You can ram a pear of anguish up me anytime, you dirty thing!

19th Century protestant movements in the second and third “great awakenings” helped by making up weird shit in an effort to slander their two biggest hate groups: Catholicism, and even worse, other types of Protestants. It’s them we have to thank in the US for exaggerating the Catholic church’s real crimes into cartoonist villainy like in the comic, as well as pushing the narrative that science and religion can’t coexist so they could remove competition to lucrative new “Christian Science” snake oil schemes. They extended this to quackery like the belief that exercise and flavorful food aru bad for your vital energies. Yes, these are the same groups of people who would go on to champion graham crackers and corn flakes.