Veronique! Where to start ~ I've always appreciated your writing and your insights. I left a different conservative church when I was younger. It was heart wrenching in a myriad of shocking, unsettling ways. Among other things, I had to come face to face with my own tendency to comply, to cooperate, even when I could tell that compliance was destructive.
My added perspective on leaving churches is this: I know that to portray religion as the opiate of the masses is almost trite. To me, that classic criticism was a macro one. Religion was a way to calm and unify whole communities. When I left the church, I had come to the shocking realization that the ways that religion teaches women (and children) to comport themselves allows for a much more personal, individualized method of control. Training obedience is the point. It's insidious.
Protestantism, in theory, does not emphasize actions or "works," but rather hinges on the total depravity of the human and limited atonement that can only be accessed via faith. Righteous action should pour fourth as a result of that faith. Trust and obedience, particularly in powerful, Godly men, is a way to demonstrate your faith and the certainty of your salvation. The point is more that you deserve hell, not that you'll be rewarded in heaven.
I found this to be a recipe for abuse. The pressure it puts on men - even very young men - to lead and on women to obey introduces a power imbalance that, in my experience, careens out of control. Moreover, the constant meditation on human depravity - we are broken, we are fallen, we are fundamentally flawed - becomes a way to avoid responsibility for atrocious behavior. We have sinned and fallen short of the grace of god. We are forgiven. But you know, what did you expect? We're such horny, sinny sinners, and we reallllllly couldn't help ourselves. We pray for strength! Maybe next time we'll have it.
Anyway, ick. And it's so sad. A formerly religious friend and I once joked about how hard we'd fallen for Jesus. He seemed so nice, so loving. But when you get to know him, MAN, the baggage. The break up was rough.
I think you know that you and I have come to very similar conclusions about our relationships with the Catholic church. I haven't found a seat at the table, my uncertainty and difficult questions made me unwelcome. I grew up very much in the fear-based version of Catholicism, and often wonder if I'd be able to continue attending when and how it suited me if I had been raised more like you had, taking what was attractive and uplifting and leaving the rest. As it stands, I can't. I KNOW what is under all the beautiful music, human connection, and community building. I'm grateful, perhaps to God even, that we stepped away from the Church when we did. It had become a weekly or daily exercise in hating myself, seeing myself as weak with no hope of improving, and of crippling scrupulosity. Scrupulosity that I'll never be able to fully escape because shame and fear are used as essential tools when raising and forming children under conservative christianity. I'm grateful that we left when we did because my children avoided understanding that their identities, their sexualities, their very selves would not be welcomed and celebrated as they deserve to be. I think the hope for salvation, the hope that ones eternal life will be the fulfillment of ones hope in their earthly life, that heaven will be God's reward for a life lived following his demands, is the way that we and religion gaslight ourselves. It tells us that all the hardship and injustice we are experiencing today isn't that bad, that is not what we think it is, that we'll be fine if we just hold on longer. Tell me what that is if it isn't gaslighting. If the Catholic church and it's communities actually lived and believed what they say they do, there would have been a gang of people to support you as you moved out, and one to demand that P lived up to his obligations to you. There wasn't. There were just people trying to shame you under the guise of concern for your soul. Gaslighting themselves that they were doing the right thing by doing so, rather than taking care of you which is clearly what was needed at the time, and to hell with what god thought of that.
Veronique! Where to start ~ I've always appreciated your writing and your insights. I left a different conservative church when I was younger. It was heart wrenching in a myriad of shocking, unsettling ways. Among other things, I had to come face to face with my own tendency to comply, to cooperate, even when I could tell that compliance was destructive.
My added perspective on leaving churches is this: I know that to portray religion as the opiate of the masses is almost trite. To me, that classic criticism was a macro one. Religion was a way to calm and unify whole communities. When I left the church, I had come to the shocking realization that the ways that religion teaches women (and children) to comport themselves allows for a much more personal, individualized method of control. Training obedience is the point. It's insidious.
Protestantism, in theory, does not emphasize actions or "works," but rather hinges on the total depravity of the human and limited atonement that can only be accessed via faith. Righteous action should pour fourth as a result of that faith. Trust and obedience, particularly in powerful, Godly men, is a way to demonstrate your faith and the certainty of your salvation. The point is more that you deserve hell, not that you'll be rewarded in heaven.
I found this to be a recipe for abuse. The pressure it puts on men - even very young men - to lead and on women to obey introduces a power imbalance that, in my experience, careens out of control. Moreover, the constant meditation on human depravity - we are broken, we are fallen, we are fundamentally flawed - becomes a way to avoid responsibility for atrocious behavior. We have sinned and fallen short of the grace of god. We are forgiven. But you know, what did you expect? We're such horny, sinny sinners, and we reallllllly couldn't help ourselves. We pray for strength! Maybe next time we'll have it.
Anyway, ick. And it's so sad. A formerly religious friend and I once joked about how hard we'd fallen for Jesus. He seemed so nice, so loving. But when you get to know him, MAN, the baggage. The break up was rough.
I think you know that you and I have come to very similar conclusions about our relationships with the Catholic church. I haven't found a seat at the table, my uncertainty and difficult questions made me unwelcome. I grew up very much in the fear-based version of Catholicism, and often wonder if I'd be able to continue attending when and how it suited me if I had been raised more like you had, taking what was attractive and uplifting and leaving the rest. As it stands, I can't. I KNOW what is under all the beautiful music, human connection, and community building. I'm grateful, perhaps to God even, that we stepped away from the Church when we did. It had become a weekly or daily exercise in hating myself, seeing myself as weak with no hope of improving, and of crippling scrupulosity. Scrupulosity that I'll never be able to fully escape because shame and fear are used as essential tools when raising and forming children under conservative christianity. I'm grateful that we left when we did because my children avoided understanding that their identities, their sexualities, their very selves would not be welcomed and celebrated as they deserve to be. I think the hope for salvation, the hope that ones eternal life will be the fulfillment of ones hope in their earthly life, that heaven will be God's reward for a life lived following his demands, is the way that we and religion gaslight ourselves. It tells us that all the hardship and injustice we are experiencing today isn't that bad, that is not what we think it is, that we'll be fine if we just hold on longer. Tell me what that is if it isn't gaslighting. If the Catholic church and it's communities actually lived and believed what they say they do, there would have been a gang of people to support you as you moved out, and one to demand that P lived up to his obligations to you. There wasn't. There were just people trying to shame you under the guise of concern for your soul. Gaslighting themselves that they were doing the right thing by doing so, rather than taking care of you which is clearly what was needed at the time, and to hell with what god thought of that.