QotD: Mixed Relationships
April 26, 2010 By 67 Comments
by VorJack
Are you involved, or have you been involved, in an intimate or romantic relationship where one side is an atheist and the other side is a believer?
How does that work out? Did you talk about religion or just avoid the issue?
Quirky Christian Courtship
March 11, 2010 By 83 Comments
“We told Ted he could court Mary.” My mother told me this as we were driving to dinner.
That didn’t make sense to me, so I asked, “Why would Ted need to ask your permission? It’s not like Mary’s your daughter.”
“Well you know Mary’s father; he would nod his head and say yes to anyone. So Mary gave me the responsibility of accepting or rejecting any man she might want to court.”
People not familiar with Christian fundamentalism may not know what courting is, so here’s a definition from a Christian: “Courting is young adults seeking each other under their parents’ supervision for the purpose of finding a spouse in the will of God.” Basically it’s formal dating without the physical intimacy and with more parental involvement.
Apologies to my mother, but having to grant Ted permission is weird. I feel sorry for him. It’s not even her parents — and he had to ask them too!
My mom continued: “We gave him a plan of things we want him to read to help him grow in Christ. We gave him a book a couple months ago on the will of God and he finished it. He’s a good kid.”
If I were him, I’d say screw this. This isn’t an engagement — it’s just permission to get to know someone more formally to see if they are a suitable candidate for marriage.
Oh, and did I mention they want to wait until marriage to kiss?
Yes, you read that right. They’re waiting for marriage, not only to have sex, but to kiss each other.
Poor, poor lovers.
As a Christian I would I have thought this was all very honorable. Now I see it as a little pathetic and a waste of time and guilt.
First, it’s demeaning. Mary is an adult. She’s 21 and doesn’t need a friend to tell her who she can and can’t have a relationship with. I would not let my mother tell me if I could go out with a girl, and I don’t think she should be telling this girl whether she is allowed to “court” a guy. That is a decision she should make herself. Sure, my mom can give advice. But it’s Mary’s decision, not her parents’ decision and certainly not my parents’.
Second, it’s sexist. Ted has to ask Mary’s gatekeeper, but notice Ted doesn’t have a gatekeeper. There is an undercurrent here that women are weak; they cannot take care of themselves; they do not have the right to make an important relational decision by themselves. It’s insulting and misogynistic.
Third, it’s arrogant. My parents do not know who is the best match for this girl. Rarely do people really know how something will turn out for themselves much less someone else. Some people who seem perfect turn out to be rotters. Others who seem like jerks turn out to be loving, caring husbands. And we remember our hits (“I never did like him!”) and forget our misses.
Now of course we all have opinions, and sometimes there are clear indicators that someone might not be the best companion for someone (“Is that a body in your freezer, Ted?”). If we care for them we’ll probably make our opinion known — but it’s their life, and it’s their decision.
Christianity makes a big deal out of freedom, but these practices are a direct result of my mother’s Christianity. This is not freedom; it’s an oppression of rules and regulations. Some would say this is not “true Christianity” (which they define as whatever they believe), but virtually all forms of Christianity have core features of dogma that prey upon fear and guilt. Thus the concept of “sin” and “redemption.”
As I watch this overdramatization of Christian courtship, I wish I could say to Mary, “You don’t need my mother to approve of your relationship. If you love him, be with him. Screw the legalism.”
And to Ted, I’d say, “Run.”
Interfaith Families in the Holidays
November 17, 2009 By 19 Comments
by Jesse Galef
As if celebrating the holidays isn’t hectic enough for most people, we atheists have to decide which days to celebrate and how. Thanksgiving and Veteran’s Day are easy ones – they’re good secular values. I celebrate the secular version of Christmas – celebrating the spirit of giving – but I often have to explain my views to confused onlookers.
I can imagine it would be even tougher for an interfaith couple. The Washington Post is hosting a forum to discuss the issue.
Perhaps your atheist husband wants that manger scene off the mantel. Your Hindu wife is uncomfortable with the Hebrew blessings before dinner. Your Muslim mother-in-law doesn’t want her grandkids sitting on Santa’s lap.
The holidays can be a minefield for interfaith couples, unearthing disparities that lay mercifully buried throughout the rest of the year. Because the tree isn’t just about the tree, of course. Like the menorah, or Iftar feasts at sundown during Ramadan, it’s about family and ritual, identity and culture.
Apparently 25% of married adults in America are married to someone of a different faith – a number that goes up to 37% if you count different protestant denominations.
Do you think it’s easier or harder when one of the pair is an atheist? In that situation it’s not just a disagreement about which religion to believe, but a rejection of all religion.
What would you do?
The First Couple: Yahweh and Asherah
May 11, 2009 By 86 Comments
by VorJack
Marriage in the Bible, Part 1
Whenever the topic of biblical marriage comes up, I always think of the first couple of the bible. That happy loving couple that proceeds all others: YHWH and Asherah.
The Name Game
Pullquote: YHWH originally had a consor — Asherah, a fertility goddess with a sweet tooth.
Yes, YHWH originally had a consort. Exactly how it happened is hard to say (there was alcohol, that trip to Vegas…). The best guess is that we’re seeing a divide between the folk religion and the more rarefied religion of the priests. The early Israelites likely had a popular religion that maintained a lot of the old religions from Canaan and the surrounding regions.
This folk religion seemed to have a place for the gods Baal and El. Baal was the Canaanite god of thunder, lightning and rain. El was the supreme Canaanite deity. But gods are fluid things. Over time, the distinctions between gods can fade. It looks like Baal may have supplanted El, and then YHWH supplanted Baal, as depicted in Judges and Isaiah.
During this process YHWH picked up the characteristics of his two rivals. The word Baal became a title, meaning “lord” or “master.” El became a generic word for God, which shows up even in the name of the nation: Isra-El. YHWH became the supreme deity, and as part of the spoils he gained a consort: Asherah, the wife of the supreme deity.
So who was this “Asherah”? She was probably a mother goddess, with the usual implications of fertility. She was symbolized by a pole, perhaps a stylized tree, that stood beside the alter of Baal or YHWH. While her consort got animal sacrifices, Asherah got offerings of cakes (Jeremiah 7:18). Apparently she had a sweet tooth.
A Messy Break-Up
It’s hard to pin down when all of this happened. It doesn’t help that the names of the gods became generic terms. Even the word Asherah came to mean the sacred groves where the gods were sometimes worshiped. So an 8th century BCE inscription refers to “YHVH of Samaria and his Asherah.” Does this mean that Asherah was still worshiped as YHWH’s consort, or does it somehow refer to the shrine of YHWH?
One thing does seem clear: the fall of Northern Israel to the Assyrians in the 8th century put the fear of some God into the rulers of the comparatively small kingdom of Judah. Seeing your larger, more successful sibling get wiped out will do that to you. In the late 7th century, King Josiah decided that he’d had enough of the polytheism stuff and engages in drastic reforms:
“And he brought out the Ashe’rah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.” (2 Kings 23:6)
Josiah cleared out the temple, kicked out the temple prostitutes, destroyed the mountaintop alters outside of Jerusalem, and “rediscovered” the book of monotheistic law that became Deuteronomy. Having finally made Israel right with God, he promptly gets executed by the Egyptians. A generation after his reforms, Judah falls to the Babylonians.
The survivors are understandably cranky. They give the Prophet Jeremiah a piece of their minds, referring to Asherah as the “Queen of Heaven”:
“As for the word which you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no evil. But since we left off burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.” (Jer. 44:16-18)
Not an auspicious start to biblical relationships. Asherah didn’t completely disappear, however. When Moses is instructed by God to make a menorah to light the temple, it is described as a stylized almond tree (Exodus 25.31-39). The biblical historian Margaret Barker suspects that this sacred tree figure was one of the symbols of Asherah. So the menorah may be one last lingering trace of the bible’s first couple.
Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.
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