Skip to main content

Male Authority

By Karen L. Garst ~

After the recent selection of Donald Trump as president-elect of the United States, many people have tried to fathom how most of the polls were inaccurate in predicting his victory. Richard Dawkins tweeted that pollsters got it wrong because the people they were talking to simply “were ashamed to admit they were Trump supporters.” Sarah Haider added that “when political correctness takes over—you don’t know how people actually feel.” These statements go a long way to explain how the predictive polls were inaccurate. But more important than the inaccuracy of the polls themselves is an interesting fact revealed by the final election results—52 percent of white women supported Trump, while Clinton received 94 percent of the votes of black women.

Who are these white women? Why did they vote the way they did? Are they simply opposed to reproductive rights for women? Unconcerned about family leave? Oblivious to health care programs like the Affordable Care Act? Blind to the future student loan debt of their children? It is very likely that these women are highly religious. The Pew Research Center has identified that 81 percent of those who identify as white, born-again Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. Nearly 90 percent of Republican women voted for Trump. We can infer that a large number of the white women who voted for Trump were Republican and religious.

But is it just that these women identify as religious, or is there a stronger aspect of religion at work here? Is there a reason they might be less likely to support a woman candidate for president and to vote against policies that might be in their self-interest? Yes. I believe it is the legacy of worshipping a male deity and the psychological impact of this on very religious women, particularly Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.

The move from worshipping a goddess or a pantheon of gods containing male and female gods to a single male deity is well documented. Author Karen Armstrong maintains that the move in early Judaism to eliminate worship of other gods may have taken 600 years.1 Although Catholicism elevated the role of the Virgin Mary and female saints, perhaps to appease women, the Protestant Reformation eliminated any reference to these women. Martin Luther had a particularly pernicious view of women. “Take women from their housewifery and they are good for nothing.”2

With a sole male deity and men as priests, rabbis, and imams, it was rare for women to even question the power of male leadership until the 19th century. In Fundamentalist or Evangelical households, the impact of the worship of a male deity is still pervasive and its impact on women manifold. First, there is a strong emphasis on sin. Ann Wilcox, one of the women who wrote about her upbringing as a Fundamentalist in my book, Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion, states that people are taught not just that they commit sin, but that they ARE sin. This doctrine was emphasized throughout the history of Christianity by such notables as St. Augustine, who lay the responsibility for the cause of sin—carnal lust—squarely on Eve and therefore all women. Second, as stated in 1 Corinthians 11:3, the father is the head of the earthly home and thus rules over women. Fundamentalists still cling to this prescription today as in the statement— “a woman's ideal fulfillment is usually motherhood.” Marsha Abelman, another essayist, was raised in the Church of Christ. She writes that her father had complete control. She recently told me that if her father would have sexually abused her, there would have been no one to deny his right to do so. Third, love in marriage is defined as obedience to the husband. Fundamentalists state this plainly—“the husband being the head of the wife and authority over the children.” Ann recounted that her mother talked back to her father once and he immediately grabbed her and told her to stop. She never did it again.

Who are these white women? Why did they vote the way they did? Winnell has been a pioneer in addressing the impact of this type of Fundamentalist upbringing. She coined the term Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) to describe “a recognizable set of symptoms experienced as a result of prolonged exposure to a toxic religious environment and/or the trauma of leaving the religion.” The psychological impact explained in Winnell’s book, Leaving the Fold, mirrors Ann Wilcox’s experience to a tee. Even after a period of thirty years away from her religious experience, her mind “was still being assaulted with irrational fear for disbelieving.”3

Is it any wonder that women, strongly under the influence of the type of Fundamentalist religion that teaches that women are sinful, men are in charge, and their job is to obey, voted for Trump? Wasn’t he the epitome of the man in charge during his campaign? Over and over he used the language of male power. Nearly every statement he made was couched in terms that HE would be in charge and HE would make things happen. He rarely talked policy. He rarely cited specifics. “Let’s Make America Great Again!” He rarely talked about working with other politicians or any team whatsoever which might have diminished his perceived power. His language was the same that these white Evangelical women had been hearing from their earliest moments as children of controlling fathers, every day in their homes as wives, and several times a week at church.

When I fall asleep at night, words come unbidden to my brain. I start to recite a children’s prayer I learned long ago—“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep….” Even though I have now been an atheist for decades, my brain still replays that veneration of a male god. Imagine how amplified this focus must be for women who attend church every Sunday, most often with a male standing in front of them pronouncing faith in the one true male god. Every song, every ritual, every doctrine does nothing but emphasize this maleness.

It would be interesting to see a psychological study on how Fundamentalist women, more liberal Christians, and atheists would rank male and female leaders. A comparison of these three groups might reveal the deep psychological impact that religion has, particularly on women.

In the meantime, there are resources to help people recover from religion, especially the toxic, misogynistic Fundamentalist ones. Recovering from Religion has now established a hotline for people to call in and talk with an individual who can help them. Ex-Christian.net also has resources for people who have left Christianity. And there are many others.

But what is our role as individuals? We cannot sit idly by while people are indoctrinated into believing that women are not the equals of men. If you are uncomfortable talking to religious people, get the new app Atheos. It is a guide to help people have “non-confrontational discussions about gods, religion, faith, and superstition.” Be open about your views. Every person needs a model to emulate. Remember the small African-American boy looking up to President Obama in the White House? He now knows marginalized people can be anything they want. Let’s all be models to show how great it can be to leave religion behind. And maybe someday elect a female president!

Karen L. Garst, PhD, editor of Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion and blogger at www.faithlessfeminist.com

1 Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions (New York, NY: Knopf, 2006), 45.

2 Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: Male Words and Female Images (London, England: Penguin Press, 1998), 329.

3 Karen L. Garst, Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2016),
30.










Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not