Just amazing to see people claim that the discourse around cultural Christianity is very America-centric, like “ah yes, America is very Christian, unlike Europe.”
Like, Sweden automatically registered its citizens as members of the Church of Sweden at birth until 1996. The Church was officially government-sanctioned until 2000.
Now that membership in the Church of Sweden isn’t automatic anymore, and only 18% of Swedes say they believe in God, almost half of newborns are still getting baptized. 75% of funerals still take place in the Church. Swedish kids still attend “confirmation camps.” The 3rd largest political party in Sweden insists that Christianity is fundamental to Swedish identity and wants to drive out members of non-Christian religions.
And this is in one of those European countries famous for being “secular.”
That is, yes, cultural Christianity.
And don’t get me started on England. Or on France.
I would like to get you started on England, because (having lived here in the south myself) I’ve always considered England incredibly moderate compared to our neighbours. Maybe Scotland and Ireland are the ones that you should be pointing out, with their main Protestant denominations being Presbyterianism.
England’s cultural landscape definitely hasn’t escaped Christianity, and if you chat to people, a lot of them still consider themselves Christian, even if they’re not too bothered about it. The north of England is far more religious than the south.
What is your point?
Whether some place is culturally Christian is not about the intensity of belief of its population. It’s about the ways in which Christianity has shaped the culture.
Your king is literally the head of your state church.
Are you fucking trolling me right now?
england??????? moderate??????? the country that colonized the entire goddamn world??????? are we living on the same planet??????????
“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.
