I was raised Roman Catholic and I can pinpoint the two events in my life that I became a feminist and stopped being a Catholic.
I went to public grammar school but still was active in my local church. (When you're raised on the Southside of Chicago church is just part of life.) I was one of the first girls allowed to be an altar server, prior to that you had to be a boy.
I just started my training and the priest was not subtle about the fact that he did not want us girls to be there. He would address the boys while ignoring or being flat out mean to the girls. I was learning how to do a funeral which requires standing in the back of the church and holding a candle. I was so terrified of the priest that I was afraid to ask to go to the bathroom and peed my pants. (Fun fact: also last time I ever peed my pants.) I put the candle down and ran out of the church.
A few years later, I was about 13 years old and in CCD class. I asked my teacher why women couldn't be priests. He told me they would gossip about what they heard in confessional.
At this point I called bullshit on the entire establishment. I went through confirmation to make my Mom happy but I have not called myself a Catholic since that day.
It's not just Catholicism. Almost every major religion has similar sexist traditions. I have Muslim and Jewish friends who drifted from their families because of their faiths treatment of women.
Does anyone else have a similar story? Was there a point where you could no longer justify an institution that treated you as less than your brothers? Were you able to find a common ground?
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about faith . I'm talking about the institution.
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I was also raised Catholic, but don't identify with the religion anymore. I have not willingly gone to church since the day when a priest told the entire congregation that we had to vote pro-life regarding a local issue or we were not Catholics. I draw the line when religious leaders try to control my vote. At the time, I was in confirmation classes to appease my father, but I basically just stopped going. I wasn't confirmed and have no intention of doing so in the future.
My fiance is a Christian and he is a feminist. I don't feel like religion and feminism have to be mutually exclusive.(however he does admit that the bible is a load of bullpucky) I have chosen not to have a religion, but that is for other reasons. I think that as long as you recognize the sexism in your doctrine and choose not to take part in churches which support those sexist beliefs, then there's nothing wrong with having a religion.
It's curious that your fiance considers himself a Christian but thinks that the Bible is so flawed. I wonder what he basis his Christian faith on since the Bible is what posits Christianity. It seems that if he sees the Bible as flawed or false, then he should question the faith it sets forth. I mean, there is no historical evidence of the existence of Jesus and if the Bible is flawed then why believe he existed at all?
I hear that a lot from Christians - the idea that the Bible is obviously flawed but that they still believe. Why believe if the source material is so poor and no improvements have or can be made on it?
My parents are religious, call themselves Christian, and view the bible as allegory, not a guide for living. It's heresy, yes, but the Presbyterian Church, as an institution, accepts that view (well, some of it). Hence the "More Light" Churches of the Presbytery, which ordain gay deacons, allow gay pastors, and have long since accepted women as spiritual leaders. The church they attend is inclusive and loving, and it has been a longstanding beacon of hope in the cruddier part of Wilmington. I'm an atheist myself, but I respect a religion that can plainly say "We share a doctrine, but our main purpose is good works and love" and then act that out within a community.
I was raised Presbyterian and had a similar experience. I'm not all that religious anymore but looking back I really liked my church compared to other ones I've heard of. If I was to ever go back I'd go there again. My parents are still involved in the church there and they seem to do a lot of cool stuff. It's a very multicultural church and they also have a partnership with a local mosque to encourage understanding between faiths (especially at a time where Islam is so stigmatized). At least half of the clergy there has been female and there are openly gay families in the congregation.
There's a vast amount of source material surrounding Christianity of which the Bible is but a small (if canonical) part -- surrounding all Abrahamic religions, in fact. More background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocrypha .
Also, about faith unsubstantiated, remember that while people often approach religion and science from a similar place emotionally (Christopher Hitchens is a famous example of someone who, though purportedly against religion, approaches science like a dyed-in-the-wool Christian approaches Christianity), empirical thought and faith proceed very differently.
I don't know what definition of 'vast' you're using, but there isn't a lot of historical evidence for the existence of Christ. None, actually. This, in itself, doesn't mean much. There isn't a lot of extant documentation from that period and many people passed through existence without any record. Ofcourse, Christ apparently shook the foundations of the Jewish Church and challenged the authority of the Roman Empire, so you'd think there'd be a few references, but there aren't. Most of the historical references that Christians claim speak of Christ either don't or have been proven to be forgeries. The New Testament has no historical value and cannot be placed into the history of the Roman Empire. For example - that whole story about going to Bethlehem for a census/tax thing? Never happened.
If you think people approach scientific inquiry in the same way that they approach faith, then you don't understand the basic premise of scientific inquiry. When I ask the church (any church - pick your denomination, it can be as liberal as you like, pick one with a gay, female miniter, if it makes you feel better) to prove their beliefs (virgin birth, divinty of Christ, whatever), they come back with 'it's faith.' Ask someone to prove a scientific theory to you. They won't expect you rely on 'faith.' They'll provide you with evidence or they'll admit that they're theory is bankrupt. That's a huge difference. You can adhere to scientific theory without becoming dogmatic or losing reason. As a matter of fact, if you adhere to scientific theory, you should be adogmatic and rational.
I'm presenting to you the available documentation surrounding Christianity through history, because it seemed as if you were interested, not to attempt to prove the existence of God.
"If you think people approach scientific inquiry in the same way that they approach faith, then you don't understand the basic premise of scientific inquiry."
I definitely agree with you here. If you read my post a bit more closely you may notice that I'm talking about religion and science as life-philosophies with similar effects, and do mention that "empirical thought and faith proceed very differently." That said, neither faith nor empiricism is appropriate all the time -- any practice has the potential to be dogmatic if universally applied.
It doesn't have to be. Some churches are pretty liberal. I don't go to church anymore but the one I went to when I was a kid was very liberal. We even had comprehensive sex-ed in the youth group! It's just hard to find a church that is progressive, but they do exist.
Sex ed at church! wow!
That actually sounds like such a cool place. Especially with all the crazy-abstinence-only stuff out there.
The Orthodox Union, the Orthodox Jewish national group, started an abstinence-only website a few years ago ( http://www.ou.org/abstinence ), and the reaction from most of the rest of the Jewish community (Orthodox are about 10-15% of American Jews) was essentially, "What, are you crazy?"
I just seem to feel that religious institutions are inherently sexist. I also feel like they're pretty silly. People wrote the bible, not some divine overseer. I'm saying this as someone who was at a fairly strict Anglican school for twelve years.
But that's just my opinion.
I come from a moderate Arab muslim family. I am a practicing muslim and a feminist and I do believe that I have managed to integrate both aspects of my life quite successfully. I think a huge part of it has to do with my family- my parents always treated me and my male siblings equally, and they always encouraged me to seek more knowledge and more opportunities for myself so I can be as educated and independent and successful as I can be - without ever mentioning any limits just because I'm female. In fact my dad always buys me magazines and sends me articles featuring Arab women and muslim women who are leaders and CEO's and activists because he thinks they are great examples for me to follow. And he does that because he is religious, not in spite of it.
I know other muslim girls are not as fortunate as I am to have an open-minded family like mine- but I believe a lot of it has to do with middle-eastern cultural traditions (that are very sexist) and not the religion itself (very thin line between the two though).
I do admit though that sometimes reconciling my muslim middle-eastern roots and thoroughly western education can be a challenge, but it's helped me a lot. I believe religion is very personal and that you don't have to stick to the institution's teachings for it to feel like you are doing it right. Plus my opinions on homosexuality, gay marriage, women's rights are completely at odds with mainstream muslim thought. But you know what? I don't care. What REALLY pisses me off is when people use religion as an excuse to limit the freedom of others and who in this world really has the moral high ground to do that?
Ultimately, what matters to me is that I feel close to God through my faith and not the opinions of others
What an apt moment to kindly remind everyone that the scribes who wrote the Bible also believed that the world was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
I wouldnt be surprised if the christian right started to push the 'earth is flat' types of theories on the public education systems along with their creationism theory.
Religions codify, enforce & provide a divine authority for the social arrangements in a particular culture. Hinduism, for instance, has condoned/promoted a caste system that is considered unjust by many people both inside & outside of India. The mainstream branches of the Abrahamic religions seem to be obsessed with gender roles. I know that millions (billions?) of people, such as Aurore above, manage to separate their faith from institutional gender role assignment, and that within those religious institutions there are movements for gender equality. I guess it all depends on how much your identity is bound up with your religion.
As someone who was raised a secular humanist, I always had a hard time understanding how someone could support/attend an institution that defined her as inferior.
There are religions, such as Wicca, in which gender equality is a tenet of the religion.
I agree.
Perhaps because I'm an atheist, I don't have any trouble recognizing the misogyny of the Abrahamic faiths. Although I was raised Catholic, I never beleived in god. Even as a kid in Catholic school, I was unmoved by it all.
I'm an atheist as well...
The one thing I hate about atheism is when some (definitely not all!) try to use nature as the reason things must work the way they work.
For, example, trying to naturalize/explain why certain traits must be "feminine". Or social Darwinism. Atheists aren't always innocent bystanders.
Social Darwinism is a bastardization of Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin talked about natural selection and Social Darwinism is all about human-controlled selection.
That said, please don't fall into the trap of believing that Social Darwinism was the purview (or even creation) of atheists. Canada's leading Social Darwinist was a Methodist minister. The same was true in Britain and the US. As a policy, it was popular right up to the Second World War. Once the atrocities of the Third Reich were brought to light, the racism and classism of the policy were finally recognized.
And, before someone says it, Hitler was not an atheist. He claimed to be Christian right up to his dying day.
I don't think that social Darwinism is something exclusive to atheism. I also never stated that Hitler was an atheist. I don't even know where Hitler came from in this particular conversation. He doesn't matter in this context. (Yeah, yeah, social Darwinism, but much of that doesn't come from the third reich, and I don't think that the second world war destroyed that line of thought as completely as you say).
What I'm saying is that atheists still support and prolong ridiculous attitudes without the help of misinterpreting the bible - and as much as I love and support scientific research, some "studies" will do things such as "prove" that women are naturally weaker and more passive. Or "prove" racist ideologies. No, science is not something exclusive to atheists either.
I just don't think that slapping on the title "atheist" gives us the right to stand by and criticize religious people just because many religions make it so easy to point out the misogyny inherent. Misogyny in atheism can be a little harder to pick at, but still exists.
I think that what Sandra meant about Hitler and atheism is that in so many threads online, whenever anyone mentions atheism, someone has to say some bollocks like "Hitler was an atheist, Stalin was an atheist." The reality is that Hitler was Christian and Stalin attended a seminary.
Those studies that you cite inevitably turn out to be terribly formulated. You can prove anything using statistics if you formulate the date properly. It doesn't help that the media is generally terrible in reporting science and goes for the most sensationalist angle, regardless of its truthfulness.
And while there can be misogyny in some atheists at least it's not divinely ordained. How can you argue against something if God decides it?
I think that the media reporting of a lot of studies is exactly the point. There are a lot more people who will read a mainstream newspaper report of a result and believe that "science says it," than there are people who will go and read the actual study and know how to interpret it. (I've had or seen this same argument over and over in blog comments and in real life. Person A: "This article says that this study says X." Person B: "Actually, if you look at the actual report in the science journal, it doesn't say X at all. It says Y." Person A, who doesn't know the terminology or the statistics well enough to be able to understand the actual report: "Why should I believe what you say it says, rather than what an actual national newspaper says that it says?"
Science reporters who actually have science or related degrees (and especially ones who have the advanced degrees required to actually understand the things that they're supposed to write about) are few and far between.
They're definitely not mutually exclusive. There is at least 1 billion Christians in the world and, despite what some people might believe, there's no way that all will think alike.
Catholicm is about as extremely conservative as you can get, so to say that feminism and religion are mutually exclusive based on them is really a bad idea.
Plenty of churches allow women to become ministers. There's plenty of people who are Christian who use birth control and are for women's rights. There's churches who are very accepting of same-sex relationships and are welcoming to those people.
I'm sure if you look around you should be able to find one that does a lot better at matching your beliefs. Depending on where you live it may not be down the block though.
I was born and raised on the southside of Chicago.
But I am really just responding to clarify that I meant *major* religions, which is why I made a point to say it in the post. Catholicism and Islam are both about 20% of the world, and many of my friends with similar stories to my own have come from those backgrounds.
I read in the paper today that the pope emphasized protection of women's rights in a recent speech. Does this mean the church is becoming more enlightened? I don't know enough about Catholicism to know what this means.
I dunno...didn't the Catholic church just excommunicate a 9 year old brazilian girl for having an abortion that would save her life? I think what they say about "women's rights" is lip-service.
Just in the interest of accuracy, the Church excommunicated the girl's mother and doctors. The girl herself was considered an innocent victiim.* Her stepfather was not excommunicated, nor will he be even if he's convicted of the crime. I suppose, from the Church's perspective, he's an innocent victim of the abortion as well.
Yet another reason why I can't stomach religion. Nothing separates morality from ethics faster than a religion.
*a victim of the abortion, not the rape.
Thanks for the clarification. It's still horrible, yes.
Is this what you're referring to? If so, this article briefly sums up my feelings about his recent statements. It's interesting too that he says that women deserve the right to be active in all areas of public life, but doesn't apply that belief to the church itself.
I think it really depends on the institution. Like, I grew up in a Conservative Jewish synagogue. (For those who don't know the Jewish denominations, Conservative is actually fairly mainstream, and relatively liberal on most political issues -- they started allowing female rabbis around 1985, and gay rabbis a few years ago, and are egalitarian in terms of gender on just about every issue.) At my synagogue, women reading from the Torah was allowed, but a lot of the older and more traditional members would grumble about it. I can remember the first time I saw a woman wear a tallis -- it was a girl a few years older than me, when I was about 11, and it caused a huge uproar -- not from the rabbi, but again from the older and more traditional congregation members.
A Jewish friend that I met in college, who also grew up in a Conservative synagogue, said that women had been reading the Torah in her synagogue as long as she could remember without anyone saying anything about it, and that about half the adult women in her synagogue wore a tallis.
In the years since I've gone to college and stopped regularly attending that synagogue, they've gotten a female cantor, a female scholar-in-residence (I'm not exactly sure what this is, actually), a rabbi whose wife and daughters wear tallis, and it now seems to be expected that girls will wear a tallis at their bat mitzvah, and most of them continue after.
I also grew up Conservative, and currently identify myself as such. My synagouge (well, my dad's) is fairly liberal (too liberal for my father sometimes!), and has lots of women involved. They love having the post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah middle/high school kids read Torah on occasion, and there tends to be MORE females than males reading. A good half of women wear tallits, at least, maybe more, I don't count.
Religion is not a monolith, and painting all of them, even all of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other single religion with one brush is a fallacy, especially when all three of the Abrahamic religions are divided, and the divisions rise to the top of the hierarchy. (Which is almost non-existent in some branches of Judaism, and I'm sure others, but I don't know which.)
You're a feminist. If you live n the states, you can form your own religion.
Go for it.
In my experience, religion and feminism are mutually exclusive.
My faith and religion are separate for reasons like you described, and particularly for reasons that aurore broached when she mentioned mainstream Muslim thought versus personal faith. There are strong and rather pernicious cultural expectations, for women especially, in immigrant churches (Greek Orthodox here), where church is a way to get back home without hopping on the plane (and having to deal with the fact that the church back home condones abortion and that yes, there is a big GLBT community, etc.).
And, while it's heartening that there are less bigoted churches out there, the so-called liberal church isn't the answer for everyone. When I tried some 'progressive' US churches, I found not only differently inflected, but just as pernicious, cultural expectations of women, but also a sense of cultural superiority that was like "you're very lucky to be here, you with the accent and without the environmentally-sound SUV like the rest of us drive". Ugh. Who wants that with her Sunday morning hangover?
The silver lining here for a person of faith is that you have to opportunity to really think about what, and who, God is, uninfluenced by institutional noise. And, if you crave community, there are definitely feminist Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Orthodoxists, whatever you happen to be. Some have posted in this thread!
I think rather than putting down a religion, we should be criticizing the religious leaders who are making a bad name for everyone else. I consider my self a Christian and I'm not ashamed of it at all. Everyone else but Jesus is human and the product of their environment and culture. There is even a passage in the Bible where Paul criticizes Peter for not being in fellowship with the Gentiles, sort of being "racist" just to make the other Jews comfortable. Never anywhere did Jesus show He was anything but egalitarian. Other humans are flawed and I don't follow or worship human beings. That is how I reconcile my Christianity with Feminism. There is simply nothing but human bias and prejudice that can discourage loving, egalitarian relationships. Basically, my personal journey/path is not based on faulty humans and so-called hating Christian leaders.
Well said, I'm the same way. I have a lot of problems with the Bible, but none whatsoever with what Christ did and said. I consider myself a Christian (as in "follower of Christ", not "follower of the Bible and human leaders").
It is just important not to lump everyone under the same stereotype like the men have been doing to us for ages. Everyone's different :) You may have the same religion but you will understand and act on things in different ways. I agree with aurore and her experiences with her Islamic faith on this one. A lot of the things she said made perfect sense and applied to me as well :)
My main issue when people say things like, "My church is super liberal," is that while that may be so, the overall hierarchy is very conservative. I don't understand how people reconcile that when they're Catholic, for instance, and their church may be kind and great and wonderful, but you still have Brazillian bishops excommunicating people who participated in an abortion for a nine-year-old rape victim or the Pope condemning condom use. They seem to talk about changing institutions from the inside but as someone from the outside you don't see much changing.
I'm currently an atheist but I was a very devout Wiccan until I was about 20 or 21. I took a course in college about the sociological and biological history of race and a major component of the course was scientific literacy. We were assigned the introduction to The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and two issues of Skeptic. They really challenged my worldview about New Age religions because I always considered them more benign than mainstream religion. I also started reading Vanity Fair around that time and while I disagreed with Christopher Hitchens politically I loved his columns about religion. It was just kind of a dominoe effect that led me to read God is Not Great and The God Delusion and by then I was ready to relinquish my faith. I realized that spells were just really expensive prayers and that neither worked for me and that people like Sylvia Browne, that I'd initially thought were benign if not hilarious, were preying on people and scamming them.
Sorry for the super-long post, but I think my story's atypical. I haven't read a lot of "Losing my faith" stories about New Age religions.
But not every religion has an overall hierarchy, and plenty of the ones that do don't have very conservative ones. For example, in Conservative Judaism (I don't agree with everything within the Conservative movement, but I end up using them as an example a lot because they're fairly "mainstream" and I grew up in that movement so I know a lot about it), the USCJ's positions on most political issues are fairly liberal -- in favor of abortion being legal (with lots of discussion about when abortion is permitted for Conservative Jews); in favor of gay marriage being legal; allowing female and gay rabbis; and a lot of other positions.
But for every relatively progressive sect there's at least one conservative sect.
Ultimately, I find religion intellectually constraining and a means of promoting in-group vs. out-group tribalism. The whole idea that some people are "saved" while the rest of us rot is distasteful and a relic that I would love to see die out.
But you were talking about "institutions." Judaism isn't a sect of broader "religion"; it IS a religion. Within Judaism, there could be considered several "institutions," one of the biggest of which (in the US) is the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Catholicism, or any other religion, has nothing to do with it. There isn't any overall hierarchy of religion in general.
And about one group being saved while everyone else rots -- I really don't know enough about most other religions to state definitely which ones do and don't believe that, but I know that Judaism does not. We believe (basically) that the Torah tells us what WE should do. It's not binding on anybody else -- other people might have their own covenants with G-d, and if they do, that's their business. (The reason for the "basically" in parentheses up there is the Noahide laws, which some Jews believe are binding on everybody. IIRC, those are Don't steal, Don't murder, Don't commit sexual impropriety (with various interpretations of what that means), Set up a fair justice system, Don't eat a limb torn from a living animal, and one more that I can't remember right now.)
You're kind of missing my point, I'm not sure if you're doing it on purpose or not--for every group that makies you feel good and warm and fuzzy, there's a group that's oppressing people. And there are definitely sects within Judaism that are less than nice.
I work in customer service and I've had quite a few terrible experiences with Hasidic Jewish men. One man was trying to negotiate a return with me and didn't like what I had to say and asked to deal with a man. There are no men in my department, so he left in disgust. I've also had several men refuse to touch my hands to take money--they just stood there while I held their money out to them. Because I'm filth, you know.
So basically, I'll repeat my point--things that may make you feel good may make other people feel like shit. Religion's like a spectrum and on one end you may have relatively "benign" groups like the Unitarians or Quakers and on the other end you have radicals willing to kill and hurt others to inflict their views on them. Even if you're a Unitarian, you're still participating in an exclusive group based on the irrational. You can't really talk people out of their irrational beliefs or how far they'll go to protect said beliefs.
I think you're missing my point. My point was that there is no one "group" that encompasses all religions. Each religion is separate and should be considered separately. You can't just talk about "religion" as there's anything that all religions have in common. Religion isn't a spectrum, it's a bunch of totally different groups. There's no reason that someone who identifies as a member of one group should have to answer for anything done or said by members of a completely different group.
I don't understand what you mean by "exclusive group." As far as I know, anyone is allowed to join a Unitarian Church.
(As for the Hasidic men, I do have many issues with the way they interpret those commandments, but the reason they wouldn't touch you wasn't because you're "filth," but because they believe they could start thinking too much about sex if they touch a woman casually. As I said, I don't agree with the way they interpret the commandments to get there, but the issue isn't "filth." In your "spectrum" argument, I would say that the Hasids are in the same spectrum as me, though on a very different part of it.)
I am a Roman Catholic, and a feminist. Reconciling these two, very important aspects of my identity is one of the greatest challenges of my life. But I am determined that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Here is what I have so far:
There are parts of the institution that can be sources of strength, especially the parts that are so intricately connected to a rich theology and faith. Lumping these aspects with everything that is wrong with the Church seems to me to be throwing the baby out with the bath water.
That being said, there is so much wrong with the Church. The gendered power dynamics are entirely unjust and oppressive. Our current papal leadership seems to be trying to turn away any liberal, or even moderate, or basically thinking Catholics.
So, my temporary hypothesis is that perhaps it is possible to live within a religious institution like the Church and still condemn aspects of it and work toward change. And meanwhile, employ the beautifully nuanced and rich (if flawed) faith of the religion as a source of strength.
Yeah. My parents were not at all religious, but I always thought that Jesus sounded pretty cool and sort of passively considered myself a Quaker. I have a friend who is in Seminary right now and has run into a lot of opposition from a Quaker Men's Group because she's a women.
Really?! Really, Quakers. Really?
I have never been particularly religious but I have seen a lot lately that is pushing me from agnostic towards atheist. I have no interest in participating in any institution that devalues me and is part of the system of my oppression. I can't get over how Christianity is so clearly designed to privilege heterosexual men. It is not for me. Women are an afterthought, and queerish independent women are the afterthought of an afterthought.
Part of me wants to do some soul searching and pick a woman-positive religion, but another part of me thinks it's kind of weird to go shopping for a religion. No one creation story is really any more convincing than any other.
I could settle for UU, but I don't know. It seems like Unitarian Universalism is more of a community than a religion.
So often I investigate religion and run into attitudes that are seriously a slap in the face.
As for the Quakers I know, I love 'em! Personally I'm apathetic with a leaning towards atheism (meaning I usually don't care, but when I think about it, I'm pretty sure I don't believe in a god), but the Milwaukee Quakers are so open and warm and accepting. They support gay rights and women's rights, not to mention they 'do it with the lights on and silently' (if you know what I'm talking about).
.... (I'm talking about prayer. it's kind of joke they've got here)
At the risk of being offensive, I'm going to use this opportunity to express my opinion that religion and sanity are mutually exclusive.
Religions are falsifiable. And anyone can falsify them pretty easily.
The universe may have had a creator but that creator sure as hell wasn't the God of Abraham!
Here's what I believe. (excuse any sentences that don't have an ending or beginning. Am tired and should be cramming for a math test I don't want to take)
*God is good.
*God is loving and personal. (S)He cares for me. (Pretty sure Bible says God is neither man or woman or something that makes a Michael Jackson joke...don't quote me on that. He is used because time of writing says he=that one over there who I can't really be sure if that's a woman or man. Don't quote says the tired-15-yr-old-non-Bible-scholar who isn't going on an internet/book /w/e search to know exactly why God is he)
*God's a feminist. God wants people equal. It's how he rolls. Jesus was first seen by women. Their testimony in that time was considered easily thrown out by a court because they were women.
*"Religion" is something I don't understand. I'm not religious. I believe in relationships. (I don't want to sound like a nutcase, because its hard to explain)
*God is way cool. People, not quite so cool. Religion, I think is people trying to write down what they think of God and pass it off as right and the only thing ever ever and injecting it with whatever of their own personal beliefs they feel like. Religion is corruptable (think popes like Urban I ((I think)) who sent them on the crusades) but God isn't.
*Jesus had the final word in Christianity. He said to love one another, and not judge eachother, because we're all people. (related note gay marriage should be legal)
*I grew up (yes sounds weird as 15yr/o) thinking God was the big smiling man in the sky who looks down and probably laughs when we trip or do something stupid or tell jokes. I'm certain that is false. (You probably are too).
So yeah. I'm a feminist who loves Jesus.
I probably missed something. I don't really care if that bugs you. But I'll explain if you want. gnite
As long as we're all professing our beliefs, here's my take on the (wo)man upstairs: he is like Richard Englerobe from Canada. I have no idea if there is a man named Richard Englerobe in Canada (read: I have no idea if God exists), but if he's there, cool. I wish him no harm, but I'm not going to praise him every day. Richard and I are content to go about our lives without messing with one another for the most part. If I meet him, we could become friends, but if he's not there, apparently I've been existing just fine without him anyway.
Also, I think that the whole "if you don't accept Jesus/God/Allah/Whoever as your Lord and savior, you're going to Hell" thing is a bunch of hooey because I'm pretty sure that God's sensible and powerful enough that he doesn't need his ego stroked every single day by every single person on Earth.
Last thing (I swear!): I think that the Heaven/Hell thing seems like a really good way to get a large amount of people to do what you (the institution) want. It's too much like the grown-up version of "be good or Santa won't bring you presents!" for me to swallow it.
I'll step off my soapbox now...
And btw, I pray every night, but I'm fully aware that it's mainly a coping system for me to deal with stress and to stop worrying about things that are out of my control. It may not be what prayer is meant to be, but it works for me, and I don't really find anything wrong with it.
I chose to leave the Catholic Church, but my family are a bunch of liberal Catholics, and I love them. They embrace the beauty and the mystery of their faith but they reject the injustices of the system: they want women to be ordained, they recognize that being gay is not a choice, they may not totally get behind abortion but neither do they think it should be illegal. They do a lot of work with the poor -- not just charity, but addressing the causes of poverty, and they do so all over the world. We don't agree on everything, but they are dedicated to spreading mercy, love, and kindness to all people, particularly the oppressed.
Personally, I'm a Unitarian Universalist and something of a pagan. I believe god dwells in everyone and we're responsible for our actions for and against others. My faith is very much influenced by the faith I grew up with, and I'm grateful for that.
I have to say I'm personally most disturbed not by the desire to stay at home, but how they feel one of their major roles is to please men sexually, and that they have this "confirmed" by boyfriends or SO's. To me, that's INCREDIBLY degrading- not only in that you're giving your view of your self-worth entirely to another person, but especially as a victim of child sexual abuse, where my abuser viewed my purpose in life bedroom furniture to be sexually gratifying him.
I don't know, maybe that's just how I see it, but that just struck me as... ew.