Category Archives: Religion

Religion and Family Violence

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There has been a steady rise in non-affiliated religious people across the past twenty years. This is perhaps due to the “inverse relationship between modernization and religion” and growing acceptance of science. However, religion still plays a part in what many people consider being right versus wrong, and therefore can change a person’s actions.

In a nutshell, we seem to hate on religion around here. Whether you believe or not, religion still has it’s perks.

Considering the Torah, a woman is supposed to maintain peace in the household, or Shalom Bayit. Obviously, peace in the household is the desired state, but is it acceptable for a man to harm a woman for not maintaining the peace? Others use the Qur’an to justify abuse, and some Christians cite Ephesians 5:21-33 (the Bible) in the concept that wives are supposed to fully submit to husbands.

All three holy books consider divorce to be a sin. Therefore, if a woman is to leave an abusive situation and become divorced, she may have to sever ties to her religious community. Many religious leaders give bad advice or attempt to cover up abusive situations, due to their lack of training in the subject matter.

The above concepts from the holy books may help justify abuse or prevent a victim from leaving an abusive situation.

Individuals are using institutionalized, spiritual belief systems as backup for their harming others. In our American society, religion is often cited by the unreligious as a concept to keep the people from doing horrible actions to others. Religion serves as deterrent besides for the concept of jail. Legal issues ensue when an individual is caught doing something illegal.

However, religious issues of guilt and punishment are plausibly always happening, as a deity sees all and knows all. In the next life, heaven, etc, an individual will pay for their sins as decided by the greater power. All of these ideas are positive in nature, since they are designed to prevent a person from sinning/ harming someone else.

Religion is rarely applied in the opposite direction: how a religious belief may justify abuse.

Perhaps Jesus should have written an 11th Commandment: “Don’t hurt others.” Oh, wait, that would be “love thy neighbor as thyself”!



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The Bible Miniseries

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Were any of you able to watch the History Channel’s miniseries, The Bible, all of the way through?

I’ll be honest—I started to watch. I did not make it very far. I did not even make it to what people are calling the “ninja angels” in Sodom. I mostly just saw Noah telling the story of Genesis in a thick Scottish brogue while the ark comically rocks back and forth.

Yes, that’s really how it began.

I did not grow up in a household of an Abrahamic faith, so, aside from reading a passage from the Old Testament in my high school World Literature class (we were comparing Noah’s Ark and a couple of other snippets with The Epic Of Gilgamesh), I had no direct exposure to the Bible until college, when I bought a copy of the Bible for a class (Old Testament Literature, a very interesting class) and read through the Old Testament.

So I was able to get through reading it, but not very far in the miniseries. At some point, I may try again, but goodness it was a little odd.

The main things that I read and heard about from the series were the ninja angels (killing the people of Sodom), Noah’s Scottish brogue (which I had already seen), and Jesus, who was apparently “super hot.” (Thus, the picture at the top of this post)

I’m not much for beards, but yeah, he’s hot. And, for some reason, white? White with a tan is still white.

A lot of people have strong opinions about religion and its portrayal on television. I mean, you have shows like The CW’s Supernatural, which, if you take it too seriously, is all but guaranteed to offend you on religious grounds no matter what beliefs you have. I happen to like Supernatural, but I also know to not take it seriously. Then The History Channel has Ancient Aliens, which is offensive to anyone with a sense of reason, but which also essentially reduces all religious belief to a bunch of confused humans misinterpreting contact with extraterrestrials.

I would like to just dismiss Ancient Aliens by assuming that we live in a reasonable world and that no one takes it seriously. But we live in a world where people believe in vast Illuminati conspiracies and actually take Glenn Beck seriously. Sadly, people will take just about anything seriously.

Personally, I think that putting religious material on television makes sense. If you can write it down, you can put it on television, whether it’s from a holy book (pretty specific to the Abrahamic faiths) or from other religious writings, storytelling, and, especially, history.

The Bible miniseries got a lot of viewers. I have to wonder how many of those were just “the Sunday crowd.” By which I mean, how many people watched it purely because of what it was—because they felt some level of religious obligation to watch it? Kind of like how I really like a few members of the cast of the See-Fee (SyFy) Channel’s new series, Defiance, so I tried to watch it even though it can’t really hold my interest in the long run and some of the makeup is positively cringe-worthy.

(Seriously, I love a couple of those cast members to pieces, but I didn’t make it to the third episode of Defiance and I doubt that I’ll go back to it, even though I want more actual science fiction on television and I love the concept of a television series that is tied to an MMO)

When you make a religious broadcast (or statement), you are bound to offend someone. This miniseries on The Bible followed the Bible’s narratives of events, rather than what archeology and history suggest actually happened. That’s pretty much expected. I’m not offended by The History Channel telling that story. I don’t believe in it—it would be weird if I did, considering that I’m not Jewish or Christian or Muslim.

So, I’m glad that The History Channel did this. It’s certainly better than their Fake History shows like Ancient Aliens and their ridiculous reality shows (stuff about truckers and pawn shops, maybe?).

Speaking of History Channel programming, have you guys seen any of Vikings? I saw the beginning and I really enjoyed it. I haven’t caught up yet, but I love it. And not just because some of my ancestors were vikings. But, yes, also because of that.



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My State Almost Tried To Ignore The Constitution

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I live in North Carolina. That’s the United States east coast. My state has the Biltmore in the beautiful mountains to the west, Charlotte with major banking institutions in the southwest, well-known excellent hospitals and a major hub of technology businesses in Research Triangle Park, and our coastline in the east has beaches, a warm ocean, and the North Carolina sound is known for both Blackbeard’s activities and Roanoke Island (where an early colony vanished, leaving the word: “Croatoan” as the only clue regarding their disappearance). Large portions of The Hunger Games and Iron Man 3 were filmed here.

So, I like my state. Did we join with the bad guys* during the Civil War? Yes. Were we the home state of one of the worst US Senators in living memory, the late Jesse Helms? Unfortunately, yes. BUT for most of my life, we’ve had a Democratic governor. In 2008, North Carolina turned blue and voted to elect President Obama. We have a good education system and some wonderful universities (including Duke, of course—I did not go there for college, but I participated in some wonderful Duke programs in my early teens).

So, when I say that my state’s behavior on the governmental level since 2010 has been scary and out-of-character, I mean it. I cringe when my state is mentioned on The Daily Show because it used to be that we would get mentioned on the news because a hurricane had devastated our east coast or because of a record-setting outbreak of tornadoes in Raleigh in April 2011 that had meteorologists from all over the country in a tizzy.

Now, in 2010, as happened all over the country, a wave of scary, fringe-right Republicans (and I do mean fringe-right) came into office. In spring of 2012, there was a vote and Amendment One passed—strictly defining marriage between one man and one woman as the only legally recognized domestic union in the state. Politicians from both sides of the aisle argued fiercely against it, but it passed. For the record, the parts of the state with universities in them? They voted against Amendment One. As seen in the map below.

The counties in which I have lived and a county in which I intend to live? All voted against Amendment One. The state’s urban areas all fell under this category. But, like the rest of the world, North Carolina is getting better with time.

That said, we got a little scare as the speaker of our (currently terrifying) state house of representatives put forward but then buried (after a few days of embarrassing national media attention) a bill which would have attempted to render North Carolina exempt from the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Stupid, right? The Supremacy Clause in the Constitution is there for a reason. And the First Amendment is . . . I mean, really important. You can read more about that story here.

It kind of gets worse, though. Spurred by interest in the topic, a poll found that one-third of those Americans who participated (hopefully they oversampled some demographic, because that is just too high a fraction) would favor making Christianity the official religion in their home states. It also found that one-third would favor making Christianity the official religion of the United States.

One. Third. Of Americans.

Guys, that’s terrifying. I don’t even want my religion as the official faith of my state or country, much less someone else’s.

Honestly, I was more comfortable when it was just a few state representatives in my state acting up while they’re still in power. Embarrassing, sure, but just a bump in the road of progress.

One-Third of Americans want an official** state religion. If that’s true, I don’t even know what to do about that. It’s scary.

 

*Guys, Lincoln and the Union weren’t perfect, but let’s not ever pretend that the good guys/bad guys line is not obvious. I don’t like the states having the power to set different ages of consent or requirements for a driver’s license, and you can disagree with me if you like. But the Confederacy was fighting for the rights of the states to own human beings because of their race. Those are called the bad guys. And I say “we,” because it’s not like I’m from NC because my parents happened to move here. My maternal grandfather’s grandmother remembered the Civil War, including the parts about her family’s slaves. Which they owned in some numbers, apparently. That makes me all kinds of uncomfortable.

**Talk about official state religions is a great time to use the “Muslim Test.” When conservative Christian politicians try to draft legislation to let prayers be said over a loudspeaker at a public school sportsball game or something like that, just see how they would respond to their own idea if it were in the form of Muslim prayer. As an outsider, I don’t see much of a difference between the idea of living in an officially Christian nation or an officially Muslim nation, but the sorts of people who draft this kind of legislation tend to see a huge difference.



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Humanity, I Love You

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After the horror of the Boston bombing I didn’t think I could ever believe that humanity was worth it. Really, I just don’t understand how blowing up innocents makes sense to anyone, but then all the stories of people opening their homes to those stranded came out. London had their marathon and they ran with American Flags and with signs that said, “Finish for Boston.” Syria, which has been ravaged by booms and genocides, took a moment to send condolences to Boston.
I saw window washers dress up as Spiderman, Captain America, Batman and the like to clean the windows of a children’s hospital. I was taken aback by how in the face of such tragedy I saw the best of humanity. Instead of breaking me—I was lifted up by the generosity and kindness of the human spirit.
Naturally, it didn’t last long. Bombs went off in Pakistan, earthquakes ruined cities, and a five-year old girl was raped in Indian. She’s not the first child raped, she’s not even the youngest child raped. But this five-year-old gets an article written about her because finally, finally something is going to be done about it.
Last week she was abducted and raped by a neighbor who kept her for three days and then left her for dead. India, like America, has a rape culture. They blame the women, they blame the victim…but how can you blame a five-year-old? What suggestive clothing was she wearing? How did she drink too much? How was her sexual history to blame for this?

The Guardian took aim at the Indian police force, “[O]fficers allegedly initially refused to investigate after the girl, from a working class family, disappeared while playing early in the evening outside her home. She was eventually found by neighbours. When the case was picked up by the local media, the parents were offered 2,000 rupees (£25) to drop the case, relatives of the victim have said.”
By the weekend hundreds of protesters were outside the police headquarters demand that the police chief, that wanted this dropped, be fired. India’s Home Minister has vowed that the officers on duty will be punished.
Once again, in darkness there is light. People will surprise you if you just let them. I don’t know why it takes horrible circumstances for people to take a stand—but maybe one day we’ll all realize that you don’t have to wait for something bad to do some good.



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