Religion Interview Assignment

I interviewed my mom, Catherine Farrar, for the religion interview assignment. My mom was raised Catholic, but stopped attending church in college and never looked back. She is a feminist, and the Catholic Church is simply not conducive to feminist beliefs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s piece, “The Introduction to The Women’s Bible” seemed to mirror my mom’s stance on the issue; the Bible was written by men, for men, with the goal of achieving power over others. Clearly, the Bible does not favor women, and this is true for many religious texts. Many feminist women feel like organized religions do not represent their best interests, some religions even promote the oppression of women, throughout the interview process it became evident that my mom felt this way as well. My mom is a white, upper middle class, 49-year-old woman with a bachelor’s degree in education from LSU. She is currently a fifth-grade teacher at a private school. She is not involved with an organized religion though she says she is open to the idea of the existence of god. Despite her belief that god might exist, she lists her religion as “None.” She does not attend church because she feels that it is boring. Because she does not attend

More and more women are waking up to this systematic sexism in religion and are pulling away from the Church in protest. Women are realizing that belonging to one of many organized religions that continue to cite books written thousands of years ago to rationalize treatment of woman is definitely not in their best interests. Even allowing others to defend their actions based on the Bible as the “word of god” is counterproductive to the feminist movement. My mom agrees with Stanton, feminism cannot progress while we allow the Bible to make the rules about modern day