I Often Wondered...
Secretly because I didn’t want to be labeled a problem child, or heretic
Recently, there has been a further exposing of the incestuous, insidious “purity culture” of fundamentalist religion through Storybrand (a marketing company owned by Donald Miller who also wrote the book “Blue Like Jazz”), Joshua Harris that wrote the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” in 1997, and Josh Duggar from “19 and Counting” TV show who recently was arrested for child pornography. You can read more about it here in a blog post by Rachael Kay Albers’s “StoryBrand Scandal: I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Purity Culture, Joshua Harris, Donald Miller, and…Josh Duggar??? 19 WTFs And Counting.”
While the above are all related to primarily the “purity culture” concept, it’s all based in the fundamentalist religion belief system. If you want to read some of the tenants, click here. Now, the Gothard’s and the Duggars perverted even further and created what the fundamentalist religions look like today, but the simple basics are that
1) the Bible is literal and infallible (without error);
2) Christian religion is the ONLY religion and the RIGHT religion;
3) God’s word is only in the Bible and any other text is suspect;
4) Jesus is the Savior of the World and the only way to God;
5) The family structure God has ordained is one man and one woman, anything else is wrong and sinful;
6) Christians will go to heaven; everyone else will go to hell. Hell is real, a place with fire where disbelievers burn for an eternity;
7) God isn’t associated with any political party (but He’s a Republican only);
8) Abortion is murder, no exceptions, end of discussion;
9) God is a HE, not a SHE;
10) Patriarchy is ordained by the Bible because Adam was made before Eve and he was to “rule over her and every living thing;”
There aren’t all of the fundamentalist beliefs but these are some of the most common ones. I grew up in the Nazarene religion, in what some would call “fundamental lite” which means that it’s supposedly not as patriarchal and fundamentalist in its beliefs and purity culture wasn’t quite as rife (although it was definitely present).
There are differences in the beliefs of the fundamentalist religions and the Nazarene religion, however, there’s no doubt that Nazarenes have often taken pride in being conservative in many ways, especially emphasizing holy living, often with an emphasis on what one shouldn’t do, a tendency rife in fundamentalism. There’s even an entire ‘Nazarene manual,’ a little black book, that describes in detail what you can’t do as a Nazarene. You have to agree to this book and its rules, as well as the Nazarene belief system, to become a member of the Church of the Nazarene (yes, churches have memberships).
What seems to be a common theme in any of these religions is that God is an angry God, prone to wrath, vengeance, punishment, and remote up there in the Heavens. He wasn’t accessible to us. Everything you did wrong meant you were going to Hell. Fire and brimstone were the norm. Patriarchy ruled and women were second class, meant to be ‘submissive’ to their husbands and to men in the church. Children were expected to be ‘perfect,’ especially preacher’s kids, from a young age, or their parents weren’t raising them ‘correctly.’ (I have to use lots of air-quotes for this…) Is it any wonder that abuse is rampant in the church?
For years I’ve struggled with the idea of God that I was taught. He seemed so tightly bound in a small box. Any deviation was considered sinful. Even questioning religious authority and biblical authority was frowned upon. You were supposed to just accept it because they said so. And if you didn’t, you lacked faith and weren’t a Christian. But I often wondered (secretly because I didn’t want to be labeled a problem child, or heretic), is there more to Him? To this? I knew He was supposed to be a God of love, too, but it seemed I had to always play hide and seek with Him to experience His transcendent love.
I grew up a pastor's kid and unfortunately, saw the dark side, the seedy underbelly of religion. Religion damaged me. Hurt me. Hated me for who I am and what I wanted to be. I became an outsider, a non-believer, an outcast from the church. I no longer believed in their stifled God, strict patriarchal arbitrary man-made rules, and the thought that if I was to be my true self, I wasn’t welcome in the church. I wasn’t good enough for the church or the people in it. And yes, that was told to me very explicitly.
But oddly enough, I never stopped pursuing the God I wanted...a God of love. And He, or should I say SHE, never stopped pursuing me.
As far as I can remember, my art (I’m an artist) has always channeled various forms of women....naked, voluptuous, pregnant, scarred, damaged, broken, pieces, radiance, life-giving, and so on. It was variations of the same embodiment, the Sacred Feminine. Although at the time, I didn't realize who SHE was and how much She was pursuing me. She appeared continuously in my art, begging to be seen in Her wholeness, Her Oneness. It is only within the past few years that I have come to discover who She really is. She is the Sacred Divine Feminine, the Goddess. She is the love and nurturing Mother Earth. She is the other side of God. Without Her, there is no complete Him.
In our Western Judeo-Christian culture, we have been dominated by a masculine, heavenly God. He is one who banished us from paradise. He was the God of wrath, tempered occasionally with love and kindness, but woe to the one who got on His bad side! Then it became hellfire and brimstone, an emphasis on our human failings and sinfulness. Over the years, morality engraved fear rather than love into our religious culture, stressing human inadequacy and leaving a trail of repression and neurosis. How much has this image of a remote and wrathful deity influenced our relationship to the divine? I fear, too much.
When God is relegated to the heavens it is easy to lose touch with the divine in everyday life. We come to know Him only as a distant authoritarian father. We feel alienated, impotent, uncared-for, unprotected, isolated, and no longer an integral part of the great wholeness of life. We lose our purpose in life. The sacred wholeness of life belongs to the feminine aspect of the divine, the Great Goddess. For Her every act is sacred; every blade of grass, every creature is a part of the Great Oneness. In contrast to His awe-inspiring transcendence, She embodies the caring divine presence.
Banishing God to the heavens, we lost touch with the sacredness of the earth and its many forms of life. Reinstating the Goddess means restoring the sacredness of a nurturing, all-embracing divinity. God's masculine omnipotence and transcendence need to be balanced by the feminine aspects of care and nearness. God is both Mother and Father. We are wrong to restrict our image of a transcendent deity to the patriarchal power-drive. Reinstating the feminine, all-embracing Goddess does not mean we reject the masculine deity. They are One, each a piece of the other.
She is the Love I crave, the Oneness and Wholeness of life, and reconnecting with myself and Mother Earth. I have always believed that you can't have one side of God without the other. There is no masculine without the feminine. It requires balance. If there must be retribution and omnipotence, there must be nurturing love and connection. Otherwise, we are left to wander in a soulless, dark world where nothing matters, and the patriarchal power-driven image will dominate, as it has for the last few centuries, causing ruin, heartbreak, and despair.
Love,
Kat
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I do not have a lot to add to this terrific piece. It seems to sum up what a lot of us "former devout Christians" struggled with (and still struggle with) in terms of our relationship(s) with religion. It often seems to me, that much of what I studied, read and heard when I was an active Catholic and heavily engaged in my Church, is contrary to what is being actively practiced and promoted by Christians throughout the world. Polar opposite actually. It still confounds me how hypocritical and exclusive religions can be and how fearful I was as a young Catholic. I despised that. Still do.
On a side note ... last year I read the book "American Cosmic" by Diana Walsh Pasulka. Very interesting read and I recommend. I am fascinated by evidence of long lost civilizations on Earth (I am talking about much older than ancient Sumerians), our Universe and potential alternative life forms and how they all have something do with our existence here on Earth. This book is a different subject altogether focusing more on the religious aspects of ufology. I came to it through my interest in those other subjects. It is worth the read (if you are willing to be a touch open minded on the subject). It helped me refine my understanding of how religions form and what drives their "success" or longevity.