The Great (False) God of Masculinity, by Robert Hewitt.

Recommended Reading
Re: Worship of idols by Christians today.

"The world is deeply divided, theologically and philosophically, between the opposing claims of democracy and patriarchy. The question seems to be, "How much freedom and authority shall be allowed to women?"


"The extreme Taliban answer was, and is, "None!" In the American "democratic" state the answer has softened since the nation's founding but, to date, continues to be, "Some, but not much!" Authoritative patriarchal religious groups such as Roman Catholicism, Protestant Biblical Fundamentalism, Mormonism, and Islam quietly deny to women within their ranks many of the freedoms granted them under the United States Constitution.


"There is a serious movement among these groups, now that we have a morally naive President in the White House, to make changes in the Constitution designed to reduce the few freedoms and authorities that women have gained. There is a similarly serious movement within the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion, pushed by the extreme patriarchalists among us, to return to a more patriarchal day. They bristled when women were allowed to be ordained; they went ballistic when they learned that gays were being ordained.

"They have, I believe, brought the 'worthship' (worship) of the false god "Masculinity" into the very core of Church life.

"The following assumptions and commentaries are offered as a basis for four assumptions:

1. God is God, "wholly Other, and One." Gender specific pronouns are
inappropriate when speaking of God, but if used for convenience because we have
no pronouns for God, they must be understood as non-genderous, and non-sexual. In speaking of the Trinity, the use of "Father" and "Son", does not indicate
gender, but relationship. To speak of God as, "He," is simply heretical, and is
unfortunately understood by children as truth. Most people carry this heresy
with them all their lives in their common speech, and that becomes an enormous
barrier to understanding the relationship between God and humanity. It is the
root of the anthropological heresies, and fictions, of "masculinity" and
"femininity."

2. God is not male. God has no genitalia, and therefore has no partner of
an "opposite" sex. God is not masculine. "Masculinity" is a fiction and a
self-deception by the human male as he finds himself in the historical setting
of a patriarchal culture. It leads him think and act as if he were destined to
control women. Mythologically, masculinity is the result of the biblical "curse"
placed upon the Man by God to rule over the Woman. Historically, it is the
discovery of paternity, as opposed to the primitive understanding of female-only
parentage. Soteriologically, male control of women ended in Jesus.


3. God is not female. For primitive people, God seemed female. We have
their stone carvings, and myths, of "Goddesses" in evidence. But God is not
feminine. Women, for our prehistoric ancestors, were the only apparent human
providers of new children for the community. As with masculinity, femininity [carries] a corresponding fiction that women are weak, addled, and destined to stay at home for domestic tasks, and ruled by men. At "The Fall," motherhood, instead of continuing to be thought of as an attribute of God, became a patriarchal assignment from men who had suddenly learned that they were fathers of the children women were bearing. Men took upon themselves the honor (and the
misconception) that they were the sole human source of human life.


4. Men and women are made in the image of God. To look at a woman is to see
an image of God. To look at a man is to see an image of God. To look at
either is not to see God, but an image of God. In their bodies they "image" God
equally. God is not better represented in one sex than in the other. Because
masculinity and femininity are both self-deceptive (i.e., poses by a man or a
woman to appear either superior or inferior, dominant or deferent), neither
masculinity nor femininity can be an attribute of God. God does not represent himself or herself (darned pronouns again!) deceptively to humankind. Back to the beginning: God is God! Masculinity is every patriarchal society's favorite false god. Femininity is a subset within patriarchy of the same heresy.

Unchangeable patriarchal- type leaders are, in my book, the most well-intentioned, but also dangerous persons in the world. That would include people like the Bishop of Rome, and James Dobson of Focus on the Family. They put the worship of Masculinity
before the "worthship" of the Lord Jesus.

[CONCLUSION] "I say this not to be offensive, even to those gentlemen, but to follow the logic of my argument. The worship of idols is still going on among Christian people."

1/1/05

article by Rev. Robert G. Hewitt

forwarded by Adonna Bowman

Executive Director,

Office of Disciples Women

Disciples Home Missions (DHM)

"Equipping Disciples for Christ"

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

www.discipleswomen.org

www.dreamonsisters.com

THE SHADOW IN ORGANIZED RELIGION

"Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions were politicized and taken over by the Powers That Be (PTB). For Christians this happened under Constantine, when bishops became part of the power structure of the Roman Empire.
When this happened religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.


In religions supported by PTB, spirituality and radical response to grace could not be encouraged nor affirmed because these led to too much individuality and autonomy, splashing too high or too vigorously, and therefore threatened the status quo. Mystics were always suspect as "out of control," either ignored. silenced, punished or in earlier times, put to death. The history of religion has many instances. "Heresy!" was the quick harsh charge for anyone who challenged the status quo.


Of course, religion's omnipresent defenders are swift to point out the many comforts it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed, the least, lost, last and lame. . .
True enough.
But God/dess is not simply a therapist. The Divine Mystery does not dawdle in the comfort zone or merely provide hospitality!
If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords, confront the Tremendum Mysterium in the desert or deep forest, on the mountain tops. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, risk the depths of the strange, befriend the shadows of running waters.


How limiting, how insulting to think of God/dess as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where official intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment which we are taught to revere.


A longing for the Divine is intrinsic in Homo sapiens. For all we know it may also be innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings, as well. We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and illumining our minds. To expedite those two things may be the mission of why we are here..
Well and good.
But such soulful activity runs counter to the aspirations of commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, while persons in the process of following God's light are notoriously difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests, politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off priests and clerics with land, adornments and endorsements.


Together, they drained the shady ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear. It was not important that the farm-bred fish understand anything or even know what they were doing.
After the tanks were in place, nobody talked much about soul anymore. Instead, they talked about spirit.

Soul is hot and heavy, messy and sensual. Spirit is cool, abstract, detached, cognitive. Soul is connected to the earth, its waters and gases. Spirit is connected to the sky, concepts of heaven and talk of transcendence. Out of the earthly gases springs fire. Firepower. Empowerment.


It has been observed that the logical extension of all politics is war. Once religion became political, the exercise of it, too, could be said to lead sooner or later to war. "War is hell." History unwaveringly reveals the political uses of belief for control, domination, and oppression: war against soul. Thus religious belief too easily propels us straight to hell.


Every modern religion has boasted that it and it alone is on speaking terms with the Deity, and its adherents have been quite willing to die--or kill-- to support its presumptuous claims. (a.k.a. kill abortionists for Christ, a.k.a., the blending of "religion" and politics in Ireland or Bosnia, a.k.a. Islamic terrorists, a.k.a. American fundamentalists who won't even talk to other Christians, or Catholic conservatives who have it Right and view "Liberalism as a Sin"). Note:


The explosion of religious extremism in the past nine years since this was written is notable. Not every silty bayou could be drained, of course. The soul-fish that bubbled and snapped in the few remaining ponds were tagged "mystics." They were regarded as mavericks, exotic, scary, inferior, to be avoided. If they splashed too high, they were thought to be threatening and in need of extermination.
The fearful flounders in the tanks, now psychologically dependent upon addictive "spirit flakes" and upon their assigned and adorned leaders had forgotten that once upon a time they, too, had been mystical.


Religion is nothing but the attempt to institutionalize mysticism, to make it "safe" for others and PTB. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to being institutionalized. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Organized religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been diminished, teflon-coated, suppressed or killed.


The function of professional theologians is to demystify religion, to make it sane, rational and believable, while at the same time, to affirm a special class of persons to function as intermediaries of understanding and grace between the Divine and common folk. When they graduate from the seminary they cannot talk the language of the people, but they are filled with concepts of their teachers and academicians. They have become fish farm management staff.


"Concepts create idols; only wonder understands anything." --Gregory of Nyssa in the Fifth Century.


Organized religion has become, by its protection of the status quo, a paramount contributor to human misery. Organized religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it has become a cyanide to genuine spirituality, to the soul required to renew society, to the development of radical discipleship. A spontaneous "Amen" or "Alleluia" is out of place in the great majority of white churches in our world. We can attend church hundreds, even thousands of times being assured we are doing our Christian duty, while never having to hear or listen to the pain or the loneliness of the person next to us in the same pew.
_______
These notes, adapted and enhanced, are from a novel by Tom Robbins, pages given to me by a friend long ago and lost for awhile. I have not been able to local the source.
--Paschal Baute, 1995