Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

[IwantToRetire]

Article by Humanist UK, so doesn't really reflect on the impact on women although does mention abortion rights.

But I do think that our politics are far more influenced by the US, not for any deep reasons, but so much of our TV is now americanised.

And some of the fundamentalist UD christian groups have very regressive attitude towards women.

https://humanists.uk/2025/09/17/rising-christian-nationalism-a-threat-to-us-all/

I have seen this before. In Louise Perry's book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution she writes this twice, but she makes it sound as if this is what some archaeologists actually believe. Now it seems that the idea is something made up by a poet.

If you want to find babies bones there are plenty in the grounds of the Mother and Baby Homes such as the one in Tuam in County Galway. Pits of babies bones are connected to nuns more than to prostitutes.

Thanks, good point. I have SOME time for Ms Perry, but I disagree with her on a lot of stuff.

I read that quote in an article she did, obvs based on that book.

I like Hollie mcNish's stuff, I might try messaging her on X to find out where she got this idea.

I'm sure Roman brothels forced infanticide but to that extent?
Besides the poor women were slaves. How much choice did they have..?

I know about Tuam, researching that rn. Vile nuns in that home.

It seems this idea is disputed. This 2010 blog debates a case where this was suggested.

https://ancientbodies.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/are-dead-babies-good-evidence-for-a-roman-brothel/

Better wait until the Tuam excavations have finished. So far, after two months, they have five workhouse-era skeletons and a lot of soup bones.

www.rte.ie/news/2025/1003/1536665-tuam-skeletal-remains/

So there were no 796 bodies? Really?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/25/a-stain-on-irelands-conscience-tuam-home-for-unmarried-mothers-gives-up-grimmest-of-buried-secrets

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwqnwrkd1go.amp

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/20/nx-s1-5467731/a-mass-grave-an-unwed-mothers-home-and-the-catholic-church-in-ireland

Are the witnesses lying/mistaken? And the other evidence wrong?

Who knows? Maybe they'll find the skeletons on the site. Maybe the town council (who had responsibility) will find the lost burial registers and a plot somewhere in the town graveyard. 796 dead babies and children over 36 years, with undernourished mothers who could not be admitted to the home until late in their pregnancies (rules from the same town council, taking care of the ratepayers), at a time when TB was rife, and there were no antibiotics for most of the period.

Too many dead, but poverty is grim. At least the excavation will give us some answers.

That's a good contextual point that mortality would have been sadly high anyway, and ofc the council also bears guilt.

I have read a lot of evidence & accounts for poor care though. The long-term domestic at the Tuam home, Julia Devaney, was recording speaking about it & her reminiscences weren't very positive.

There's also several different people's accounts (including Devaney) of seeing a lot of babies buried there by the nuns.

My mother was in boarding school in Tuam in the 1940s - a farmer's daughter, related to the school doctor and a Canon in the church. The food was dreadful, several of the girls she shared a dormitory with got TB and were sent home to die. The country was desperately poor, and only began to prosper when they got good market prices supplying food to the UK during the war.

The Home children and their mothers did not have easy lives, but nor did anyone else.

If there are babies buried on that site the archaeologists will find them.

Yes,. Either way, as you say, there will be some kind of closure.

That's really awful, must have been very upsetting also to see that... ☹️

I appreciate that the conditions were very bad for everyone. What I was referring to me were reported cruel/uncaring behaviour from the nuns in Tuam & elsewhere.

There's lots of discussion now on MN & elsewhere about cruelty from midwives, pregnancy does seem to sometimes bring out cruel behaviour from others including other women... for multiple reasons probably, and obvs positions of power over the vulnerable are abused to some degree in probably all cases.

I suspect that if you inquire about the way people were treated in the workhouse, or by the soldiers barracked in the interval between the workhouse and the nuns, or the way the soldiers themselves were treated, you'll find that was fairly hard too. And that the nuns were as cold and badly fed as everyone else.

And as I said, the ratepayers and their representatives really resented having to finance the Home.

If I remember correctly the last time a majority of people went to church in the UK was about 1850 and then it was nonconformists like the Methodists who had the numbers.

Dead babies aside, the thing about brothels in the Roman through to the Medieval times is that there was a whole group of women who weren't deemed worthy of any sort of protection at all. The Roman prostitutes were slaves. In Thomas Aquinus's time it wasn't just their health but their souls that was being put on the line. But, it was considered worth it because effectively some women needed to be sacrificed to men's needs. So for all there may have been pragmatic reasons for Aquinus's.and other religious thinker's emphasis on chastity - this piety required some women to be sacrificed. It's why I think Louise Perry is a bit blinkered. It's not that there aren't costs to the sexual Revolution and the sex work is empowering brigade. But the other extreme isn't any better and still results in the exploitation of women and children. And possibly the deaths of many babies.
I know it's only a book but it reminds me of the bit in the Handmaid's tale where she meets her old friend in a brothel. So in addition to women being trapped at home in incredibly restrictive moralities, other women are also trapped working as prostitutes. By the same regime.

I have read what the anthropologist wrote in the link. She said these 97 dead infants were more likely the offspring of servants or slaves than prostitutes. I have often thought that in ancient times many people lived on farmsteads.

These farmsteads would have been owned by one man but occupied by a large family and would have included some people who were servants but little more than slaves. There would have been unmarried women who were paid nothing, had to work all hours and were probably sexually abused too.

In the Bible and in the Odyssey there seem to have been women and girls called maidservants. They were not captive but couldn't really walk away because there was nowhere for them to go. Maybe most of them were orphans from wars or from really poor families who couldn't keep them.

Why care when Islam doesn't respect gays, allow gays, allow trans or allow women to pray with men

You just going on every thread to complain about Muslims today?
You could say the same about most religions being intolerant to gay people, being misogynistic, Christianity, islam or whatever. Why do you seem to think the only problems with religion are with Muslims?
There are plenty of Muslims that are very tolerant and live and let live

The most memorable of those maidservants is Hagar. Abram's wife Sarai was old and barren, so Abram fathered a child, Ishmael, with Hagar.

Then [insert stuff about covenant at your leisure] Sarah (Sarai) despite her old age, became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac.

So - Abraham agreed that his first born son and his mother should be cast out into the desert to die to make space for Isaac.

Lovely stuff.

The twist - Islam regards Ishmael, who survived, as one of its ancestral patriarchs, and the line of descent through Hagar as more important than the line through Sarah.

Like I said, Bible, action packed.

A generation later, the twelve sons of Isaac's son Jacob, who become the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, are the sons of his two wives and the wives' two maidservants.

Definitely the workhouses were like that (as here) and as you say probably the soldiers..

Devaney did remember the Tuam nuns living frugally. Certainly seems a lot of nuns were probs not keen on being nuns & this would ofc affect their behaviour. Accounts also of nuns treating each other poorly. The difference was they had more say in being there in the first place - though in practice maybe often they didn't..

More recently 4 of the orders do seem to be wealthy. They refused to pay compensation to the women & in 2012 were found to have 1.5 billion in assets (mainly property investment from the later economic boom). But I'd agree most nuns around the 50s-60s weren't living with much.

Exactly , that's quite a story.. So by that Jews & Muslims are cousin-tribes.

Incidentally I've read some online Catholics say sex after menopause is OK bc while on the surface not 'open to life', a miracle like Sarah is possible. I thunk there have poss bwen a few of women over 70...not as old as Sarah though!

Exactly, Perry has some good ideas, but like Mary Harrington she often goes off the deep end. Harrington has similarly over-positive ideas about medieval women, and as Sam Bidwell pointed out in The Critic recently, people like her forget that extended family has not been as big a thing in British culture as she seems to think, and that cultures (eg China, Japan & India) with a high degree of clannishness & family obligation tend to also be somewhat repressive & have a at times unhelpful honour/shame customs. Further cultures in both Europe & Asia with strong extended families still have falling birth rates.

It also seems wrong-headed in one sense to associate Roman brothel infanticide with feminist pro-choicers.

Feminists want women to be free to have children, they usually oppose forced sterilisation and abortion. I suppose she means that making abortion legal makes it more likely women will get pressured into it, but even if that' true, are there not workarounds to try to ward off coercion?

Unless she thinks abortion per se is equivalent to infanticide? Or third trimester?

According to this article she did for the conservative US Christian magazine First Things, she got confirmation of thus from Helen Somebody (I'll check surname) who had been an archaeological student & found this on digs. Admittedly this woman is a proven liar which fabricated a book she wrote, but could be true...

https://firstthings.com/we-are-repaganizing/

Def right about the Handmaid's Tale. Madonna/Whore complex I suppose...

It does seem blinkered as you say to ignore that Aquinas & Augustine supported a subclass of women for male sexual desire.

Also she ignores that quite a few medieval brothels were owned by the Church! The Bishop of Winchester was apparently one of the largest owners.

https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-bishop-s-profitable-sex-workers

As a matter of fact, that reminds me of when Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Benedict's right hand man, bought a 23 million share in buildings including Italy's largest gay sauna. Probs just a wise investment, but some said some priests had other motives for wanting him to do that...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/vatican-purchases-23m-building-that-houses-europes-biggest-gay-sauna/29123076.html&ved=2ahUKEwjb_PLI94iQAxXGTkEAHfLvJnwQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1b-9A_3KxR4xETSIBlmRbm

Yeah, its a very simplified view of medieval times, or the.past generally. On the one hand medieval women were more economically active and possibly had more agency than people might think. There was actually more kindness shown to illegitimate children or single mothers than you might expect. But on the other hand, writers like Aquinus- were both highly judgemental of sexual incontinence but also weirdly hypocritical in recognising "men's needs". So I suspect the real middle ages wouldn't have met the "trad" Christian ideal. But the "trad" Christian ideal would have been horrible for women.
Mary Harrington is to be fair more intelligent and better informed than a lot of the "intellectuals" arguing similar things. But most of the "we should go back to traditional values" type are attracted by a false view of history - a weird mix of 1950s ideals and misunderstandings about medieval times. It's very much pick your history to suite your story.

If you look at County Court records, people were up to all sorts of crazy shenanigans back then same as now.

St. Mary's Refuge, High Park in Dublin was a Magdalene Laundry. I was run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. In 1993 unmarked graves of 155 women were discovered. They sold the land for millions during the boom but have refused to compensate former inmates.

I don't know that it's really hypocrisy. There are an awful lot of things we recognise as bad, that we allow or put up with for pragmatic reasons.

Neither Augustine nor Aquinas really thought that prostitution was good or ok, they thought it was a sin and no one should be involved in it.

But it's always a differernt question to say, should we try and actually prevent this activity, make it illegal or give serious social consequences to people who partake.

This is the kind of argument you see people making around harm reduction approaches with drugs for example, right up to state provided safe supply. Which does perhaps prevent some deaths, and does perhaps reduce the hold of gangsters on the market, but it also tends to sacrifice many of the addicts themselves and often their families and neighbourhoods. Is that a fair trade off, after all, many might not have managed to get off drugs anyway - it's hard to say. But it is an example of allowing something seriously damaging to individuals and societies in order to balance out harms that could be caused by cracking down.

Romans like Augustine and medieval like Aquinas tended to be a lot more pragmatic than a lot of people understand, for some reason they seem to hold them up to a standard of idealism we often don't hold ourselves to.