I heartily dislike Sarah Palin for many reasons—but unlike some Kossacks, I can understand why she appeals so strongly to Bush’s base, the Religious Right. In fact, many of the things she stands for which utterly appall me, are the same ones that make her their darling. In order to understand her profound appeal, I made a foray into Religious Reich Territory. No, I didn’t go Concerned Women For America’s forum; I’m not that self-sacrificing and my nausea tolerance isn’t that high, even with a couple of Dramamine in my stomach. Instead, I chose to visit the comments section attached to an article I knew was sure to infuriate the fundamentalist, Pentecostal and evangelical communities.
It appears that a sociologist in the U.K. believes that women are fleeing Christianity (and particularly the rather progressive and egalitarian Church of England) in droves to become Wiccans, inspired by the images of female empowerment in shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Charmed. As a Wiccan, I found this simplistic and faintly insulting---the professor ignores the fact that there are many men who are drawn to Wicca and abandon Judeo-Christian religion for their new faith. However, his theory didn’t interest me half as much as the response to the article from the Christian Right (and quite a few are from Americans, not the U.K), which pretty much explain the mentality of Sarah Palin’s fans. And, right in line with polls which show that men favor Palin considerably more than women do, the negative comments about Wicca and feminism and women who dare to differentiate themselves from a doormat by expressing opinions, came mostly from men. There was one commenter who called herself doris who was female and combined the treacly nastiness of Dolores Umbridge with the smarmy piety of Pat Robertson (I’ll be including a sample of one of her several diatribes—she posted often and at length).
Her are some of the gems. The first is from someone who preferred to call him or her self "anonymous".
satan is fighting a war with Heaven, and his contempt for mankind (because we are God's beloved children) is immense! He will promise you anything to obtain just one soul; to steal away from God what belongs to God.
The father of lies (the great deceiver) is named such for he knows our desires, our inner longings, and will use them to gain our favor.
Bending your knee to God (who loves you with an unfathomable love) will reep "eternal happiness". Pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom & knowledge.
Bending your knee to satan will bind you to him for eternity. If we saw him as he really is, we would recoil in terror.
If you hate the feeling of being dominated by the Church now, you have no idea what being dominated by satan will ultimately cost you.
Only with God's grace can you have spiritual eyes to see. Otherwise, you will fall victim to his ploys.
Be warned: He plays for "keeps" and keeps no promises.
May you know God's Love!
I especially love it when they tell me God loves me but will cheerfully send me to hell for praying to the wrong name. However, it is right in line with the dogma of churches like the Assembly of God and non-denominational ones like the church Palin currently attends. As dogemperor has shown, they're obsessed with demons lurking everywhere and perform exorcisms at the drop of a witch's hat (or even if one is not dropped)
One poster named Angie agrees wholeheartedly—-this could be Sarah Palin speaking.
If you have experienced the LORD and all HIS goodness, no one will ever want to turn to any form of witchcraft. Witchcraft leads you down a path of destruction and you wont see that destruction until it is too late.
Satan keeps you longer than you want to stay, takes you further than you want to go. And won't let you leave when you want to leave
gerrie piombino also had his say—another male voice condemning women and religions he knows nothing about (pagans don’t worship idols, any more than Catholics do; depictions of a god or goddess are just that: depictions). He also ignores the fact that the people leaving Christianity for Wicca DO know about Christianity , and are probably more knowledgeable about church doctrine and history than many of the faithful. People who abandon a religion usually try very hard to find a way to stay, and thus read in more depth than those who never question.
It is a shame that they do not realize how much God loves them that He gave His only Son for them as well as for the men.I will pray for all those poor sinners who think that paganism can ever again be okay. Satanism is a one way ticket to hell as is worshipping false idols (paganism).
The equation of Wicca, a nature-based pagan faith, with Satanism is another meme that crops up constantly. It says far more about the ignorance of the person posting the comment than about Wicca, which has not a damned thing to do with Satanism—we don’t even believe in Satan; he’s part of Judeo-Christian mythology, not ours. Here it is again from Mark:
When a women truly embraces Christ and like anyone else, forms a personal relationship with the Lord, they stop looking for other forms of religious expression. Women are the pillars of any Christian community. In our parish, women are involved in everything and they find fulfillment. Not one has ever expressed a desire for ordination and they would be horrified at the thought of invoking spells or performing the pagan rituals of witchcraft. In other words, they are very happy worshiping and serving God as Catholic women of faith. They understand that these so called "religions" like Wicca are contrary to the First Commandment and are also very dangerous spiritually. They can open a person to demonic powers that will seek to control and terrorize them and then they will need to call a Catholic priest or Christian minister to free themselves!
I especially loved the quotation marks around the word "religion" when referring to Wicca. Apparently only Christianity deserves to be counted as one. Kei agrees completely with Mark, and says:
Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the only thing on the planet that portrays Wicca as positive
Well, he’s entitled to his opinion, I guess, even if it is based on complete ignorance of the facts. And now for one of doris’s shorter rants.
The only women who will become attracted to the so called pagan religion wicca are the ones who watch these silly soaps; the ones who are influenced by these soapstars and try to mimic their lifestyle just to be popular, in other words, those who can't think for themselves. They are just looking for some quick fix.If they really want to be turned on tell them to tune into Benny Hinn or Joyce Meyer on the God Channel. However, with regard to your comment about religion being old fashioned, of course it's old fashioned. Jesus Christ walked the earth over 2000 years ago,and incidentally, miracles are still being performed in his name. God created the earth thousands of years before that. What do you think religion is? some kind of soap opera you can keep on reinventing. Get real!
I have news for doris. Most of the female Wiccans I know are well-read and well-educated. They’re not drooling soap watcher who can’t tell reality from a television program. And considering this broad takes Benny Hinn seriously, instead of recognizing him for a fraud who is getting rich off credulous idiots like her—well, I’d say she’s the one with problems telling the difference between reality and TV shows. And her's one more example of her that sounds so much like Dolores Umbridge, it makes me feel like puking.
Narla, God help you darling as you have yet to see the light. God's church is not a building of bricks and mortar; God's church is in people. When you become a follower of Jesus, you become a temple of God. I know you will not understand what I am saying but I pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth
Narla, you see, had the unmitigated gall to defend Wicca, which, to doris, indicates she doesn’t know anything about Christianity.
Here’s one Benedict Carter offering his opinion on castrating women:
If women are leaving the Anglican Church, then is has to do with the crisis of fatherhood and masculinity in the west - caused mostly of these self-same women.
Those damned feminists are to blame for EVERYTHING that’s gone wrong since Seneca Falls! We've turned real men into namby-pambies afraid to challenge women's domination--shades of the famous Thurber drawing of the enormous woman lunging after the tiny little man.
James here agrees.
The Anglican church has ordained women as bishops. They are very open to radical feminists. Has that drawn in millions of women? No. The only women I have seen drawn to wicca are basically nutcases. On the other hand in the Catholic Church where orthodoxy is strong there are many women in the pews and men too
Thank you, James, for calling me a nutcase. I assure you I am not. I am not, however, certain I can say that about you. Wokingham Chris, however, thinks you’re right on.
"Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca...."
We are then told that:
"Young women tend to express egalitarian values."
Er, it's just that Wicca doesn't sound too egalitarian from a man's perspective, does it?
Sorry to have to point out this particular inconsistency, but perhaps Dr Kristin Aune's concept of egalitarianism excludes men. In my experience of feminists this is entirely possible.
This is a perfect example of the sort of feminist advocacy "research" (so called)that is being deployed against the Church of England by those who merely wish to use it as a vehicle for their own destructive ideologies.
I wouldn't be surprised if it(her "research") was paid for by the taxpayer - most of whom are men of course.
He got one thing right: the professor ignored the fact that a lot of Wiccans are MALE. He does, however, buy into the notion that feminism excludes men and is somehow anti-male—-and thinks most taxpayers are men,ignoring totally the many women who work to pay their bills. Somehow he misses the point that empowering women doesn't mean disempowering men, unless you believe religion is a zero-sum game.
The major themes expressed by these commenters are the same ones that concern Sarah Palin’s cheering fan club. They’re terrified of anything they don’t understand—whether it’s a different religion or a different attitude on women’s roles—and too mired in tradition to question what they’ve been taught. Change of any kind scares the hell out of them, to the point where they’ll vote against their own economic interests to keep things comfortably the way they are. Feminism is regarded as the work of the devil, luring women away from their God-decreed roles as wives and mothers—but it’s okay for Sarah to be VP because she produced five offspring and because their preacher said it was okay because she’s a godly woman doing God’s work. And Wiccans? We’re uppity, man-hating women and radical feminists who probably kill babies in our lesbian orgies and believe women should throw a big party when they have an abortion.
This is Palin’s base. They love her because they agree with her. Troopergate won’t change their opinion one iota—they’ll view her as protecting her sister rather than abusing power. Neither will the fact that she left Wasilla deep in debt because of her botched handling of the sports stadium project, forcing cuts in essential services like the police and fire departments and public schools. Censorship? They’re all for it. Most of them would die happy if she could get Harry Potter pulled from the shelf of every public and school library in the country. These are the people who view the Left Behind series as fiction based on fact.
Nothing we can say or do will change their minds. We need to aim our efforts at wooing the moderates and independents, because the Sarah Palin Express has left the station jam-packed full of fellow believers. As georgia10’s front page diary today shows, polls reveal that moderates aren’t all that favorably impressed. In fact, 61% regard her somewhat or very unfavorably. THEY are our targets. And they may not like the ugly truths about Sarah.