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!
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