Fixing the image of Christianity isn't something pagans and atheists and Jews can really do. They have got to clean up their own damn house. We have to survive and yeah, when people start talking about Jesus I watch them more carefully till I am able to figure out what that actually means in each case, because it's self-preservation.
As a religious institution, Christianity has stolen your rituals and my scriptures. I don't know how you feel about that, but I personally feel that I have enough to do in the PR arena dealing with all the misinformation about Judaism that Christianity is responsible for. I'm not even talking about obvious bullshit like Christ-killing and blood libel. I'm talking about the way that they frame our scripture as the source of all the bad shit Jesus had to fix and our G-d as the punisher and the hater who had to be mollified by the blood sacrifice of his own son (btw, our G-d doesn't have sex with mortals and sire children). I'm the one who has to step up and correct them about the rules in Vayikra (Leviticus), which were only ever meant for members of the tribe, not outsiders, and tell people who think that that's how we all lived before Jesus that then as now, the Torah laws are constantly being re-examined and new 'amendments' go up all the time in order to keep them sane and sensible and workable and not egregiously cruel or senselessly enforced, and that they should never be taken as a literal legal code for all mankind. I'm the one who has to explain that while we're still arguing about whether that badly translated passage forbids anal sex, male-male sex or male-male rape, the punishment for transgression is a spiritual excision and not the literal death penalty, and also, the way it's written, bacon is forbidden just as strongly. Christians have used their interpretation of our Law as a justification for hurting people, and I have so much work to do around that that I'm not really interested in fixing their internal problems. Because if I don't do that work then I am also viewed as an enemy rather than an ally by some people who really believe that however bad Christianity is now, once upon a time, we were worse and if we had it our way we still would be.
I sort of feel like the problems pagans have dealing with the demonisation of their gods and rituals (the ones that weren't stolen outright for saints and festivals) are probably similar, but I do remember holidays being MUCH easier when I was Pagan-identified, so. *shrug*
The story that the kyriarchy tells about Christianity, like the stories that it tells about whiteness and masculinity and heterosexuality, can really only be dismantled by the people that it applies to. Everyone knows people of colour want white people to be different from the bad ones and everyone knows women want men to be decent but we don't get to make up those stories; we have enough trouble getting listened to when we try to define who WE are. I honestly don't think that the general public cares what you or I think Christianity is. Christians are the ones who have to come out of the closet and fight this rap.
We also have to live in a society where we constantly have to gauge how safe we are when dealing with those who have more privilege, and demanding that Jews and pagans and atheists not consider what many Christians are like and how they use their privilege is a lot like getting upset because blacks are slower to trust whites and women are slower to trust men.
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chiming
no subject
Date: 2011-07-27 09:04 pm (UTC)From:As a religious institution, Christianity has stolen your rituals and my scriptures. I don't know how you feel about that, but I personally feel that I have enough to do in the PR arena dealing with all the misinformation about Judaism that Christianity is responsible for. I'm not even talking about obvious bullshit like Christ-killing and blood libel. I'm talking about the way that they frame our scripture as the source of all the bad shit Jesus had to fix and our G-d as the punisher and the hater who had to be mollified by the blood sacrifice of his own son (btw, our G-d doesn't have sex with mortals and sire children). I'm the one who has to step up and correct them about the rules in Vayikra (Leviticus), which were only ever meant for members of the tribe, not outsiders, and tell people who think that that's how we all lived before Jesus that then as now, the Torah laws are constantly being re-examined and new 'amendments' go up all the time in order to keep them sane and sensible and workable and not egregiously cruel or senselessly enforced, and that they should never be taken as a literal legal code for all mankind. I'm the one who has to explain that while we're still arguing about whether that badly translated passage forbids anal sex, male-male sex or male-male rape, the punishment for transgression is a spiritual excision and not the literal death penalty, and also, the way it's written, bacon is forbidden just as strongly. Christians have used their interpretation of our Law as a justification for hurting people, and I have so much work to do around that that I'm not really interested in fixing their internal problems. Because if I don't do that work then I am also viewed as an enemy rather than an ally by some people who really believe that however bad Christianity is now, once upon a time, we were worse and if we had it our way we still would be.
I sort of feel like the problems pagans have dealing with the demonisation of their gods and rituals (the ones that weren't stolen outright for saints and festivals) are probably similar, but I do remember holidays being MUCH easier when I was Pagan-identified, so. *shrug*
The story that the kyriarchy tells about Christianity, like the stories that it tells about whiteness and masculinity and heterosexuality, can really only be dismantled by the people that it applies to. Everyone knows people of colour want white people to be different from the bad ones and everyone knows women want men to be decent but we don't get to make up those stories; we have enough trouble getting listened to when we try to define who WE are. I honestly don't think that the general public cares what you or I think Christianity is. Christians are the ones who have to come out of the closet and fight this rap.
We also have to live in a society where we constantly have to gauge how safe we are when dealing with those who have more privilege, and demanding that Jews and pagans and atheists not consider what many Christians are like and how they use their privilege is a lot like getting upset because blacks are slower to trust whites and women are slower to trust men.