Talk:Gender and religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

align="left" This article is part of WikiProject Gender Studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.
??? This article has not yet received a rating.

This article was nominated for deletion by User:Grutness. Following a clean-up by User:Michaelas10, it was withdrawn. Capitalistroadster 00:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Here was the discussion. Sr13 09:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] emphasis

This article seems to focus slightly too much on Christian perspectives over others. A small amount of cleanup could fix this. --Alynna 14:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The article is barely more than a stub. There are literally two sentences about Christianity. The rest is generic, Judaism, or feminist extremes. What the article needs is more of everything. If you are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with Christian views, by all means extend the other areas. If you are interested in Women and religion, the glaring omission, imo, is the Qur'an, which has a whole sura on women.
From a neutral, world-wide, verifiable perspective, celebate, male-only priesthoods in many traditions, and temple prostitution strike me as the most significant elements of Gender and religion taken across cultures and over recorded history. Christianity is actually somewhat of an exception from that perspective, because of the high regard it has always accorded women. Some have argued that the rise of feminism is actually due to historical consequences of freedoms promoted by the Protestant Reformation, it would be interesting to write up that POV.
I'm sure I'm showing an editorial bias here, I invariably look for what is omitted in articles. Only once they approach 50kB do I think about finding an objective basis for balancing content with regard to value in presenting an integrated picture.
Please contribute freely on whatever motivates you most. You shouldn't find me any trouble, I'm not fussy about language use and even text that's factually wrong, I normally ammend by only by adding the sources that contradict it. Readers love it when one source shows another to be wrong. The only thing I terminate on sight is unsourced claims about what various groups say, when I know this is not what they say. I replace such text with the highest quality source for the group's opinion that's available online.
There's a lot more out there on this subject than a whole faculty could possibly know, and a lot more than 50kB worth. I'm looking forward to being educated. ;) Alastair Haines 15:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, sorry Alynna, I rattle my sword a bit on some pages (maybe a lot). I can stand by what I've said, but I wouldn't say it this way to you. Anonymous media have interesting side-effects. Anyway, to Alynna sorry, to others ... <rattles sabre> again. Alastair Haines (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of sourced material

I note someone removed the reference to the discussion of the Unborn Child Protection bill in the NSW parliament. If you wish to delete sourced material, please discuss this on the talk page first.

If you would like to argue that abortion is not a gender issue, I'm very happy to think that through with you, gather sources and document what we find in the article. You may very well persuade me, in which case we can work together to do the hard work of removing discussions of abortion from other gender related articles.

Perhaps it's the combination of gender with religion that means abortion is no longer relevant. That seems a little odd, but if Child Protection is a community issue, Unborn Child Protection is too, so I can see a point in that. We need to give wider coverage to the idea in a larger article and this one can simply refer to it. Please point us to where the discussion is already documented, if it doesn't yet exist, we can write it up. Cheers. Alastair Haines (talk) 08:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original research?

The 1st section looks very much like it, arguing for interpretations of scriptures. Peter jackson (talk) 14:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

“ Pierre Chaunu also contends that the very recognition of women as full fledge human beings depends on moral and ethical categories that derive ultimately from the Bible. He points out, for example, in his book Foi et histoire (Faith

and History, 1980), that it is only in those cultures where the biblical text and Christianity have had some long term influence, that the status of women has gradually improved from that of property and progenitor to that of a full human being, equal to man. In cultures where the biblical text has not had any significant impact, women are regarded as property whose main purpose is to produce children. In such cultures, women are married as soon as they are able to procreate, they have little or no access to formal education, and they are allowed little self-determination. The main reason behind this social transformation is fundamentally linked to a statement found in Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” This text affirms the intrinsic dignity of both men and women regardless of their gender or social status. This is in stark contrast to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where the value of human beings was primarily determined on the basis of their social standing.

 ”

—Pierre Gilbert, "How the Bible Shapes Our World"
I can select from probably a couple of thousand sources for the interpretations given. Genesis 1 has to be one of the most cited and analysed pieces of writing in history. Karl Barth had some novel twists on the verses. There are Islamic and Christian, as well as Jewish sources on these verses, some of them canonical. The significance of the Creation mandate is very much debated, especially in recent times, population explosion and all that. Henri Blocher has written a neat, accessible commentary on Genesis, called In the Beginning. There's a fair bit of feminist attention as well.
The probability of original research on Genesis 1 would have to be pretty low, POV is more what I'd be worried about were I someone unfamiliar with the material. That's why I stuck to mainly providing the grammar, which is objective, and used quantifiers for the significance.
The section is unfinished. Genesis 2, with the rib material, is where the action starts. There are half a dozen major issues that come up there. Does it contradict Genesis 1? Is it sexist? Do they have sex before or after chapter 3? The first question is happily irrelevant in this article, but the other two are definitely gender issues. Genesis 2 is the basis of patriarchy in the Christian canon (see any mainstream or feminist commentary). It is also the basis of monogamy, the sinfulness of divorce, abstinence prior to marriage. As you can imagine, it's unlikely these views are not covered in rather a lot of literature. NPOV is the thing to watch, I would think, rather than OR.
What does the text tell the reader to do so far? What does it say is true? If it says what I want it to say, it only describes language, according to standard Biblical Hebrew sourcebooks, and according to 3,000 years or so of commentary. I wish it was original, then I could publish it. ;)
I'm not sure I really understand your "arguing for interpretations of scriptures". There's no argument and no interpretation in the section, but given that the Bible was written to be clear, it's not surprising that most sections have had lakes of ink spilled over them, without leading to much diversity. There are difficult parts, and there are controversial parts; sadly, imo, the latter get far more attention. Alastair Haines (talk) 16:41, 30 May 2008 (UTC)