Thirty pitches I sent to Religion News Service that were quickly rejected but then they ran another writer’s “Eve is the Original Brat”
That is a real essay and not something I made up while doing a fake youth pastor voice
“Brat culture very intentionally steps away from the male gaze, helping you reclaim parts of yourself only for yourself. Eve is the original brat. She took a bite of the forbidden fruit and things were never the same again. Contributed to the mortality of all humanity? That’s brat. Unlocked the awareness of good and evil? That’s so brat.”
-again, from a real piece that really ran on a real website
“Bathsheba is the original brat”
“Mary Magdalene is the original brat”
“Rebekah is the original brat”
“What if the Blessed Virgin had said ‘Girl, so confusing’ to Gabriel instead of her fiat?”
“Vocation: how each Christian is called to ‘choreograph’ their own ‘apple dance’”
“We think about it all the time: sin”
“Just like in the video ‘360’, Charli and her friends are picking the next Hot Internet Girl. But what if they picked…Mary Magdalene?”
“Veronica could work it out on the remix with Lorde, but could Charli xcx tend to the wounds of the Lord on the Via Dolorosa?”
“His eye is on the sparrow, and the Robyn verse on the 360 remix”
“G.O.T.H.S. and it's the same but there's three extra sentences so it's not”
“Gomer is the original brat”
“Gomer is the original all-american bitch”
“Nobody had more ‘Guts’ than the early martyrs”
“Ballad of a homeschool girl: how Regina Caeli has persevered through scandal”
“Saint Paul in Acts and the true ‘Eras Tour’”
“Do non-Abrahamic religions just not get to have ‘brat summer’ if they don’t see Eve as the original brat? Can Hindu people have brat summer? What are the rules?”
“The Resurrection is the original Cowboy Carter Act II”
“John Paul II is the original Cowboy Carter Act II”
“Sixteen carriages and seven seals”
“The Holy Grail was the original Olivia Rodrigo Limited Edition Stanley Mug”
“The great commission is Christ's ‘that me espresso’”
“It's fun to sing ‘that's that me espresso’. But God calls us to sing another song: ‘that's that we espresso’”
“Chappell Roan's rise reminds me of another woman's rapid ascension: the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and Earth”
“The twelve Apostles were the original Pink Pony Club”
“How Christ tells the church today ‘Good luck, babe!’”
“Charli xcx may be ‘just living that life von dutch’, but was Harrison Butker ‘respecting his wife von dutch?’”
“Will wire services run literally anything? Are we just hurtling towards the abyss, plugging in stupid shit to our madlibs and throwing them into the maw in front of us to distract ourselves from our own swallowing? Is this all I'm doing too?”
“Blah blah bishops blah blah scandal blah blah I like the new Los Campesinos! album”
“The Book of Psalms, our original tortured poets department”
“‘Bloodsucker, fame-fucker’: Olivia Rodrigo provides a new perspective on Bishop Robert Barron”