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God is fat, and she twerks marvelously

Also, I met Pope Francis yesterday in the Vatican, briefly

Rohan Salmond

• 3 min read
God is fat, and she twerks marvelously

This week’s edition is about some of the most powerful posters on Christian Twitter. But first, a quick note: Just in case you haven’t noticed, the last few editions (and this one, probably) have gotten clipped by Gmail, meaning unless you click “View entire message” at the bottom, you probably didn’t get the whole newsletter.

If you can see this or something like it, there’s more to read - please click the link!

I’ve been trying to approach the email size limit but not exceed it, but that obviously hasn’t worked. I’ll try and keep these editions short enough that you can read the whole thing in Gmail, but long enough to still feel satisfying.

If I had more time I would publish two short editions a week, but it’s too much work! Sorry! Sometimes a boy has to play video games!

Rod Dreher meets Pope; Pope unfazed

I am begging the subjects of this newsletter to please not do anything notable or memeworthy within at least a few weeks of me writing about them, lest I be compelled to cover the new development and therefore appear obsessed.

After writing about Rod Dreher and the Bombadil Option, he has (once again) published a tweet that has burned through Christian Twitter, and no it’s not the one where he coined the phrase “The Wiggles of Weimar”.

Incredibly for a guy whose whole deal is retreating from public life, he felt the need to explain the situation to a random Twitter user with a cartoon rabbit avatar (and was quickly owned).

Unfortunately, it appears Rod has deleted his masterpiece, but it lives on in Christian Twitter as a meme format. And how!

There are just so many!

What’s the best book of the Bible?

I teased this two weeks ago, and now it’s online. The 100th episode of Love Rinse Repeat was a three-hour showdown to find the objectively best book of the Bible. Did we pick the right one?

You can also listen to an audio version (just search Love Rinse Repeat in your podcast app). Despite it being quite long, my highly unbiased boyfriend said it is a good listen!

God is fat, and she twerks marvelously

I don’t think you can bring up viral Christian tweets without handing it to Lura Groen, a Lutheran pastor who managed to write one of the most iconic tweets of all time.

I can’t remember the context of this tweet and I’m not criticising anyone’s minister here, but it is undeniably very funny.

There’s interdenominational conflict at work here too: Lura would be considered progressive in the already progressive denomination Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, so variations of this tweet have become stand-ins for what more conservative Christians see as the loosey-goosey theology of mainline churches.

(This one is riffing on this tweet, which is a whole other story)

It still does the rounds nearly two years later, and continues on as a meme format in and of itself.

In researching this, I learned Lura is one of 18 extraordinary ordinations of LGBT-affirming clergy that have been made outside the official structures the ELCA - and were subsequently validated in a “Rite of Reconciliation”. Interesting!

Get me one of these IMMEDIATELY

The bishop of memes

What if I told you that the Catholic Church’s dankest memelord is an auxiliary bishop in Sydney, Australia and a member of Opus Dei.

The Most Reverend Richard Umbers is the youngest Catholic bishop in Australia and maintains an active presence on Twitter and Facebook. He’s known for his bespoke memes, and this week is his 19th anneversary of ordiantion.

He also posts a lot about how he hates meetings, but this week I learned he likes K-dramas!

I once did a pre-interview with him for a podcast that never eventuated, and he told me he makes all the memes himself. Weird and fun, even though half the time I don’t have the background knowledge to understand them.

I don’t get it. Anyway, here’s one about Saint Guinefort, which is great because “dog saint” is just an objectively funny concept and funny thing to say, but also because it means a bishop posted a meme with a cartoon dog’s entire genitals on his Twitter. I respect it!

I left this section out last week for space, but got a few people thinking that I’d accidentally sent it out without finishing! Anyway here you go.