And on with the religion…

I know, topic might be getting old. But I have some questions to put to you all.

Talking about spirituality and spiritual experiences, Sarah, one of my uni friends,  that she didn’t disbelieve  ’spiritual experience’, but the systems of belief to which those experiences are ascribed. For example, to have some kind of ‘encounter’ in prayer is one thing, but to then assume that that spiritual experience correlates specifically to one kind of belief system, which belongs to a certain group of people in a certain part of the world at a certain time within a certain political system, might be completely unnecessary. Is it possible that just because there’s ‘something’ out there, it isn’t necessary to ascribe that something to, for example, a white, patriarchal, monotheistic, culturally specific religion (Christianity). Especially when so much about that religion is oppressive or in direct opposition to some of your other beliefs. I have been thinking about this since Sarah put it to me.

Why ought I ascribe my spiritual experiences to a certain organized form of religion? I mean, spirituality and faith and religion are all completely different things. And you can have one without the other.

I get very put off by the claims that Christian ideology ‘founded the western world and our legal system’, as though that is something to be proud of. Capitalism is so oppressive, just that it’s an indirect kind of oppression with no ONE person to blame. So saying things like that put me off A) because of their underlying political ideologies, and B) because in seeming SO pro-western, statements like this emphasise Christianity’s NON-universality.

For example, how is Christianity relevant to native peoples on the other side of the world in BC times? Or even now? People with their own history, culture, dreaming, etc etc that have gone on for millions of years? How can we claim Jesus, one dude who lived in Israel over 2,000 years ago (but more importantly, millions of years INTO human existence) overrides that?

Judaism and then Christianity belongs to only one cultural history and that is largely a western history and culture, except where the West have imposed those views on other people groups. Eg. Christianity is not the ‘native’ history and culture of most Eastern countries. It is not even that native religion of the U.S, or Australia. It accounts for only a percentage of the population. And yet it’s supposed to be true for everyone? I find this really difficult to get past.

In fact, I’m not at all sure people can get around it and not stand accused of working within an exclusive framework that doesn’t account for cultural others.

Any thoughts?

There is hope!

After kicking over the Christianity / homosexuality thing for a fair while, things seemed to come to an ugly head for me at the conference the other night.

I’d been talking about it with a couple of people, testing the waters to see if there was any hope of reconciling my feminist / gay rights beliefs with any kind of ‘christian’ faith. It seems I kind of took a step out in both directions – into the gay world, and back into the Christian one. It wasn’t until last week that I became convinced I was doing the splits.

Now though, that may have changed. I chanced across Tim’s new blog: Rite of Reply, and happily spilled my guts. I’m glad I did. Not only did his response suddenly make me feel a whole lot less alone and a whole lot more hopeful, he also referred me to the blog of Anthony Venn-Brown, a Christian GLBT activist. With a bit of jumping I also got to this:

http://www.recycleyourfaith.com/2010/06/14/reconsidering-the-bible-and-homosexuality/

After doing gender studies at Uni it’sbecome  impossible for me to look at this issue with the old Christian ignorance any more. Christians, those who are supposed to be agents of love, acceptance and non-judgement, have been some of the most oppressive agents of harm to GLBTI’s.

While I want to believe in God, it is Christians that seems to make it impossible for me. Since finishing my degree I’ve moved home only to have two world collide. I’ve felt utter hopelessness at the possibility of reconciling being a Christian as well as a feminist and LGBT advocate (ok, so I’m not an ‘advocate’ advocate, but I did go to the Gay marriage rights rally, and I do openly call people on their homophobia. That makes me an advocate, right??)

It is so uplifting to suddenly see, when I thought there was no hope of that, that it is possible.

I can’t quite explain how exciting this is for me to hear. I feel like I’ve been on this hideous lonely journey of trying to assimilate my feminist/gender studies with Christianity. The more I’ve dug the more incompatible they’ve seemed, not from a “gospel” point of view, but from the responses I’ve got from people. Over the last 3 years of  steadily getting further and further away from the traditional church point of view, “Christian” has come to mean for me “Upholders of the patriarchal heterosexual nuclear family.” Every conversation I had with family or christian friends about feminism, or especially, homosexuality, has resulted in an “awkward silence” or a blatant “shut-down” …

Most feminists and GLBTI activists that I’ve encountered at Uni seem to be atheists, probably for the very reasons that religion has been a massively oppressive force for both women and gay rights. (which was nastily confirmed to be at the recent conference).

I’ve been asking the question over and over: “If Christianity is so all-accepting, why aren’t our churches full of gay and lesbian people? Or not even full…. why aren’t their ANY openly GLBT people in our churches?” It doesn’t say much for the whole diversity in the church thing.

Now I see there are people out there actively trying to change this.It feels like somebody just wrote “THERE IS HOPE” in the sky with a skywriter….

The L Word.

Woop!

Boum

“But suddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from ‘Let there be light’ to ‘It is finished’ only amounted to ‘boum.’” – E.M Forster, A Passage to India.

I suppose love was there once. In amongst the politics and the prejudices and the rules of admission. Love had pride of place once, actually—in the middle the mantelpiece, in the centre of the table, at the head of the bed. But love didn’t quite answer all of the questions, you see. Love was quiet, unassuming. In the end it headed into a corner to wait silently until it was noticed. I think love was eventually swept under the carpet.

It’s still there waiting, actually. There’s a few people who know where it’s hiding. They drag it out every now and then, put it on parade, throw it a party, put some of it to good use. Those who aren’t quite sure where it went try to recreate it—paint a portrait, make a sculpture. They grind it into a powder and put it on their faces, in their hair. They sprinkle it on their skin, they ingest it.

I heard that love can be found in a book, in black ink on white pages. Yes, love lies dormant in print. Edited, compiled, reworded, translated. But love has never mixed very well with black and white. It’s too colorful, takes some getting used to. If love was a fruit, it might be an apple (versatile: green, yellow, a hundred shades of red). But the black print says the apple was loves downfall. The man says it was the woman.

Ah, the woman. She is the virgin or the whore; Mary or Delilah. She is sexless or sex; the white veil or black heart. But I am blue in the cold and pink in the heat. I brown under the sun and when I’m sick I am green. Who can tie me up in a neat little box now? My paper is torn and my string unravelled.

(I’m afraid I’ve lost the end, and I can’t quite remember where it began.)

Oh! That’s right. It began with the man. The man on a Monday, in a suburb not a few blocks from here. The man who promises to take all my pain away with some hefty books, a few hard talks and a mustard seed of faith. He’s always there—in the street, near the cafe’s. Felt bible in hand, bony skull as hard-set as the thoughts inside; “do you know where you’re going?”

The man’s at the podium, shaking hands, weilding words. On Wednesday he’s a black suit, a white shirt (you know the one I mean). He fits into the squares like words fit into verses. On friday it’s the gym; pumping iron, sweat like drops of blood. Strength of muscle and bone, peppered with arrogance, salted with power.

But there’s only one man, you say to me. One man, one love. Yes, against remarkable odds. Love exists only in only one culture’s history. One man who came at one time to one place. For those already dead? For those across the world who could not know it? To those of another race, another tongue, to those of anotherGod?

Oh, I’ve tried to argue. But you are a file-o-fax of every inadequate Sunday School answer I’ve ever heard. Your without choice and without room for grey. You are a veritable cathedral of right. There are no chinks in the armour. Your boundaries are established and your cases closed.

And you only tell me I’m not quite right in the head. I am not quite right; my hair is too short and clothes too tight and the devil’s face is too close to my pillow. I use words that don’t exist in your dictionary and my eyes cannot see right from wrong. Oh, I can’t make it easy for you. I am outside the parameters. I am outside your mythical garden and your nuclear family. Outside your binaries, and generally out of order.

I suppose love existed once. But it was not in that mythical garden or that black and white text. It was not without colour or choice or valid opinion. It was not without women or gays or Muslims or atheists. And it did not come from the father.

And she shall be called woman

Recently I was accused under the cloak of humour of being a pretentious Melbourne University post-modernist. How did I manage to get that title? I wondered, after being raised in a conservative Christian family and attending a sheltered Christian school both of which maintained fairly fundamental views on every topic from creation to conversion? Well apparently this has happened in the space of two short years of brainwashing under the secular system. But I think it would have happened anyway; I’ve always questioned everything I’ve been taught about religion. Even in year eleven legal studies when we studied marriage and had to discuss the Biblical rules about sex and marriage, I couldn’t accept a piece of paper legitimising the carnal act. After two years of quiet rage, with the help of various people who are more articulare and insightful than myself, I recognise the source of this justifiable anger.

 

 

I know some of my friends have simmered with quiet frustration watching the race to the altar that occurs amongst Christian’s from the age of about eighteen onwards. Why? Because it’s plain stupid when you have the rest of your life to find a partner be fruitful and multiply. But we all know the Christian view on sex and why they’re all rushing down the aisle; set with a legal acknowledgement of their union, our barely-out-of-high-school Christian couples now have permission to shag. Oh, joy.

 Don’t get me wrong; I can see the good side of this rule. It seems ideal in a perfect world: finding your one man (or woman) and living happily ever after – no fucking around necessary. Or at least that’s what they say. But I have always felt there has to be some deeper reason behind this absolute insistence on virgin weddings. Thanks to Tori, Stu and Gender Studies, I think I might have figured it out.

 I was lucky enough recently to have one of those classic conversations where the ingrained nature of religion really hits you. Say something provocative like “I don’t believe in marriage” around a group of Christians and it’s not hard!

“What? You don’t believe in marriage? Don’t you want to have sex?” Er, I think there’s a way around that Sherlock. But never mind. The conversation followed was more interesting. 

Q. Why do you think you have to be married to have sex?

A. Because the Bible says so.

Q. Why does that mean you have to do it?

A. Because the Bible is God’s word.

Q. Why would God make a rule like that?

A. Because he has your best interests at heart.               

 

 So I’ve been thinking a lot about this and realising how much the Bible is a product of patriarchy written by men under a system which, among other things, attempts to subjugate women and keep them under control. Why?

 

Because woman is man’s one weakness and her sexuality her one form of power over man. This is revealed in countless bible stories and other myths. In Jewish and Greek mythology the fall of man comes through a woman; in the Bible this is Eve, in Greek myth it is Pandora. Pandora was irresistible to men because of her beauty and yet she was deceptive, for she carried with her the box (or jar) that contained all the evils in the world if opened. Thus, the beautiful and sexually desirous woman became the downfall of man. Similarly, Eve in the Garden of Eden tempts Adam to eat the fruit which brings evil into the world. Damn. So from the start woman is to blame, but even more she is mans Achilles heel. Don’t worry though, God fixed this problem from the word go through creating marriage; the institution in which gender inequality is first established. Shortly after the apple incident God tells Eve that having kids is going to hurt and that ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ (Genesis 3.16). In other words, you’re not going to get away with this again. The rest of the Bible follows in this same vein, depicting women who use their sexuality as a form of power over men as evil. Delilah is a fine example; the prostitute who seduced Samson and became his downfall,  ultimately causing his death and the death of many others. This woman did not conform to having sex within the institution God set up for it; the patriarchal system. Sexually aware women, first Biblically and then throughout history, are demonised as devious, tainted, unclean and sinful, while the virgin Mary is the ultimate example of virtue and is upheld as the ideal model of woman; her purity was the very reason she was chosen to give birth to the saviour. In this way, the nature of woman as good or evil is related solely to her sexuality. Sexually transgressive women are made outcasts in order to scare other women into staying pure. That is into coming under the submission of a husband and having sex only within marriage so that the patriarchal framework – family, of which the father is the head, remains intact. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden, particularly to women, as a means of control. If the family structure functions as a miniature version of society with the husband / father in charge and in possession of his wife and children, then society as a whole remains patriarchal; men stay in charge. If marriage and family fall apart, father’s are no longer the head of the household and of their wives. On a larger scale this means that patriarchy loses control of the reigns. The solution? To confine sex as an act to be done solely within marriage, the institution that prescribes men as the boss. Sex outside of this patriarchal institution is depicted as dangerous and the women who instigate it are evil adulteresses and seductresses who lure men into sin. This myth generates the belief that women should feel ashamed of their sexuality, viewing the unchaste body as ‘a source of embarrassment….an object of disgust.’ Deuteronomy even describes a woman who has sex outside of as being punishable by death: “if no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”(Deuteronomy 22:20). So men are aware of women’s source of power over them and to combat this women are made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, to have sex only when men are sure they’re in control (in marriage), or otherwise risk social rejection and punishment. Or at least they were a few thousand years ago. But I’m pretty sure this is still going on today. And if the rate that I’m seeing nineteen year olds purchasing wedding dresses is any indication, the purity myth is still in force. And patriarchy still holds the reigns. Because God said so.