How CAN you be religious if you are a feminist?

[SolidGoldBrass]

Given that misyogyny is absolutely inherent in Christianity, Islam and the rest (even when they try to dress it up as saying they 'revere' women and women are 'special' it;s still about women being defined by men as not quite human), how can a woman follow any of these myth systems without accepting that she's less than fully human and her imaginary friend thinks so too, otherwise why wouldn't it have smashed the patriarchy already?

Thing is, the Lords prayer as taught by Jesus is what is said in the christian tradition, so it would be difficult to do the Lords prayer as anything else - like twisting Jesus' words. However there are lots of prayers round it using the language of mother or father and mother, and I don't have a problem with these.

I have tried not to say I think 'father actually means mother too', I know I can't always get it across in words, but it's more for me a sense that when I am praying to God as father, I have an awareness that God is more than a male, has female characteristics as much as male, is in fact so much more than I could describe in language. So it's not as simple as 'father means mother too' at all.

BTW I think I said further down that I agreed the Church is PAtriarchal and all that.

As for men thinking of us as an afterthought- I guess we have very different people in our lives. The ida that there are things I cannot do as a female etc hasn't really been something that has affected me- I am lucky. I am pretty sure I ahve passed that to my boys as well- was explaining to ds1 about restrictions on females historically and he was just amazed.

I am not a girly girl though: when we get together in our theatrical group I would rather weld than sew. I domsetimes look at the otehr woman and think I ownder if theya re truly happy there but I also appreciate teh fact that nobody stops me sitting quietly in a corner with a pieve of cable and a screwdriver either.

I am siure there is soemthing we agree on Dittany- well I know ther is, that women are in no way any less than men. Other than that- yellow? can't stick iy- you?

you and I are seemingly cut from the same cloth I think- opionated, bright- matbe in rl we'd get along in rl who lnows?

If people quibble about the language it really puts me off organised religion altogether!

Dittany- yes and I would say it as it is said at whatever group I wat with as a matter of respect. My boys attend a faith school (there is no other option anyway, apart from ds3'sd SNU- small Welsh village) and they are taught all of the traditional stuff but whilst I do get them to talk about things like being told anyone who prays hard enough can geta nything they want (what a stunning thing to tell a child with AS but anyway..... 'Mummy why won't God listen to me when I pray for friends' 'Mum if ds3 prayed mroe would his autoism go away?'- bastards) I try not to give thema nswers any way, just get them to think about things they repeat and what they mean IYSWIM?

Absolutely gripping thread! I've been glued to this for the last couple of hours.

Dittany I am a very big fan of yours.

Earthy I am fascinated by your beliefs. Deep down I know they are closest to my own views, but they won't get my kids into the great school at the top of my road and out of the Russian roulette-style lottery system which blights secondary school admissions in Brighton.

I'm now off to listen to Banishing Eve. Many thanks for the link.

Yup, if you find it weird to say 'our mother' rather than 'our father' it means you have bought into the idea that the default position of humanity/deity is male (ie 'mankind' is a valid word for 'human beings' when 'womankind' means a separate category of human beings.)

Now this is one of my (new) favourite quotes on the whole business. I think that fundamentally This Will Do.
'Civilisations all over the world worshipped the sun as a god that gave birth to Earth. Thousands of years later we discovered that the Earth WAS actually created from the sun as part of the debris that whas wirling around it four and a half billion years ago... But they were worshipping the wrong sun. Our sun isn't actually hot enough to fuse hydrogen to helium. The sun that 'gave birth' to us died billions of years ago in a supernova which created the higher elements that make up our solar system. And that means that every one of us here is literally made of stardust.'

Good quote SGB that pretty much equates with my understanding of the old faiths I know about (didn't do much on Pagan faiths though).

Default position is that deities are genderless: the rest all came later. Doesn't have to eman it is untrue- a lot of stuff we learned thatc ame later is true after all- but nonetheless it is proven that the faiths absorbed the cultures and faith systems they moved into.

Thing is though that whilst I absolutely agree that there are no mainstream feminsit faiths etc (I amt old Pganism is, but as I said...) I am very much a pragmatisit. What I care about is what happens now- that Muslim women aren't stoned for the 'sin' of sex; that females can become Bishops and influence their faiths now.

I definitely don't do semantics., I leave that for otehrs, I am too much the real time activist I guess.

I suppose it must take a mix, learn from the past and change the future.

Sorry but anyone who claims that the Bible they read is the Literal Word of God sets off my Idiot Alarms. Unless you can prove to me that you actually speak Aramaic/Ancient Hebrew like a native, you're not getting the original version, it's gone through half a dozen translations before you got to read it. And if there was a BigSkyDaddy who wanted you to read his literal words then wouldn't He have arranged for no one to speak anything but Aramaic? Or for translation to be invariably easy and flawless? Or if that was what he meant only he kind of forgot to see to it, well he's a bit rubbish at being completely all-powerful then, isn't he?

Anyone who thinks the Bible is the lieteral word of God makes me sob quietly too SGB.

I don't mind you beleive (within parameters absed on decency to otehs and the like) but fgs, make sure you know the actual reality of it.

But then the Prof at Uni tells me that he ahs real issues with Muslims too who walk out of the lecture where he questions the progeny of the Qur'an. persoanlly if someone signs up for a degree in world faiths and then walks out on such things i'd fail them (regardless of what they walked out of and what faith-we had Christians doing it too, apart from that it was 1 sikh girl and many atheists) but I am a hard cow like that. Refusal to ehar anyone elses opinion esp, in a uni setting pisses me off endlessly.

It's interesting what happens when Catholicism goes head to head with feminism. Where I went to high school (all girls), the nuns wanted to live in the community, not cloistered away, and they didn't want to wear a habit. They did real grassroots stuff, feeding the homeless, helping drug addicts, raising money for women's refuges. So, Pope Paul ex communicated them . They continued doing what they felt was right as women in Christianity.

They were later re instated as being in good standing, but what I loved about them as an order of nuns, is that they didn't notice that the Pope had re instated them as their status in the church didn't matter. It was the work they were doing that was important.

Somehow these nuns reconciled their religion with what most would deem real Christianity.

I don't think women should have to apologize for being Christian and feminist. I think one can disagree with aspects of one's religion and still be a feminist and vice versa. They aren't mutually exclusive, imo.

Ilovemydog that's my experience of the nuns at my church.

Why exactly were they ex communicated? Was it because they wouldn't wear habits?

Christianity has done some terrible things in the name of religion, including its treatment of women.

The British Empire has also done some terrible things, including its treatment of women.

But I like living in England and being British, because I judge this country on how it is now, not how it was then. And for the same reason I am happy to be part of a Christian church because of what it is doing now, not what it did then.

spidermama think the habit was a symbol of oppression to them, and part of the bigger power struggle. They made a point of not wearing the habit (and favored polyester ) and not living together, but (shock) as individual women in their own apartments, some shared, but the point being that it was their decision.

They were considered quite liberal in that we discussed openly issues such as abortion, contraception, divorce, and how it could be/couldn't be reconciled with the doctrine of the church. It was OK to disagree as long as one could back up the argument.

Oh, and they would demonstrate quite openly about nuclear power and workers rights.

They were ex communicated for papal disobedience, I think, but in essence it was because they were a strong group of women.

And I really wonder why these women aren't in charge of the church? It would be infinitely more sane if they were.

Women are not turning their backs in large numbers-they are fighting to take part! I would say that more than half of Cof E vicars are women and they are fighting to be bishops-it will come eventually.Things move on.

Dittany: "I don't think the bible is that hard to understand. It's a patriarchal document that sets man up as god (god made man in his image) and women to be subordinate." - did you read the bit I wrote yesterday saying that the bible itself says man and woman together represent God's image? Why don't you check it in one of your online Bible sources?

Now, since you're the one who said to SGB that you don't know much about the Bible, could you explain why you suddenly appear to be rejecting that very statement - perhaps because it's suddenly inconvenient to the new point you're trying to make? When you say the Bible is not that hard to understand, are you saying that despite the scant biblical knowledge which you yourself professed, you understand it far better than the millions of male and female scholars who spent decades wrestling with it for the past two millenia? The fact that you say that the parables weren't that complicated, for example, is a classic example of what I said about you scratching the surface (without realising that's what you're doing) - without knowledge of information such as the culture,, language and assumptions of the time, of course you would see them as simple! Did you know, for example, that the 'camel through the eye of a needle' statement was actually a joke, which would have had his listeners wetting themselves laughing? I only discovered this recently, and I've followed this faith all my life.

If you were writing about Shakespeare or Chaucer, would you still be denying the relevance of understanding the culture within which these people were writing?

As for your objection to my statements about Catholicism, did you notice the bit where I said I may be wrong and that perhaps a Catholic can correct me? As a non-Catholic I do not presume to understand Catholicism better than a Catholic. However you, despite professing scant knowledge, do presume to understand Christianity better than Christians. How are we meant to have a thoughtful discussion on this basis?

This is exactly why I asked earlier for a ground rule where posters would agree to show openness to the thought that that ideas they hadn't considered might have merit. This convo has SO much potential but is sadly taking the usual predictable route - ironically the traditionally 'male-brained' war-mongering route of defending one's territory, launching attacks and flatly refusing to engage or try to understand the other. How very sad and ironic in a conversation about patriarcy. I haven't caught up on the whole thread but I so far haven't seen a single response to my request for openness. I know that not all posters on this thread take the 'war-mongering' approach; maybe there's still room for discussion with those posters.

I shall read the rest of this thread later but from what I've seen so far am feeling very depressed by the predictable way parts of this convo are turning.

If women want to change things they need to do what the are doing-stay within the system. Nothing changes if you just take umbrage and leave! Thousands of years of patriarchal society isn't going to change overnight!

Coming to this thread late, but just wanted to make the point that not understanding the Bible and not knowing much of it (there's a lot of it!) are two different things. I think Dittany was saying the latter.

Dittany- not talking about the Abrahamic faiths, theya re relatively recent: talking about the really most ancient Indus Civilisation beliefs, Paganism etc.

;Also do you really think that the "truth" of religion is based only in the dim and distant past - that no-one can ever actually know given that not a single one of us was there

And that's not what I said

But no matter what we do now we can't get a tardis and go back there. We simply cannot. We can't wipe the faitjhs out even if we wanted to either so we have (or rather I find it is best to) work with what we have in the here and now.