Considering how they've been treated, why do so many women stick with religion?
Some days I
am amazed that women who believe in God bother with religion at all.
For centuries
they have been told by men to shut up, cover up and put up with countless rules
and regulations governing how, where, when and why they may—or may not—participate
in religious roles or rituals of one sort or another.
I honestly
don’t know how so many of them managed to keep their faith. If the shoe were on
the other foot—if men faced the same limitations and restrictions based on
out-of-context interpretations of selected verses from ancient texts—most of us
would be out of there in a minute.
But somehow,
and for some reason, many religious women have hung in there. All I can feel is
awe.
What got me
thinking about how women have been treated by religious groups was the hashtag
#thingsonly Christianwomenhear, which was popular on Twitter in April.
The
conversation about the sexist and toxic things Christian women hear was started
by popular Canadian Christian author and blogger Sarah Bessey.
According to
Bessey, who is author of the book Jesus
Feminist, it was just something she wanted to talk to her Twitter followers
about.
But it
quickly went viral, amassing hundreds of responses from women sharing things
they had heard in churches or from church leaders.
Examples
included: "You are an amazing leader! You'd make an excellent pastor's
wife someday!"
“Women are
too emotional to be leaders and pastors. It would never work."
"OK, you
can teach this, but there has to be a male leader in the room when you do.
We'll send someone." “
“Your clothes
can cause boys to sin.”
“You have
tremendous leadership gifts . . . it's too bad you weren't born male.” “
Wrote Bessey
on her Facebook page: “This hashtag is pulling back the curtain on the everyday
lived experiences of women within the church.”
She added
that the responses were “illuminating, sad, infuriating, ridiculous, funny . .
. we still need to speak about freedom and expose the lies and amplify the
voices of women who have too often been silenced.”
In an
interview she went on to say that “I love the church but I also know that we
can’t fix what we refuse to acknowledge . . .I look forward to the day when
women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic
leanings are called out and celebrated.”
In a
subsequent tweet, she stated: “Nobody is attacking the church. We're attacking
the patriarchal spirit that has a death-grip on the throat of the beautiful
bride of Christ."
There was
pushback. Author and speaker Rebekah Lyons urged women this week to avoid
making the hashtag a "megaphone for bitterness."
That prompted
Christianity Today editor Katelyn
Beaty to respond: “I don't know . . . it seems to me when men name structural
problems it's prophetic. When women name structural problems it's bitterness?”
Of course,
this isn’t true for every Christian denomination; many church groups are
welcoming of women as leaders. But I bet some of those women also have
experienced sexism while trying to follow God’s call in their lives.
And it’s not just
a religious issue—women hear similar things in many parts of society. Another
Twitter hashtag started about the same time was titled #thingsonlywomenwritershear.
And women in Canada only make 87 cents for each dollar made by men.
About the
same time this hashtag was getting traction, A Handmaids Tale was beginning its
run on TV.
In the
series, based on the book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, men in the future
theocratic country of Gilead use religion as a basis to subjugate women.
Just fiction,
right? In fact, Atwood based her book, which was published in 1985, on
real-life events throughout history such as the 17th century
Puritans, the experience of women in some Muslim-majority countries, and the
rise of the religious right in the U.S.
One can only
hope that we have moved on from those experiences, that the imaginary country
of Gilead will remain, in fact, a fantasy.
But as the comments some religious women hear today show, we still have a ways to go.
From the June 3 Winnipeg Free Press.
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