Melissa McEwan, Shakesville
I’ve had mixed feelings about this site and its blog mistress. On the one hand I think many of the essays are first-rate, and cover a lot of important background and breaking news in issues related to feminism and equal rights. As such it’s one of my daily-read sites. On the other hand I’m sometimes taken aback by the level of vitriol and confusion exhibited against so-called militant atheists. Somehow expressing oneself forcefully about feminism was one thing, while expressing oneself equally forcefully about religion was another.
Then there was the post linked above. Ms. McEwan examines the commonly-accepted claim that Christianity makes you a moral person and soundly refutes it.
The message of the savior was that I could sit back and be saved with minimal inconvenience, not to mention negligible self-reflection. I could be stingy with my willingness to admit to anyone other than God my wrongdoing, my mistakes. If it was selfish to let other people live with the pain I caused them, it didn't matter: I needed God's forgiveness alone.
If anyone believed that the scriptures have any modern validity, this 650-word critique rather deftly demolishes it. Our contemporary understanding of how to live in complex societies is a lot more sophisticated then it was back then, and today it’s not enough just to get absolution in your own mind for transgressions against real people. We’ve thought of some ways to be better human beings that Jesus never considered.
Interestingly it didn’t stop there. The comments took a turn that’s very familiar, arguing that not all Christians are like that, and that those who are most rabidly anti-progressive – based on the same holy book or not – should not be considered “true” Christians. I get the impression it may have been a bit of a rude awakening to find out that liberals committed to feminism and gay rights and civil rights nonetheless feel their smug superiority at belonging to certain privileged classes should not dare be undermined, or even questioned.
So she wrote a follow up:
That Christianity is a chosen privilege does not mean its members can claim a lower standard of rigorous self-examination. And it doesn't mean that less privileged Christians, i.e. progressive Christians, can claim a lower standard, either, just because the more privileged Christians marginalize them. Poor whites don't get to disclaim their white privilege just because they are further marginalized by their lack of wealth.
In fact, chosen privileges demand, if anything, a higher standard of self-examination, because one has a choice whether to participate in the privilege. But so often, the fact that Christianity is a choice is instead used to deny the effects of that privilege altogether—"I'm not one of those Christians; I'm one of the good ones!"
All the benefits of the privilege that saying "I'm a Christian" confers; none of the responsibility for the effects of Christian supremacy.
Lizzy smash! Read the whole thing, and welcome her to the ranks of the militant atheists.
- jack*
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