believe would be on campus in quantity is young Christians.
Same. There are basically no religious people at my school because where I am, we kinda see any form of religion as dangerous brainwashing. We let them exist of course, but strongly, strongly discourage spreading any religion. yay liberal west coast…. i think?
as in, “you do you, but please don’t teach it to your kids and hopefully the religion will die with you when you turn 106”
Pretty much, I didn’t hear anyone booing street or quad evangelists, but I did see them all just turn around and walk away when they started up,
Yay! Episcopalians represent!!
I’m not really familiar with what all these churches are called in the US, but what Jacob is describing sounds like what my church I went to as a teen (and am still a not-really-practicing member of) was like. European Evangelical Protestants in generally non-religious Northern Germany. Super liberal. We had women pastors and lgbtq people all over the place, in official positions too (my youth group co-leader was a trans girl :D). That was really important to me as a young queer kid.
Probably why I liked it so much and stayed so long, despite literally no one else in my family being religious in any way, shape or form. I’m still a member, because I still very occasionally go to service and enjoy the ritual (and my faith is very complicated, but I know I believe in SOMETHING), but I don’t really subscribe to a doctrine anymore, or never really did, idk. But that doesn’t feel like a conflict to me. It’s always felt like a really chill church to me.
So I really like this. Jacob’s explanation of his church speaks to me. I am also totally a hippie, so there’s that xD
Believe it or not, but Epsicopaleans is what Americans call Church of England, changed from Anglican for obvious, nationalistic reasons.
Oh ok! Yeah that makes sense. I’m just looking it up now and apparently Episcopalians practice some kind of middle ground between Protestantism and Catholicism. Which is very fascinating to me, those are the main two ones in my country and when I was young I always thought they were sooooo different lol. And they are different. But really, truly not as much as you are lead to believe as a kid :p
I’m Canadian and I’ve literally never heard Epsicopaleans out loud and have a bad habit of reading it as ‘episco-poplians’.
I’m pretty sure we just call the Anglican churches Anglican, or whatever the specific church is called
Uh-piss-kuh-pay-lee-uhnz.
… you know, if you’re West Coast. Otherwise it’s
Eh-piss-kah-pay-lay-ehnz.
Sa-Nee-Fayr as it is called in the region where caesaria82 is from.
That’s about what I would guess (western) if I actually paused to read the word instead of starting the word, panicking, then forgetting how to read.
Episcopaleans actually broke off from the Church of England originally. So while it still has a very Anglican (and by extension Catholic) organization and flavor to it, they refuse to accept either the Monarch of England or the Pope as their spiritual leader, instead focusing on their own bishops, with dioceses that vary from place to place and from state to state. As a rule however, Episcopalean churches are more liberal than many other American churches, although the Catholic Church in North America has over the past few decades been deeply influenced by the Latin American doctrine of liberation theology, which was the outgrowth of the Catholic Church in Latin America following the second Vatican Council and the increasing popularity of socialist, communist, and Marxist ideologies in Latin America, which decided to put the emphasis of religion back onto social justice, and challenging systematic norms that were oppressive and kept people impoverished.
That is really interesting and cool, thanks for that explanation! So Episcopalian is probably still a little more Catholic-y (in spirit, if maybe not in practice) than my church, but overall pretty similar. Good to know. So I could probably totally go to an Episcopalian service and not be lost lol.
The Episcopacy is a governement of the Church by bishops and is another name for the Church of England, applied long before American churches were referred to as Episcopalian.
The American based Episcopalian churches remain members of the Worldwide Anglican Union. There was no fracture within the churches, they simply stopped recogising the monarch as their figurehead. Something that only lip service is paid to since the days of the Stewarts.
Protestant, yet Catholic refers to the actual, original meaning of the words. Catholic means Universal or all encompassing.
Yes, you will find many of the rituals familiar if you were raised Catholic. Confession is not observed, except as a liturgy during mass and Hail Mary etc are only practiced by the self described “High Church” Anglicans. Other small differences apply.
If I remember correctly the name change in America happened during the Revolutionary war with “Patriot” churches relabeling themselves as Episcopalean and “Loyalist” churches keeping the name Anglican…Until England decided to wash their hands of the thirteen colonies, at which point the Loyalist churches either switched to the Episcopalean name or joined the migration of the 80,000 loyalists who left the US after the Revolutionary War. Although at that point I believe we where still the Continental Congress of America.
Yep, as I said nationalism is the only reason for the name difference.
Fun fact: because the church has become so liberal of late, some episcopalean churches are breaking off and calling themselves Anglican again so they can keep being predjudiced.
Once again, that really depends on which church you walk into. They run the gamut from Vicar of Dibley to Hellfire n Brimstone.
They will enjoy the company of the huge African Anglican congregation then.
I talk about the situation in Uganda to a class I sub for, and goddamnit but I have a burning hatred of the Ugandan Anglican Church.
Like I said, Americans think they are conservative, wait until they butt heads with the African congregation. That’s the Hellfire n Brimstone end of the Anglicans.
Unfortunately the Episcopal church has already butted heads with the African congregations. During the last worldwide meeting of the Anglican Communion, there was a huge debate about whether or not it was OK that the American Episcopalian church decided to allow for gay marriages. The African congregations were all for kicking us out on our asses, while the Canadian congregation was very supportive. In the end they voted to punish us by essentially making us second class citizens of the Communion for a while, barring us from some key leadership positions, among other things. I am usre I am not alone in wondering whether it is really worth it to try and remain in full communion with these people. Still, the Anglican church as a whole was built on a foundation of attempting to unify two fundamentally different world views (at the time they were…), the Catholics and the Protestants, so maybe it is just part of our task to try and figure out how to worship with them.
was that her accepting his offer?
Acknowledging you belong somewhere sounds like big time acceptance.
I don’t think that’s acceptance.
I think that’s depression. One more stage to go.
Oh geez the way Jacob stops himself from saying she’s Muslim …. afraid of what Joyce’s reaction would be? Fair enough. Invites her to church anyway.
Things really turned around for me when it comes to how I see Joyce’s character for the first time in a long time I’m just going to say it, Up yours Joyce.
Something about this strip in particular? Cause I’m not seeing anything bad here.
I didn’t know Episcopalians were like that. Good for them
I applied to work at an Episcopalian backed charter school and didn’t get hired =( I was super bummed. Their principal was a lady minister.
As far as I recall they’re closer to Catholic then they are Non-denomination Christian – which makes their more lax beliefs that much more interesting.
The church has roots to King Henry VIII which is always fun. But it is a good church I think – except for the one I went to as a kid. I hated how scripted it was.
will Joyce’s head explode when she learns Radiah is Muslim? a lot of fundies are islamophobic but haven’t heard anything in that regard from Joyce or her circle yet
does she think that Muslims can be converted like she tried to convert Jewish Ethan? or are they Forever Lost in her mind?
She interacts with Asma to pick up her mail. I think she’s fine.
I literally squeed at the alt-text. I recently became a Unitarian Universalist <3
I’m going to be honest here, I grew up Christian and ever since I was 10 this is the exact type of church I went to and I didn’t know there was a name that separated us from the Stero type of the Conservative Christian platform form that most people see Christians as.
Well, typically people distinguish between “mainline Protestantism” and various forms of “conservative” or “fundamentalist” or “Evangelical” Protestantism. Mainline churches are politically moderate to liberal denominations like Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists. The fundamentalists are denominations like Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Mega Churches, etc. The mainline/fundie split goes back about 100 years, IIRC.
Mainline is a category that includes a lot of fairly conservative churches – it doesn’t really go into the far right the way fundamentalists do, but there’s a lot of room on the conservative spectrum left of fundagelicals.
I grew up Episcopalian. They’re a pretty nice crowd. Not for me, though.
I would approve a Joyce and Jacob relationship.
I like that Joyce is being presented with a non-shitty faith option. Well, I mean I don’t know much about Episcopalians, but being cool with gay people and female pastors sounds like not shitty anyway. So, maybe this could help Joyce with her self journey. It might not be where she ends up, but exploring the options could be good. I’ll be interested to see where it goes anyway.
We’ve got gay and lesbian ministers and bishops too.
I thoroughly believe that Episcopalians are the Nicest Christians.
Uh… depends on the Episcopalians. A ‘friend of the family’ is in an Episcopalian church in Virginia. When the Episcopalians allowed homosexuality they revolted against the hierarchy and left the church because they hate the idea of homosexuals. Lots of politicians funded them and they were able to buy their own building (because the Episcopalian church kept the building as it belonged to them.)
With many Christians they may seem nice but the facade of piety isn’t always real.
Oh, yeah, there’s a turd in every box of chocolates, no doubt. But I mean taken as a whole/their Official Church Stances on things. (I live in Mississippi, I know all about Good Christian Folk who are in fact terrible.)
I ended up parting ways with Christianity because the core tenet of “nonbelievers go to hell” invalidated way too many people I love. But if I were going to go back, I’d be Episcopalian.
I don’t know where you’ve been getting your chocolates from, but you should stop shopping there.
She just said: she lives in Mississippi.
Hippie Church?
Imagine the hymns:
Amazing Grass,
how sweet the smell,
that made a wreck of me,
I once was straight,
now shit-faced,
pass the joint ’round please…
Naw, they’d sing along to, like, Fleetwood Mac or something.
Never thought I’d ever see Kevin-Bloody-Wilson quoted in here!
🙂
I can always go for some festival of life 🙂
Props for knowing about KBW.
Where’s that muzak hacker fella? I would like to request “Teen for God,” by Dar Williams please.
You are the hippie, Joyce. It is you.
Coming from a non-American background, it amuses me that Episcopalians (or Anglicans as they’re known outside the US) are seen as a hippie church. Yes all those filthy hippies like her majesty the queen of england.
Eh, they aren’t really. Episcopalians are seen as one of the “respectable” denominations that upper class people attend; they have pretty standard upper-class views. Actual hippies, if they attend anything, will be over at the UU or Quakers or Neopagans.
Yeah, it’s only hippie by the extreme conservative standards of Joyce’s upbringing.
Joyce’s body language in this one is… kind of odd. I don’t know if she’s just responding to Jacob’s essential kindness or if his sex appeal is working its magic on her too!
That said… Joyce, you go to a church in town where attendees are encouraged to clap along with the music and dance in the pews. To someone like me, that’s a ‘hippie church’!
Soooo.
We are going to a church?
…
Ryan, anyone?
…
…
…
You just had to ruin the moment for everybody, didn’t you?
Ryan was lying about being a pastors son tho
he was not
And just in case Word of Cthulhu is not good enough:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/bat/
If you are still sane after hearing it, it is not the True Word Of Cthulhu.
Uh, just because it’s a church doesn’t mean it’s the same church Ryan’s related to. There are at least 200+ different denominations within the US, and roughly 350,000 different congregations. And I would wager that Bloomington, Indiana has more than two churches near their college.
Yeah, it isn’t automatic but it is a nice way to catch up with him and would be broadly in line with the wider themes of the strip.
Because I’m a superhero story fan, it would be a great time for Joyce to find out that she’s telekinetic in this universe too and Force Choke the little rat in human skin.
You know what else is a nice way to catch up with Ryan? Some random driver recognising him while he’s out walking, and then deciding to act with integrity.
I don’t know about “nice”. And tbh, that just sounds like something to make Joyce lose even more faith in her religion, if she can’t even be safe going to a new church. Not everything has to relate back to Ryan.
Given the semi-autobiographical slant, I would not necessarily expect Joyce to keep her faith in this story, unless I’m forgetting something Willis has specifically said otherwise. Just… a ‘don’t get your hopes up’ note of caution. 🙁
Are we going to see a service interrupted by Amazi-Girl beating up Ryan? I think that’d be a super killjoy for her rep.
I now officially love Jacob! 🙂
Your comment contrasts in a humorous fashion with the vacant and completely unimpressed expression of your lute player.
Jacob x Joyce shipping then?
Carol is gonna friggin’ flip.
Carol: “Episcopaleans!!! That’s one step away from being a filthy antichrist worshipping papist!!”
In some parts of the US Episcopalians are referred to as “soft-shell Catholics”.
I think this is mid-Atlantic argot.
One of my friends is Episcopalean, and they once joked “I’m just like you (I’m Catholic) but without the religiously mandated guilt complex or the guy in the funny hat.”
Hm…more and more I get the feeling that Jacob does not fit to the rest of the cast…because…well, he’s not dumb! At least not in the comical, slightly (or sometimes not-so-slightly) exaggerating way most characters are.
He is a sensible, insightful and respectful person, considerate in his words…that’s just so…I don’t know, imagine a comic full of people like Jacob! There wouldn’t be any drama, no misunderstandings…and it certainly wouldn’t be called “Dumbing of age”!
I’m curious to see where this is going!
Ha, I know: Jacob is a robot! (sounds likely, doesn’t it?)
I wanted to have the snippy reply of “yeah, a sex robot” because of Shortpacked!
then I considered Jacob’s conversations in the last couple of days, and felt bad.
Joyce would be really cute with flowers in her hair. I’m just saying.
Great avatar for that comment!
That’s true.
So…
Will Sarah wait until she and Joyce are alone, before she RAGES at her for being dragged into a booth, forced to listen to convos about sex, (while sitting beside “the hottest man on the planet” ™) and then having to watch the object of her lust/affections, to all intents and purposes, hit-on Joyce?
“You KNEW I liked him!”
Interesting times…
Or she could be reasonable and recognize the offer of friendship for what it is, but that would be silly, apparently.
When has lust and awkwardness and isolationism ever been logical? 🙂
Speaking as the son of an Episcopalian minister (or “mom” as I call her), friggin’ FINALLY.
… If Joyce’s upbringing was anything like mine, realizing that she has become what her parents would call a (in my case) “leftie pinko commie socialist” or (in Joyce’s case) a “hippie church” member would be a crisis of conscience on par with the crisis of faith she’s been experiencing for the past few weeks (in comic time anyway). It’s a huge, “Oh fuck” moment if you’ve been brought up to view something as Teh Ebil and then you realize that 1, it’s not, and 2, you actually kind of agree with it.
For me for a long time I had this thing of, “Well, socialism* had some good points but that doesn’t mean I agree with all of it!” Now I’m pretty comfortable with saying I’m for single-payer health care and a strong social safety net.
*Note: what far right households derisively call socialism is not actually socialism, but rather is a left-leaning mixed-market system with a strong social safety net.
Yeah, you’re trained so hard to be against “anything hippie or socialist” and to view that as a mortal sin that can’t be recovered from. So yeah, it’s hard to break away from that and realize “oh shit, this is actually the party or church that is align with my real beliefs”.
Or that moment when you realize that there is no organized political party, no philosophy or ideology or religion, no group or category, where your view of the world actually fits without major differences on issues they consider core.
See also why I am stuck halfway between the Canadian liberal party and the NDP.
Liberals fit me on sciences and gun control etc ehile NDP fit on social issues. If they had a love child, that would be my party.
Same! Coalition time!
I think that’s one her and her dad have shared recently. I recall his surprised looks on the Sunday strips, where people were more concerned about Becky’s hair then they were her father running around with a gun.
Joyce: *Blurts out moderately judgmental sentence*
[Beat}
Joyce: “Oh, motherf-”
Abrupt cut to next scene.
It’s funny how extremes meet. My dad was a proper Scottish socalist and a strong atheist. And he was extremely derisive of what he called “happy clappy” churches. If you were going to do religion, he felt, you might as well do it properly.
Of course, he was also derisive of the small-minded, conservative churches, but for different reasons. He got on very well with our minister, though, who said a nice piece at the funeral.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Head leaning forward on arms rested on the table, soft dreamy look… Joyce, my dear, are you starting to develop a slight bit of a crush?
Also, I like Joyce’s acknowledgment that her grip on her faith used to be is slipping. Because that’s a hard thing to admit even when it happens. Like, she’s been trained all her life that losing her faith is the single worst thing that could happen to a person and condemns them to an eternity in Hell and a life of immoral sinful activity that hurts man and God. And that that faith is all or nothing, not a buffet she can harvest the good parts from.
So to admit to another person that yeah, my faith is leaving, I don’t hold all those beliefs anymore or fight so strictly, is huge and shows the level of trust she has in Jacob thanks to his earlier comments about sex being scary.
Panel 2: Awkward glossing over the fact that Raidah is muslim. 🙁 And the sad part is we know he’s been really excited about learning stuff about her faith, so this is just a sign of the new normal. That because of the rise of nazis and islamophobia, it is not entirely safe to tell people that someone is muslim, especially someone who is known to be “of faith”.
And that recognition by Jacob that admitting Raidah is muslim to a full group beyond just Sarah who already knows her might be dangerous feels like an ominous part of where America is heading. And it’s the ominousness I don’t know how to handle. I know how to handle intense angry violent bigotry, but I don’t know how to handle nazis with an authoritarian leader who has multiple times noted his belief that camps can be a good thing for “undesirable” groups.
Like, I know how to fight against anything but that, cause I’m not privileged enough to expect I wouldn’t be in those camps if things go that way and so it makes it hard to figure out what to do or fully believe in a future. And that’s with me being lucky enough to be white and not muslim. For our muslim brethren that fear is a million times worse (I still remember my muslim former colleague who felt like he needed to personally apologize to me for the Pulse nightclub shooting simply because of how muslims are expected to accept universal guilt for anything any muslim person does anywhere).
Panel 3-4: 🙁 She’s remembering how triggering her attempt to reconnect with her old church was and is super wary of accepting an invitation she probably would have practically jumped at a few weeks ago.
Dunno about the crush… I think it’s just opening up to someone who has just confirmed her in an awesome way.
On the other hand, this is JOYCE who develops crushes faster than Walky eats nachos, so you might be onto something…
I really, really wish I had any comforting words about the current regime. I can at least say what I see from my comfort zone over in Socialist Utopia Sweden – I see a lot of very bright US citizens with very sensible values getting up in arms and learning everything they can about how to work a system they up to now have taken for granted.
Hang in their. You do tons of good for people who really need it.
I don’t know how to handle nazis with an authoritarian leader who has multiple times noted his belief that camps can be a good thing for “undesirable” groups.
Trump: “Not only will Guantanamo not be closing, but it’s going to be expanded into the best prison in the world. And Cuba will pay for it. A world class prison, with world class waterboarding and more! I am the best at building prisons. I am the best at imprisoning people.”
And it’ll bear the TRUMP logo, of course.
I neglected to put quotes around the first paragraph. Those words are Cerberus’, not mine.
While most of us don’t know how to fight back against the Neo-Nazis, I’m ready and willing. I’ve been the token straight guy in my social group my whole life and if anyone is going to drag my friends or anyone in my community off to a camp, they’ll have to do it over my dead body. And we’ve already started fighting back. When they tried that bullshit with the ethics committee the uproar shut that down quick. And most of us have realized that the best way to fight is pay attention, and raise hell when bullshit like that gets proposed. The Orange bastard already has one of the lowest incoming approval ratings of all time, and the American public is now watching him like a hawk. There are people here who will not let that happen to LGBT people, and there are people who are willing to die before something like that happens. I know, that because of the Orange bastard, it might be hard to believe, but always remember, in a real democracy he would have lost big time. His supporters are the minority. And I know people (myself included) who will walk to hell and back before we let a minority group of bigoted whites oppress anyone. What I’m trying to say is, you have support. From a lot of us. On a slightly unrelated and much less serious note, my white guilt has become ten times worse over the past few weeks.
Oh, see, I read it differently. I thought Jacob was hinting at some tension that has developed between Raidah and him along religious lines. I wondered the same thing about his comments in yesterday’s strip about being seen as nothing but a sex object–maybe this something that’s been on the forefront of his mind lately because he’s dealing with it every day. Not sure.
Panel 5: I get a bit sad at how low a bar this is, but so hard to clear for so many, especially so many communities of faith. The sexism and homophobia just runs so deep (not that atheist communities are much better what with the MRAs, the Trump Libertarians, and the hate movement that spawned out of angry gamer bros).
Like it’s important, but I’m a bit older so I remember when Gene Robinson was first installed as the first gay bishop and how violent the reaction from some Episcopalian groups was, with some even threatening schism or split over the decision. And how inoffensive Gene had to be in response.
Panel 6: Which makes Joyce’s response all the more meaningful. Episcopalians are not the UU, are not neopaganism or wicca, are rather politically moderate and certainly not radicals.
But to Joyce’s training, that is beyond the pale, something to mock and deride as “hippie” because it isn’t an Evangelical movement that sold its soul to the far-right.
And yeah, that instant derision is what folks in those communities are trained in. It is seen as a mortal sin to support anything “hippie” or “socialist”. To do so is the equivalent of yelling Heil Satan and working in service to the Antichrist. And so you are supposed to automatically reject anything that even remotely smells of “hippiness” or “liberalism” in order to be a good person (creating a situation not unlike toxic masculinity or toxic whiteness, cause basically any identity that defines itself by what it must never be like rather than what it is quickly becomes a toxic dance of avoiding anything done by a group of people in reflexive bigotry or outright banning people of certain groups from participating in things you like).
And it’s that whole mess in parentheses that was responsible for the election being close enough to steal through all the means in which it was made unfair and undemocratic. Groups of people trained to reflexively backlash against anything tainted with woman cooties, to be reflexively against anything espoused by a black man, to angrily reject anything any Democrat says and fully marry oneself to being against empathy, kindness, fairness, or any other positive trait if the Democrats are for it.
Basically people finding it easier to fall into nazism or nazi-apologism in their headline quest to not be all the things they fear being too much alike for their self-images as Christians or white people or straight people or men.
That breaking away for a second from the Fox News/Alex Jones worldview will mean one’s complete loss of self.
And it’s sad that they, because of what they view themselves as having to be against, will never fully appreciate how many people close to me their angry tantrum will kill. Innocent, good people who just had the bad luck to be born different enough to be hated by people married to these toxic interpretations of what it means to be a dominant group member.
I dunno, it’s getting really hard at times with all this shit.
Sadly that’s exactly where Carol is coming from.
Panel 7: And that moment of intense painful awareness. Where the automatic response is questioned. I’ve seen that moment in folks and yeah, it can be downright painful and traumatic for them. When you are told all your life and devote so much of your life to that automatic rejection on lines like that, when your whole sense of self is predicated on that?
That’s a lot to let go. And here I think Joyce is realizing that automatic response or no, she isn’t holding to those conservative beliefs anymore about the inferiority of women, about the sinfulness of queer folks, and so on.
Panel 8: So yeah, I empathize with her crisis of faith here as she realizes that she can’t really reconnect with the faith she was raised in and so if she is going to remain Christian, she’s going to have better luck in a “hippie church” she was carefully taught to revile.
Cause, she knows too many of the people her old church rants about to be able to stomach that anymore and needs a space where gay people are accepted and the rules are softened. Whether that will be enough to save what remains of her faith is yet to be determined, but it’s nice she’ll be making the effort nonetheless and recognizes that where her faith is now is no longer in the type of church she was taught was right.
There are lot’s of people trapped in toxic cultures of one kind or another, just like you note. It takes serious amount of strength of character to see that and move out from that bubble.
Joyce is all kinds of awesome!
Happy Corona^D^D^D^D^D^D Inauguration Day, everyone. Guh. It’s gonna be a tough four years.
Let’s make sure they’re ONLY four years.
Given historical patterns, a swing to a Democrat-controlled Senate in 2 years isn’t at all unlikely… especially if The Donald is as much of a total shitshow as I expect. If there’s a split government, his agenda grinds to a halt, and Senate investigations might start.
He may also alienate GOP Congresspeople (and for the love of dog, “Congress” includes both the House and the Senate) with his kneejerk Twitter-tantrums the first time they don’t go along with what he demands. Calling a Senator “a worthless loser and idiot” publicly isn’t going to help The Donald, regardless of policy affiliation.
Sadly, a swing to a Democratic Senate is going to be really hard in 2018. Barring retirements & the like, there are 25 Democrats up for re-election and only 8 Republicans – most of whom survived 2012 and the wave in 2006. Just holding ground will be a hard fight. Taking the Senate will require a serious wave election.
Which is possible, if things get bad enough fast enough.
I was balancing that against the tendency of the POTUS’s party to lose seats in midterms, especially if they have both houses. Senate is currently at 52-48, so it would be a gain of 3 for a majority.
Mid-terms aren’t just won by the party that isn’t in power — they’re specifically won by a party that’s angry or afraid (huge gains happened in 2002, for example), with a tendency to _otherwise_ go to Republicans, who are across the board more likely to show up (disproportionately so for their numbers) to _any_ given election.
I still don’t think Trump is a Republican.
I think a lot of traditional Republicans are going to be unpleasantly surprised by this in the coming weeks and months.
I think a lot of traditional Democrats are going to be pleasantly surprised by this in the coming weeks and months, if they can look up from their script of distaste long enough to notice.
I am NOT a supporter or Trump. I voted Johnson. I’m concerned by his stance on Eminent Domain, for starters.
Episcopalians are pretty much catholics that’re more liberal, I mean, they’re not THAT hippie…
Compared to where she was? What Jacob’s describing is pretty damn hippie.
i have been waiting so long to hear Joyce or Becky checking out the Universalist Church, considering they are the biggest LGBT-friendly Christian group in Bloomington; they are literally at every HIV March, Pride event, as well as often hosting the LGBT Youth group in Bloomington.
Yes, Joyce, join us! Bring Becky!
Seriously, bring Becky. I think it would be good for her to have experience with a church that accepts her, and it might also widen the resources available to her as a homeless lesbian teenager.
YAY WE GET A SHOUT-OUT.
PLEASE please please have Joyce & Becky have experience with a Unitarian Universalist church!
It’s clear you have a decent amount of UU readers, and as Nym said, it would be beneficial for Becky.
(We are small but mighty and everywhere. We will take that alt-text and run with it!)
<3 Another Episcopalian reader here, happy for the shout-out! And, like Joyce, I was raised Baptist. I think I actually sent Willis a tumblr message a while ago asking if there were any liberal-leaning Christians in the DoA cast, and he pointed out Sierra (whom I believe is UU?) I didn't realize I was really missing Episcopalian representation in this comic until this strip though!
Also, while it's probably a coincidence, it was with an Episcopalian reverend, during counseling, where I first brought up, in tears, the idea that I don't want to have sex with anyone or get married, and might not ever be able to, and she was the first person who told me that, yeah, some people are asexual. It doesn't mean you're broken or missing out on some fundamental human experience. Sex can be scary, and there are sex therapists out there if you *do* want to try to become more sexual, but you never have to if you don't want to.
And it was a huge relief. It was amazing. Like, "Oh, I don't have to stress and worry about never being able to do this thing. I can just not do it. And then I can choose to try to do it later if I want to, on my own terms."
I know that's not exactly what Jacob was saying when he was empathizing with Joyce? And, er, probably encouraging a gay person to stay in the closet is never going to be a good thing. But the underlying message was really reassuring, especially coming from a writer that is sex-positive enough to write a NSFW version of his comic. Like it feels good to know that there are sex-positive people who nevertheless still respect people who find sex scary or uninteresting.
Per this one in book 2 Sierra was brought up in Church of God.
Glad to hear you were able to find a sympathetic figure to confide in.
I was already an introvert, raised Catholic (gave it up ages ago), and the idea of talking to one of the priests about such a personal issue, as an adolescent, would frighten the heck out of me. No small part of that was the whole authority thing in that denomination.
Ah! Good catch.
Er, I was 22 at the time, so, not exactly an adolescent. >.< Took me a while.
I actually find the, mm, I guess the ritual aspect of Episcopal services really reassuring. In that I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing–like having a script. Every week same prayers, etc, and you literally *can* read off a script if you want to. Whereas Baptist services I always felt like I was being yelled at and wasn't totally sure what I was supposed to be doing.
But, I can totally see how someone could find that needlessly authoritarian. It doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity or self-expression.
I remember the exact moment I had this realization.
I’m an agnostic, but technically I was baptized Episcopalian. I’m just glad I’m “technically” something that I’m okay with. 🙂
I am Joyce af right now. Seriously, this is me a few years back. And I am, actually a universalist now. 😀
Hey, some of us resemble that remake, alt-text!
Those crazy, late-18th century hippies and their Episcopal Church!
So long as it’s not catholic XD
I love this! Because the main reason I’m not Episcopalian is that they are too rigid in formal for my tastes–Catholic lite, as some people call it.
I mean, I was ecstatic when I first heard of a church that was not homophobic. But I was raised Pentecostal, so I want a lot of active emotion in my church services. Anything else feels like legalism to me.
My wife had exactly the opposite approach. She was brought up Southern Baptist and was used to a lot of “active emotion” in her services. She was actually relieved when I took her to my RC church where everything was more reserved.
Agnostic here, in the original Huxley meaning.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Thomas_Henry_Huxley
Wow, Joyce, that wasn’t judgmental at all!
Nah, of course it was judgmental. It was a knee-jerk reaction, though in some ways not as bad as her reaction to Mormons, etc…
I think the current use of the word “hippie” is WAY too broad these days. Either that or Joyce’s family doesn’t actually know what a hippie is.
I think here, “hippie” is a stand-in for liberal. Sort of like “tree-hugger”, it’s just one of those right-wing euphemisms to make it demean liberals.
(Not that, of course, it doesn’t have an original, more precise meaning. Just like “fag” is technically a cigarette, but is used as a slur for homosexuals.)
(Also, sorry about the poor grammar in my previous post :p
)
Would you really expect Carol and pre-redemption Hank to have any clue what a hippie really is.
after the bullshit she just pulled, not sure i really want to see Roz naked
Joyce is rich with character development. She’s really grown on me more than anyone else
HOOOOOOOLY shit, finally finished bingeing this comic after 2.5 weeks.
I don’t even know what to say. This is easily the most intelligent web comic I’ve ever read but how the hell do you summarize that in one comment?
I’m kinda just dazed dude
😀 Fresh comment blood!
….I MEAN congrats! Welcome to the comment section. Yay for loving DoA.
Be mindful off the post rules. Sometimes it filters, sometimes the ban hammer comes down…
OK, I have Sierra’s number now: Sierra Foot
hills Unitarian Universalists
Unrealistic.
She should be saying HAW HAW HAW
Panel One: Yeaaaaaaahhhhhhh, ‘being threatened with a gun by your best friend’s dad because you’re protecting your gay friend’ will kinda force a paradigm shift. It’s a hard thing to admit, considering her parents spent so much time driving it in, and she believed if she relinquished any part of her faith she’d go to hell, this must be hard to say out loud.
But Jacob is empathetic and encouraging and that matters. It makes her feel better confiding in him.
Panel Two: And yeah, Jacob CAN be discretionary. ‘Don’t out your gay roommate, even if you think someone’d be okay with it’ is probably lesser known than the whole ‘Muslims are evil terrorists with no business in America!’ bullshit (even though Muslims have lived there since 1716). That’s everywhere. And yeah, it’s probably wise not to talk to the fundie about Muslims, even if they seem to be accepting. Which is probably good, as Joyce still struggles with non-Christian non-atheist/agnostic/apathetic religions. She’s not malicious, but you don’t need to be to be bigoted. It’ll be a while before things like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Paganism get knocked out of her head.
That said, it’s sweet of Jacob to offer. He knows she’s gotta be struggling with her faith, and invites her to see a less strict interpretation. Cute!
Panel Three: There’s the pause, as she considers it. Her faith’s meant everything to her. Sure, her family searched around for the ‘right’ church with the ‘right’ interpretation, but they stopped when they found it. To willingly give it up when she’s ‘found’ it? This is rough. And that’s almost impossible given how omnipresent the threat of hell’s been in her life. Poor thing.
Panel Four: Of course, that doesn’t mean she’ll be a dick about it. This reads to me like she’s searching for a polite way to turn him down, because she doesn’t want to abandon her interpretation of faith, as rough as it is.
Panel Five: Oooh, Jacob’s Episcopalian church sounds sweet! I’m told Episcopalian churches largely decide those things individually, so that’s neat! Reminds me of United Canadian.
I find it interesting he’s concerned she won’t think it’s accepting enough – gay people are probably something Joyce would worry about if she were to search for a new denomination, but women ministers? My guess is it didn’t even cross her mind. Women don’t minister, silly! Unless they’re mothers teaching their children or missionaries or young, waiting for marriage, teachers. Silly Jacob! I’d think the first concern would be ‘oh shit, is this too much? Will she explode?”
Panel Six: And yeah, there’s the sneer she was raised to have. You don’t go to HIPPIE churches silly. The Jesus movement is probably something she was raised to break into hives at. And of course there are New Age followers (Dunno what they’re called) who believe a mishmash of things, and some of whom have created new forms of Christianity. All of which isn’t REAL Christianity, it’s pinko communist gay ‘Christianity’, hail Satan.
Panel Seven: Then there’s the pause. Thinking about Becky and her relationships with Dorothy and Ethan and how she’s been scared so many of her friends will go to hell. How much she’s grown. How alien her church felt and how shitty everyone was and how triggered she got.
Panel Eight: Aaaaand the hard rough realization that damn, I belong in that pinko communist gay friendly ‘Christian’ church, hail Satan. That’s gotta smash her upbringing with a hammer and will undoubtedly be the roughest realization she’s had today.
Hey! I’m a UU and I, uh…
…OK, you’re right, we are hippies.