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Monday, September 24th, 2018

What draws women to a religion that says men should be in charge?

Author:     Julie Zauzmer
Source:     The Washington Post
Publication Date:     21 September 2018
 Link: What draws women to a religion that says men should be in charge?
Stephan:   My only interest in religions is anthropological. In my view, they all arise as systems to open to nonlocal consciousness, and I study them for the protocols they develop to do that. All the Abrahamic religions are patriarchies and essentially have iron age dogmas. Now their views on sex and gender have come into direct conflict with the cultures that have evolved in the second decade of the 21st century. What I find particularly interesting is how many women continue to be comfortable as second-class human beings subordinate to men, and why they do that. This article is one of the few I have seen that tries to address the thinking behind this trend.

Rhonda Kelley, left, hosts female students for tea in the president’s home on the campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
Credit: Julie Zauzmer/The Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS — Growing up in rural Mississippi, Gracie Robinson decided early on that she would never get married.

In her Baptist church, she heard the preaching: The Bible orders women to be submissive to their husbands. Robinson didn’t want to be submissive.

This summer, 26 and unmarried and enrolled in a seminary 300 miles from the dusty backwater she describes growing up in, she’s holding court, ranting over garlic fries and gumbo that she’ll never let a man control her.

“Every time I think about it, it just burns me up!” she says, as the other female seminarians laugh and clap.

And then Robinson’s tone changes. Matter-of-fact, she says about a husband: “True enough, he is the head of the household. And he is the spiritual leader.”

And her friends wholeheartedly agree to that, too.

This is the challenge and the contradiction of being an […]

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