My husband, the rather militant atheist his is, had one request when we talked about what religions I'd expose our child to - I was to subject her to "real" religions, not made up religions. Made up religions appeared to be UU and wicca style stuff (not paganism specifically, but the type of paganism middle school girls tend to fixate on).
As for masculine religions... When I was taking my confirmation classes, a silly amount of time was spent on the Lord's Prayer, which in my tradition begins "Our Father, who art in heaven." So sure, there are phrases which may require explanation/discussion ("forgive us our debts") but the sheer amount of time spent on "by father we don't really mean male, etc." When, to anyone who's grown up in the faith, and even though I grew up as a liberal Presbyterian (women pastors, women can teach men, etc) it was really clear that all the god imagery is masculine. You can't just hand-wave that away. If you really MEAN that god transcends gender identity then the language should reflect that (language can make that hard, of course). Representation matters.
Sometimes, changes are hard and seem sudden (Martin Luther), sometimes they're gradual. Now, maybe the changes made were arbitrary and thoughtless. Maybe they don't make sense. But tradition for the sake of tradition is just as bogus as change for the sake of change (and I say this as probably one of your more conservative, tradition beholden readers). Getting girls into STEM isn't just making legos pink. Making religion more open to the community, and potentially even more accurate (the god in the tradition in which I was raised *does not* have a gender, in spite of all the masculine words in that same tradition) might not be such a bad thing even if it is discomfiting to wrest tradition out from under people. I'm told Vatican II was hard.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-05-07 04:57 pm (UTC)As for masculine religions...
When I was taking my confirmation classes, a silly amount of time was spent on the Lord's Prayer, which in my tradition begins "Our Father, who art in heaven." So sure, there are phrases which may require explanation/discussion ("forgive us our debts") but the sheer amount of time spent on "by father we don't really mean male, etc." When, to anyone who's grown up in the faith, and even though I grew up as a liberal Presbyterian (women pastors, women can teach men, etc) it was really clear that all the god imagery is masculine. You can't just hand-wave that away. If you really MEAN that god transcends gender identity then the language should reflect that (language can make that hard, of course). Representation matters.
Sometimes, changes are hard and seem sudden (Martin Luther), sometimes they're gradual. Now, maybe the changes made were arbitrary and thoughtless. Maybe they don't make sense. But tradition for the sake of tradition is just as bogus as change for the sake of change (and I say this as probably one of your more conservative, tradition beholden readers). Getting girls into STEM isn't just making legos pink. Making religion more open to the community, and potentially even more accurate (the god in the tradition in which I was raised *does not* have a gender, in spite of all the masculine words in that same tradition) might not be such a bad thing even if it is discomfiting to wrest tradition out from under people. I'm told Vatican II was hard.