Religion and Gender
Obama's speech on race and religion has me thinking back to the church I grew up with. But for me, it was gender instead of race that disgusted me.
I grew up in the rather conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran Church since there was not a practically available parish from our family's (more conservative) Evangelical, or Norwegian Lutheran Synod. Here are churches that don't see women fit to vote on church matters, and who, in my experience, frequently called on wives to submit to their husbands in weddings.
I feel that I couldn't get out quick enough and spent several years with no interest to belong to a church. When I did, I went to Quaker meeting. And yet my parents still attend those synods, knowing that women and men are equal in the eyes of God... but also because church is important for spirituality and community, despite the shortcomings of those that preach there.
posted by Sam Teigen @ 10:02 AM
2 Comments:
I was raised in the conservative Norwegian Synod which was, admittedly, somewhat of a ghetto experience. Later I had experiences (which included the Viet-Nam War) which severely challenged some of the assumptions on which I was raised. Some of my friends and family have totally rejected the ghetto, others (friends) have wrapped themselves in the comfort of the ghetto.
I don't want to retreat into the ghetto nor do I want to reject some of the important things which I learned there. I am in and out on an optional basis.
This is not an original insight but I first read it in one of Peter Berger's essays. It made sense to me and it has become something that has shaped my thought.
Just a thought from the other side...I was raised in the ELCA and drifted into Evangelical-land for too many years (talk about bad preaching!). I found welcome clarity and freedom at an ELS church and, for whatever reason, it never once bothered me that women did not have a direct vote in voters' meetings. I have been a member of many different congregations and King of Grace is the first church I've ever belonged to where I feel completed and totally valued as a woman and a person. Each family has a vote and my husband casts our family's vote. I'm totally modern and yet have no problem with this. Am I weird? If I am, I don't care. Norman and I can exist happily in the same church, so I think that says something.
Post a Comment
<< Home