Moose wrote:
> For women, in particular, which seems to me to be where this started, many
> mainstream religions here are completely
> gender blind. I know a few women ministers and a candidate as close friends.
> They have never mentioned to me or my wife
> any hint of feeling oppressed or 'less than' males in their churches.
Well, we've come a long ways, but there is still the occasional
oppression. My wife is a minister in a particular (and rather popular)
brand of church where female ministers were among the founding of it a
hundred years ago. Some of the biggest and most respected names in the
organization are/were women. However, on the local level, sexism still
exists. I won't get into the other types of oppression that occur in
ANY group of individuals, no matter religion, creed, etc. Christianity
itself teaches equality among the sexes. Religion enforces cultural
stereotypes.
Across the USA, there are implied beliefs about certain parts of the
country and how racist/sexist/etc., they are. For the East/Left
Coasters, a place like Iowa would probably be assumed to be a
throwback to the 1600s. Not really. In fact, if you look at the
founding of Iowa, you will see that it had very little cultural
influence from the religious colonies that started here in the
Americas and was initially quite non-religious. Depending on where in
Iowa, if they were religious, they were Lutherans or Italian
Catholics. When "religion came to Iowa" it was primarily through
reformation-era startup churches that were primarily led by WOMEN!
Another oddity is that historically, Iowa has had the highest
percentage of women employed outside the home of any state. Depending
on where you are in Iowa, it ranges from extreme liberal to moderate
conservative with a tiny fringe of lunatic conservatives in a narrow
geographic band of counties with diminishing population. It's
fascinating to consider that in most metrics, Iowa is more progressive
than almost all of the "progressive states". We may not have a huge
population of Democrat-voting urban dwellers, but we are the first in
the nation on a lot of things. We may be "conservative" in some
aspects, but not nearly as much as you would think. Even our
"conservative/Republican" governor is a flaming liberal on most
things. In some areas, we're still not very progressive, but you can't
win in everything.
Within the community of which we live, my wife pastors a church and
happens to also be the president of the county ministerial alliance.
Almost half the of ministers in this entire county happen to be women.
The Baptist and Catholic churches being the obvious exceptions, but
most every other church either has or has had a female pastor in the
past 10 years. However, to the point I made in the first paragraph, on
the local level, sexism still exists. When we came here, there were a
couple of people who left because they couldn't stand the thought of a
woman pastor. "We're happy that you are happy over there at that other
church."
> It even seems that some denominations may soon be predominantly run by women.
Founded, run, etc. Bring it on.
> In that sense, the contrast to the situation of women in some Muslim
> countries is pretty great. Perhaps AG should have
> been more specific in his comment. Given the image that prompted it, though
> ...
Exactly. I thought that the picture was worth "a thousand words" and
wouldn't require my repeating them.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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