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Post by km on Oct 28, 2009 12:03:40 GMT -5
Except for this one thing. And that was the thing he wanted to remove from the patriarchal ideal. That's what annoyed me. Not just seeing a black man who was living the quiverfull life. Ah, okay, hadn't thought about it that way. That's a good point.
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Post by km on Oct 28, 2009 12:06:01 GMT -5
This is all so troubling to me. I need some time to process this. Even thinking about it is just tearing down some of the things I believed about my family and not in a good way. My first feeling is that a different term than racism is needed in discussing this, because at least as far as I've seen it, it's about culture instead of just race - people of color, even if they are Christians, tend to be the "wrong type of Christian" - but no fear, we can turn them into the right type of Christian (including by adoption) and THEN their race doesn't matter. YMMV Can you be clearer about what you mean? Maybe it's a kind of racism that is institutionalized in the movement rather than necessarily being intentional racism? I mean, I think back even to Bill Gothard and the big thing about the "voodoo beat"? Racism seems, to me, to be pretty entrenched.
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Post by km on Oct 28, 2009 12:09:22 GMT -5
And Kisekileia, thanks. You are right, I honestly didn't understand. I see that now. Sorry it seemed like I was jumping on you. Your comments honestly raised some issues I've been thinking about wrt this blog for a while.
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Post by km on Oct 28, 2009 12:14:20 GMT -5
Lack of tolerance toward fundies. That's hilarious. How much more tolerance would they like? They're allowed to practice their religion as they fit. They can bad mouth whoever they want and get away with it. When they run for public office, they've got built-in support. Their religious institutions are tax exempt. They're allowed to train up their children any way they want. Even if it means lying to them, stunting their potential, and leaving them without the skills necessary to survive in the world at large. They're allowed to discriminate against the women (or anyone else) in their own congregations. They are not held accountable for the tragic results of their belief system. Look at all those faith-healing parents in the news lately. They've killed their children through medical neglect. Fundies do not even have the decency to monitor the results of their belief system for their own sakes. I'd say they have it pretty good. Unfortunately, the bar they've set for themselves is very, very low. margybargy: Your post *cracked me up.* Anyway, in response, one thing that has always astounded me is the fundie persecution complex. Christians practice the dominant religion in North America and yet... And yet... We hear that there's a "War on Christmas" and that soon the American KGB are gonna come for the Christians and all sorts of claptrap... Why? I never understood it.
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Post by km on Oct 28, 2009 12:22:26 GMT -5
But really, it's everybody's job to get educated about the reality others experience. It's not OK to hand down discrimination to another group just because one has been discriminated against. In fact, it prevents people from uniting in common causes to effectively address discrimination. If we remain in our own little gender/race/religion/ability/etc camps and only look out for our own, we miss a chance to organize on a larger scale. Exactly. And it was precisely what I read your comment as doing. And I thought it was a cheap shot. I think there are enough *good* arguments against this guy that it doesn't even make sense to use his race to trivialize his arguments. There are *substantive* reasons why his argument is crap. I mean, look... What I would see as condescending would be someone saying to me, "Dude, seriously, as a WOMAN, you should *understand and be sympathetic* to my oppression on account of the fact that we're both oppressed." Um, no. That's a non-point. Tell me what's *wrong* with what I said and *how* it's oppressive in an argument. Our disparate oppressions are so disparate as to be pretty meaningless. I don't call it PC. I call it anti-essentialism.
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Post by margybargy on Oct 28, 2009 16:52:56 GMT -5
Aw, thanks. I'm glad I lost the original now. And, yes, the persecution complex! It's maddening. Absolutely maddening. It's just a "shut down the critics" mechanism, but it works. People are afraid of offending on the basis of religion. It's like it's above criticism. I think if religion were subject to extensive critical analysis, the results would be very enlightening. That's why this blog is so great. Vyckie has an outstanding analytical mind, and so do the guest posters and commenters. I love it. I would love our society to progress to the point where the religious are openly challenged about the damaging aspects of their faith - like the promotion of homophobia. I'd love to see a world where accepting things without evidence was considered a social taboo, like burping aloud in public. We're taking baby steps in that direction, I think, but there's a long way to go.
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Post by tapati on Oct 28, 2009 18:28:30 GMT -5
But really, it's everybody's job to get educated about the reality others experience. It's not OK to hand down discrimination to another group just because one has been discriminated against. In fact, it prevents people from uniting in common causes to effectively address discrimination. If we remain in our own little gender/race/religion/ability/etc camps and only look out for our own, we miss a chance to organize on a larger scale. Exactly. And it was precisely what I read your comment as doing. And I thought it was a cheap shot. I think there are enough *good* arguments against this guy that it doesn't even make sense to use his race to trivialize his arguments. There are *substantive* reasons why his argument is crap. I mean, look... What I would see as condescending would be someone saying to me, "Dude, seriously, as a WOMAN, you should *understand and be sympathetic* to my oppression on account of the fact that we're both oppressed." Um, no. That's a non-point. Tell me what's *wrong* with what I said and *how* it's oppressive in an argument. Our disparate oppressions are so disparate as to be pretty meaningless. I don't call it PC. I call it anti-essentialism. We'll have to agree to disagree then. It wasn't just a conversation about understanding my oppression--it was my response to a person who wants to take away MY rights, in other words to actually discriminate against ME. So yes, I'll draw whatever parallels might get through to someone with that agenda. If he was merely quoted as saying that other QFers wanted to take away women's right to vote and he wasn't sure whether or not he agreed, then I'd take a more sensitive and respectful tact. But that's not where he was coming from--he'd made up his mind.
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Post by jadehawk on Oct 30, 2009 1:38:28 GMT -5
This is all so troubling to me. I need some time to process this. Even thinking about it is just tearing down some of the things I believed about my family and not in a good way. My first feeling is that a different term than racism is needed in discussing this, because at least as far as I've seen it, it's about culture instead of just race - people of color, even if they are Christians, tend to be the "wrong type of Christian" - but no fear, we can turn them into the right type of Christian (including by adoption) and THEN their race doesn't matter. YMMV Can you be clearer about what you mean? Maybe it's a kind of racism that is institutionalized in the movement rather than necessarily being intentional racism? I mean, I think back even to Bill Gothard and the big thing about the "voodoo beat"? Racism seems, to me, to be pretty entrenched. i think the best term for this sort of thing is "Cultural Imperialism", and it's nothing new. Goes all the way back to the boarding schools for Native American children, at least.
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Post by jadehawk on Oct 30, 2009 1:43:07 GMT -5
Lack of tolerance toward fundies. That's hilarious. How much more tolerance would they like? They're allowed to practice their religion as they fit. They can bad mouth whoever they want and get away with it. When they run for public office, they've got built-in support. Their religious institutions are tax exempt. They're allowed to train up their children any way they want. Even if it means lying to them, stunting their potential, and leaving them without the skills necessary to survive in the world at large. They're allowed to discriminate against the women (or anyone else) in their own congregations. They are not held accountable for the tragic results of their belief system. Look at all those faith-healing parents in the news lately. They've killed their children through medical neglect. Fundies do not even have the decency to monitor the results of their belief system for their own sakes. I'd say they have it pretty good. Unfortunately, the bar they've set for themselves is very, very low. margybargy: Your post *cracked me up.* Anyway, in response, one thing that has always astounded me is the fundie persecution complex. Christians practice the dominant religion in North America and yet... And yet... We hear that there's a "War on Christmas" and that soon the American KGB are gonna come for the Christians and all sorts of claptrap... Why? I never understood it. I've linked to this before, but it's still the best explanation out there how Christians can possibly feel persecuted when they're actually the majority The Persecuted Hegemon, by slacktivist: I suspect that American evangelicals' persecution complex is an inevitable side effect of sectarian hegemony. Once you believe that your faith requires cultural dominance, and that it deserves it, then any threat to that dominance -- even just the unwelcome reminder of the existence of alternative points of view -- is perceived as a threat, as a kind of persecution. Thus, for example, Hannukah is perceived as a threat to, and an attack on, Christmas.
The persecuted hegemon is thus an oxymoronic creature driven by an oxymoronic principle: non-reciprocal justice. For these folks, turnabout is never fair play, turnabout is merely backwards. Thus when others respond to them in kind, or even simply remind them of the Golden Rule, they take offense, as though this constitutes an injustice toward them.
We've seen how this plays out on the national scene two, three times a month. Some pious dignitary remarks that homosexuality is just like pedophilia or bestiality -- a statement regarded within the hegemony of the sect as wholly innocent and inoffensive. Someone outside the sect will reply, accurately, that this is an offensive lie, a vicious slander. That response will be perceived, within the sect, as "religious persecution." The response -- any response other than "thank you, sir, may I have another?" -- implicitly rejects the legitimacy of the hegemony and rebels against the privilege enjoyed by the sect. (A big part of that privilege, it turns out, is the expectation that one can say offensive things without others taking or expressing offense. This has become far more important as a hallmark of American evangelicalism than, say, Sabbath-keeping.)
This points to the key confusion of the persecuted hegemons. They are unable to distinguish between challenges to their hegemony -- to their privilege -- and threats to their faith itself. This is a spiritually perilous confusion, particularly so for Christians who claim to follow a crucified outcast.
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Post by km on Oct 30, 2009 10:33:38 GMT -5
jadehawk: Well, I never implied that it was new. My point was that it's very rarely addressed or talked about by people who were once in Quiverfull.
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Post by km on Oct 30, 2009 10:36:19 GMT -5
This points to the key confusion of the persecuted hegemons. They are unable to distinguish between challenges to their hegemony -- to their privilege -- and threats to their faith itself. Must've posted it before I joined the forum. Anyway, I like it.
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Post by km on Oct 30, 2009 10:47:47 GMT -5
In fact, just thinking about this more... Of the few people I still know who are Quiverfull adherents, all of them actively think of themselves as *anti-racists.* A few of the children have entered into interracial marriages, and another one of the adult children recently adopted some twins from an African country. But I think Kathryn Joyce is right in saying that there's very often a subtext of "white race suicide" in a lot of the QF culture. One of the only secular supporters of the lifestyle said as much in an issue of International Affairs several years ago. Not to mention the cultural imperialism that pervades so much of it ("The rock beat is an African voodoo beat." Fears of witchcraft in non-Western cultures. When I was working in sub-Saharan Africa, I made the mistake of going to a North American English language fellowship, where the QF families prayed for "this dark continent." I was horrified.).
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Post by jadehawk on Oct 30, 2009 14:38:43 GMT -5
jadehawk: Well, I never implied that it was new. My point was that it's very rarely addressed or talked about by people who were once in Quiverfull. oh, I wasn't saying that you thought it was something new, I was just saying that the concept we're talking about most resembles the sort of cultural imperialism (also known by the much harsher term cultural genocide) that western folks were perpetrating on indigenous "savages" and other "uncultured" folks. and it seems this is more of the same. it has less to do with "inferior skin-color", and everything to do with "inferior cultures". which you can liberate people from by taking them out of these supposedly inferior cultures and instead immersing them in your supposedly superior one. they do the same to exchange students that come to the USA
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