Women Bishops - Reality catching up to Sci-fi?

Michael Everett wrote:I didn't. I just posted some links to inspire thought.
Although you could argue that as Christianity is derived from Judaism (Jesus was a Jew), Islam owes a part of its origin to Christianity...

Anyway...
Have some more links.

Truth & Dogma.
Before The Translation
Trouble With Arrogance

All religions should have something like "Grampy Says".
(Warning, the main comic itself often verges on being NSFW. There's a reason it's called "Too Much Information)

Muhammad had both Jewish and Christian tutors when he grew up, which is one of the reasons Islam considers the other two faiths as 'People of the Book'. Commonly, all three are regarded as 'Abrahamic' traditions.

At the time of Islam's founding, there were both Christian and Jewish Arab tribes living in the Arab Peninsula, among the pagan tribes.

Michael Everett wrote:All religions should have something like "Grampy Says".
(Warning, the main comic itself often verges on being NSFW. There's a reason it's called "Too Much Information)

I like Grampy!
Thanks for the link!

I don't know what this has to do with SCIFY but the radical Muslims are only about 25% of the Muslims. That is only what 300-450 million. Nothing to worry about there. I don't see many female jihadist leaders.

The only reason there are females in most roles is that in christian societies women are getting or have equal rights and given that SCIFY typically happens in the future or the dark, the future is seen as being equally equality based.

As a side note Muslim women surely are not being argued as being equal to Muslim men? Let alone the heathen women.

Lord Skimper wrote:I don't know what this has to do with SCIFY but the radical Muslims are only about 25% of the Muslims. That is only what 300-450 million. Nothing to worry about there. I don't see many female jihadist leaders.

Actually, fundamentalist Muslims account for under 5% of the Muslim population. They just have an effect far out of proportion to their numbers.

Many Muslims accused of being radicals or fundamentalists are simply pretending to go along with the radicals in order to not get stoned to death or similar.

Lord Skimper wrote:The only reason there are females in most roles is that in christian societies women are getting or have equal rights and given that SCIFY typically happens in the future or the dark, the future is seen as being equally equality based.

Equality has surprisingly little to do with religion. In fact, many religions used to seek to control women in order to ensure that the next generation of believers would grow up believing and thus being easy to control/direct.

Gender equality came about because of several factors, the most important being technology (which notionally equalized how much work genders could do) and war (the need for males on the front lines let the women move into traditionally-male jobs).

Lord Skimper wrote:As a side note Muslim women surely are not being argued as being equal to Muslim men? Let alone the heathen women.

It is an unfortunate truth that some of the more extreme Muslims (who in no way reflect the majority) hold to the tradition that Muslim women are worth about half (or 3/5ths) of a Muslim male while unbeliever women are virtually worthless.

This has led to a few damaging cases recently where groups of Islamic males (Usually immigrants or raised in non-integrationist areas) have groomed and used underage non-Muslim girls for sex. It should be noted that the paedophiles in question were driven by cultural and not religious constraints since their cultures severely restrict non-family male/female interactions until the wedding day. This leaves only a couple of outlets for the resulting... urges. Homosexuality or the targeting of those unprotected by their culture (such as non-Muslim girls).

Once again, I must point out that they were the extreme non-representative minority and do not in any way represent the true Muslim religion.

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A survey recently checked 203 women in the Arab Emirates and found that all but 4 had vitamin D deficiency. The researchers believe that this is due to the wearing of the Burkha, blocking the sunlight required to make the vitamin.
Food for thought... culture can be bad for your health.

Michael Everett wrote:...A survey recently checked 203 women in the Arab Emirates and found that all but 4 had vitamin D deficiency. The researchers believe that this is due to the wearing of the Burkha, blocking the sunlight required to make the vitamin.
Food for thought... culture can be bad for your health.

Priceles!!!

A very cognent and informative posting.

Michael Everett wrote:The Church of England Synod has officially backed the (currently theoretical) ordination of women as bishops as seen in this link.

In quite a few sci-fi series including the Honorverse, female bishops and other high-ranking clergy are accepted as simply being the way things should be, so it's rather nice to see that the Church of England is leading the way.

Interesting question, how many other major religions are doing the same (or similar) thing?

Swedish church got its first female bishop in 1997 (Odenberg), first archbishop 2013 (Jackelén).

Actually, fundamentalist Muslims account for under 5% of the Muslim population. They just have an effect far out of proportion to their numbers.

The portion of fundmentalist christians are higher and have a similar out of proportion effect.

A survey recently checked 203 women in the Arab Emirates and found that all but 4 had vitamin D deficiency. The researchers believe that this is due to the wearing of the Burkha, blocking the sunlight required to make the vitamin.
Food for thought... culture can be bad for your health.

And the burka and its likes, does not even come from islam, but from christian Byzantium.
Which makes the thing utterly stupid.

hanuman wrote:
I really do not wish to offend anyone here, but Americans generally are rather ignorant about the intricacies of Islam and the Muslim faith community.

The Muslim faith community is incredibly diverse; it includes people from literally thousands of language groups, cultures, all race groups and every country in the world - all of whom have their own customs and practices, which often inform their particular interpretation of Islamic doctrine.

Women have always played a major role in Islam, and despite the common perspective in the West, women do in fact command a great deal of respect and authority among many of the cultures where Islam is the predominant faith.

Among the Tawariqu of North Africa (the Touaregs), for instance, it is women who control the manufacture of trade goods and who conduct trade. The tribal councils consist equally of women and men. Women choose who they wish to marry and may in fact take more than one husband at a time, whereas men are limited to only one wife.

As with Christianity, the permissibility and status of female imams vary from 'denomination' (although that's a rather ambiguous term when speaking of Islam) to 'denomination'. Islam, too, has more conservative and more liberal 'denominations', but once again, the meaning of those terms are somewhat different than in the West.

I think it is very unfortunate that the Western media tends to present certain Muslim religious practices as 'universal' aspects of Islam, when the truth is far different. What actually happens is that our media is keen for stories that will generate sales, and too damn lazy to do their background research properly. After all, who cares? Most Westerners know absolutely nothing about Muslims, except that they're all a bunch of terrorists. So who will care that the information the media dispenses about Islam and Muslims is often distorted, ignorant and sensationalist claptrap? It's not as if anyone in the West is going to call the media out for it, is it?

And even more than christianity, islam has adopted many local customs. Unfortunately, some of the worst of those have then become widespread and claimed as integral parts of the religion itself. For example, islam has adopted a lot of Byzantine patriarchal focus, and due to how much influence that area exerted through the califate, islam became drastically more patriarchal than it started as.

Arol wrote:

Hutch wrote:I expect the Catholic Church (I was raised in that faith..been out of it for the last 30 years) to rise to the occasion and have women (and married) priests by no later than 2350 AD....

2350AD!
You’re probably a bit of an optimist, seeing that the Patriarchal vs. Matriarchal aspects of all religions, probably had its origin in a religious argument the caveman Alley Oop had with his wife around 1,000,000BC!

If you check on archaelogical findings, you will notice that a strictly patriarchally based religion is, historically, the exception rather than the rule.

Judaism and christianity pretty much stands out from the rest, with islam and druids nearby, being generally or "in reale" patriarchal.

Tenshinai wrote:If you check on archaelogical findings, you will notice that a strictly patriarchally based religion is, historically, the exception rather than the rule.

Judaism and christianity pretty much stands out from the rest, with islam and druids nearby, being generally or "in reale" patriarchal.

Where would you place Hinduism?
The plurality of their Gods and Avatars seem to span the genders, and yet it seems that they have a preponderance of male priests.
Or maybe it's still the remanants of the cast system that plays in.

Arol wrote:Where would you place Hinduism?
The plurality of their Gods and Avatars seem to span the genders, and yet it seems that they have a preponderance of male priests.
Or maybe it's still the remanants of the cast system that plays in.

Pretty much yeah. Similar as with islam, interacting with non-religious culture over time, but while there the whole religion got twisted around a bit, hinduism seems to have gone more of "we preach this but do that" route.

It can be argued either way nowadays, since my focus tend to be historical, where it seems to have been more neutral, i should probably have included it in the "in reale" category for how it is now.