Came upon this essay accidentally this morning. The irony is that this (growing up in religious schools) was a topic in three conversations last week* (different people who lived it; one called it the "school of hypocrisy"). While I can't really contribute to the conversation because I didn't have that experience, I've known many who did live it. Including my father.
As author C. J. Leede comments, the roots run deep, perhaps a thousand years ago. Although, my limited experience in Europe suggests that perhaps it's influence may no longer be as strong in many places there. A French colleague once mentioned that many hundreds of years of religious wars there makes people weary and wary of religious repression and control (have heard similarly of Asia). Obviously, some countries are still willing to kill and maim in the name of their gods, such as many places in the Middle East. And treat women like property and dogs. I find this tantamount to extreme hypocrisy and excuse for patriarchal control.
Regardless, the bad vapors of religion manifest in various ways. Many times permeating and fusing with capitalism, and, as the US is a perfect example of current times, politics. Some mistake religious piety for greed. As I mentioned in our conversation on Friday, the demon in the box pulling the strings is power. Greed and power seem to be twins, so can't delineate where one begins and the other ends. They are joined at the hips. Or, perhaps, the brain.
"When I ask myself why I wrote 'American Rapture,' why I read religious horror or watch it on the screen, when I really stop and think, what do I wish more than anything I had known when I was a young girl trying to step into herself?
It’s this: Repression—religious or otherwise—is the horror. Ignorance is what we should fear. What makes us all ill-equipped for moving through life as humans in natural human bodies.
And maybe little girls aren’t born into more sin than little boys. Maybe sin is just an idea we’ve created for control. A powerful little beast that preys on all of us every day, in and outside of fiction. And maybe it’s one we just don’t need to feed anymore. - C. J. Leede"
* These people whom I had these conversations with were unconnected, nor did I initiate the aforementioned topic. This suggests people may actually be thinking about such subjects. I interpret that as a good sign, aka maybe hope?
