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How Political Correctness Infects Religious Organizations
When I was in Israel just over a year ago, I had one of my most uncomfortable moments related to Judaism. I visited Beit Hatfutsot, the Diaspora Museum, on the Tel Aviv University campus. In one room, they featured small replicas from synagogues all over the world; it was a beautiful display. They also had films of international congregations conducting services from many different cities and towns. One of the films stopped me in my tracks: a group of Jewish women were being led in prayer by a small group of women—wrapped in tallitot and kipot—prayer shawls and skullcaps. As I recall, they were filming a service in the Midwest. Granted, I haven’t been in a Conservative or Reform synagogue in a very long time, but it was still a shock. I stepped away from the film and collected my bearings.
It’s not like I haven’t been exposed to the idea of women wearing tallitot previously. In fact, I had joined a Jewish group in Los Angeles that had a weekly discussion of the Torah. I also attended a silent retreat with them. At the end of the retreat, the women in the group called us all up (Aliyah) and we surrounded ourselves with prayer shawls. It was a unique and moving experience, and I decided to purchase my own prayer shawl.
The first morning I was going to say the prayers at home, I pulled out my new tallit and prayed. I was uneasy and uncomfortable the whole time. I put the tallit back in its bag and never took it out again.
In researching the use of tallitot by women, I was surprised by what I learned. The Torah does not prohibit women from wearing the tallit, but women are not obligated to do so. At the same time, Chabad, an Orthodox community, suggests that women might want to wear the tallit for the wrong reasons:
While altogether the feminist movement is to be commended for the equal rights it has secured for women, and the elevation of the woman’s social, legal and economic status, a certain aspect of this movement’s aims is questionable at best. I refer to the desire to make women masculine, rather than accentuate their feminine qualities. To evaluate a woman based on her ability to “do whatever a man can,” is to dishonor womanhood, and all the unique qualities it brings to the table. A true feminist is someone who believes and is committed to making others understand the equality and importance of a women and the natural feminine role, not someone who believes that women should forsake their femininity in favor of becoming more man-like.
Judaism has also been accused of denigrating women, but the fact is that both men and women are appreciated for their different roles. For example men have stronger bodies, and it is said that women have stronger souls :
Women are more soulful than men. While men may excel in physical prowess, women are far ahead when it comes to spiritual strength. Women are more sensitive to matters of the soul, more receptive to ideas of faith, more drawn to the divine than men. The feminine soul has an openness to the abstract and a grasp of the intangible that a male soul can only yearn for. This is why G‑d told Abraham, the first Jewish man, ‘Whatever Sarah your wife tells you, listen to voice.’ She was the greater prophet, her soul more intuitive than his.
Thus, Judaism is wrestling with its own identity in the different communities: what is required, what is appropriate, which practices honor G-d.
So I have a number of questions that I am posing in this post:
- Has today’s political correctness taken your church/organization in a negative or unproductive direction in general, or when it comes to men and women?
- Are there conflicts within the organization that compromise traditional values or beliefs?
- Are there practices that make you uncomfortable?
- Do you think women intuitively have the ability to make a stronger connection to G-d than men?
I always like to remind people that I am still exploring my Jewish roots, trying to understand the Torah, the origin of Jewish ideas and practices, and what I feel I am able to include in my own practice.
I’d love to learn more about your own struggles with your home church or the larger organization, or the ways your organization has resisted, or been co-opted by, the pressures of political correctness.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
I’m Catholic, so let’s start with that. I would classify the problems within Catholicism as struggles on how to resolve the traditional values with the modernist sexual values. For the most part, it stands apart from the other Christian denominations in giving in. But that’s not to say there aren’t significant advocacy groups pushing to Liberalize the Church, and whole swaths of Catholics who just ignore the traditional beliefs. Let me try to give some specifics as I respond to your questions.
The Catholic Church has been struggling on how to deal with the whole homosexuality question. Gay marriage is just a non-starter, but the Church has a hard time articulating the sinfulness of homosexual acts. The culture has defined (incorrectly in my opinion) that homosexuality is normal, and therefore excluding homosexuals from participating as homosexuals is seen as prejudice.
There are a number of groups that are pushing for women priests. Theologically (in short, I don’t think people are interested in the specifics) this is an impossibility. However, the Church is trying to find ways to utilize women more in its organization. But nothing specific ever comes up. My reaction will come when and if I see specifics.
A issue more widespread the the laity would be divorce and contraception. The Catholic Church doesn’t accept divorce *though you can get around it) and prohibits the use of contraceptives, though most Catholics use it.
I have been to some Masses where it went for a more hip environment as opposed to a reverent environment. To my knowledge, these practices are not widespread, but when I do come across them I instantaneously pull back. Yuck, is my reaction.
Probably slightly, but only slightly. I would say the process for a man to being spiritual is slightly different than a woman. It just so happens that modern culture inhibits masculine spirituality more. It inhibits all spirituality but more so masculine, and so I think there are more women who are spiritual.
Thanks so much, @manny! A great explanation of many aspects of the Church.
Both men and ladies are stupid. But at the moment, we are not comfortable with addressing the stupidity of ladies. Should a man be as stupid as a lady, men can insult him mercilessly. When ladies are horrible and dumb, (and sometimes they can be) men can’t unleash justified wrath on their stupidity. Consider the following dialogue:
Lady: My son is autistic and it is the fault of corporations.
Me (An idealized version of me): Autism is a difficult condition and I sympathize that your kid is having a tough time. I do support Mr. Trump’s appeal to assist parents of autistic childen. Respectably, I think the Heritage Foundation has a better plan than Mr. Trump’s plan but that is my opinioin and I want everyone of every political orientation to help autistic people. Particularly those on the low spectrum of autism.
Lady: My son is autistic so are you in league with big-pharma to hurt my son.
Me (As I actually am): Umm… I’m poor. I mean I do have a job but it doesn’t pay me much money but umm. No. All the data says that… Autism is mostly a genetic thing. I mean all the studies about Autism point to genetics. There may very well be enivornmental factors but they are all pretty inconclusive.
Lady: So my son’s autism is the fault of your companies.
Me: Umm. I dont have companies I only have data.
Lady: Data provided by companies.
Me (Getting Angrier): And also governments. Governments of multiple nations and they all say there isn’t a connection between vaccines and autism. Also, those democratic governments don’t agree or cooperate on anything but they all say the same thing about vaccines.
Lady: Well what do you say to my son?
Me: Sorry. You got a rough draw of the cards. Anyways, Trump is not reliable about autism but he does have friends in the Wall-Mart charity towards autism and Bosie is filled with decent Christian groups that want to help kids with autism. So you can focus on that and I really hope that scientists do more for autistic kids.
Lady: Why don’t you respect my pain.
Me: Because your pain doesn’t frickin matter. I’m really sorry that your kid has a serious problem. Really I am but your pain doesn’t have anything to do with your kid. There is literally zero evidence that corporations or big-pharma did anything your kid.
Lady: Well you just don’t know how I feel because you don’t have a son.
Me: Gah. Ah.. Ah… Data. Evidence. There is zero evidence for anything you said bitch.
Lady: Well you are sexist.
Me: You would be equally stupid in any biological form. You should not vote and you should not raise your son if you are that stupid.
Lady: Well I have a degree in humanites.
Me: (Long screeching wail)
When dudes are stupid, other dudes can tell them that they are stupid. As a dude, I benefit from this because I have been stupid before. But dudes are super uncomfortable telling ladies that they are stupid. And ladies are almost as stupid as often as dudes.
My (perhaps unfair) prejudice against female pastors is that they have a tendency to come across like schoolteachers, girl scout leaders, and/or community organizers, protecting their charges from the big bad world and helping them to develop skills for creating change! She may be more or less authoritarian, nurturing, and/or crusading, but in any case the vibe comes across as condescending.
I prefer pastors whose vibe is more like that of a consultant, there to competently answer questions and assist with problems when required, but fundamentally engaging with me more-or-less as an equal rather than a project.
Now, lots of male pastors give off the schoolteacher vibe as well, don’t get me wrong. The vibe tends to be especially prevalent with youth pastors. But still, it seems less prevalent with male pastors, especially when they’ve got a few years’ experience under their belts.
Aside: The best youth groups I attended were those led by a senior pastor who didn’t really want to be there. Theologically they’d engage with us kids little differently than they’d engage with the adults in the congregation, and then they’d leave us alone to organize our “kid activities” cuz they really just couldn’t be bothered. Then it would all be ruined when they’d finally find a “trained” youth pastor to lighten their load. In other words, a good youth group should be run by a (way less cynical version of) Reverend Lovejoy rather than a Ned Flanders.
Don’t be fooled. He’s talking about Jean Chretien.
Susan, I was relying principally on comments by Jonathan Haidt, which I recall from a podcast or interview discussing the negative social consequences of IPhones, particularly among young people. His comment was, essentially, that the boys just play video games, while the girls engage in merciless gossiping and social competition. I don’t have a cite for this, as I’m just going from memory.
Here is a 2012 study indicating that women gossip more than men. This is true of the overall TGQ (tendency to gossip questionnaire), and also true for the subcategories “physical” and “social information,” all three of which were statistically significant at or above the 99.9% level. Men scored higher on “achievement” gossip, but this was not statistically significant. (These results are in Table 1.)
Anecdotally, the MeToo movement seems to be an example of this phenomenon.
I have learned to tolerate the legacy of P’tit Jean, when compared to the legacies of others from his party since WWII.
Wow.
This is going to take more space than I have, so see below.
I will start by asking: What in the world does better color discernment have to do with anything that I said? This is quite a non-sequitur.
[Cont’d]
[Cont’d]
Caryn, you say that women reach a spiritual elevation unreachable by men. Susan says that women are spiritually stronger and superior to men. I hope to persuade you otherwise, as I think that these are serious errors.
Please explain to me how your position is anything other than a female supremacist argument.
I said that men and women are different, complementary, but equally precious to God.
Are men not party to creation? Are men not fathers to their children, just as women are mothers? Might not fatherhood be just as profound as motherhood, though different?
In fact, might it not be even more admirable for a man to pour his life into providing for and protecting his family, when — until very, very recently — he could not even be sure if the children were his own?
Biblically speaking, I could make a strong case for male superiority, though I do not. We worship God the Father, not God the Mother. Jesus is male, not female, in his human nature. The Holy Spirit is debatable. The female role in the Biblical view is assigned to us, collectively, with the Church as the Bride of Christ. Helpless and in need of a savior. I could cite 1 Corinthians 11:3 or Ephesians 5:22.
I think that a male supremacist interpretation of this Scripture is incorrect, however.
This exchange is actually a very helpful answer to Susan’s original question, of how political correctness infects religious organizations. I submit that one way that PC infects religious organizations is with feminist nonsense about female spiritual superiority, and such propaganda can, on occasion, even mislead fine, smart ladies like you and Susan.
[emphasis added]
This just may get very interesting…
I suppose I have been blessed in that even in churches where I came to vehemently disagree with the theology or the practice, I have never personally encountered churches where political correctness has come to dominate. But I know plenty of others who have. My parents, for instance, left the Methodist church of my early youth because of its then rather open flirtation with liberation theology and communist sympathies.
There are more jokes than I can readily recall about how the Orthodox churches have an innate resistance to modernism and political correctness (Orthodoxy ≠ An Organized Religion), but will fight endlessly about everything else (the Ukrainian question being the most current). Doctrinally they’re all united, and moreover teach that doctrine and dogma cannot be changed without the consensus of all churches. But as that would require all churches to actually hold an ecumenical council, and none of those have been held since the 700s, we’re certainly in no danger of any change in that regard now. So the canons and teachings of the church that were true in the 700s and earlier are still clung to today. This was one major reason I was glad to find Orthodoxy – it is basically immune to modernism.
I cannot say that any practices of the church as a whole make me uncomfortable except in the sense that they run rather counter to the Protestantism in which I was raised. That being said, there are certainly individual churches who, while doctrinally sound, carry over some bad habits – sometimes a long memory can be a misguided thing.
Regarding men and women and the issue of spiritual intuition, I hesitate to say that either has more than the other so much as to say that men and women, as sexes, certainly have different types of spiritual understandings of things, and different expressions. There are some things that women understand intuitively better than men, and some things men understand intuitively better than women. And that’s rather the point, and it’s by design. The greatest and most venerated saint of the church is Mary, and she has pride of place in all churches, second only to Jesus. This itself is a recognition that Mary, as a woman, was capable of something (beyond merely giving birth) that no man could do. We have our differences, but they are meant to work together. It is taught in the Orthodox church that one of the prime functions of matrimony is so that men and women can together work to bring each other closer to the Lord together.
One need only spend time in a monastery or a convent and this is readily apparent – both are filled with people who have chosen to devote their entire lives to prayer, obedience, and service, yet their expressions thereof are very different. Male and Female – we are made to complement one another. Neither is better, and neither is complete without the other. Even though the monastics have chosen to live celibate, this separation is in part due to a recognition that togetherness and complementarity is the natural order of things, and choosing to sacrifice that opportunity is an actual sacrifice to the Almighty so as to better serve others – it is a willing giving-up of something natural and good.
Another beautiful comment by SkipSul. And take it from an old Catholic: these ecumenical councils can be more trouble than they’re worth.
I don’t belong to any church, but I spent a lot of time at our local Episcopal church because our daughters went to their parochial school. There was a mild discussion when we got our first female clergy, but when the ordination of an Episcopal gay bishop occurred, that’s when the caca hit the fan. This church broke away, not wanting association with the people who approved of homosexual clergy.
The left is destroying the stable family structure, the K-12 educational system, and the colleges. However, religion remains the final, yet toughest obstacle to government domination in everyone’s lives. What better way to destroy the church than to destroy its teachings?
Aside: The last major faith left standing will be Islam, because they kill the opposition.
I didn’t know that any Episcopal churches operated their own schools.
Hehe . . . learning doesn’t stop with a diploma. I’m sure there are many across the country. I will say the school I referred to is non-denominational, but there’s plenty of God and Jesus discussed . . .
My wife has no problem telling me that . . .
@arizonapatriot, I didn’t mean to start an argument. I’d rather people didn’t insult each other over their differences. I would like to think that mostly everyone agrees on the comment above. Who is more this or that is not a constructive debate, IMHO. So let me see if this comment passes muster:
Both men and women have their strengths and limitations in their relationships with G-d. Those differences are sometimes due to temperament, sometimes due to gender, but they exist nonetheless. Would you be comfortable saying that women might be more easily attuned to a spiritual connection with G-d? That men are more attuned in other, important ways? For example, I have male friends who I believe have a deeper spiritual connection with G-d; that could be due to their personal devotion, their temperament, the length of time of their practices. If nothing else, they set an example for me that this kind of connection is possible. I feel a connection to G-d, and it is growing, but is probably more limited than theirs. The key point is that I’m devoted to deepening that connection. That is most important, because as I said earlier, it’s not a competition.
I also want to thank @skipsul for sharing your thoughts. People can have different perspectives and different perceptions of faith and relationships to G-d. I always love the generosity and depth of your sharing. Thank you.
This Ted Talk I think gets to the heart of how political correctness gets a foothold in various religious denominations. Currently, the United Methodist Church is wrestling with this issue.
Superb post, Susan, woman of valor that you are.
Rambam, the greatest authority on Jewish law, summarized the subject in these pithy words: “The sages commanded that a man honor his wife more than himself, and love her like himself.”
Yep! I love my wife in spite of the fact she likes liver, and thinks soccer is a great sport . . .
I, of course, do not belong to a church, but yesterday I went to the funeral of my wife’s uncle at a Presbyterian church.
Above the main entrance was a weather beaten sign that announced “We stand with our Muslim friends.” That’s not so bad in itself, but it’s a strange thing to announce at a Christian church as you enter. The preacher, the retired pastor, was a woman. Again, not such a bad thing, because it’s not my church. But as we left, my daughter needed to use the bathroom and I helped her find the restrooms. There were the typical two doors, one labeled “People who consider themselves men” and “People who consider themselves women.” I kid you not.
I’m all for freedom, but that includes my freedom to label that church a bunch of weirdos.
Sarah laughed at God’s promise of a child in their old age. Abraham believed. This is in Genesis 18.
I think women are more receptive (or susceptible) to the presence of spiritual forces. I don’t think all spiritual forces are with God.
Re: # 54
Who is Athaliah ? Where in the Bible can I find her?
That’s the spirit!
As you asked:
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/athaliah-bible
Re:# 57
Thank you, Susan. This fantastically provides the motivation I needed to start somewhere reading the large number of books of the Bible I haven’t read. It feels, right now, like enough to get me to do the boring housework quickly and sit down with the book.
I learn something new every day . . .
Those history books in the Bible are a blur to me. I know I’ve read them but obviously I’ve retained nothing. I can’t remember ever hearing of Queen Athaliah. You would think the feminists would make more of her, though, but then it might undermine their argument of patriarchy.