As a Nicaraguan-born girl growing up in Miami, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez remembers going to church five times a week. Her father was a pastor, and their fundamentalist evangelical faith taught that a woman’s role was to serve her husband.
At the same time, Mojica Rodríguez saw how essential women were in keeping the pews filled and the church running. Ultimately, dismayed by the subservient role of women and the church’s harsh restrictions on girls, she would leave her faith – and her husband – in her late 20s.
“Women are less inclined to be involved with churches that don’t want us speaking up, that don’t want us to be smart,” said Mojica Rodríguez, who went on to earn a master’s degree in divinity. “We’re like the mules of the church – that’s what it feels like.”
Though the Nashville-based author and activist is now 39, her experience reflects a growing and, for churches, a potentially worrisome trend of young women eschewing religion. Their pace of departure has overtaken men, recent studies show, reversing patterns of previous generations.
When one of my buddies got married, his wife wanted it done at her family church back home even though neither are currently religious.
Part of the ceremony included her to swear to always obey any request her husband makes, no matter what.
And not in like an offhand mention thing during vows that gets glossed over.
It was a separate part where she had to explicitly agree to do anything her husband says.
He stills pulls it out as a joke when they disagree over stupid shit.
I have no idea why it’s taken so long for women to leave the Abrahmic religions.
Childhood indoctrination is a very powerful thing to be able to break away from. When you’re told every day to do exactly what the pastor says Jesus wants you to do from the point that you are able to understand the “do this or else” concept, it’s hard to shake that off even if you feel it’s wrong.
It’s not only you are told every day, it is like that when you are born into it. It has always been like that, it bacomes the cornerstone of what you will go from.
Very hard to break I imagine.
You are born into a family that practices that religion. The people closest to you insist the religion is true. Every week they take you to a stage performance where the audience all insists the religion is true and they performers not only insist it’s true but are treated as a great authority on the truth of the religion.
You are put into youth groups and formal education programs where additional authorities instill in you the constant insistence that the religion is true. You join the local Boy Scout troop and they all insist it’s true. You go to a school run by the church. The entire class of students collectively insist the religion is true.
Some religions, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, send church members and their families to canvas neighborhoods, knocking on doors, delivering the “good news,” failing to convince anyone, and coming to the conclusion over time that the rest of the world just doesn’t want to see the truth that you’ve become convinced of because literally everyone in your life constantly reaffirms that the religion is true.
The most successful indoctrination runs deep and is pervasive.
Yup, and in my experience, it’s strongest in Catholics. Like my wife hasn’t been to church or practiced anything in probably 20 years, but a lot of the tenets are deeply rooted in her, most notably guilt (and guilting other people, especially her family)
Probably why Catholic girls are some of the most wacko and most fun in a particular regard. All that repressed emotion.
I have no idea why it’s taken so long for women to leave the Abrahmic religions.
Leaving a religion often results in shunning and the loss of ones entire social network; for many vulnerable people (like women caught in a patriarchal cult) this is a cost too high to bear.
It’s a culture cultivated specifically to make it difficult to leave.
Having religion in politics has ruined both. It makes politicians uncompromising since they believe they have God on their side and thus people they disagree with as the devil. This forces those within a church to decide on their values and their church. This drives people out of the church until only the craziest remain. This was inevitable and they both deserve it
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
- Barry Goldwater
Hate to break it to you pal, but religion has been in politics since before cities existed. Not really ruination if it’s been that way almost forever.
Baron d’Holbach was writing about it in the… 1600s? And it had been going on for a while at that point, too.
who went on to earn a master’s degree in divinity.
That doesn’t sound like, “becoming less religious” to me.
The first time I read the whole bible was when I was doubting god as a teenager after half my family died and my extremely religious aunt kept going on about how they’re in a better place and I’d feel better if I went to church more.
Read the whole thing cover to cover in about a week.
It pretty much cemented my atheism.
Just because you research something or even invest time and money into getting a proper education on something, doesn’t mean you support it.
Studying something doesn’t mean you believe it or like it. I’ve read the Bible, Koran, and a lot of the Sikh holy scriptures. It did nothing but make me less religious.
Back in the medieval times, the church didn’t even want regular people reading the Bible. It was deliberately not translated from Latin or Hebrew to local languages.
Turns out they didn’t have to worry so much because most people wouldn’t bother even if they could.
Though I gotta admit that I find it baffling that so many people supposedly believe but so few take it seriously enough to even read the book they might even refer to as the greatest story ever told. Seems to me like the only logical positions are to believe and treat it as the most important thing in life, not believe and do whatever you want in life, pretend to believe to manipulate those who do believe, or pretend to believe to keep the first and third groups off your ass. Are those last two groups where most apparent believers are?
I had a Baptist minister tell me that he refused to get his masters. It involved learning to read source material. He said all of his friends that did became less religious, and he was afraid it would happen to him.
Doesn’t sound like he’s got much faith if he’s so worried that becoming more educated will result in losing faith. If something is true, broadening information generally shouldn’t challenge faith. And if it does, those contradictions would be worthy frontiers for scientific discovery.
There’s a reason why more education results in less faith, and it’s not brain washing (if it was, why hasn’t it been picked apart by now?).
A similar line of reasoning applies to higher education resulting in less conservative beliefs. There’s also a reason why religion and conservative beliefs are closely aligned about this.
I couldn’t think of anything that would make anyone less religious that taking that masters course.
I mean, how many pictures of yahweh with his horns and giant, novelty sized cock would someone need to look at before they realise that hes just a middle Eastern Zeus?
[…] a potentially worrisome trend of young women eschewing religion.
Say what?
Edit: Never mind. I skipped over the phrase “for churches,” which explains to whom this would be worrisome.
You’re right. I was considering adding more of the quote so it didn’t look like I was leaving out context, but I wanted to highlight the phrase that confused me. It looks like I just ignored “for churches” mentally for some reason. I will edit.
