Susan Jacoby, in her recent article for The Humanist, quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton in contending that religion is detrimental not only to humanity in general but to women’s issues in particular.
You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman…What power is it that makes the Hindoo [sic] woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, “Thus saith the Lord,” of course he can do it.
Even a lifelong atheist like Jacoby can’t deny the good religion has done, but we’ve lost our edge. Christianity—at least in the West—is no longer the religion that elevates the marginalized or succors the oppressed.
I say we get to being incarnational, as the Church should.
Via XX factor.