4a
Opinion
Thursday, March 1, 2001
For comments, contact Chris Borniger or Nathan Willis at 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Perspective
Christianity fails to stay relevant in modern times
This semester finds me bright-eyed in Smith Hall every Tuesday and Thursday for Living Religions of the East and a women's studies course, From Goddesses to Witches. As I ponder the religions and culture of other times and places, I turn with scrutiny to Christianity.
I've been straddling the line between feminist, independent-thinking college student and born-and-raised Christian for years. This semester, my professors are doing a superb job of continuing to fuel the fire of my internal conflict.
While studying various
While studying various religious traditions, I have realized that religions echo society and culture. Society years for a belief system that mirrors its established priorities and customs. Through time, religion and society become mutually influential. It becomes difficult to discern whether society was the original image or just the reflection of religion.
Sheri Martin
columnist
opinion@kansan.com
This happens because the society no longer has a fresh effect on the religion; because of their desire for tradition, humans often cling to a religious structure long after it becomes outdated in modern society.
The male-dominant culture during and before the development of Christianity produced a male savior and mostly male authorities. Christianity originates from a culture that suppressed female deities and wiped out traditions of goddess worship — goddesses most often from pantheistic traditions. It is based on a single male entity and includes a moral foundation that men created. Women in the Bible reflect the gender roles they played in society; they reflect the absolutist madonna whose dichotomy that pervaded the times.
Although it is lovely to share a tradition with your ancestors and share in the community of a popular religion, it also hinders social change to cling to a belief system that represents antiquated (and for many, offensive) ideals.
But the Bible contains many good morals, you say. Yes, but it also contains many inconsistencies within those morals and often presents a morality that seems perverted. Sex is dirty, women who have sex are dirty, homosexuals are punished through God's wrath, and we all enter the world with the mark of sin thanks to the prototype woman Eve.
in biblical times, childbirth often brought death for the mother. And women were physically disadvantaged because of the great physical burden of delivering multiple children. Biological differences between the sexes were exploited in biblical society.
Other gender differences were exploited in societal traditions, such as inheritance and property rights. Regardless, knowing that fertility in the past was much more difficult to control and predict, we can understand at least why sex was mysterious and stigmatized
However, understanding a biblical perspective and agreeing with it can be polar opposites.
Times change and will continue to change. The Bible is limited in scope, but we aren't limited to that time period anymore. Why should women — or anyone, for that matter — continue to follow traditions in which they had a submissive, powerless role? Do former slaves venerate the tradition in which they were enslaved?
I am superimposed on a past and future that seem like black and white justuptosed. If I reject Christianity, do I stop celebrating holidays and participating in marriage and funeral ceremonies? I would find that very difficult.
I think that the Bible fails half of the population. Mary, the most important female figure of Christianity, portrays the ideal woman as a virgin and the vessel of the all-important savior. I know she is not the ideal woman figure for me.
I still have one foot in Christian tradition, one foot in my own theology. This isn't an easy path because our society, as well as my life, is based in Christianity.
Maybe I will never find a tradition in which I find spiritual comfort. Maybe I will continue my current shaken-not-stirred mix of transcendental philosophy in which I find morals and truth in art, books, people and music — and my selective rejection of Christian tradition.
Martin is a Topena senior in creative writing and Italian.
Bruno Pieroni/KANSAN
Kansan report card
Pass:
Jennifer Chaffee. KU student running for city commission passes primaries, advances to general election. Assuming students don't mistake it for Student Senate elections, they might actually show up to vote for her.
**KU's antivirus guardian.** Computer server will combat e-mail viruses once Exchange system is in place. Now can we get a server that filters messages beginning with "Timmy is sick and needs your help."
- Legal Services for Students. Need tax help? Call these guys. They do it for free. Need online enrollment? Call another university.
Fail:
Blood donation restrictions. FDA won't allow sexually active gay men to give blood. If you've had sex with a prostitute, however, you only have to wait a year. What? No restrictions on left-handed people?
Disney Direct Marketing. Local catalog company and major employer of KU students closes down. "Whistle While You Work." no more. "Be Our Guest" in the unemployment line.
Bush's budget speech. "Some say my tax plan is too big. Others say it is too small. I respectfully disagree. This tax cut is just right." Thanks for that stunning insight, President Goldlocks.
Perspective
National missile defense won't make world safer
Since George W. Bush became president last month, he has moved quickly to implement many of the policies that he touted during his run for the White House.Most recently, he has begun a push for a national missile defense system to protect us from intercontinental nuclear missiles.
I wonder exactly what country Bush imagines as a nuclear threat to the United States. Foreign relations with Russia have improved steadily from Gorbachev's era through Putin's.
Military experts no longer place the threat of nuclear attack on Russia but on so-called rouge state. A Feb. 20 story by the Associated Press named North Korea as a possible threat, yet this does not recognize how drastically North Korea's politics have pacified in recent months. A Korean reunification now seems inevitable.
Conventional alternatives bring Iraq to mind, despite the likelihood that it couldn't manage any mili-mil
ary operation while under continued U.S. surveillance. Or Bush might worry about Osama bin Laden, the Arab bogeyman high on the U.S.'s list of the world's most dangerous people. But his terrorist acts also attract the perpetual attention of the U.S. military. A missile defense system makes no sense because the U.S. keeps constant watch over the enemies it fears.
Matthew Reeck
guest columnist
opinion@kansan.com
So perhaps the argument behind the proposal is not so specific but relies upon a general threat of terrorism. Politicians like to use the word "terrorism" to generate fear. We like to think that our country, alone in the world, should remain immune from terrorism. We think of terrorists as foreigners. By a paranoid inverted logic, we tend to suspect those who look foreign might well be terrorists — the prejudice behind police profiling of Arab Americans. Ironically, the most deadly act of terrorism in our history came at the
hands of Timothy McVeigh, a Midwesterner.
We ought to consider why (allowing the threat to be credible) we have so angered parts of the world as to require protecting ourselves with a $30 to $60 billion network of military machinery
$30 to $60 million network of military machinery. The U.S. has a worldwide reputation for its economic prowess. Promoted by multinational companies based in the U.S., global capitalism has spread with great impartiality. Investigations into the labor policies of Nike and the Gap have revealed that U.S. companies exploit foreign workers — they build overseas factories in order to manufacture goods at fractions of the cost possible in the U.S. Perhaps if our government and companies were less interested in turning a dollar regardless of the human toll, regardless of the cost on human lives, we would inspire less ice.
Bush's promotion of a national missile defense system seems grounded in loose information. Anyone on the street can tell you the cause of racism — or of any bigotry, for that matter — lies in ignorance; when you bring two unfamiliar groups together, conflicts dissipate. I wonder how ignorance (a lack of knowledge, not necessarily stupidity) contributes to Bush's projects. I remember his disastrous performance on the impromptu foreign relations quiz during his campaign. A missile defense system necessarily requires a person to believe that people of different cultures have irreconcilable differences held in check only through military intimidation. This perspective seems shortsighted, at best.
The recent trend toward globalization means that all countries are reliant on one another's economic well-being for their own. A government attacking the United States would be sabotaging itself. A more humane approach to reducing anti-American sentiment in the world would be for U.S. businesses abroad to treat their employees with greater care and for U.S. companies to curtail their global expansion.
Both scenarios would require U.S. consumers to pay more — $120 for a pair of Gap jeans purchased locally instead of $60 billion for a network of national military hardware.
Reeck is a Manhattan graduate student in English.
Editorial Rec center planners need student input
An upcoming meeting will allow students a chance to shape the new facility.
A new recreation center at the University of Kansas is slated to open in the fall of 2002. Students should voice their opinions to ensure the center will reflect their needs.
There is a lot of room for student input, and the Recreation Center Program Committee wants it. Students should attend the committee's next meeting Monday, March 12 at the Frontier Room in the Burge Union.
In a referendum two years ago, students voted overwhelmingly in favor of paying several dollars more in fees per semester to finance a new recreation center. Part of the reason for this is that Robinson Center no longer meets students' needs — it's open too few hours each day and lacks space and equipment for the students and faculty members who want to exercise there.
In a university setting, many support systems aid the development of each student, both academically and otherwise. Some campus organizations combine social events with a specific cause. Other facilities such as the libraries and computer centers aid students academically.
Entertainment and health are equally essential elements of student life. A recreation center is one more way for students to make their experience at the University the best possible.
The recreation center, which will be built south of Watkins Memorial Health Center, is set to include a track, gymnasium, aerobics/martial arts area, two racquetball courts, two outdoor basketball and volleyball courts, a climbing wall, spaces for sports clubs, a multimedia lecture room, a conference room and a food court.
We students are the reason the center will be built. It's our money that will finance its construction, so it's our investment. Students should think about what they want to see at the new center and voice their opinions at the committee's meeting to influence the final plans.
More information can be found at www.ukans.edu/~recserv.
Katherine Marchin for the editorial board
free all for 084-0568
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. The Kansan reserves the right to edit submissions, and not all of them will be published. Slanderous statements will not be printed. For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
I'd just like to say that Ben Tatar's article on student basketball seats is great. I agree with him, and let's all be loud during the Missouri game and prove we deserve better seats.
I've known Buck Rowland for years, but it was really cool to see the article in the Kansan about him. Buck's my hero.
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I just wanted to say thanks to the three guys who helped me push my stuck van from the snow Tuesday night.
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To the person who made the comment about how not every race having their own month. The reason why we have a Black History Month is because Black people have a history of being discriminated against.
Maybe if people would quit calling KU info to find out answers to silly questions, I could actually find the answers to serious questions.
It really disappoints me that Facilities Operations on campus will clean regular roads, but they won't clean up the dormitory parking lots and Memorial Drive.
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How can Matt Cox bring an end to the abortion debate when he can't even clearly articulate the pro-choice stance? Even if you disagree with an argument, you should fully comprehend it before you criticize it.
The Free for All has taught me that KU students are far more sexist and racist than I ever believed.
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I'm a graduate teaching assistant, and I just want to say that my 3:30 Thursday discussion section rocks. I love you guys.
Safeeride is a very good service for students. Safeeride rocks.
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Jesus loves you because he died for you, so what do you say we live our lives for him?
Hemp is the answer to many of today's economic and environmental problems. Please support the legalization and cultivation of it in the U.S.
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Football players suck because they cut in the line at Mrs. E's, and that's not fair.
Why can't classes be canceled campuswide? Either you show up and half the class couldn't drive in or the teacher calls and cancels class. It doesn't make any sense.
Is it OK for your anthropology teacher to tell you have a learning disability? I don't think so.
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