If you are a woman, and the Christian Nationalists don't scare the bejeezus out of you--you haven't been paying attention. Tinight we'll talk abotu why fear is a sane response--and what we can do to help defeat them
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Previous "episodes" in this diary series have been written by hrh, with guest-host diaries from mem from somerville, Elise, righteousbabe, and irishwitch. Some more guest-hosts are waiting in the wings. Feminists who are interested in being a guest-host can email hrh at: feministsupervixens (AT) yahoo.com
The Religious Right has moved far beyond being just a group of loud-mouthed evangelicals with a fervent belief in the inerrancy of the Bible and an annoying need to preach at the rest of us. As I explained in my three-part series, Holy Smoke, they've been infiltrated by Dominionists/Christian Reconstructionists--a heretofore fringe group or pre-millenialists who think they must create a Christian Kingdom on Earth before Jesus can come again in glory. Most conservative Christians--what I call the Rapture Crowd--are POST-millenialists who believe the Rapture and the tribulations must occur, culminating in Armageddon, before Jesus establishes his kingdom. But thanks to the Coalition on Revival, they've agreed to disagree on this issue--and now this unholy alliance is doing its damnedest to bring America into line with Biblical law, which is what Christian Nationalism is all about. They want this to be a Christian Nation for real. For a more in-depth look, read my Holy Smoke diaries or dogemperor's more detailed look at dominionism (my emphasis was on how this group is infiltrating conservative and mainstream denominations).
They are very up front about their goals.
"The stranger in ancient Israel did not serve as a judge, although he received all the benefits of living in the land. The political question is this: By what biblical standard is the pagan to be granted the right to bring political sanctions against God's people? We recognize that unbelievers are not to vote in Church elections. Why should they be allowed to vote in civil elections in a covenanted Christian nation? Which judicial standards will they impose? By what other standard than the Bible?"
- Gary North of Institute For Christian Economicshttp://www.geocities.com/...
"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."
Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 87. http://www.serve.com/...
In other words, if you aren't Christian, you're not a citizen. And what they mean by being a Christian is not being an Episcopalian or Catholic or Methodist--only THEIR version counts: fundamentalist and evangelical.
This has some very unpleasant implications for women.
The status of women would be reduced to almost that of a slave as described in the Hebrew Scriptures. A woman would initially be considered the property of her father; after marriage, she would be considered the property of her husband...
Polygyny and the keeping of concubines were permitted in the Old Testament. However, Reconstructionists generally believe in marriage between one man and one woman only. Any other sexual expression would be a capital crime. Those found guilty of engaging in same-sex, pre-marital or extra-marital sex would be executed
Legal abortions would be banished; those found to be responsible for abortions would be charged with murder and executed.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/...
Doesn't that just make you feel warm and fuzzy?
A woman would be expected to submit to her father before marriage, dutiful and obedient. He has final say over her life until she marries the man he selects for her. In Biblical times, he could sell her into slavery. After marriage, she belongs to her husband. Paul is very specific on that.
Here's how one Christian explains that:
Paul says that there is a certain structure which God has ordained, by which wives have to be in submission to their husbands, children to their parents.
This passages should put to rest once and for all the myth that marriages are to be fifty-fifty. I can't think of a worse scenario for a marriage than to have the authority in that relationship divided equally. When two people are together like that, then nobody has any authority. You are in a perpetual power-struggle where one is trying to get control of 51% of the stock. And that can be exceedingly destructive to a family.
I have plenty of issues about that--because Paul has a lot to say about this, and he makes it clear that the wife must be subservient to the husband She is non-voting partner, basically.
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord (verse 22). This is a service and an act of worship that the woman gives to the Lord himself. It is the Lord's will that the wife be submissive to her husband, and if she wants to honour Christ, then one of the concrete ways she does this is by being in submission to her husband. If a woman is contentious and refuses to follow the leadership of her husband, she is in rebellion, not simply against him, but also against Christ.....
Nevertheless, the general principle is that a woman is to bend over backwards to defer to the leadership and authority of her husband. She is not free to disobey simply because she disagrees or because she finds herself inconvenienced by what the husband requires...
The husband is responsible for the leadership of the home. He is accountable to God for how the home is managed, and how the affairs of the home are conducted.
http://www.cbmw.org/...
There is a corresponding message for men to love their wives as Christ loved the church--but human women aren't marrying Christ. They are marrying flawed, flesh and blood men, and the possibilities for abuse are rampant, especially among men raised in a strictly Calvinist belief system, with its emphasis on punishment and the fallen nature of man, and which devalues women as even more inclined to sin (it was, after all, EVE'S fault). I've read several Christian marriage manuals, and one by Ed Wheat (I don't own it so I can't cite the name) told women they MUST stay in a marriage even if their husband is a drunk or a violent abuser--unless he seriously harms the kids (since this group is also big into beating children with rods, I kinda cringe at what they'd consider "serious harm"). Divorce, of course, is forbidden.
Forget equality. HE calls the shots. YOU do what you're told, or you are a bad wife and a bad Christian.
Think this is just the more extreme groups? Plenty of relatively mainstream Christians believe it. Look at Pat Robertson--on a scale of 0 to 10, where the UU are 10, and Christian Reconstructionists are 0, he'd be a 4--to the right, certainly, but still teaching doctrines that don't dismay moderate Christians. The Southern Baptist Convention
Pat Robertson puts it this way:
"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period."
--The 700 Club, January 8, 1992
"As long as the husband is following the mandate of the Lord, the wife should submit to his leadership even though she may disagree with it. God's standard is true. Yet in many marriages, the wife is more able than her husband. Regretfully a woman with great abilities sometimes marries a man who does not have much ability. This wife must resist the temptation to dominate her husband. Her husband will sometimes make decisions that the wife feels are wrong. She must either gently persuade her husband or pray that God will change her husband's mind."
--The 700 Club, July 27, 1995
"Why are so many marriages falling apart? Why is the divorce rate so high? Why is there such a tragedy in marriage? Now the basic answer to the basic problem of marriages today is a question of leadership. The wife actually makes the husband the head of the household and she looks to him and she says 'now you pray, and I'm going to pray for you that the Lord will speak to you."
--The 700 Club, May 22, 1986
A woman's place is in the home, as wife and mother--very reminiscent of Hitler's emphasis that women belonged in the nursery, the church and the kitchen. She must not dare to speak in church or to teach men (thanks, Paul), though she may work outside the home if her husband permits her to. She must dress modestly so as not to entice men with her feminine allure. In fact, this sounds a whole lot like Saudi Arabia minus the abayehs and face veils (some of the nuttier groups call for her never to cut her hair and to cover it before all but her husband, though). It's not a world I want to live in.
And then there's Biblical law when it comes to rape, as interpreted by the late Rousas Rushdoony, one of the founding lights of Christian Reconstructionism, which wants to replace the constitution with Biblical law:
One area of protection is against violence, or rape. The texts citing the laws on rape and seduction are the following; rape, Deuteronomy 22: 23-29; seduction, Exodus 22: 16,17.
The penalty for the rape of a married woman, or of a betrothed woman, was death. The law specified that consent on the part of the woman was presumed if it occurred "in the city" and "she cried not," and she then was assumed to be a participant in the adultery rather than an act of rape. As Luther observed, "The city is mentioned here for the sake of an example, because in it there would be people available to help her. Therefore she who does not cry out reveals that she is being ravished by her own will." In other words, "the city" represents here available help; was it appealed to?
The cases classified as seduction are technically and realistically cases of rape also; the difference is that the girl in question is neither married nor betrothed. Why, in such cases, was not the death penalty invoked? In the former cases, marriage was already contracted; the offense was against both man and woman, therefore, and required death. In the case of a single girl, unbetrothed, the decision rested in the hands of the girl's father, and, in part, the girl. If the offender, cited simply as a seducer in Exodus 22:16, 17, and as a rapist in Deuteronomy 22:28, 29, is an acceptable husband, then he shall pay 50 shekels of silver as a dowry and marry her, without right of divorce "because he hath humbled her" (Deut. 22:29); but "If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins" (Ex. 22:17). If a man thus is rejected as a husband, the girl is compensated for the offense to make her an attractive wife to another man, coming as she will with a double dowry, his own and her compensation money.
To understand the background of this law, let us remember, first, that the Biblical law-order requires the death of incorrigible delinquents and criminals. The seducer and/or rapist of an unbetrothed girl was thus presumably not an incorrigible youth, although at this point clearly in guilt. No gain was possible from his offense. If he were allowed to marry the girl, he did so without right of divorce, and at the cost of a full dowry. If he were refused, he still had to pay a full dowry to the girl, a considerable loss to his own future.
R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 396-397.
Let's examine that closely. Commit adultery with a willing married or betrothed woman--you both die. Rape a married or betrothed woman, and you die--you've destroyed someone's property. Rape a single woman--and you pay up and marry her, if Dad consents, or else you pay an amount equal to her full dowry, presumably to sweeten the deal for another man who's willing to take damaged goods. Because THAT is precisely what women were: chattel, property, something to be bought and sold. Can you imagine the life of a woman married to her rapist?
The most troubling part, for me, is the idea that a woman must PROVE she fought against her rapist. If she is assaulted outside the city, where no one could hear her if she screamed, it is presumed that she did--but if she is within a city, and no one hears her, she is assumed to be an adulteress, rather than a rape victim--and the penalty for adultery is death. Doesn't matter what the circumstances were--whether he came at her from behind and gagged her, then took her, or whether he raped her at knifepoint so that she was too terrified to scream.
I remember the Bad Old Days, when a woman had to have massive bruises and preferably broken bones before juries would convict. Even then, without a witness, they were often reluctant because it was "he said, she said" to a lot of people. The fact that most rapes don't take place in front of witnesses--rapists are vicious predators but most aren't stupid--didn't seem to occur to people. If
Abortion, as stated, would be a capitol crime punishable by execution (there's some disagreement on the method, but the death penalty is a Big Hit with these guys). Randall Balmer (Thy Kingdom Come, p. 7), a liberal evangelical, points out the "inconvenient fact" that Jesus Himself never said a word about abortion. And despite the fact that conservative Protestants and Catholics have formed the majority of the anti-choice movement since its inception, the churches themselves weren't in a rush to attack Roe v. Wade. Even Paul Weyrich admits that this issue is not the one that united evangelicals--in fact, it was the IRS attempt to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University hat brought them together. He knows because he tried to launch an anti-abortion campaign pre-Roe -and failed miserably (Balmer, pp. 13-15). They got involved formally later, and conservative Christians are still the bulk of the movement. They want abortion banned completely, with no exceptions, not even for rape or incest or to save the life of the mother (though some moderate anti-choicers will allow exceptions for those cases)--and lately have been making noises about the "contraceptive mentality"--in order to ban or at least discourage the use of birth control. Many have called for banning Plan B and all forms of hormonal birth control as well as the IUD since they define life as beginning at conception--which means that any form of contraception that prevents implantation of the fertilized ovum is an abortifacient in their eyes (physicians, on the other hand define pregnancy as BEGINNING at implantation). If they get their way, women will resort in desperation to back alley abortionists, and many will die or lose their fertility. And because the safest and most reliable methods of contraception may be banned as well, there will likely be an increase in unwanted pregnancies.
As far as the Christian Nationalists are concerned, we must all be virgins until marriage, therefore even if birth control were allowed, you'd probably have to prove you were married. Of course, it's more important for GIRLS to be virgins than boys (remember, the rapist just has to marry her or pay a fee, unless she's married or betrothed--he doesn't get stoned to death since rape is a crime against property, by diminishing her value), as we can see by the preoccupation with the Silver Ring Thing and the Purity Pledges where Dads take their virgin daughters to formal dance (the incestuous implications are way too obvious).
Could you be happy living in a country where you are property? Where, very likely, there would be a Religious Police checking to make sure no one's having any illicit fun or that pregnancies aren't terminated? Where you could be fined or jailed for disobedience to your father or husband, or for immodest dress? If this sounds like Puritan Massachusetts, where did you think they got the ideas from? They called it a shining city on a hill. I call it HELL.
So how do we fight them? The first thing is that it's liberal and moderate Christians who have to lead the fight--and we have plenty of those in feminism, too. We have to stop being afraid of speaking about religion publicly--by "we" I mean liberals, feminists, Democrats. Shannikka raised the point in a diary on ways to handle the anti-choice folks--some way to counter the stance of Leslie Unruh who claims that pro-choice women deny women the right to be mothers (doesn't matter that the counter is merely that banning abortion forces women to BECOME mothers, and to have no choice at all). I cannot do this--I am a Wiccan, and my words won't be heard by conservative Christians once they know my faith. I am pretty sure I couldn't do this with any sincerity even though I do know the Bible pretty well. I've got too much baggage.
But moderate and liberal Christians who are pro-choice Christians CAN and SHOULD. I am NOT saying the Demcoratic party should embrace anti-choice candidates (in fact, I think if they keep doing that, women should pull a[ political Lysistrata and refuse to campaign for any anti-choice candidate at least in the primaries, and, depending on his other stances, even in the actual election; we need to make it clear that if they don't start taking women's issues seriously, they will lose our votes--and we are half the party), but merely that we need to stop ignoring the fact that most Americans are believers in some faith or another, and that this isn't indicative of some sort of mental illness as a few die-hard atheists have been known to claim snarkily.
Dems have to stop being afraid to discuss religion. We need to reclaim it from the right, who have made "Christian" a cuss word for some of us. THAT is the job of American Christians--to reclaim the word. As Randall Balmer points out, there are a lot of liberal evangelicals who were horrified when Bush won, because they see so many of his positions as opposed to the call for social justice that is one of the dominant themes in the Gospels. They are gonna have to carry this fight into their congregations because the Dominionists are going after mainstream and moderate denominations. They start small, congregation by congregation, until their numbers are large enough to call for a change at the national level--this is how they came to take over the Southern Baptists.
Christian feminists have to do their part too. Jesus treated women as equals in the Gospels, which often rankled people like Peter. Point that out. When there is conflict between the Gospels and the epistles--go with the Gospels. Jesus, after all, never tells women to submit to their spouses--Paul, who never even met him, does. Make it clear that feminism is far more in tune with their beliefs than the Republicans are. They claim to be in favor of family values--but, in reality, their pro-family stance stops at birth. WE are the ones who are truly pro-choice. While we support right to terminate pregnancies, we also work to lower the numbers by supporting efforts to make contraception more widely available--and we know that comprehensive sex education, not ignorance in the name of promoting abstinence helps prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs (which are becoming increasingly drug resistant) Feminists want universal healthcare so that families don't have to choose between paying for utilities or buying medicine or go bankrupt if there is a catastrophic illness (half of all bankruptcies are the result of huge medial debt--and the new bankruptcy laws which make it harder for these families to get out form under that debt were shoved through by REPUBLICANS). We want better schools for our children, better daycare (with subsidies to help low-income women get off welfare and into meaningful jobs), anti-outsourcing of jobs so that American workers can support their families, a safety net so that families can get help when necessary. Feminists have worked to end domestic abuse, rape, economic inequality, racism. A quick glance at NOW's agenda gives you ammunition.
http://www.now.org/...
And get hold of Randall Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come. Balmer is a liberal evangelical who framed issues for us--and who points out the fallacies in the Republican claim to be the party of family values. And the fact that party leadership KNEW about Foley propositioning pages shows how hollow those claims really are. Tell them we are not asking them to violate Christ's teaching about not judging others, because most of the rank and file in the Christian Nationalist movement are sincere--but merely to examine the effects of their policies on real people. We don't have to cast stones, to get out point across; quoting the Beatitudes makes the point by itself.
We have facts and stats on our side. The lowest divorce rates and the best test scores for students are in BLUE states, not red ones. Feminists are the pro-family people, NOT the Republicans.
It's up to you to develop the strategies. But speaking the language of sincere ,moderate Christians is at least a place to start.
Most of all, we can stress that the Democrats are FOR the first amendment because it protects believers from interference by the government and because it prevents anyone faith from being imposed on everyone. And if ONE faith--conservative Christianity-- is the majority now--in twenty years, a different one might be. I've also used the fact that religion in the public schools is a bad idea--because it interferes with the parental right to raise their children in their faith (or none at all). Would conservative Christians like a Catholic nun teaching her version of Christianity? In fact, mainstream Protestantism was taught in many public schools which led to the development of the parochial schools system and Orthodox yeshivas. Acknowledge that there are atheists and agnostics in our ranks and make clear that they have a right NOT to worship if they don't wish to. And--my favorite--remind them that the first real endorsement of separation of church and state came from Baptist leader Roger Williams who felt strongly that a close relationship between church and state polluted religion with earthly concerns (there's a great quote from him in Holy Smoke III).
It's so easy to write off the Religious Right as nutters out of touch with reality, speaking only to themselves. But there are a LOT of them, and they elected Bush in 2000, and re-elected him in 2004. They include 24% of Americans. We MUST deal with them, by winning over moderate Christian voters who have leaned right because Bush talked their language. We need to learn that language, and USE IT, without selling out liberal values (which are far more in keeping with the Gospel than those of the right are). Shannikka was right on this and I was wrong. If, like most atheists and a lot of us non-Christians, this feels like caving to the Right---it isn't. If we can't help, we can at least not antagonize people who are sincere in their beliefs; name-calling (and I am as guilty of that as everyone else; my nickname for the truly fringe types is the "Religious Reich"), and implying that anyone who believes in a Deity is either stupid or mentally ill does NOT help. A little tact goes a long way.
This is a war we can't afford to lose.