Feminist Religion

Compared to men, women are more likely to express a greater interest in religion, to have stronger personal faith and belief in live after death, and have a stronger personal religious commitment. Also to involve themselves more in religious rituals and worship e.g. they are more likely to attend religious services and they participate more in religious life generally. Bruce also found that women join or involve themselves with new religious movements and new age movements. Religion and religious ideology plays a part in maintaining the male domination over women that is found in many aspects of social life, achieved by religious ideas

Professor of religious studies Karen Armstrong finds in the early Christian Church examples of hostility toward women and fear of their sexual power, which she contends led to the eventual exclusion of women from full participation in a male-dominated church.

Two forces which gathered strength in the last half of the twentieth century now dominate the world religions at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The first is the globalization of religions and their resulting encounter with each other, and the second is the need to redefine attitudes toward gender as women have stepped forward to insist that their full humanity be acknowledged in the religious as well as the social realm.

When reading Lynn Japinga’s Essential Guide to Christianity and Feminism, there are many different lessons that you can take from it, ranging from lessons on what it means to be a feminist, what it takes to be considered a practicing Christian, and the many critics that both Christians and feminists face. Much like The Bible, the lessons you take depends on how you read it and what of your own knowledge and experiences you bring into the analysis. As someone who is on the forth year of sociology and gender studies programs, I went into the reading with a preconceived view on what it means to be a feminist and with knowledge of the potential dangers that women within Christianity face.

Sexism and feminism are controversial issues, that is why they are a global issue in today’s society. People who argue sexism does not exist tend to focus only on the wires of the issue in relation to a birdcage. Like Frye said, “...step back...and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment”(Frye). So if people expand their focus to the world it is overwhelmingly apparent that in many countries women are second class subjects. Sexism is still a problem which feminists in our society today are still trying to fix. Through her use of characterization, symbolism and changes in relationships, Zora Neale Hurston argues in Their Eyes Were Watching God which is widely viewed as a feminist novel that even though American society is majority sexist and are uninformed about feminism, feminism will ultimately overtake but will not be enough to eradicate the sexism that has been embedded in all aspects of our daily lives. As Janie retrieves her independence after being maltreated by men, one must know that the novel cannot simply be regarded as a feminist novel because there are aspects that dispute with talks about feminist theory. The novel grapples in a way with feminist ideals of equality of men and women and traditional gender roles which is referred to as sexism.

Gender Issues in Religion Amongst the world religions are many different attitudes towards gender issues and sexuality. A hundred years ago, or even a lot less, these different perspectives did not exist, as they were often considered unimportant, as King noted 'until recently little attention has been paid to gender differences and their impact on religious teaching and practice. '[1] With some religions, their scriptures are considered to be infallible and therefore not to be questioned.

Women have been oppressed in many religions such as, Catholic, Christianity, and Muslim. Women are viewed as less than men. They are not allowed to express themselves or have control over their own life. In the Catholic religion they believe women should not be allowed to have abortions. They are saying that Women should not have control over their body.

In the final chapter of Objectivity and Diversity, Harding puts feminist discourse in conversation with cultural context and religiosity; particularly, I’m intrigued by the future of religious feminism in contrast with the more popular secular feminism. Secularism is an issue that Western feminism grapples with frequently, tending to adopt secular views because of rampant misogyny in religious institutions. This Western secular approach, however, is especially problematic because lends an oppressive characteristic to a movement that otherwise seeks to eliminate oppression; it also irreparably reduces feminism to a one dimensional body of Western secular knowledge. This type of free market feminism is quite indebted to the patriarchal, classist, and racist concept of “secularism” as a superior institutional ideology and continually propagates capitalist forces that oppress women. Nonetheless, it frequently derides religious feminism is for perceived conflicts of interest and the historical role of misogyny in most religions.

Religion is powerful in that it controls followers’ behaviours and beliefs throughout their entire lives; it is a form of social control. Catholicism is one of the most widely known religions influencing more than 2 billion people around the world (Ross). Within Catholicism not everyone are seen as equals; men have greater privilege than women. The bible and church are from a male’s point of view (Christ 86) and passages within the bible are used to enforce a sexual hierarchy. In fact, the oppression of women begins with the first story in Genesis about creation, which portrays females as being inferior to men and even of an evil nature. This one passage is the main source of justification of oppression of woman in the church (Daly 13).

Not only was Calvin innovative in his beliefs on Paul’s teachings, but also in his thinking of women in the Bible. He believed that some women held great importance in the Bible, and although he thought the purpose was to embarrass men, it was still a step past the belief that women held no importance at all. First, Calvin saw the importance when Jesus first appears to women and not men after his resurrection. Because the men had fled, Jesus sent women to the disciples in order to teach them about their wrongdoings. Even though he thought this was the purpose, Calvin believed that since Christ gave these women the apostolic mandate and appeared to them first, they helped “with reuniting and restoring the scattered church” (Douglass 59).

As explained by Hamlin, the freethink feminists saw an ally with science and sought to use it to combat the traditional beliefs concerning women. Additionally, prominent Darwinian feminist Elizabeth Wilson, professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University, has contributed to the idea that Darwinian science and freethink feminism are allies in the fight in the overarching struggle between science and religion (Wilson). During her Feminist Darwin lecture series at the University of Pennsylvania (2012), Wilson explained the dire need for feminism and science to coexist and is leading the fight to reignite the flame that existed between these two areas of thought during the 19th century (Wilson). To present day Darwinian feminists,

I believe gender and religion is a very interesting topic because there are many ways these two topics intermingle and affect each other. There are many ways that one could go about analyzing the complex and ever-changing relationship between religion and gender. It is important to look at the higher spiritual being or beings that are worshiped, the religious leader such as a priest or rabbi, and also the members of a certain religion and asses how gender affects it.

Gender roles, and the mere existence of a gender binary, has been a recent topic of conversation for many churches, theologians, and individual believers. As the cultural pressure to remove gender-specific limitations builds, many of those aforementioned have turned to scripture for answers. Seldom are women’s roles in the Old Testament characterized by decision making or personal merits. Rather, a woman’s capacity to produce an heir for their husband complements his dominance and responsible faithfulness and allows God’s plan to be fulfilled through their combined efforts. In the New Testament, through the transformative power of Christ, prominent women became less of an anomaly, but were still held to a different set of standards and expectations than men and were usually still praised according to their actions and their faith. The Pauline epistles, written in the context in which the Church still exists today: the age to come, provide a basis for today’s understanding of women’s roles in marriage and in church leadership. Although there are many instances of women fulfilling God’s plans and proving their worth among the community of Christians, the biblically normative role of women is to avoid authoritative church leadership positions and remain submissive in situations of teaching and interpreting the Word.

Religion can be seen to act as a social control over women to a large

Even though we statistically see women as being considered more “spiritual”, up until recently, the normal perspective held was that women were not allowed to participate as leaders in church teachings or higher ranking members. They only make up about 10-12% of senior or sole ordained leaders in the church. A study done by the National Congregation shows the numbers are highest, yet still drastically lower than the statistics of men, in Unitarian Universalist Association at 30% and the United Church of Christ being at 25%. The lowest numbers seen are within the Southern Baptist Convention with 4% and the Free