Loren:
Metacrock, could you please tell us the biggest good thing about our culture that you think that Christianity cannot be credited with.
Meta:
The basic principles that you are not getting, 2 fold:Loren:
(1) Christians are human, some times they do bad things, sometimes they do good things. You can always find stupid narrow minded one's that feel bigotry and oppression, but you can also always find good one's who sacrifice themselves for the struggle of human liberation. But you only want to look at the bad ones. you refuse to give an credence ot the good as though they don't exist.
(2) there is no reason why the former group should define Christianity any more than the latter.
I could just as easily as you and Rex to name one thing that you don't Christianity has caused that is bad and evil and negative.
to answer your question. pornography. I don't think you can blame Christianity for pornography. that and diet cola.
As to feminism, most Christian clergy have been blatantly misogynist for the last 2000 years.Meta
Consider how feminist John Knox was when he denounced the "monstrous regiment of women". Also consider the feminism of all the pastors who denounced women getting the vote in the 19th cy. Like Horace Bushnell, who wrote of "Women's Suffrage: The Reform Against Nature"
there is an unbroken line all the way to Paul of women having authority in the church, serving God striking on their own and even Christian women fighting for woman's rights. The first woman suffrage group in America was Methodist women.
Problem with that topic s half the world is men. So men have male egos. males egos are sensitive and easily bruised by women. That is not a Christian problem it's a male problem. But the tradition of egalitarianism in the chruch has always been around.
see my chart on Doxa showing women in positions of power and responsibility from the Ministry of Jesus to 6th century. There were a lot of them.
Loren:
19th cy. feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton had noted: "In the early days of woman-suffrage agitation, I saw that the greatest obstacle we had to overcome was the Bible. It was hurled at us on every side."
Meta:
It was also used to support woman's movement. There was even a pro woman's rights translation made in the 19th century, and women like Katherine Bushnell who went to Northwestern and learned Greek and Hebrew and wrote on the egalitarian translations have been celebrated in the recent decades and even though she died in 1942 she had a major impact on the chruch in just the last 2 decades.That's in the original essay. Look at how many women in that essay are mentioned as taking a major role in the Nicaragua revolution and hey were all Christians.
Bible:
see my essay on female teachers in the Bible. Female teachers in the Bible are a big deal because they establish the precedent that women can have authority. See all of my women pages on Doxa where I dispell the myths of sexism such as the idea that the Bible forbids women to speak or have authority in the chruch. There are two different essay on women teaching, the other one is linked here.
Loren
She was right. The Bible certainly does not command "thou shalt burn thy bras". Look at the Catholic Church's argument at why women cannot be priests -- because priests must be like Jesus Christ, who was male.Meta:
that's the result of male ego. It's not what the Bible says it's how men have translated it.
Loren
Feminism is a mostly secular movement -- nonreligious without excluding religion.
Meta
this is what I complaint about in you. You are a bright person you stick with a few little bigoted myths that you have heard you don't research and you don't dig to find the truth. if you new the history of the woman's movement you would know how wrong that is.
Loren
Even the civil-rights movement was largely secular.
Meta:
ahahahah who the hell do you think Martin Luther king was? how old were you when they marched on Selma? Were you even alive? (1963)? I was! I remember it.
the major oranization was THE SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE. WHY DID THEY CALL IT "CHRISTIAN" DO YOU THINK?
the major leader THE REVEREND mARTIN LUTHER KING, WHYD ID THEY CALL HIM REVEREND?????
learn some history man you don't know anything!
I covered all of this in the essay you are commenting on.you didn't read it did you?
Loren
As Susan Jacoby notes in "Freethinkers", there were a lot of secular Jews from big cities who participated, and some black-church elders considered them too irreligious and disrespectful.
Meta
she's just a bourgeoisie rich person trying to take credit for other people's blood, sweat and tears. next she will be claiming that it was really Middle class Jews who suffered form Jim Crow laws.
if the civil rights movement was not black wha the hell was it? it was black Chrisitans. 90% Christian, over 90% black. Something like four Jews died, hundreds of blacks died. like 20 Jews went to jail, thousands of blacks whent to jail.
learn history!
Learn about Katherine Bushnell, a Christian Missionary who saved women from forced prostitution in China and in India, and unbound woman's feet in China. She also wen tto Northerwestern and learned the Biblical languages and disproved the ancient mistranslations that fuel sexist interpretation. She recorded her lessons in the book God's Word to Women. A modern Website pushes her view and is very successful (ran by women in Dallas). A famous Welch devotional writter and Biblical expositor Jesse Penn-Lewis's attempt to popularize Bushnell's God's Word to Women. Penn-Lewis adds her own original insights which are well worth reading. Magnacharta of Women.
There are organizations working to distill the message of egalitarianism in Christianity, such as Council on Biblical Equality. There are several others. see my women pages on Doxa.
