Interesting article
Mar. 26th, 2013 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraCN: religion, trauma caused by religious groups, eating disorder, various kinds of abuse
"Religious trauma syndrome"
I think she's got some generalities in language going there. You can be a "devout Catholic" without being an authoritarian dogmatist. You can also be raised in a left-wing non-evangelical Lutheran church and end up with crushing guilt and a belief you aren't allowed to defend yourself, as I have experienced personally. Contrary to what the article says, the golden rule is not always healthy. Though my experience is certainly nowhere near as bad as that described in the article.
But I think the basic concept has merit. Often, non-Americans have trouble grokking how in the U.S., there's a social and even legal knee-jerk belief that religion is good. Full stop. There's a hierarchy in which Christian religion, especially Protestant religion, is thought to be the most good, but all religion is still widely considered a force for good, with Satanism being the only exception I can think of. (Islamaphobia is a real problem, but Islamaphobes are like the Tea Party: a small, loud group of assholes making serious trouble.) Therefore religions get away with just about everything, and atheists are thought to have something deeply wrong with them. Imo, the latter fact is not nearly as harmful as the former. Being told I'm a jerk online and being asked by friends if I want to go to church is not in the same ballpark as being a girl raised in the Duggar family, and the Duggar family is a relatively tame example.
One reason I find Scientology so interesting is that L. Ron Hubbard realized that if you call your group a religion, you can get away with pretty much anything in the U.S. Physical and sexual abuse, lying about literally everything, getting people to believe only one expression of sexuality is valid (and that expression does not include masturbation, let alone non-straight sexuality), telling people everything bad that happens to them is their fault, controlling people's lives, and getting rich doing so. Now, not only is Scientology crumbling, but states are making laws addressing abuse by religious groups partly because of Scientology and other cults. It's a wedge into the problem that we do not actually have separation of church and state. If we did, religious groups would be treated the same as any other groups by the law.
We have to be able to talk about these things in a reasonable manner. Right now I often feel there are clowns to the left, jokers to the right. Loud dogmatic religious people shriek whenever anyone says religion is not always good. Loud dogmatic atheist people scream that all religions are all evil. I want to treat religious groups like any other group. If the Sierra Club were sexually abusing people, we'd bring them down. If the local book club were trying to control their members' sex lives, it would fail hard. If someone were raising their daughters to believe they existed to be incubators, and claimed they were doing this because it was what the Alabama Bar Association wanted, I hope we would not accept that as a society. I want groups to stop getting a pass because they happen to promote belief in the supernatural.
"Religious trauma syndrome"
I think she's got some generalities in language going there. You can be a "devout Catholic" without being an authoritarian dogmatist. You can also be raised in a left-wing non-evangelical Lutheran church and end up with crushing guilt and a belief you aren't allowed to defend yourself, as I have experienced personally. Contrary to what the article says, the golden rule is not always healthy. Though my experience is certainly nowhere near as bad as that described in the article.
But I think the basic concept has merit. Often, non-Americans have trouble grokking how in the U.S., there's a social and even legal knee-jerk belief that religion is good. Full stop. There's a hierarchy in which Christian religion, especially Protestant religion, is thought to be the most good, but all religion is still widely considered a force for good, with Satanism being the only exception I can think of. (Islamaphobia is a real problem, but Islamaphobes are like the Tea Party: a small, loud group of assholes making serious trouble.) Therefore religions get away with just about everything, and atheists are thought to have something deeply wrong with them. Imo, the latter fact is not nearly as harmful as the former. Being told I'm a jerk online and being asked by friends if I want to go to church is not in the same ballpark as being a girl raised in the Duggar family, and the Duggar family is a relatively tame example.
One reason I find Scientology so interesting is that L. Ron Hubbard realized that if you call your group a religion, you can get away with pretty much anything in the U.S. Physical and sexual abuse, lying about literally everything, getting people to believe only one expression of sexuality is valid (and that expression does not include masturbation, let alone non-straight sexuality), telling people everything bad that happens to them is their fault, controlling people's lives, and getting rich doing so. Now, not only is Scientology crumbling, but states are making laws addressing abuse by religious groups partly because of Scientology and other cults. It's a wedge into the problem that we do not actually have separation of church and state. If we did, religious groups would be treated the same as any other groups by the law.
We have to be able to talk about these things in a reasonable manner. Right now I often feel there are clowns to the left, jokers to the right. Loud dogmatic religious people shriek whenever anyone says religion is not always good. Loud dogmatic atheist people scream that all religions are all evil. I want to treat religious groups like any other group. If the Sierra Club were sexually abusing people, we'd bring them down. If the local book club were trying to control their members' sex lives, it would fail hard. If someone were raising their daughters to believe they existed to be incubators, and claimed they were doing this because it was what the Alabama Bar Association wanted, I hope we would not accept that as a society. I want groups to stop getting a pass because they happen to promote belief in the supernatural.
