Signal Boost: QotD -- on women and christianity

[minoanmiss]

eftychia posted: QotD

Comments

[minoanmiss]

my babbled response:

This is --

my whole childhood --

I have to actually coherently say something, but, I mean, I thought this was basic fundamentalist Christianity that all the holiness was linked to the Male. God is Male, Jesus is Male, Mary was just a conduit. Catholics, whom I always privately gave points to for basically deifying Mary, were considered by Protestants to not be 'really' Christian for precisely that 'idolatry'. I remember pointing out to my mother a museum display of 'cave people' having a religious ceremony and saying it would be interesting if the woman was leading it instead of the man, and my mother said, "God said that men lead in church" .

One of the many reasons I left was the strict unbreakable division between women and anything sacred. I saw churches full of women being told every Sunday, prayer meeting, and Saturday symposium that MEN, not us, were in God's image.

I -- I am wowed that Jim Rigby said this, that he was allowed, that such thought can even exist.

This one is going to stick with me.

[hitchhiker]

also, as a friend of mine pointed out, catholics may revere mary, but she is also held up as a "pure and virginal" standard for women, so not a huge win.

[minoanmiss]

ahahahah I am not a fan of Catholicism (I was about to look up an example of Catholic malfeasance and happened upon this article about a woman slut-shamed and robbed of her child by a priest and the Church) but I found a tiny scrap of something good in the notion of women not being completely separated from holiness, despite the stranglingly pure form that holiness was made to take.

[cjsmith]

One friend of mine puts it thus: "Any religion that does not allow my participation at all levels does not deserve my participation on any level."

(Let alone the whole question of what the religion tells each group of people to do and be, which is also hideously problematic. Christian religion is forever lost to me.)

[princessofgeeks]

*nods*

There's a whole liberal church out there that is trying to change this, but they get very little publicity. Also, what is QotD? Queen of the Damned can't be right?

[hitchhiker]

"quote of the day"

[princessofgeeks]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense than my initial suggestion.

[eftychia]

:-)

[hitchhiker]

agreed, that is a fatal flaw in most of christianity today, and i really hope they fix it in my lifetime.

[cjsmith]

I admire your optimism. (Just the phrasing implying it's even remotely possible that this might occur.) :)

[hitchhiker]

there are cracks in the dam - episcopals have had woman priests for ages now, and some churches (catholic included!) have modified the lord's prayer to "our father and mother who art in heaven" to emphasise that god isn't male. very small steps, but things are moving in the right direction.

[cjsmith]

Yes, I've long known about the Episcopals.

For me personally, it would have to be much more than cracks in the dam to make me consider turning back toward not hating organized-christian-religion-as-an-institution. There's been enough horrific, deep damage, there's been enough absolutely needless suffering stemming from this, that it would need to be not only 100% full equality but a big fat world-spanning sincere apology for two thousand years of cruelty. I'm guessing that'll be a long time coming.

But that's me. I'm often regarded as unreasonable.

[minoanmiss]

FWIW, I'm with you.

But, I am glad to hear about the wee steps. Even if they aren't enough for us, hopefully someone down the line won't get hurt as badly as we did.

[cjsmith]

Agreed on all counts.

(And being unreasonable gives me a handy litmus test for who does and who doesn't believe I am just as fully human as someone who wears a male body. I get pushback about this? That person just showed me some key information.)

[baranduin]

Thanks for this! I’m now following him on facebook.

[nagi_schwarz]

Oooh, thanks for sharing! I guess since I grew up Christian but was taught about a mother goddess (not Mary) I always had a different sense of what being made in the image of the Gods meant (often people forget that the word “Elohim” which is translated as “god” is actually plural in Hebrew). I never thought too closely about the more “traditional” interpretation.

[acelightning]

And this is why I haven't been a Christian since I was seven years old. And this is why finding out about Wicca and Paganism and the Goddess was not a "conversion" - it felt like I was coming home, acknowledging what I had believed and felt for my whole life, and rejoicing in the knowledge that there were other people who felt the same way as I did, and we could be together. We remember when God was a woman...

[eftychia]

And maybe this is a part of why I, a Christian, tend to feel more comfortable among Witches than among mainstream folks of my own faith.

[acelightning]

Many Witches go out of their way not to be exclusionary in the same ways that mainstream religions are exclusionary. Yes, many of us feel it would be better for the world if more people were Wiccan and/or Pagan, but we are notcommanded to convert people - in fact, Wicca specifically prohibits proselytizing, although we will explain our beliefs to anyone who wants to know.

Also, back in the 1970s, with that particular wave of feminism, there was a lot of attention being paid to Goddesses, and also to improving the perception of women and the Divine Female within Christianity. And that was when the book When God Was A Woman was written, which led to that song.

[cmcmck]

This is why I became a Quaker.

God is a person.

[cjsmith]

♥