Would you convert for the skydiving Christian baby?

When religion happens on the internet, Modern Relics will cover it. At least, that's the hope. The vibe is kind of like:

But I am just one man! If you see something that looks like Modern Relics material, shoot me an email or drop a link in the Modern Relics Discord and I'll do my best to cover it all!

Skydiving Christian baby

Atheists, imagine you're going skydiving with a Christian baby. Suddenly the baby tells you he won't open his parachute until you renounce atheism and accept Jesus as your lord and savior. What would you do?

Bluesky has been awash with skydiving Christian baby discourse the last few days, and I was very confused by it all and had to go looking for an explaination!

When I did, I found this Quora question, which is from April, and this slightly different one, which is from January. There's a whole host of others as well, with Christian babies in all kinds of perilous situations emotionally blackmailing atheists into salvation.

It seems impossible that it's just one person coming up with these, but maybe it is — many people answering them on Quora seem to think so. Many of them are in on the joke, but most are atheists either taking the question very seriously, or insisting it's impossible for babies to have a religion, and therefore all babies are really atheists. Expert troll.

So, atheists, what if you and a Christian baby are being mugged and the criminal shoots the Christian baby and suddenly everything goes into slow motion and you're able to jump in the way of the bullet — would you save the Christian baby?

What if a Christian baby put a spell on you which caused you to lose your faith in atheism, and the only way to reverse it was to throw the baby off a cliff — would you kill the baby or become a Christian?

What about if a Christian baby walks up to you, pulls down his pants, poops in his hands and throws it at you, and tells you he has magical powers to keep pooping and won't stop until you renounce atheism? What then??

I, for one, welcome our new skydiving Christian baby overlord.

Jon Foreman officially supports Semler, btw

If you remember, queer Christian musician Semler went to a Switchfoot concert and said they were going to yell "gay rights" and see what would happen. In response, Jon Foreman made a video where he said some nice things about people being who they are, but never actually said he supports LGBT+ people.

Anyway, here he is with Semler looking real happy, so I think that settles it. I love how all my favourite Christian bands from my teenage years are now queer-affirming lol I have good taste after all.

Eating apple? No papa

Here's some context. I can't even find the video I'm thinking of that went viral on Tumblr around 2013. It's the one with the same dad as the Baby Shark version, but not set to the tune of Baby Shark.

Berk shirks quirk work; irks jerks?

Bobby Berk, Fab Five member with all the religious trauma, bids goodbye to Queer Eye after eight seasons on the show.

I only watched the first few seasons, but the show grappled with religion surprisingly often. It did feel weird how Bobby's awful religious upbringing was used as a plot device in those episodes though.

As it turns out, the producers really did lie to him about making over a church in 2020, which nearly made him leave the show back then.

From Attitude:

“In my first meeting with the producers, I said, ‘Never ask me to talk about religion. Never ask me to go into a church,’ Bobby tells Attitude.

“The Mama Tammye episode was kind of an accident. She wasn’t supposed to be the hero originally. It was so hard for me to do that episode. They told me it was a ‘community centre’. They fucking knew I wouldn’t do a church!

“I threatened to walk. I refused.”

He talks about how it opened a lot of old wounds and was one of the most difficult things he's done. That sucks, man! I'm a gay Christian but I don't think it's right to be coerced back into a church building if you don't want to go. I hope Bobby finds a new gig where people respect his boundaries!

Gonna stick to a theme here

Cutting this edition short

Hey sorry igtg I have this thing on tonight and I've run out of time to make this post any longer. Hope you enjoyed it anyway. Have a great week!