This has been troubling me lately. I guess it's been simmering away in my mind following the women bishops vote a while back, but it's not just the CofE - although I know more about that having been raised CofE and being an occasional churchgoer.
I feel like religion gets hijacked by the patriarchy. In the history of the Church it seems to me to start from the Council of Nicaea where male bishops created a male hierarchy of what had been a predominantly female religion with many well-born Roman women adherents, (including the Emperor Constantine's mother - possibly a trigger for his conversion). Right through to the Church of England's opposition to the Suffragettes, and now women bishops. Of course it's not just women - in history the Church of England was involved with the slave trade, and there is still homophobia in the Church of England. And it's not just Christianity - but I'm not really qualified to talk about other religions.
I have a very strong sense that this isn't what God wants, that this is the very opposite of what God wants. Some might disagree of course. But if this troubles you in the same way it troubles me, how do you square that with the practise of your religion, whatever it is? I find it really difficult to get my head around it - I believe in God, but I'm wary of organised religion for these reasons - it's really difficult to express how I feel in words, but it's something like feeling that religion isn't being true to God, that it has been twisted to fit a bigoted agenda - and how do I get to God through that? I don't know if I've expressed it properly. What do others think - is this something that anyone else struggles with?
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Religion and the patriarchy
16 replies
becstarlightstarbright · 31/01/2013 17:29
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