Which is your favourite heresy?

I like the Judaism of: "If you ask two Jews, you get three opinions."

nomadthethird said:

Are you Russian by any chance?

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lol nah. Irish Catholic on one side (mom's a convert) & the other uh, some kind of Eastern European - Lithuanian, maybe? - but in the States since the early 1900s.

my stepdad's family is Russian tho - he & all his siblings were born here but his grandfather was a petit bourgeois who was exiled to Siberia after the Revolution. his dad (so, my step-grandfather) has an awesome story about meeting Trotsky in like 1922 or something when Trotsky made a tour of his elementary school.

oooh, can we have followers of Shabbati Zevvi? that's my new favourite.

Muggletonianism just sounds too much like something from Harry Potter.

I dunno if they count as 'heretics' as such, but I'd like to add the Gozer worshippers led by Ivo Shandor, and the Starry Wisdom Sect.

poetix said:

Beguines sound awesome, like twelfth-century lesbian separatists.

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It looks as if they've been reclaimed by feminists in the literature. Reading into it a little further, it also looks as if there were quite a number of them who had children or who strayed in from bad (abusive) marriages. I'm getting a "scarlet letter A" vibe (this is pre-pennyroyal tea, even), which might explain why they were accused of being prostitutes as well--where did these children come from if these women weren't married? This would have been a big deal I imagine. A perfect angle for the Church's smear campaign as well. (And to think this was only about 700 years before we developed more humane methods, such as asylums and "vacation" camps for unmarried pregnant women!)

I prefer imagining Beguines as fallen women who decided to redeem themselves by worshiping a God whose Church hated them, anyway, with guilt playing a dual role as a powerful vehicle for social constraint but also for social progress (or the prefiguration thereof).

HERESY!

I cannot believe that piece of shit cost 80 grand

wild greens said:

I cannot believe that piece of shit cost 80 grand

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IKR? Never mind the theological aspect, the thing's just visually offensive.

I wonder whether there are any friends involved in that transaction

when did the Guardian start using the "double decker bus" unit of measurement?

the sculpture, which is as high as two doubledecker buses, one on top of the other

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