Posted on 08/25/2008 10:36:39 AM PDT by NYer
The report claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their congregations over the past two decades because they feel the church is not relevant to their lives.
It says that instead young women are becoming attracted to the pagan religion Wicca, where females play a central role, which has grown in popularity after being featured positively in films, TV shows and books.
The study comes amid ongoing controversy over the role of women in all Christian denominations. Last month its governing body voted to allow women to become bishops for the first time, having admitted them to the priesthood in 1994, but traditionalist bishops have warned that hundreds of clergy and parishes will leave if the move goes ahead as planned.
The report's author, Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby, said: "In short, women are abandoning the church.
"Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
"Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.
"Women's ordination, as priests and now bishops, has dominated debate and headlines – but while looking at women in the pulpit we have taken our eyes off the pews, where a shift with more consequences for the church's survival is underway."
Her research, published in a new book called Women and Religion in the West, cites an English Church Census which found more than a million women worshippers have left churches since 1989.
Over the past decade, it claims, women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Wasn’t women’s ordination intended to solve this problem?!
BS.
Wicca is a made up religion that morphs into whatever the person wants.
People who follow Wicca don’t like rules and therefore LOVE Wicca (I have some in my family) I have a niece who joined Wicca because of Xena Warrior princess. I kid you not.
And honestly, if one is joining a religion because of a TV SHOW! then, bye! You don’t have a bit of grounding in reality anyway.
If the goal is female empowerment, I don’t understand the need for the Wicca membership unless it’s really about female worship.
One of the truths from Buffy, they associated wicca with homosexuality.
You forgot bouncing..
In tight little outfits.
A quiz for anyone who thinks Buffy was promoting paganism...
Buffy almost always wore what religious symbol around her neck?
When Buffy died where did she go...until she was brought back?
A Vampire recoils when confronted with what religious symbol?
The evil that Buffy confronted in the form of a nexus of evil under her city was a portal to where?
(answers for those of you in Rio Linda: Buffy wore a cross. Buffy went to heaven when she died. A Vampire recoils from a cross. Buffy fought against creatures that came over across a portal from Hell.)
Touched by an Angel, Joan of Arcadia, Nothing Sacred...
The feminist agenda never ceases to amuse me. From believers to witches? Never believers in the first place. Nothing lost...
I know that people take classes to learn to speak Klingon.
I wonder if there is some Klingon or Vulcan church I can join?
/sarc
It is hard finding a good church these days. All of them are full of hypocrites so I quit going. I worship at my house where I am not interupted.
The only women leaving church for Wicca are the ones attending goofy churches like the Unitarian Universalist Church and the like. Meaning that they are ugly liberals anyway.
No — but if you’re in the UK, you can officially list your religion as “Jedi!”
May the schwartz be with you!
>>Touched by an Angel, Joan of Arcadia, Nothing Sacred<<
Come on seriously, you know that none of those are real, don’t you?
That’s the point. Buffy is make believe.
Is there a rule?
You could start one and fashion it after Scientology.
Maybe make Billions!
Did it ever occur to you that they (we?) are the ones who need it?
I was always partial to Eliza Dushku myself, something about those Albanian chicks.
>>A quiz for anyone who thinks Buffy was promoting paganism...<<
A quiz for those who think “Buffy” was promoting anything.
Who told “Buffy” to wear a religious symbol around her neck.
(a director)
Who made “Buffy” die ect.?
(a writer)
Does one know that Vampires are not real?
(maybe a trick question)
Who kept “Buffy” on the air so she could confront evil, yadda, yadda, yadda?
(the sponsors)
Let’s try again. It’s make believe. It doesn’t promote anything but money for the network and sponsors. Those going to Buffy’s religion are not based in reality.
Very well put.
Should we as Christians, even attempt to reach these people? Or is it just not worth the effort?
The point is that if Buffy can bring people to paganism, then there are Christian shows that would be able to bring people to Christianity.
But then for many people their first positive view of paganism is one of these shows, while they were likely raised with Christianity in the first place.
>>Should we as Christians, even attempt to reach these people? Or is it just not worth the effort?<<
If you’re asking my opinion, I think we should do two things.
1. Start teaching our own the difference between fake and real. Get the tvs out of the bedrooms and discuss. Kids are, too many times, left without reinforcement from parents on this issue.
Parent - “Do you like Zac Efron?”
Child - “I love him”
Parent - “So do very many other young girls. Let’s look at the boys around here. See Daddy? He is a good man”
I see many mothers calling tv and movie characters by the show names. The kids can’t fathom that a person is not their character. Even the blending of names “Zanessa” or “Oiley” dehumanized the people who play those characters.
Start early.
2. Now for those already lost, let them mature and they will see things differently. If you try to hit them now, in their little sex filled Wiccan world, they will rebel even further. (I know this for fact with my own niece, now back to Christianity)
And in the meantime, the hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world. We are breeding them away, anyway. Raise our children right. Be open to Life.
This is an “ecumenical” thread in the Religion Forum. Antagonism is not allowed.
Maybe. But society itself is letting children mature sexually and yet keeping them young in decision making. The girls that are going Wiccan are screaming for attention. We did the same thing, only it was in junior high, not in our late teens and twenties.
I did a stand up report in 9th grade where I took a little supermarket book “Everyday Spells” and spun a lifestyle out of it. At the end of the report, a boy asked me, “Are you a witch?”
I slyly looked at him and said, “Oh no, no, no.” as I grinned. I had begun wearing long black dresses and shawls before that. People thought I was. I was a stupid kid trying to have people pay attention in my new school.
I matured past that within a year.
The writer of Buffy didn't JUST want to make money, he wanted to write an engaging story that turned the “damsel in distress” paradigm of horror on its head; where the “damsel” is the one who the monsters are afraid of, a sub-theme of woman empowerment in a story of good against evil.
That being said, the actual story Buffy had her....
Wearing a cross just about always.
Going to heaven when she died, and being upset about being pulled back into life.
Using a cross to repel Vampires.
Fighting against the agents of Hell.
Lets see. Wears a cross. Fights against the agents of Hell. A Cross works against the agents of Hell. Yep; promotes Paganism...no doubt about it. What a laugh.
It's too bad you quit going. The Church has had hypocrites in it from the very first. Christ himself said it would be so (wheat and tares), so don't expect it to ever change.
And so instead of trying to figure out why everyone thinks the church is no longer relevant so they can address the problem, the church decides to blame a TV show that has been off the air for five years?
Instead of 'scientology' (the scientific study of science), I have discovered something called 'sophosphy' the knowledge of knowledge.
You may not know this, but one billion years ago all of the planets in the solar system were arranged in a duodecahedral pattern until the great warrior-philosopher Aristotilla the Hun ...
Oh, I'm sorry, you'll need to send me $1,000 for the rest of the story.
Seriously, folks...what IS the topic here?
Meh. It's tough to get worked up about Wicca. It's a harmless religion for chubby bi-sexual chicks who want to hang out naked in the woods.
If Christianity doesn't work for these women, so be it- better this than them becoming Muslims or something harmful.
no at all.
And even there, there you are!
I wasn't meaning to be antagonistic. I really wonder if/how much effort we should spend on people who turn to a religion because of a fantasy television show. It seems on the level of Star Wars fans listing their religion as "Jedi".
Now for those already lost, let them mature and they will see things differently. If you try to hit them now, in their little sex filled Wiccan world, they will rebel even further. (I know this for fact with my own niece, now back to Christianity)
This is exactly where I was going with the remark. Maybe we as Christians need to let some of these people grow up a little before engaging them. To accept religion from a fantasy tv show places their worldview so low as to be completely unexamined. People in the western world so rarely have their false beliefs challenged by reality that they live in a world dreamt up by movie and television writers. We saw what happened when 9/11 shook their worldview--they turned to churches in droves. The problem is that many didn't let that sink in.
Maybe it's time to stop all fictional/fantasy intake for Christians (I would probably include reality shows in that). Maybe going as far as not owning a television (or at least not owning one that receives a signal). That way, if someone got into the church for a short time, they would at least not immediately be taken back by a daily dose of fantasy.
No, my FRiend. I’m telling you that it is not real. It is fantasy, not real life. The characters are real people playing parts.
No one, absolutely no one, should base life decisions because they saw it on a tv.
Really, you do know that this is not real, right?
And btw, if you want to engage in a conversation, namecalling should be kept to a minimum. Anti-Capitalist is an insult.
That is when you are speaking to real people. Tv characters, may be different.
>>It’s a harmless religion for chubby bi-sexual chicks who want to hang out naked in the woods. <<
Some of those “harmless” Wiccans nearly burned down my house when my niece crossed them.
Right.
I am glad you consider it an insult to be anti-capitalist, but your post seemed rife with the notion that anything that made a profit couldn't have any other ennobling aspect.
**Wasn’t women’s ordination intended to solve this problem?!**
LOL! Jesting again, I see!
This is typical. Note that the issue is women not attending church. Sort of like the big “problem” of girls not succeeding in math 10-15 years ago.
So what about men not attending church? Go into a mainline Protestant church and take a look around you. What you’ll see more often than not are all the women. Men and children are as rare as hensteeth. What you’re looking at is a church that will disappear in a generation. If not sooner. But note that the concern here is not the nonexistent men and children, but the women who might be leaving.
Glad to see that you reduced the number of hypocrites going to church by one.
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