I’m sitting in my apartment surrounded by about four or six inches of snow, covered by freezing rain. Thankfully, my manager called from work to let me know that I don’t have to go into work tonight, but what it has done is given me time to just surf the internet and catch up on my Twilight-stuff reading. (yeah I know, shut up.)

One of the articles I came across was written by this former member of my church who was going off on how the Twilight books are really propaganda from my church to influence the youth about sex and sexism. I’m not linking to it because I’m not going to give her any more publicity but I did want to comment on religious paranoia in regards to organized religion and my organized religion in particular. If I sound like I’m rambling through this post, I apologize now.

Thanks to the history of religion during the middle ages many people have an understandable distrust of organized religion. There wasn’t anything that the state churches of the time didn’t do to control the masses. Our own Founding Fathers wrote our constitution in such a way as to prevent state religions and all the harm that was then known that they did. There are still those who want to control others and religion is often the easiest vehicle to do that in. Religion does not stop the monsters. I have relatives in one church who have told me that its not important to read the scriptures. That their pastor teaches them all they need to know. I come from a faith that stresses knowledge and to not just take someones word for it, so my mouth just falls open when I hear stuff like that. We no longer live in a time where reading is considered unnecessary. With education comes experiences and perceptions on how things are and what they are. What we read helps shape how we view our experiences and those experiences will support or reject what we have read as valid or complete poppycock. There is an amazing amount of information available out there. Even in my own faith, everything from what happens in our temples to how we interpret the bible is available to discover. You do have to be careful of where your information comes from, if you go someplace jaded, keep that salt nearby.

Another important influence on religion is families. Its amazing how important this factor is in peoples perceptions on religion. Most distrust of religion is going to come from warped or mean spirited mind-sets from family members. There are many women who distrust a patriarchal view of religion thanks to abuse by men, usually in the form of their own fathers. I know that I’ve learned more about God from my parents and from being a parent then any other experience in my life. I was abused by a member of my church who used polygamy to justify “training future wives”. I count myself extremely lucky that the lesson I learned from that was that you cannot let how others warp religion to determine how you view it. My parents helped me in learning that lesson from that experience and it has served me well. The point though is that how your own family members dealt with religion is going to have a profound impact on your reactions to religion. You see this most often in children of extremely conservative or controlling religious parents. Their children often become very hedonistic for awhile, whether to shock or to hurt, they are responding to the hurt and shock caused to them by their parents. Hard to view God as a loving parent when your own parent acts as if they hate you. My own church refers to abuse of authority as unrighteous dominion. Doesn’t matter if it happens in church, the home, on the playing field of a game, its wrong. And most of us are guilty of it at some point in our lives. Most of us to small degrees, (who hasn’t said, “because I said so” to their kids?) but it can be staggering in large ones… state religions anyone? Now I’m not pointing fingers and trying to say how you should raise your kids. Heaven knows I’m not a perfect parent by any degree, but I did want to show that families have a huge impact on how we are going to view the roll of God in our lives.

Now some of the issues presented in the woman’s blog was her concern that books pushed that sex was either bad or to be feared and that women should let men make all the decisions. And her fear was that this book was actually written from our church to push our patriarchal views that women are inferior to men. Reading anything is always interesting. Your always going to project your own issues to whatever the text is expressing. And the Twilight saga has definitely brought up a lot of issues for people. Feminists just get enraged by these books, and now I found an article that was a conspiracy theory regarding my church. Yes, I’m laughing at this woman because I know how silly it is, but I also know that for some people this is a fear they have. Maybe not to the severity that this woman was going off, but that background fear of organized religion does creep in the background.

I imagine that were Stephenie Meyer to read that article her first reaction would have been, “what?”. Our church has no paid clergy. You don’t get paid for being a Bishop, or Stake President. The “guy” roles of our church have no paid salary. The roles women fill, Relief Society President, Primary President to name a couple are also volunteer only. Its all volunteer and your asked to fill and you say yes or no. Your choice. What this allows is for people to have a chance to grow by having new experiences. Some do well, some do not. Everyone learns. Our church has set programs and those programs are designed to help you grow as you want to. How much you learn, grow, experience is completely dependent on how much effort you put into it. For those willing to do more, there are the added responsibilities provided by temple service. If you have power and control issues, they don’t do well in our church structure. They happen because people are imperfect, but they are not the norms and they tend to not last long. I’ve moved over 20 times in my life, and I’ve lived in a lot of wards in a lot of states and its pretty consistent.

As for the patriarchal view we have, it is not the “man makes all the decisions” type of thing. I Know that is what most women think of when they hear that term, but if you ever meet a man who thinks that way….drop his butt. That is a boy who needs to grow up some more. The basic idea is that Fathers have a responsibility to their family to guide them. What this means is that men need to make wise decisions in who they marry so they have a good partner in raising that family. So in our church there is an emphasis that men and hence the boys have a responsibility to their own conduct in how they relate to the females in their lives. The phrase, “well she made me” doesn’t fly. This is a concept that I feel does show its face in the character of Edward. He does take the responsibility upon himself and doesn’t expect Bella to control the romantic side of their relationship. Just because she wants to jump his bones doesn’t mean he’s going to just let it happen because “she wants it”. His reasoning, of course, is based on his fear of eating her if he lets himself lose control, but then, having been raised in the early 1900′s he would have a more respectful attitude about sex and marriage anyway.

Bella is also not a weak character in these books. She knows what she wants. In this article the author complained that Bella didn’t make her own decisions and relied on the men to make them for her. Lets keep some things in perspective. We have a rather level headed girl who is in love with a vampire and has a werewolf for a best friend. The werewolf is 16 years old and the vampire is 108. This girl understands that in regards to capabilities and certain unreal situations she finds herself in, the werewolf and the vampire are going to understand how best to fight or deal with something she is not physically capable of doing herself. This doesn’t make her weak. As Bella says in Eclipse, “I’m not worried about anything that would be deterred by a locked door.” Now we do get the domineering bit from the guys, but that’s understandable and even expected when your trying to protect something you care about so much. Now does this stop Bella from making sure that what is important to her stays safe and protected as well? Of course not. She is often rather proactive in her own choices.

On the religious front, many people try to use Eve being the “problem” in the Genesis story to justify whatever control issues they have. Eve gets blamed for a lot in some theological writing. What is missed is what an amazing women she was. It helps to have additional scripture on this subject. Eve was only deceived in that she believed the lie that they wouldn’t die if they ate the fruit of the garden. But what she understood was that to become like her Heavenly Parents she would have to learn knowledge by her choices. And only through eating from the Tree of Knowledge would she have that opportunity. Until then, the garden was a never changing world. Nothing to learn from because there was no risk, no challenge, nothing to have experiences with. To realize that your life is stuck and that it requires change to grow is not always an easy thing to choose. Many people now a days will not make choices that rock the boat. Mormons are unique in the idea that we are the literal children of God and so we are on a path to become like our Heavenly Parents. In Genesis, when God looks down and says, “Now they are like God knowing good and evil” its taken as if this is a bad thing in many christian circles. When in reality this is the very best thing. This was the plan from the beginning.

Gaining knowledge through experiences is how we grow and learn and become better as we travel through this life. At no point should you ever give up the right to know for yourself to someone else. There are only a handful of theologies in the world that do not suffer from their adherents gaining an education. These are theologies that treasure knowledge and support the gaining of such. Your less likely to have adherents involved based on fear and control. When your actions are the result of your knowledge and what has become your values, then its never about control. This is the idea often missed in regards to my theology. Because we emphasize knowledge and service is such a big part of things, your involved because you want to be. Some people may be involved because they feel they have to be, but its not long before they find their reasons to stop.

In response to this poor woman who is so paranoid that her former church wants to control her, I hope she learns to relax. Get away from whatever family/friends are around her that have created that fear in her and find comfort in her own skin.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Church, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.