Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Hi countmeworthy,
I'm still here. I can't comment on San Diego, but I cannot draw any link between my experience and the claimed sexism and LGBTXYZQRSTism matters. So I don't have much to contribute except point out a few things.
In the LC I know, there are no dress codes, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends can sit together, although discouraged, and the issue of LGBTXYZ I can't recall ever being mentioned. There is no sexism either, unless we think that to mean that females are not allowed to use the male toilets and vice versa. Sadly, that is a common definition of sexism today.
The claims of sexism by the OP, are of course with respect to the modern standards. However in the early church, they had separated seating for males and females, and women wore head coverings. This persisted until well into the medieval times and later, and the modern concept of males and females together is fairly recent, historically speaking.
Rules about female/male interaction are not uncommon in my view in Christianity. I was once involved in an inter-denominational evangelical organization that believed men and women could not hold hands because the tension between them will lead to a 30 second flurry of activity and produce unwanted offspring. They warned us about holding hands in other words. The LC do not go to such extremes, but I think it works - the out of wedlock pregnancy rate would be lower in the LC than say the Baptist church and Pentecostal churches, applying the biblical principle of marrying rather than burning. This is because in the LC marriage is encouraged rather than so-called "Christian dating". Baptists seem to encourage long periods of "Christian dating" with many different people which is just a Christian version of worldly dating. Pentecostals, I don't know what is going on there. The pastors don't seem to address these matters according to the Bible and allow adulterous relationships to continue unchecked.
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Evangelical. Thank you for your input. There are couple things I wanted to talk about but how about we start with one.
What is your understanding on sexism? I'm also in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and by no means the "common definition of sexism today" has ever revolved around "females are not allowed to use the male toilets and vice versa". Sexism is, and has always been about "the prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender." Note here that by definition, sexism can affect either gender.
And I apologize if I haven't made it clearer. When I talked about sexism exhibited in the LC, I was referring to misogyny, which stands for dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. From my experience, there certainly is prejudice against women in LC. I'm taking your comment "there's no dress code" at face value; Sure, different localities might have different practices. I'll just ask you one thing: Who do you see, in the leadership circle of LC, is a woman? And whom among those women that you considered leaders in the LC community, is not some elder/male leader's wife, sister, daughter? I'm genuinely curious if you know any sister that is in leadership position because of and only because of her spirituality.
That's the thing. Sexism to me is all about power dynamics. Men hold positions of power in the LC system. Men have all the representation in leadership. There are at least the same number of women, if not more, in the LC system. Why aren't women represented in positions of power and be involved in high level decision making? There are and always have been spiritual giants that are women. When voices from one gender are not heard but rather ignored, whatever the situation is, there is a problem.
I appreciate you bringing up the historical viewpoint. If you think people then got things right and you would rather live according to those standards, well, I'm fairly certain that I know much more about you as a person and a believer than how much info you revealed about yourself on this forum.
Thank you for your input. Looking forward to seeing your reply.