‘Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions’ Edited Susan Tive and Cami Ostman

[rug]

By Rachel Newcomb
Published: August 9

‘Beyond Belief” explores 26 different women’s entries to, immersions in and exits from communities where religion permeates all aspects of life. The editors, Susan Tive, a grantwriter who left Orthodox Judaism, and Cami Ostman, a blogger who was once a conservative Christian, have created a volume “to spark a conversation about the commonalities of women’s experiences in restrictive religions.” Most of the essays are slice-of-life depictions of defining moments in these individuals’ religious lives and as such offer only brief glimpses into much longer journeys. Yet the moments are well chosen, illustrating in particular the conflicts women face because of gender subservience imposed by religion.

Religious rituals, connecting individuals both to the divine and to one another, initially drew many women to their chosen faiths, including Leah Lax, who spent 30 years in Hasidic Judaism as a closeted lesbian. Escaping a troubled home and a nominal religious upbringing, she finds transcendence while watching Hasidic men dance. Momentarily forgetting that she has just been told that women must remain silent, she imagines herself “in the middle of those dancing men, my hand on a sweating back, feet swept up in the beat” and “not a woman on the sidelines.” Other women describe rituals as more alienating, ranging from self-flagellation to speaking in tongues. Caitlin Constantine, a former Mormon, writes of baptizing by proxy a list of women dead for more than 400 years, in order to save their souls for heaven. Dizzy from being dipped 12 times into a baptismal pool, all in the name of a dozen women from the 1600s named Anna, she wonders about these women’s own religions and tries “to ignore the newly formed questions swarming my mind.”

Conflicts over sex, usually tinged with shame and visions of hellfire, figure prominently in the book. Former nun Mary Johnson recalls that she “hadn’t imagined that my own human needs for intimacy would clash so dramatically with rules demanding the denial of every human desire.” Several of the authors had to sublimate their needs for same-sex relationships, whose consequences of “eternity in a pit full of wailing, burning sinners” are even more severe than the punishments of this lifetime. Upon finding out about her relationship with another young woman, Pamela Helberg’s father brings her to the office of her pastor, where the two men pray, speak in tongues and “command the demons of homosexuality to leave her now.”

The final third of the book covers women’s “exodus” from these religious groups. One of the most moving accounts comes from Donna M. Johnson, who grew up in the orbit of a traveling evangelist and charismatic faith healer with whom her mother secretly had three children. Initially escaping by way of an early marriage, Johnson is intermittently drawn back to the group, in between going through a divorce, alcohol and drug addiction, and chronic illness. But the ultimate alienating vision, which “haunted, inspired, and remained with me through years of agnosticism,” is the image of the revival tent, “stretched out along the outskirts of town where the trash and outcasts congregate.” The tent pulls in everyone: “old and young, black and white, poor and poorer,” yet Johnson is always outside watching, and she finally realizes that outside is where she belongs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/beyond-belief-the-secret-lives-of-women-in-extreme-religions-eds-susan-tive-and-cami-ostman/2013/08/08/bc92ec98-a218-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html

[cbayer]

1. This sounds really good and I actually might read it, lol!

Thanks for the review.

[dimbear]

2. More proof, as if any were needed, that women and men are different and women are in more danger

from religion than are men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the first of our foremothers to point this out in the modern era, one could wish she was more widely remembered.

[okasha]

3. Which is just another way of saying that

the underlying problem is actually patriarchy.

[dimbear]

5. Modern scholars have managed to trace the patriarchy pretty successfully, right back

to the Persian captivity. The (patriarchal) system that prevailed under Cyrus the Great spread over the whole Roman Empire and eventually most of the west.

So the original culprit, as well as we can determine it, was Zoroastrianism or its congeners. Paganism had some lovely branches where women enjoyed equality or dominance, but they went by the board. Patriarchy is the problem, its origins are religous.

[rug]

6. I wasn't aware the Captivity extended to China, sub-Saharan Africa and Central America.

[dimbear]

8. I'm almost sure they aren't usually considered part of the west.

Have to double check.

[rug]

9. They're not. Patriarchy is global. It is unlikely to have a religious root.

[dimbear]

11. Western patriarchy flows out of Judaism through Christianity, and goes back to the Persian

captivity and perhaps flows from Zoroastrianism, IMHO. This is the emerging modern view. Compare the Canaanite religious world, where Judaism originally belonged, with its deities which occur in pairs--royal divine couples. Naturally a society under that sort of dual (or plural) godhead is likely to be more equal with regard to the sexes.

[rug]

12. If you eliminate the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Sumerians, the Myceneans et al., that might be true.

The development of a culture is sloppy and rarely linear.

[dimbear]

13. Of course, I merely sketch the main current.

It's remarkable how ideas got around back in the day, and remarkable which ideas took and which didn't. The why of it all, the why the patriarchy took such strong root, is the real question. The seed seems to have been Zoroastrianism, but the persistence needs to be traced to the human psyche.

[cbayer]

4. Women are in more danger from men in general than from religion.

While this focuses on women in extremist religious groups, women are in danger in all kinds of groups and societies, be they religious or not.

Women and girls are also receiving desperately needed assistance from religious organizations all over the world.

Your blinders make you say some pretty silly things sometimes, dimbear.

[dimbear]

7. It escapes me entirely what is silly in my post.

It's more or less warning that there are sharks in the water.

[cbayer]

10. What's silly is you trying to make this argument against religion.

There are sharks in all the waters, not just the religious ones. Apparently there are even sharks in some atheist organizations, at least according to some women that swim there.

[LiberalAndProud]

14. You overlook that religions are the source of much justification of misogyny.

Ask me. I'll quote you chapter and verse.

It remains a puzzle to me how so many can ignore the psychological and sociological ramifications of doctrines which teach that women are inferior by design. It's not healthy.

[cbayer]

15. Maybe the source, maybe the excuse.

I think it's very hard to distinguish those at time.

There have been lots of strides made by women within some religious organizations. Not so much in others.

It is not black and white. Not all religion is bad for women.