God v the feminists

Cath Elliott, a left-wing feminist activist of a type that is now probably an endangered species, today offered CIF a passionate denunciation of religion as, basically, a tool of patriarchal oppression. God - always a "He", of course, despite recent attempts at gender inclusivity - offers the message that "life exists for men, while the best women can hope for is some kind of reward in the next one, as long as we do as we're told". She has "dabbled" in religion - in her mind, having once had a Rastafarian boyfriend counts as dabbling - but feminism always got in the way. Religion, says Elliott, is responsible for most of the ills that befall women, whether it's honour crimes, or inferior education, or AIDS. Nor is any of this likely to change. Invoking imagery from the prophecies of Isaiah, she concludes, "As the lion is never going to lie down with the lamb, so the church is never going to passively cede any control to women: it's simply not in their interest."

Elliott was responding to a bizarre article by Julie Burchill in which the former journalistic wild child announced that she was now a "Christian Zionist" and "Christian feminist" who believed "literally" in the "God of the Jews and the Protestants" (but not, it seems, the God of the Muslims). For her part, Elliott thinks that "Christian feminist" is an oxymoron, "on a par with compassionate conservative". (Actually, Cath, "compassionate conservative" isn't an oxymoron, it's a tautology. Rather like "champagne socialist".) Also on her mind was the debate on Sharia law instigated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. As she notes, giving official blessing to religious-based systems of law that discriminate against women may sound multicultural and "inclusive" - and thus liberal - but what it actually means is "one rule for us and another for our Muslim sisters."

This is an argument on the Left that, until recently, seemed to have been won by the multiculturalists, with feminists who dared to criticise the desire of some women to drape themselves in burqas risking the dreaded taunt of Islamophobia. Feminism, along with other forms of secularism, when subjected to the mental contortionism demanded by "liberal" ideology, turned out to be just another form of Western triumphalism and intellectual arrogance. If no culture was inherently superior to any other then how can modern European/American notions of female equality be imposed on "communities" who cleave to different value systems? Take the hijab, or even the burqa. Can such garments really be claimed to "oppress" women? Surely, proclaim the pro-Islam feminists, the opposite is the case: it is the desire of women to beautify themselves for male visual delectation that oppresses; the veil is a raiment of liberation.

I detect a few signs of a fightback. One was the recent (seemingly successful) campaign to save the Southall Black Sisters, a feminist activist group whose work among disadvantaged minority women dates back to the days when skin colour mattered more than religion as a source of identity. How long ago that now seems. In an article earlier this month for the New Statesman, SBS leader Pragna Patel faced the problem head on. The prevailing multi-faith approach, she complained, "institutionalises the undemocratic power of so called ‘moderate’ (authoritarian if not fundamentalist) religious leaders at all levels of society." As a result,

Civil society is actively encouraged to organise around exclusive religious identities, and religious bodies are encouraged to take over spaces once occupied by progressive secular groups and, indeed, by a secular welfare state. In the process, a complex web of social, political and cultural processes are reduced by both state and community leaders into purely religious values, while concepts of human rights, equality and discrimination are turned on their head.

It is in this context that Cath Elliott makes her attack on the inherent misogyny of religion. She's careful to point out flaws in Christianity first. But she goes on:

Christianity is and always has been antithetical to women's freedom and equality, but it's certainly not alone in this. Whether it's one of the world's major faiths or an off-the-wall cult, religion means one thing and one thing only for those women unfortunate enough to get caught up in it: oppression. It's the patriarchy made manifest, male-dominated, set up by men to protect and perpetuate their power.

Is it, though? Historically, religious power structures have been dominated by men. Traditionally, too, the image of God has been a male image. Theologians, of course, claim that God is pure spirit, beyond male and female; but it's difficult to read the Bible without getting the distinct impression that the Deity is a bloke. The Bible, indeed, is full of "patriarchal attitudes". Paul calls on women to obey their husbands, "for the husband is head of the wife"; the Book of Proverbs laments that a virtuous woman is a rarity, whose "price is far above rubies". Leviticus has some very strange things to say about menstruation. In the Koran, meanwhile, husbands are allowed to chastise (and probably beat) "disobedient" wives.

There are, of course, significant women in the Bible (though less than there are men): one thinks of both Marys, Rebecca and Rachel from Genesis, heroines like Ruth and Deborah. Harold Bloom even argued that the author of the earliest sections of the Bible might have been a woman, so prominent were they in the story. Yet the most memorable women in the Bible are villainesses, or portrayed as such, names that have come down as shorthands for female treacherousness or depravity: Jezebel, Delilah, Salome, above all Eve. Eve's "sin" kick-starts the entire soteriological machinery of Christianity: it was what Jesus was supposedly come to save us all from. As for Mary the Virgin, while her cult is sometimes held out as an example of Christianity's feminine dimension, she can equally seen as an impossible ideal, her virgin motherhood proof of the Church's horror of female sexuality.

If Christianity is bad, Islam would seem to be a whole lot worse. Apologists may point to rights of inheritance and divorce "given" to women by Mohammed (in fact, they often turn out to reflect the social norms of the society in which the prophet was born, as demonstrated by his independently wealthy first wife Khadija); but however progressive Islam might have seemed in the 7th century, those days are long gone. Women under Sharia law have inferior rights of inheritance and divorce; their testimony is worth less than that of a man; they can only marry with the permission of a male relative. Women under Islam are often kept in a condition of perpetual childhood. Islam also gives cover to patriarchal notions of family honour: arranged marriages, dress codes (in which women are identified as the instruments of male temptation), an obsession with virginity on marriage (female virginity, that is). Even the cruel practice of genital mutilation is given religious sanction.

But then most organised religions can be condemned in similar terms. Hinduism, despite its pantheon of powerful and sexually active goddesses, once promoted widow-burning and still treats widowed women with considerable cruelty. None of the Sikh gurus were female, for all that religion's claims to sexual equality. There's only one female Tibetan lama (and she's a Chinese puppet). Scientology forced poor Katie Holmes to give birth in silence.

And yet, if religion really is nothing more than a mechanism by which men oppress women, how does one account for the apparent fact (consistent in most surveys) that women are generally more religious than men. More women attend church every sunday; women are more likely to pray and to express belief in God. Men are less likely to be interested in religion, and considerably more likely to be atheists. These factors are more pronounced in western, post-Christian societies where faith is no longer required for social conformity, suggesting that whatever it is that religion offers people (solace, community, hope for an afterlife or direct spiritual experience) appeals to women more than it does men. Of course, we're talking of statistical averages rather than any particular individual.

Outside of the male-dominated priesthoods, it's women who traditionally passed on religious devotion within families and who often enforced communal religious norms. Women have collaborated with, indeed instigated, forced marriages and even honour killings; they have mutilated the genitalia of their own daughters; they have climbed willingly onto funeral pyres or denounced their neighbours as witches. Men have often been bystanders in the misogynistic oppression of women, by women, in the name of religion or morality. Feminists such as Cath Elliott also tend to ignore the obvious fact that many of the most vocal and passionate opponents of abortion are religiously motivated women.

It might be added that the moral requirements made by religions on their followers aren't necessarily sexist. There's nothing sexist about the requirement to love your neighbour, to be faithful to your spouse (while religions have often indulged the double standard, they do not, generally, proclaim it) or to pray for guidance to a higher power. Religion imposes duties on men to honour their wives and provide for their families; old-fashioned, patronising duties, perhaps, yet these were moral norms that served to mitigate the worst excesses of male dominance.

And while the preponderance of female churchgoers is a phenomenon of the modern West, female religiosity is certainly nothing new. It was women who sustained the early church and were the most enthusiastic followers of ancient mystery cults such as that of Isis. Throughout the centuries, many girls have been romantically attracted to the life of a nun. Indeed, notwithstanding its exclusively male hierarchy, the Christian church has for most of European history been the only institution (with the possible exception of the brothel) that offered women independence, education, even power. A religious woman could be a scholar, a mystic, a poet, a businesswoman, the absolute ruler (subject only to the Pope) of her order, potentially a saint. A secular woman, unless a queen, could only be a wife.

It would be possible, indeed, to turn Elliot's whole argument upside-down and suggest that exclusively male priesthoods originated as a mechanism for preserving male dominance in an arena that would otherwise have been dominated by women. Something that, given the role of religion in organising society and policing moral norms, could hardly be allowed in a male-dominated culture. Since the opening of the Anglican priesthood to women, numbers of female ordinations have outstripped male; in another few decades the Church of England will probably have become as female dominated as nursing.

Then there's Islam. In its externals, Islam is more clearly male-orientated than any other major religion. It segregates the sexes, and encourages women to conceal their bodies, hair and sometimes even faces for reasons of "modesty". As we have seen, Sharia discriminates in important respects against women. Women are barred from many mosques: in others, they are relegated to peripheral areas or forced to sit behind a curtain - all to prevent their sexuality from polluting the minds of the men present. Young Muslim males openly practise a sexual double standard, demanding virginity from prospective wives while themselves sleeping around. Yet among British converts to Islam, women outnumber men two to one. And, often to their families' horror and shame, they not only submit to wearing the hijab but become vocal and enthusiastic proponents.

Islam often strikes unbelievers as being like other religions, only more so. And what appeals to some women particularly about Islam, it seems to me, may be something inherent in many forms of worship. The word Islam, we're often told, means "submission". An alternative translation is "peace". Perhaps the Latin pax carries a similar tension: the Pax Romana was, after all, the outcome of imperial conquest. Islam is the psychological relief you feel when you hand over responsibility for your life to a higher power. It's the comfortable feeling that comes when someone else is in control.

What I'm suggesting here is that many women have a psychological need to be dominated - even in some cases abused - and that it is this need, above all, that religion supplies. God is the ultimate alpha male, the wise, loving father and strong protector. Religion answers the evolutionary need for security, but also darker urges too. Just as female mosochists outnumber their male equivalents, and women often stay with abusive partners, so even a religion that patronises, marginalises and oppresses women will answer their deeply-felt needs. This is an aspect of female psychology that feminists like Cath Elliott do not understand; or if they do understand, they hate, and because they condemn it they put it all down to social conditioning or immemorial male oppression. Perhaps they are simply disappointed in their God-fearing sisters. Perhaps they are right to be. But in most cases, and certainly in modern Britain, it is not men who are using religion to oppress women. On the contrary, in some cases women who can't find male oppressors are turning instead to God.

I don't think Julie Burchill herself belongs to that category, however. Her new-found Anglican religiosity seems more closely connected with her dislike of Islam or what she likes to call "Roman Catholickism" than a hankering after spirituality. Her desire to be contrarian and politically incorrect makes her sneer at atheists who want to be on "the winning side". She may think that she needs God; she undoubtedly thinks that God needs Julie Burchill.