Kabbalah Madonna
A kind reader, by which I mean Norm Geras, emailed me to point out this absurd piece by Mary Kenny in the Guardian. Norm has already made some pointed comments about it, so I’ll try not to go over the same bit of ground. But there’s really quite a lot to say, because there’s quite a lot wrong with the piece (and the pervasive way of thinking it typifies), so I think I’ll manage to find a few words.
But first I’ll point out one of Norm’s most amusing remarks, in reply to Kenny’s utterly ridiculous ‘Faith is a feminine thing.’
I have some questions here. First, how does Kenny know that faith is feminine? She doesn’t say. But I can think of a few counter-examples: the Pope, Desmond Tutu and a Jehovah’s Witness I once made the mistake of inviting through my front door for a chat. I’m compiling a more comprehensive list but won’t be able to post it till… I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Yeah, it does take some brain-cudgelling, doesn’t it. Hmm, hmm, let’s see, male-type people in the religion game. The Pope? Oh, Norm already said that. Umm – gosh this is hard – oh, how about the Archbishop of Canterbury? Yes, that’s one. Err – that guy on Oxford Street with the ‘End is Nigh’ sign? Is he still there?
So anyway. More seriously.
They want to give their children values. And they quite often feel a stirring of these transcendent values themselves, at about the same time…If you don’t believe me, look at the evidence, and visit a church, chapel or synagogue on a day of worship: you will find that at least two-thirds of the worshippers present are women, and 90% of these are mothers.
How the hell does she know what percentage of the women she sees in various random (note indirect article: a church, not my church, or St. Boniface-on-the-Green’s church, but any old church) religious gathering places, are mothers? Eh? Do they wear badges? Are they marked in some way? Or is she just extrapolating from statistics on what percentage of women are mothers. But that’s not safe – in fact it’s question-begging. For all she knows all the women in those religious gathering places are not mothers, and have come in either to rejoice at their freedom or to pray for conception. She doesn’t get to assume that 90% of any given gathering of women consists of mothers and then tell us ‘See? Look at all the mothers!’
But of course I also wanted to quote the stark nonsense about ‘transcendent values’ even though Norm already has. Note the quick assumption that values are ‘transcendent’ values, and also that church or synagogue attendance has some obvious connection with wanting to give children ‘values.’ And then yawn violently and think about something else.
Then there’s this absurdity:
It is a fairly well-kept secret that feminism originally arose among religious women in the 19th century: from Hannah More and Josephine Butler in Britain to Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the US, feminism was an offshoot of evangelical Christianity, and that spiritual energy still hovers.
How could it possibly be a secret? Were there a great many atheists in the 19th century? Especially among women? (No, I’m not making Kenny’s point for her. The rarity of atheism among women in the 19th [as well as earlier] centuries is a contingent historical fact, not nonsense about the inherent ‘spirituality’ of women.) Of course feminism arose among (mostly) religious women in the 19th century – what other kind of women would it arise among? All those emancipated intellectual women living in their own book-lined flats in London and New York? News flash – there weren’t a lot of women like that in the 19th century. Naturally most 19th century feminist women were religious. It doesn’t follow that they have to go on being now.
For many women, perhaps even most women, some form of religious sensibility is what gets them through the night, and helps them lead the examined life, too.
Possibly. And possibly the same is true of many, perhaps even most men, too. So what? People can always learn to lead the examined life in a secular manner, after all. People change – even women do.
Kabbalah isn’t a “feminine” thing–we’re not supposed to read it, for crying out loud. And…um…theosophy?!
I’m not sure how Kenny can cheerfully generalize about Stanton as an “evangelical”–hasn’t she ever seen Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible? Stanton was way, way, way out there on the religious left, and certainly wasn’t any sort of orthodox Christian. (Actually, 19th c. US feminism has always struck me as more hospitable to freethought or ultra-liberal Christianity than the British variety, possibly because the Unitarians exerted more intellectual influence on our side of the pond.)
“and there is religious jewellery, like pretty rosary beads, which will always draw women.”
Really? I thought that only men had hidden shallows.
I think she right that most churches I’ve been to have had more women than men. Quite probably because they were full of old women and most of the old men were dead.
“I think she right that most churches I’ve been to have had more women than men.”
She said most churches PM has been to had more women than men? Really? I missed that!
Sorry, just my little joke.
Yes, that rosary line, wasn’t that a beauty. Rosaries, ‘Sex and the City’ shoes – that’s how women are, just can’t get enough pretty baubles.
Interesting thought about Unitarianism. Carlyle thought Emerson was all moonshine (mind you, so do I…); no doubt that’s how Unitarianism struck Ukanians at the time – typical Yank moonshine.
Mary Kenny opens up new horizons in moithered thinking, but she is probably right as regards the high ratio of female to male churchgoers. According to an article I’ve just googled in ‘Christianity Today, “there are more than twice as many women as men overall in British churches …. For 40-year-old women, the ratio of women to men is four to one; by 50 it is six to one.”
(http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/123/35.0.html). There you are, now.
So Kenny’s anecdotal evidence may well reflect the statistical realities. No doubt mothers are also ‘over-represented’ in church, since devout women are more likely to reproduce than the feminist ‘smarts’, few of whom marry.
The rest of her column helps explain why many men were so strongly opposed to giving women the right to vote.
Haven’t seen the inside of a church since I was 8, but some years back one of our local libraries got this atheist magazine, which was not only one of the dullest things I ever clapped eyes on, but had these little cartoons each month in which the believers could be either sex but the atheists who got the better of them were always male. I was sensitive to that sort of thing from very young days–how come the school-crossing signs always had a big boy shepherding a little girl and never the reverse?
Cathal, Sure, I don’t dispute the statistics, just Kenny’s absurd argument, especially the one about mothers.
“how come the school-crossing signs always had a big boy shepherding a little girl and never the reverse?”
I know, I know, those bug me too. And I just noticed this morning the cover of my paperback reissue of Lippmann’s Public Opinion – it has a row of paper-doll-like men and under that a row of ditto women – and the women are exactly half the size of the men (as well as being below them on the page). Good thinking!
Actually psychologists have documented that religiosity is greater in women.
As for the “mother” issue, I think it’s obvious that they brought their children with them, so it was obvious that they were mothers.
Regarding atheism and women in the nineteenth century, I think both you and Kenny are making somewhat wild guesses. Criticism of religion seemed to be more common in the 19th century with people like Jefferson at the beginning and Ingersoll at the end. The wives of these men might have been atheists too. I know that Anthony fought to have atheists and agnostic women included in the feminist movement. There are some Anthony quotes here:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-a1.htm#SUSANB
although I don’t know about their authenticity.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that religiosity is greater in women. As I said, it’s not the facts I’m disputing, it’s Kenny’s way of asserting them.
So I don’t quite see how it can be obvious that “they brought their children with them” since Kenny didn’t say they did. It’s a trivial matter, to be sure, but my point is that Kenny is making an assumption and then using her own assumption as evidence. That’s not legitimate, and casts doubt on the quality of her thinking in general, at least I think it does.
But you’re quite right about my wild guesses. A reader emailed me a very interesting an article from the Summer 2003 issue of Free Inquiry – “Belief and Unbelief Among Nineteenth-Century Feminists,” by Melinda Grube. Anthony pretty much sold out to the religious party, despite not being a believer herself; Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage resisted this move, the women’s movement split, and the larger branch became much more conservative. Sad.
But I don’t think she was making an assumption at all. She saw these women bring their children with them. I think that’s implicit when she says that they were mothers so she didn’t spell it out.
Oh, I see what you mean. Fair point. (Mind you, she still did express way too much certainty. Two-thirds, 90% – did she count them all? Was she sure none of the children in the company of women were nieces and nephews, friends, kidnapping victims? Hmmm? I don’t think so.)
Doesn’t specify type of church either, I imagine the Catholic, Anglican and properly Protestant churches differ importantly in their demographics.
Jeez, the mileage that Madonna gets out of one press release….