dazed&fallen
fine artist
You may remember my prophetic ramblings from a few years back. They seem slightly more relevent now don't they?
Fundamentalism was born in an era of anxiety over gender roles. Fundamentalist attitudes about gender provide a key to understanding fundamentalism's internal development and its interaction with dominant forces of American culture. Fundamentalist militancy grew from more than just its rejection by intellectual elites, although this did elicit considerable anger.
A significant element of this militancy was generated in the masculine persona that fundamentalists identified as the true hallmark of the Christian warrior. Leaders were determined to stop the spread of liberal and secularizing trends in a society once defined by Christian values. Masculine language and comradery became a common rallying point for those that chose to do batttle with the Devil in modern Babylon.
Gender is a powerful means of orienting world and self in the middle ages for example male monks symbolized their renunciation of the world by self consciously leaving behind their masculine power and adopting a female state of "lowliness." In the twentieth century fundamentalist men, who saw their world as dangerously feminized sought after otherworldliness through assertive masculinity.
The "new evangelicals" encountered the feminist movement unwillingly for very little in their collective past had prepared them for that encounter. Take Scanton's February 1966 article in Eternity magazine entitled "Women's place, silence or service."
A Texas pastor found it "A perfect example of why woman is admonished to be silent in church concluding that "most women seem to be incapable of consistent logic when their emotions are involved." Another contributor wondered "why the apostle Paul's simple rules against over ambitious women dominating Bible studies were too difficult to under stand."
The central drama of the fundamentalist/ modernist contraversy in the early twentieth century was a conflict over the nature of biblical truth. For fundamentalists all other debates over evolution, the conduct of foreign missions, or the coming millinium boiled down to a single principle: their insistence on the utter reliability of God's word.
-Fundamentalism and Gender John Stratton
Here is an account from a homosexual Christian named Troy Perry: "She looked me over, backed off a step and I thought she was going to hit me again. She said "Young man, do you know what the book of Leviticus says?"
I told her "I sure do!" It says that it's a sin for a woman to wear a read dress, for a man to wear a cotton shirt and woolen pants at the same time, for anyone to eat shrimp, oysters or lobster or your steak too rare.
She said "That's not what I meant!"
I said "I know that's not what you mean, Honey, but you forgot all these other dreadful sins too, that are in the same book of the Bible (perry p.150)
Perry will go on to state that "According to the way you (straight people) think and act Jesus would have been a real weirdy for you as well. If he lived in this day and age, the way you people label individuals, you would have labeled him a homosexual right off the bat!! I don't believe Jesus was a homosexual but I know you people. Here was a guy that was raised by his mother with no father--typical of homosexual syndrome, according to so many psychiatrists for what that's worth. He never married and ran around with twelve guys all the time. Not only that he wasn't above bodily contact with another man. John the beloved lay on the breast of Jesus at the last supper. Not only that but a guy betrayed him with a kiss!doesn't that make you want to throw up?"
I like this guy already. Not because I'm gay, because I'm not. But I like how he topples traditional gender roles. -Elijah
The Christians say they love Christ but I think they hate him without knowing it. So they take a cross by the other end and make a sword out of it and strike us with it. -Ernie Leiry
Fundamentalism was born in an era of anxiety over gender roles. Fundamentalist attitudes about gender provide a key to understanding fundamentalism's internal development and its interaction with dominant forces of American culture. Fundamentalist militancy grew from more than just its rejection by intellectual elites, although this did elicit considerable anger.
A significant element of this militancy was generated in the masculine persona that fundamentalists identified as the true hallmark of the Christian warrior. Leaders were determined to stop the spread of liberal and secularizing trends in a society once defined by Christian values. Masculine language and comradery became a common rallying point for those that chose to do batttle with the Devil in modern Babylon.
Gender is a powerful means of orienting world and self in the middle ages for example male monks symbolized their renunciation of the world by self consciously leaving behind their masculine power and adopting a female state of "lowliness." In the twentieth century fundamentalist men, who saw their world as dangerously feminized sought after otherworldliness through assertive masculinity.
The "new evangelicals" encountered the feminist movement unwillingly for very little in their collective past had prepared them for that encounter. Take Scanton's February 1966 article in Eternity magazine entitled "Women's place, silence or service."
A Texas pastor found it "A perfect example of why woman is admonished to be silent in church concluding that "most women seem to be incapable of consistent logic when their emotions are involved." Another contributor wondered "why the apostle Paul's simple rules against over ambitious women dominating Bible studies were too difficult to under stand."
The central drama of the fundamentalist/ modernist contraversy in the early twentieth century was a conflict over the nature of biblical truth. For fundamentalists all other debates over evolution, the conduct of foreign missions, or the coming millinium boiled down to a single principle: their insistence on the utter reliability of God's word.
-Fundamentalism and Gender John Stratton
Here is an account from a homosexual Christian named Troy Perry: "She looked me over, backed off a step and I thought she was going to hit me again. She said "Young man, do you know what the book of Leviticus says?"
I told her "I sure do!" It says that it's a sin for a woman to wear a read dress, for a man to wear a cotton shirt and woolen pants at the same time, for anyone to eat shrimp, oysters or lobster or your steak too rare.
She said "That's not what I meant!"
I said "I know that's not what you mean, Honey, but you forgot all these other dreadful sins too, that are in the same book of the Bible (perry p.150)
Perry will go on to state that "According to the way you (straight people) think and act Jesus would have been a real weirdy for you as well. If he lived in this day and age, the way you people label individuals, you would have labeled him a homosexual right off the bat!! I don't believe Jesus was a homosexual but I know you people. Here was a guy that was raised by his mother with no father--typical of homosexual syndrome, according to so many psychiatrists for what that's worth. He never married and ran around with twelve guys all the time. Not only that he wasn't above bodily contact with another man. John the beloved lay on the breast of Jesus at the last supper. Not only that but a guy betrayed him with a kiss!doesn't that make you want to throw up?"
I like this guy already. Not because I'm gay, because I'm not. But I like how he topples traditional gender roles. -Elijah
The Christians say they love Christ but I think they hate him without knowing it. So they take a cross by the other end and make a sword out of it and strike us with it. -Ernie Leiry