I just read the NYT article about the stained glass ceiling for women in the church, and I was especially struck by this comment:

…in the marketplace of ideas and values, men matter most and…by definition, women have to take a back seat…

Why do men matter most in the marketplace of ideas?

To offer some background on how I think about this question - my Dad was an ordained minister, and my Mom worked for the church for most of her working career. I know first hand what a thankless struggle it can be to dedicate your life to serving the church.

One of my strongest memories of my father relates to how proud he was to serve as a substitute minister for the “black church” in town. Now that I’m older and the post-civil-rights era has grown with me, I find myself  wondering why there wasn’t a black minister available. And for that matter, I don’t recall ever seeing a black minister substitute at any of the “white” churches in town.

The older I get, the more I’m amazed by my father’s accomplishments. He was the son of a North Carolina farmer, but to study theology he learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, and a little French. He had a second degree in music and later in life he taught computer science at a local community college.

My own interests are just as wide-ranging. I’m incurably addicted to ancient history and culture, particularly religion and philosophy. I don’t even consider money when it comes to making life decisions, and I care deeply about social justice. It seems like I was cut out to follow in my father’s footsteps.

However, I never considered studying theology or pursuing a career in the church. Why not?

I think, like many women, I weeded myself out early because I couldn’t envision myself in the role, and therefore I couldn’t imagine anyone else casting me in that role either. On the stage of cultural stereotypes, I was not a “good fit.”

What is that role that so many men strive for, and so many women dismiss for themselves? It’s the role of the spiritual authority.

One of the dominant themes of world history is the perpetual effort of ambitious empires to convert their neighbors. Why was conversion so important? Shared criteria for truth and justice fostered cultural stability and a sense of common interest. But, more importantly, empire was the center of spiritual authority. The agent’s of official religion were not only the “thought leaders” of their time, they had the right of reprimand. They rode in judgment over the spiritual outlook and behavior of others. The great religions of the Book were also the great religions of the Bureaucracy. The primary instrument of spiritual authority is rankism, which is why the history of all churches is rife with every kind of corruption.

While I didn’t study theology, I did get a taste of spiritual authority as a form of masculinity while I was in graduate school. While I try not to make too many generalizations about gender, it did seem to me that men were attracted to forms of analysis that enabled them to transcend all arguments and particularist “trivia.” They equated transcendant rhetoric with spiritual authority (which seems to be for men an adequate substitute for physical/material power). In some classes, I could swear I could hear the clash as the male students projected frenetic transcend, transcend, transcend mindwaves at each other.

This is the secret driving force behind a lot of the petty politics of academia. In the battle for spiritual authority, There Can Be Only One. No matter how many theories academics spout about race, sex, age, and disability - any divergence from the (white male) stereotype of spiritual authority means that in the end you will be defering to those transcend guys.

The rankism that occurs in the workplace is crude in comparison, but it seems more important because people’s livelihoods are at stake. To an unemployed single mother, academic wars seem as irrelevant and stupid as a virtual melee in World of Warcraft or a wheel war on Wikipedia. However, that’s where the all important positions of spiritual authority are decided. The people with spiritual authority require deference, tell everyone else what to do, and command astronomical consulting fees.

Lately, PR folk have been fond of the idea that markets are conversations. This implies a level playing field where people negotiate as equals and make fair exchanges. However, the spiritual authority hijacks the market. The spiritual authority stands on a platform and preaches to the masses. Spiritual authority is one (man’s) vision imposed on all others, winning pre-eminence through guile, mass mobilization. and acts of verbal violence. The spiritual authority dictates reality, recording their vision on the world as if people were blank tapes. Perhaps spiritual authority does win in the marketplace of ideas and values, but perhaps we should ask ourselves why there should be a marketplace at all. And if there is a market, doesn’t a diverse world imply niche markets of ideas instead of some beady-eyed guy shouting transcend, transcend, transcend!

My new favorite quote is by Blake:

…he would do good to others must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the Hypocrite and the Scoundrel.

I know it’s a cliche to say that women a more immanent and relational than men - and I’m the first one to chalk this up to nurture rather than nature. However, I think this is, for the time being, the  basic truth of the Stained Glass Ceiling. Women don’t want to be spiritual authorities. They don’t see themselves as spiritual authorities. Women want to help people, and it doesn’t really help people to transcend over them or subject them to your vision. At some point we, as a community of citizens, have to decide whether we want to devote our resources to promoting a few spiritual authorities or cultivating every member of the human community as a worthwhile individual, each with the potential for boundless contribution.

I didn’t think it was possible for the U.S. cultural bar to sink any lower after Abu Ghraib. Silly me - apparently the U.S. is working without a net when it comes to sheer barbarism. Now we have ministers, traditional leaders of our local communities, beating children for reporting sex abuse. As the article points out, this girl has been betrayed several times over and has no reason left to trust adults. Even more sad, U.S. society doesn’t compensate for this sort of experience: for the rest of her life she will be punished for having “baggage” and a distrustful attitude.

Perhaps this is all part and parcel of a civic culture that busies itself in manipulating appearances to prevent morale issues instead of striving for a more just society.

Today I was checking out the asian sculpture at the wonderful Ring of Fire Imports in Berkeley, and it reminded me that I once had a brush with what may be a bodhisattva. A few years ago I moved to a new place. Moving is especially difficult for me: I was working sporadically as a temp, I had no savings, I had no family and few friends in the area, and I don’t drive. After making some elaborate arrangements for exchange of services, I put together a group of friends who were supposed to help me move. Since helping someone move is one of the top ten most onerous duties of friendship, everyone who had agreed to help found an excuse to back out. Since someone else was supposed to be moving into my old place that week, I had no idea what to do.

Then a miracle happened. Another temp that I barely knew, heard me calling my friends and begging for help - and out of nowhere, he volunteered to help me. He had a car, and he spent a day doing a lot of heavy lifting and making multiple trips. I asked him what motivated him to help a stranger this way when all my supposed friends had ducked out of it. He explained that he was a Buddhist, and his religious beliefs guided him to act selflessly and reach out to anyone who needed his help.

After I met this person, I read a bit about Buddhism, and one of the things I learned is that the role of the Bodhisattva is to help other people reach enlightenment. The person who helped me move certainly played that role for me. To this day when I’m faced with a difficult ethical question, I ask myself what this guy would do. He’s the person who represents what it means to Do the Right Thing in my mind.

I’m bringing up this story because this is one model for building a dignitarian society. Rankism often results from people putting their own convenience before anything else and excluding the people who most need their help. The Bodhisattva seeks out those who need help and embraces the inconvenient as an opportunity for selflessness. Look for the potential Bodhisattvas around you and recognize that they are the leaders in creating a dignitarian way of life.

Recently the U.S. has been facing significant challenges to one of the fundamental principles of our Constitution, the separation of church and state. As pundits and litigators rattle swords over beachhead issues like prayer in schools and Intelligent Design, it’s edifying to consider the logical outcome of theocracy. Afghanistan has provided a timely demonstration in the form of a Christian convert that faced the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. While the Afghan court system cheated the question by tossing the case on a technicality, Muslim religious leaders prayed for the death penalty and threatened to whip up the anger of the people to tear the man who dared to turn away from their god “to pieces”.

Because Afghanistan is a theocracy, their government may not be able to adhere to their agreement to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can’t let all converts off on a technicality. Perhaps they will try a variation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell - though Afghan policymakers should take a hard look at how well that’s working for the U.S. armed forces first. Or should the U.S. offer amnesty for all?.

Given the collapse of the Human Rights Commission and the failure of the U.S. to incorporate Universal Declaration into its domestic legal system (not to mention our willingness to resort to torture), there may be no genuine defenders of freedom of conscience left. It may be only a matter of years before we see people on trial for their religion in the U.S., complete with lynchings, witch burnings, and crucifixions. It’s time to call on the U.S. government to restore the principle of separation of church and state in our own country, and lead by example in order to promote the wisdom of freedom of conscience throughout the world.

According to Benjamin Farrington’s Greek Science, the rankist practices of the empires of the ancient world blocked the development of science until the Greeks came along. To manage colossal irrigation and temple-building projects, the old empires fostered superstition. The various and sundry god-kings sought to “accustom the masses to obeying any command that was given to them by their superiors…[because] he could rely on those who displayed their piety to be equally law-abiding in every other particular.”

In the free-wheeling merchant states of presocratic Greece, on the other hand, relatively independent men were encouraged to study industrial techniques and speculate on the way things work. Later as the Greeks came to rely on slaves and the upper classes distanced themselves from manual labor, the spirit of scientific inquiry declined.

Hopefully people will keep the origins of Western civilization in mind as political and religious interests maneuver to redefine science.

The settlement of the Santa Barbara Franciscan sexual abuse case brings up the idea of restorative justice. The underlying issue of many high profile court cases is that there’s no amount of money that would render justice. Moreover, the problem has been exacerbated by lawyers functioning in gameplan mentality who advise their clients to make no apologies and to smear and abuse the victim further just so they can get away with the initial wrongdoing. If the victim makes it through the years of litigation, they may only receive some sort of compensation for the complaint - there’s no compensation for the burden and trauma of the litigation itself.

The court system in the U.S. has been broken for a long time. While Supreme Court Justices have the standing to make threats to their job and well-being pubic knowledge, it’s easy to forget that regular people who are abused by bad judges have no voice. Unfortunately, the politicians who should be championing their constituents usually only go after judges when it serves their political agenda.

For all the other problems that plague the Catholic hierarchy, I think they’re on the right track by promoting the idea of restorative justice. It’s an important first step to talk about justice and try to figure out what it looks like in this day and age. Until we start talking about justice and how it applies equally to every citizen, the court system will remain in the hands of the game-players and the politicians, and the most vulnerable people in our society will continue to suffer in a world outside justice, where anything can be done to them at any time.

The governor of South Dakota has signed a bill to ban abortion. Somehow religious beliefs have managed to hijack the government, twisting the law so it can be used against the Constitution, against the poor, and against the rights of women as free individuals. Here’s the full text of the Rapist’s Rights Bill.

One obvious subject for a blog that focuses on rankism is the ongoing attempts of fundamentalists to subtract human rights from a whole category of people - those who profess to be (or are perceived to be) gay. However, I’m just going to redirect people to the Intrepid Liberal Journal, which got there first last week. The only thing I have to add is that identifying a stable social structure with the traditions of a particular theology is the epitome of religious rankism. The only people who push for theocracy are the ones who envision that they themselves will benefit from it. Beware the people who actively seek a pretext to rule over others.

For over 50 years, the St. Anthony’s Foundation of San Franciso has reached out to the hungry and the homeless, providing clothing, housing, eldercare, medical services, and “healing of the spirit” to people of all faiths. Today St. Anthony’s has expanded its mission to advocate for the most vulnerable members of the community and promote public policies to change the structural causes of poverty. St. Anthony’s actively leads the effort by providing adult education and job training. We at Breaking Ranks salute this energetic and effective effort to uphold human dignity and do good in the world.

When a minister uses his spiritual leadership of the community to influence political debate, is this an abuse of rank?