According to a study cited in the
Los Angeles Times,
“thinking analytically can cause religious belief to wane.” Analytical
thinking and religion aren’t quite mutually exclusive, but when
religious people exercise their brains, they tend to reach some
conclusions that are antithetical to what their religions teach. A
prominent example is in their attitudes toward women.
Former
President Jimmy Carter is
a thinking person of faith. In 2009, he left the Southern Baptist
Church because of its refusal to ordain women and its strictures that
women be subservient to their husbands. In leaving, he made these
statements:
“At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be
subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced
prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a
crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over
their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to
education, health, employment and influence within their own
communities….
“The truth is that male religious leaders have had—and still have—an
option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women.
They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.
Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for
much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the
world.”
The abuses perpetrated on women around the world are horrific, but we
don’t need to look any further than the United States to see the
persecution of women by religious forces. Let’s consider the
ten most religious states in
America. They are Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas,
South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma. These
are some of the leaders in initiating anti-woman legislation—like Utah’s
law to criminally prosecute some women for miscarriages, or Louisiana
and Oklahoma’s attempts to pass personhood amendments that declare a
fertilized egg to be a citizen with full rights, or Georgia’s effort to
pass the cynically named “Protect Life Act” that would give hospitals
the right to refuse treatment to a woman whose life is in danger—if it
involves an emergency abortion. Georgia, by the way, ranks eleventh in
the nation in its number of forcible rapes.
It doesn’t take much brainpower to see why there’s a link between religion and the mistreatment of women.
Randall Bailey,
of the Interdenominational Theological Center, goes even further than
Carter. A thinking person has to see the logic behind this statement:
“We think we can use abusive texts in a sanitized way to
prevent violence… If we continue to sidestep those issues, we are
furthering abuse not only on those we want to help, but also on
ourselves.”
That cuts right to the heart of the problem. The histories and holy
books of the three major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are
filled with God-sanctioned violence toward and control of women. All
three religions have come from the same source: Abraham. The great
founding father, Abraham, married his half-sister, Sarah, and then
prostituted her to the Pharaoh of Egypt in order to save his own skin.
He is the role model for every subsequent generation of believers in all
three faiths. The bottom line is that women are seen as tools for men
to use for their own purposes.
There has been a lot of emphasis in the media on the role of the
Christian Right in political attempts to forcibly control the behavior
of women, but the Right is the easy target. The truth is that the
language of all the major religions victimizes and subjugates females.
Randall Bailey is right; trying to use abusive texts in a sanitized way
doesn’t come close to addressing the problem. The words shape attitudes
and behavior. You can paint the walls of a building pure white and make
it look quite holy and presentable, but when rot eats at the foundation,
there is no salvaging the whole. It must come down.
Randall Bailey continues:
“What is this notion we have in religion that there is a
spirituality that can be anti-human rights? What can even condone that
as an option?”
Oh, Religion —If It Only Had A Brain! | Addicting Info
