Religion
Related: About this forum‘Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions’ Edited Susan Tive and Cami Ostman
By Rachel Newcomb
Published: August 9
Beyond Belief explores 26 different womens entries to, immersions in and exits from communities where religion permeates all aspects of life. The editors, Susan Tive, a grantwriter who left Orthodox Judaism, and Cami Ostman, a blogger who was once a conservative Christian, have created a volume to spark a conversation about the commonalities of womens experiences in restrictive religions. Most of the essays are slice-of-life depictions of defining moments in these individuals religious lives and as such offer only brief glimpses into much longer journeys. Yet the moments are well chosen, illustrating in particular the conflicts women face because of gender subservience imposed by religion.
Religious rituals, connecting individuals both to the divine and to one another, initially drew many women to their chosen faiths, including Leah Lax, who spent 30 years in Hasidic Judaism as a closeted lesbian. Escaping a troubled home and a nominal religious upbringing, she finds transcendence while watching Hasidic men dance. Momentarily forgetting that she has just been told that women must remain silent, she imagines herself in the middle of those dancing men, my hand on a sweating back, feet swept up in the beat and not a woman on the sidelines. Other women describe rituals as more alienating, ranging from self-flagellation to speaking in tongues. Caitlin Constantine, a former Mormon, writes of baptizing by proxy a list of women dead for more than 400 years, in order to save their souls for heaven. Dizzy from being dipped 12 times into a baptismal pool, all in the name of a dozen women from the 1600s named Anna, she wonders about these womens own religions and tries to ignore the newly formed questions swarming my mind.
Conflicts over sex, usually tinged with shame and visions of hellfire, figure prominently in the book. Former nun Mary Johnson recalls that she hadnt imagined that my own human needs for intimacy would clash so dramatically with rules demanding the denial of every human desire. Several of the authors had to sublimate their needs for same-sex relationships, whose consequences of eternity in a pit full of wailing, burning sinners are even more severe than the punishments of this lifetime. Upon finding out about her relationship with another young woman, Pamela Helbergs father brings her to the office of her pastor, where the two men pray, speak in tongues and command the demons of homosexuality to leave her now.
The final third of the book covers womens exodus from these religious groups. One of the most moving accounts comes from Donna M. Johnson, who grew up in the orbit of a traveling evangelist and charismatic faith healer with whom her mother secretly had three children. Initially escaping by way of an early marriage, Johnson is intermittently drawn back to the group, in between going through a divorce, alcohol and drug addiction, and chronic illness. But the ultimate alienating vision, which haunted, inspired, and remained with me through years of agnosticism, is the image of the revival tent, stretched out along the outskirts of town where the trash and outcasts congregate. The tent pulls in everyone: old and young, black and white, poor and poorer, yet Johnson is always outside watching, and she finally realizes that outside is where she belongs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/beyond-belief-the-secret-lives-of-women-in-extreme-religions-eds-susan-tive-and-cami-ostman/2013/08/08/bc92ec98-a218-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Thanks for the review.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)from religion than are men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the first of our foremothers to point this out in the modern era, one could wish she was more widely remembered.
okasha
(11,573 posts)the underlying problem is actually patriarchy.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)to the Persian captivity. The (patriarchal) system that prevailed under Cyrus the Great spread over the whole Roman Empire and eventually most of the west.
So the original culprit, as well as we can determine it, was Zoroastrianism or its congeners. Paganism had some lovely branches where women enjoyed equality or dominance, but they went by the board. Patriarchy is the problem, its origins are religous.
rug
(82,333 posts)dimbear
(6,271 posts)Have to double check.
rug
(82,333 posts)dimbear
(6,271 posts)captivity and perhaps flows from Zoroastrianism, IMHO. This is the emerging modern view. Compare the Canaanite religious world, where Judaism originally belonged, with its deities which occur in pairs--royal divine couples. Naturally a society under that sort of dual (or plural) godhead is likely to be more equal with regard to the sexes.
rug
(82,333 posts)The development of a culture is sloppy and rarely linear.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)It's remarkable how ideas got around back in the day, and remarkable which ideas took and which didn't. The why of it all, the why the patriarchy took such strong root, is the real question. The seed seems to have been Zoroastrianism, but the persistence needs to be traced to the human psyche.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)While this focuses on women in extremist religious groups, women are in danger in all kinds of groups and societies, be they religious or not.
Women and girls are also receiving desperately needed assistance from religious organizations all over the world.
Your blinders make you say some pretty silly things sometimes, dimbear.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)It's more or less warning that there are sharks in the water.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)There are sharks in all the waters, not just the religious ones. Apparently there are even sharks in some atheist organizations, at least according to some women that swim there.
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)Ask me. I'll quote you chapter and verse.
It remains a puzzle to me how so many can ignore the psychological and sociological ramifications of doctrines which teach that women are inferior by design. It's not healthy.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I think it's very hard to distinguish those at time.
There have been lots of strides made by women within some religious organizations. Not so much in others.
It is not black and white. Not all religion is bad for women.