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12:14 AM - Monday, May. 22, 2006
Deep Thoughts by Jessica Nichole

I wanted to write something deep for awhile now, and this is my chance to do it. I can't place it all on one page so I am breaking it up by section. Hopefully what I have written will not only be educational but thought provoking.


Seven years ago I experienced a life changing situation. Not only did this experience affect me physically, it affected me mentally, emotionally and spiritually. For the first time in my life I was lost. I did not know who I was anymore, and I was not sure if I would ever find myself again. The idea of being gone forever frightened me. In order to keep myself from slipping away completely, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I observed random people, read different self-help books, and took various classes about the study of human behavior. In doing so, I hoped to figure out the answers to all of the questions that were forcing me from living.

In the process, I learned a great deal about myself. I also learned a great deal about people and society. This led me to focus on inter-connecting modern day society to history. As I did this, my interests began to lean toward studying the subjugation of women throughout time, and how religion tied into their inferior status. This is what I have learned so far:

Let me first define religion. First of all, it is common sense that new forms of religion grow out of old forms; and that with the disappearance of religion, we see the evolution of society. It is also known that all religions are similar because people act in accordance to their beliefs. Therefore, the following definition is based off the premise of every religion. Souls, supernatural beings, and supernatural forces exist. Certain minimal categories of behaviors are always found in association with one another, and, which are, the substance of religion. It is a set of rituals rationalized by myth that mobilizes supernatural powers to manipulate natural forces in the natural world. What does this mean in laymans terms? It basically means that religion, world wide, constitutes an ancient philosophy of which belief is the theory and worship is the practice.

Now lets move on to the interesting stuff.

At first I couldn't believe how much religion has impacted the social structure of modern day America, especially since the United States is a country founded on the freedom of religion. The nation is also a cultural melting pot housing every kind of religious sector one can think of. However, even though The Constitution guarantees all citizens of the U.S. the freedom to practice their own personal set of beliefs, the history of America has been impacted, and is still being greatly impacted, by the beliefs set forth by Christianity.

How is this so? When the settlers first started coming over from Europe, they were fleeing to escape religious persecution. These were the people who would help create America, and they did so by planting the roots of religion into American law. Our Founding Fathers who laid down the ground work for our society did this by adopting English Common Law, whose laws I can trace back as far as 757 AD when Offa took control of the throne. From 757 AD, the English Monarch was strongly influenced by the papacy of Rome, influencing the later kings and queens to put laws into effect that centralized around some form of Christian belief.

Christianity, itself, was history's first great church organization. Doctrines were designed and written to answer theological questions and to bestow rules of conduct for everyday life. These laws and customs were shaped by St. Augustine and his fellow theologians. Most of these were influenced by the church's view of women so that the majority of the laws applied to their subordination.

In the next section, I will talk about some of the church's past laws and how they enforced women to be inferior to men.

 

 

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