atheism for lent, day 22: covid edition, pt. 7: one reason i quit the church

Today is my Day 7 for covid, and it’s the first day since getting sick that I’ve woken up feeling slightly better. I was able to cook breakfast for 10yo and myself without having to sit down and, having cooked breakfast, I don’t feel like I must immediately lie down again. I still feel like I have no muscles whatsoever, but at least the weakness isn’t accompanied by the feeling that leaden weights are attached to my extremities and sternum.

So that’s my health update, yay. On to AfL!

Today we turn our attention to Simone de Beauvoir, French philosopher, writer, and feminist activist. She didn’t think of herself as a philosopher, but much of her writing is now considered some of the most important philosophical work of the 20th century. Her book The Second Sex (1949), a discussion on the treatment of women throughout history up to de Beauvoir’s time, was banned by the Vatican. To that, I can only respond with a quote from icon, activist, and ardent bibliophile LeVar Burton:

“Read the books they’re banning. That’s where the good stuff is.”

This is the Way.

In today’s reflection from The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes religion as a way of enslaving while offering the illusion of freedom. Her main concern is the enslavement of women in particular. “Man enjoys the great advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over woman, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being…. The Church sees to it that God never authorizes women to escape male guardianship.” What believing woman would dare speak out against patriarchal control when God “Himself” sets men over her? Besides, God says she is spiritually equal to the man, so there’s nothing to speak out against in the first place.

In much of what de Beauvoir writes, I can’t tell if she really means what she says or if she’s being subtly yet scathingly sarcastic. She refers to God as “the heavenly absent One” — but also dives into a treatise of women’s God-given power within the church. “When she is bringing up her children, governing a convent, organizing a charitable society, she is only a humble tool in supernatural hands; she cannot be disobeyed without offending God Himself.” Sure, a woman’s not supposed to lead: but if she’s doing God-ordained “woman’s work,” then men aren’t allowed to question her.

I can’t tell if de Beauvoir (1) really believes this and considers it beneficial, (2) thinks that religious people believe this, or (3) is satirizing the entire institution. Dr. Peter Rollins comments:

de Beauvoir “argues that religion offers women a way to express their desire in a disavowed way.”

–Atheism for Lent,
03/15/2023

I guess I can see that, but I’m not sure I would’ve seen it that clearly on my own. De Beauvoir is definitely critiquing the “freedom” within religion as part of the problem of religion. In her view, the concept of “liberty” or “emancipation” is built into religion for the specific purpose of letting us feel free when we’re really not. It’s the thing I’ve heard Peter talk about before: that many of our systems have these “release valves” built into them, ways that let us remain cozily enslaved while believing we aren’t.

It’s like an inversion of The Matrix: Agent Smith tells Morpheus that the machines built pain and suffering into the Matrix so that human minds would accept it more readily. In the original program, the machines built a virtual paradise for humans, and “entire crops were lost” because the human mind won’t accept living in perfection. “The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”

Just as the human mind, according to sci-fi (see also the Eloi in The Time Machine), can’t thrive in perfection, so a woman can’t thrive in religion without the illusion of emancipation, according to de Beauvoir.

I wonder how de Beauvoir might have amended or altered her treatise if she’d witnessed women in religion today.

I might be a little perplexed over her tone and intent, but I get what de Beauvoir is saying. In my “churched” days, I protested often (though not terribly loudly, because I was super codependent and wanted everybody to like me) at being confined to what everyone around me defined as “women’s roles.” In most Churches of Christ, the denomination I was raised and spent adulthood in until 2010, women aren’t allowed to take “leadership roles”: no speaking publicly to the congregation, no leading singing, no leading prayers, no preaching, no being counted amongst the “deacons” or “elders.” If I as a woman wanted to speak, teach, preach, or lead singing, I could only do so in groups of other women, or in working with children — as long as the boys weren’t baptized. I knew of several occasions when a woman was required to give up her position of teaching a certain group of children because one of the boys had gotten baptized and was now counted spiritually as a “man.” As if, by “becoming a Christian,” that 9-year-old boy suddenly gained more human experience and greater wisdom than the 35-year-old mother of three who was teaching him. That was her, “usurping authority over a man.”

It was utterly ridiculous.

Anyway, when I critiqued this state of the union, both women and men in the church told me that I was out of place, that I was in rebellion against God, and that OF COURSE I could do all of these things (lead, preach, pray, etc.) — just not in a congregational setting. I had all the freedom! as long as I stayed in my lane. My opinions counted! as long as I voiced them only to other women or to my husband (who represented my interests among the male leadership). As a missionary, I was equal with my fellow missionaries who were men! until it came time for meetings about the state of our collective work with area churches. I could even preach! as long as my “audience” was made up of women or the unbaptized. (Because only the baptized [fully immersed in water for the forgiveness of sins in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] are Christians.)

Wait, so…. I wasn’t born with a penis, so that means I can’t possibly have the same skills, abilities, drives, goals, and hopes as someone who does own that particular appendage? And if I do find within myself such unholy urges, that means I need to repent? But at the same time, you’re telling me that my soul has equal worth with every other human soul, including the boys and men, so I need to praise God and live in humility? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

So, yeah, Madame de Beauvoir — been there, done that, got the T-shirt AND the flair.

And that’s one of the main reasons I quit. Not because “waaahhh, I don’t get to do what I want,” but because the entire system of that denomination (and others) is built on inequitability, and I simply could not function in it anymore, let alone thrive. I was suffocating, and the only way to survive and thrive was to GET. OUT.