Feminism and religion: discuss

[tabouleh]

There was some interest in discussing Feminism and religion on the "intro" thread.

I think it would be very lovely if that thread is pretty much kept to intros and light hearted banter.

So I thought I would start this thread to discuss religion.

I will copy some info I quoted on the other thread which is from the "Reclaiming the F Word" book:

Apparently feminists of the second wave who worked on religion fell into four groups: religious reformists, religious revisionists, spiritual revolutionaries and secular feminists.

So which are you?

I can't help it if I find the whole idea of a progressive or feminist thinker converting to Islam or Catholicism, for that matter, peculiar and misguided. I think it helps if you were misguided in your youth and already brainwashed by another patriarchal religion. I'm not the only one who finds it strange, although easiest to pick on.

I am Atheist, I find most religions backward.

I live in Japan which has its own unique religion! I think it might be one of the only countries that does. It is very similar to Celtic paganism and the priest of the local shrine who married me and DH was fascinated that I'm from Wales and he knows all about the celts

Anyway, there is no sexism in these religions because they're based on fertility gods (I think), which are female in "feeling". They offer rice to the gods and hope for harvests etc. They are based on the connection between people and nature.

THe big problem they have is that they lack any deep theology, so they're not going to give you any answers about the meaning of life, which is what other religions attempt to offer.

This arrived to Japan in the form of Buddhism later on, but it was mostly rejected because basically I think the Japanese are pragmatic people.

COnfucianism (sp) came from China to Japan and that was based on patriarchy and the patrilineal line so the Japanese rejected Buddhism but happily assimilated the idea of patriarchy into their culture

I understand there are over 100 verses in the Quran which ask Muslims to kill people like me.

But Posie, if you want to find solutions to women's problems you have to work alongside muslim feminists.

i believe in god but i dont go to church.
is god a imaginary friend-[does god exist]no idea and nor has anyone else but im happy with the idea.
is god male[ive only seen pictures of god being male]or female-no idea-god could be genderless for all i know.

as i said im quite happy to be believing in god[is this because i i was indoctrinated to believe this in the first place-dont know]
as i find this a comfort at times.

but having said this-its because i have a choice whether to believe or not and i feel that this is sometimes what some of the problem is-choice.

i do have a problem with places of worship though-because i feel that sometimes they are not giving you any choices-they are making you fear instead and this is wrong.
i also see them sometimes as discriminating and if there is a god-i doubt that this god would discriminate-its humans that do.

i feel that religeon is used to control people.
and i feel that this control is directed at women most of the time.
if god is good i feel that god would want us to learn and get on with each other and be kind to each other-not have some people bullying and scaring others-in the name of god.
if god is loving and caring-why aint man?
religion causes wars-all in the name of god.
its not in the name of god-its in the name of man[cos he s frightened of losing any control]
if there is a god-god must be crying.

i have a choice to believe or not-i have a choice to go to a place of worship or not-
many people dont have this choice-both in this country and other countrys.

I fall into group three. Many moons ago I used to fit into groups 1 + 2 before giving up.

A typical example is me and dh going to church for the first time, dh being asked to read the lesson and act as sidesman and me being asked to read the lesson, act as sidesman and go on the flower rota, the cleaning rota, the refreshments rota...such a silly thing but very much reflects the attitude of the church to men and women. I had afriend who laughed it off and whose husband baked the cakes - he's now a priest so there are pockets of change, but never enough.

I like Starhawk's work and she often quotes a thealogion who says that 'when God is male, then the male becomes God'. As a feminist and also as someone who knows that however flawed they are our religious institutions aren't going away, I think it vital that the Divine Feminine is taught alongside other religions in schools. I did offer to go into the dc's primary school and explain about the pagan wheel of the year and the Goddess as part of their learning on religion and the environment, but wasn't allowed to - yet the poster proclaiming that 'God made the world in 6 days' was okay. (thankfully dd1 stuck up her hand and said she believed the Big Bang theory anyway

The idea of secularism is a tricky one. It bothers me when I see a politician who holds to a certian faith going against that for political expediency because I do not want hypocritical politicians, especially in Government. So do we ban everyone with a faith from political office? But then that woudl be prejudiced and unrepresentative. Or what about doctors or nurses who have strong beliefs about 'the right to life'? Not easy, any of it, but we can't pretend faith and religion don't exist.

LackingINspiration: Sorry but it's far too big a leap from tentative experiments with 'shared consciousness' to saying oh well, there must be a deity. 'Intelligent Design' is creationism for the stupid-but-snobbish.
Yes there may be some strange and interesting stuff going on in the far reaches of particle physics and all that, but none of it actually suggests in any logical way that there is a supernatural THing which is conscious and aware. The three main purposes of religion are and always will be a) control of the masses to keep them in their place b) enrichment of the priest class and their backers and c) comfort to the gullible or vulnerable.

I think if so much evil is done in the name of Allah then Muslims need to be seen to act and speak out against it. I am not blaming Muslims for the acts and think Muslims and Westerners must work together to find a solution to Islam's difficulty in being accepted and integrated into the West.

This is a massive aside to the inherent sexism within Islam.

Not loud enough.

Riven - do you have a better link than the one you posted the other day? I was frankly unimpressed with the quality of that article.

SGB: "Sorry but it's far too big a leap from tentative experiments with 'shared consciousness' to saying oh well, there must be a deity."

I don't think I said 'there must be a deity'. I meant that there is no evidence for a higher power, but there is at least the beginnings of evidence for some sort of shared energy.

"'Intelligent Design' is creationism for the stupid-but-snobbish."

Not sure why you directed that at me, because I don't believe in intelligent design/creationism at all.

"Yes there may be some strange and interesting stuff going on in the far reaches of particle physics and all that, but none of it actually suggests in any logical way that there is a supernatural THing which is conscious and aware."

Neither did I. You're misunderstanding me. I'm talking about energy/ies and the power to control it/them. To me (as I currently see it but I am, as always, very open minded) 'God' (for want of a far better word!) is within us and shared by us all - we are connected. But it's not in charge of us and it hasn't designed anything.

"The three main purposes of religion are and always will be a) control of the masses to keep them in their place b) enrichment of the priest class and their backers and c) comfort to the gullible or vulnerable."

That's not true in the slightest for pagan religions.

LackingInspiration. Of couse, electricity exisgted before someone worked out how to make lightbulbs with it. There may well be other types of energy that havne't been discovered yet, but they are no more 'gods' than electricity or the internal combustion engine (ie things with a consciousness of their own).
And paganism and pantheistic religions are less into social control than monotheistic ones, I'll grant you, and these days paganism is pretty much the preserve of nice hippies, but there will have been people who used it for control, power and money. Actually, chatting with any pagan will generallynet you afew nam,es of individuals whos interest in pagan religions it based on how much money they can get out of other people and how many gullible types they can persuade that getting shagged is a way to connect with the higher power, etc ...

SGB, I just had a hilarious vision of you as Richard Dawkins in drag :)

Agreed with all you say.

Weirdly, most of my friends are haaaaaaaaard core Christian women whose lifestyles, ironically, have a lot to offer hardcore feminists.

Riven - I have been trawling through Google, but I haven't found any good quality articles yet. I thought you might know some. The one you linked before was bizarre, I found. It's the first time I've ever seen anyone try to use personal ignorance of vocabulary to win a linguistic argument! Plus lots of irrelevant stuff and straw man arguments.