The Fake & Fraudulent Prophets Around the President
September 4, 2026 |
Daniel Henderson
Growing up in a religious home means you’re given a roadmap for life—and it usually dead-ends at a church steeple. You’re handed a Bible before you can read, taught to bow your head before you ask questions, and made to believe that pleasing God (and by extension, your parents) is your life’s primary goal.
And if you ever veer off-script—if your path leads somewhere bright, loud, or god-forbidden—you’re labeled a cautionary tale. In the world I came from, faith wasn’t a journey—it was a pageant. And there’s no place for anyone who dreams of their own Pink Pony Club. This is where religious family expectations stop being guidance and start becoming control—just dressed up in Sunday best.
I still remember the Christmas I got Castle Grayskull and a shiny new He-Man figure. I was six. Two months later, my mom threw them in the trash because they were demonic. Apparently, toys were portals for Satan, and I had unknowingly invited evil into the living room. That was my first brush with the 1980s Satanic Panic—also known as “peak bad parenting.”
It wasn’t about belief—it was about compliance. You obeyed because eternal damnation was the alternative. And hell hath no fury like a Southern mom who thinks you’re harboring demons in plastic action figure form.
The trick with religious family expectations is that the goalposts move. You’re never holy enough, never obedient enough, never quite what they hoped you’d be. Conditional love is the unspoken currency in many religious households. Toe the line and you’re in. Question the line and suddenly you’re the family prayer request.
When I first told my father I felt called into ministry, you’d think he’d be proud. He wasn’t. This was the man who dragged me to church multiple times a week, taught Sunday School, chaired the deacons, and made sure my childhood was steeped in church culture. His response? “You’ll never make any money.” That was it. They showed me Jesus—but didn’t like what I found when I started actually taking him seriously. It turns out, following Christ’s actual teachings often gets you disowned—at least ideologically.
At some point, the script stops working. You stop playing the good child, the obedient Christian, the holy placeholder for someone else’s dreams. That’s when your Pink Pony Club moment hits—the moment you realize the only person you need to please is you.
For me, that moment came when I confronted my family over their allegiance to Trump. These were the same people who raised me on the red-letter teachings of Jesus, and yet they had cozied up to a man who couldn’t even spell Beatitude, let alone live one. I told them plainly: “What you’re following isn’t compatible with Christ.” They told me I was backsliding. That’s when I knew—biblically honoring my parents might just mean loving them from a very safe, healthy distance.
Breaking away is rarely clean. You don’t just shed beliefs—you shed communities, routines, and a sense of home. And when your family’s identity is fused with religion, your shift becomes their perceived betrayal.
Holidays are the clearest reminders. We pulled back. We found new community elsewhere. We still visit, sure, but those aren’t our people anymore. It’s hard to break bread with folks whose ideology seems to enjoy the breaking of others. There’s no drama or blow-up—it’s more like a slow fade. A quiet distancing that speaks louder than any theological debate ever could.
Freedom isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s just… peaceful. It’s the kind of peace that comes from trusting your gut, honoring your soul, and realizing you don’t need a church to teach you how to love people well.
These days, I’m still following the ways of Jesus—they just led me out of the church. Out of the system. Out into the wild spaces where people are honest, messy, kind, and trying. That’s where I found life again.
There’s so much more air in the deserts beyond institutional religion. Keep walking. Keep dancing. Keep being you. And above all—be kind, especially to the ones still limping from the same conditional love that tried to shape you. Call out bad theology when you see it. But remember: the real heresy isn’t disbelief—it’s knowing doctrine and showing no love, no justice, no humanity.
Religious culture taught me one thing well: telling you you’re broken is how they keep you that way. It keeps you submissive. Malleable. They don’t care about your holiness—they care about how tightly they can hold the reins. It’s not acceptance, it’s conformity. And it’s not a family—it’s a cult. Step outside the line, and you’re out. Just like that. The love they preach? It’s just control, dressed up in church clothes.
As a former pastor and missionary, I’ve heard the stories. LGBTQ+ kids cut off for being themselves. Pregnant teens cast out to preserve purity optics. I’ve seen families use faith like a weapon, the kind of cruelty that would make Jesus flip tables in their living room.
They say you left the faith. Maybe. But I’d say you just left the show.
They do it all to preserve the illusion of holiness—but really, it’s just to protect the echo chambers that comfort and confine them. And the saddest part? Those chambers oppress them just as much as the people they push away.
And honestly? The Pink Pony Club has better music anyway.
