Your question about studies in theology is totally valid. But it doesn't seem to be one we can ask in this country. Even I don't asked that question and I go about as far out on a limb as anyone can go.
For my entire life I have tried to figure out how to deal with delicate issues like that. The prototype for that question has always been what should a person of conscience have done in the South regarding segregation between 1860 and 1960?
If you brought it up, you became a pariah. If you didn't bring it up, then you were complicit in the suffering of the African-American. Eldridge Cleaver said it best in his book: "Soul on ice:" if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
Theology in this country has not been a benign institution. It has been a primary institution for evil throughout our history. It has been used to keep down women, just like it's being used today to keep down gays. It was the Mormon church that defeated the equal rights amendment for women. Just as it was the Mormon church that funded proposition eight in California against gay marriage.
But all the churches have been complicit in bad things in this country, of one thing or another, but few people are willing to take the issues head on, from the psychological anguish caused by stupid guilt over natural behavior by children to pedophilia and corporal punishment so common in the Catholic culture in the past , to the relegating of women as second-class citizens among virtually every denomination.
And even today, the churches stand united against the gays, and women, as though those were not important issues. We are not even really allowed to discuss the pain and suffering the gay community has endured at the hands of the church and continues to endure to this day. The suicide rate among gays is through the roof. But none Dare pen it on the church. And women continue to function as second-class citizens in the Catholic Church, the Mormon church and the Southern Baptists. That is certainly not good for their self-image or their mental health regardless of what people say. They are only human and we know a little bit about how humans react to being beaten down psychologically.
Dealing with theology is a real conundrum because it is a powerful emotional foundation for a lot of good people. And it is sort of like Siamese twins that can't be separated. There is no way to get at it, without hurting the patient.
But I think it helps, for brave people like yourself, to at least bring it to the forefront once in a while, so it doesn't stay completely hidden. But I think it is a chronic issue that is going to have to be gently managed until it fades away like it has done in countries like Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. |
