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Unhealthy Motivations Cause Unhealthy Responses

Barring women as leaders in church may be bad for their health, new study finds

Past studies have shown participating in religious services and in the life of a religious community can be good for your health.

You know what’s bad for a woman’s mental and physical health? Jealousy, envy, narcissism, misandry, and victimhood. These are all really bad for women. They lead to an enormous amount of stress and unhappiness which can manifest physically. Going to church, and better yet, Mass, should be a harbor for the soul, yet some are so caught up in themselves they never get the benefits. Of course, this isn’t limited to women but since this is the focus of the article, that is where I will go.

(RNS) — Going to church is generally touted as good for the soul.

But there is also evidence church attendance can be good for your health — unless, that is, you are a woman at a church that bars women from preaching or other leadership roles.

A new study published in the American Sociological Review has found that women who attend churches with such restrictions report worse health than those who attend churches with women in leadership roles.

People really need to stop and ask themselves why they are going to church. Is their motivation to be in the limelight, or is it to worship God? Unhealthy motivations are going to cause unhealthy responses.

The study suggests sexism can counter some of the health benefits associated with religion, said co-author Patricia Homan, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University.

“Women who attend sexist congregations have the same health as those who do not attend religious services at all, and have worse health than women who attend inclusive churches,” said Homan.

And there you go. Churches that think service at the altar is reserved to men are somehow sexist. Makes about as much sense as men having hurt feelings because the role of motherhood is reserved to women. (And no, I’m not going to entertain the illness of those who believe men can give birth too. Go “explore that theory” elsewhere.) Envy is antithetical to Christianity. Those churches willing to promote it are, well, evil.

A number of past studies have shown that taking part in religious services and belonging to a religious community can be associated with better health outcomes. Regular worship attenders are less likely to smoke, may be less likely to use drugs and may live longer than those who don’t attend services.

That health effect of religion appears to be tied to active participation in a church. Those who have religious beliefs but don’t attend can report poorer health outcomes. (Atheists, by contrast, also seem to report better health.)

All those numerous studies and yet not one link to any of them.

Gender discrimination, on the other hand, can be associated with poorer health outcomes. In a previous study, Homan looked at the effects of what she called “structural sexism” at the state level. She found that states that had fewer women political leaders, larger gaps in wages and workplace participation between women and men, and a larger percentage of conservative Christians had higher levels of chronic health issues.

Holy cow! Can we lump enough things together to make our numbers work out so that Christianity is bad? LOL!

For this new study, Homan and her co-author, Amy Burdette, a professor of sociology at Florida State, wanted to see if sexism counters the health benefits of religion. To do this, they drew from two nationally representative sources of data: the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study.

The GSS collects data about religion, gender, marital status and health, among other factors. The National Congregations Study collects data about local congregations, including data on the roles women are allowed to play in those churches.

The samples collected by the two studies are linked. In 2006, 2012 and 2018, the GSS collected data about how often respondents attended religious services, then asked attenders to identify their specific congregation. That data was used to create a nationally representative list of congregations for the NCS.

Not that this is a surprise to you, but I couldn’t care less about these types of studies. First of all, they don’t understand the Catholic faith by a long shot, nor a bunch of Protestant denominations. What they reduce to “sexism” is the nature of women and men as God designed them. It also could be that something they consider sexist is merely something that falls to the nature of the vocation. Lumping, lumping, lumping. The only thing that matters is if a church somehow sees women as inferior or if they see them as the wrong matter for the sacrament. Two wildly different things than secular people understand.

The researchers looked at three different measures of sexism, using four questions included in the 2006 and 2012 waves of NCS: Could women teach a co-ed class, could they preach at the main worship service, could they serve on the governing board of the church, and could they be the main leader? Those questions were used to sort into what the researchers called either “sexist” or “inclusive” congregations.

So they set out to find “sexism” and, as you can see below, they also got to define it. The problem is, we don’t all define it the same way.

Churches that banned women as the main leader (50%) were labeled as sexist. So were congregations that only allowed men on the governing board (14%). Homan and Burdette also looked at all four questions — and rated congregations on how many restrictions on women were in place. Those with more than two limits on women were labeled as sexist.

Let me ask you this, is a church where women choose to go and love sexist? I mean, don’t you think that maybe women should have a say in this? For heaven’s sake, other than Catholics, where we have no women priests, people are pretty much free to open the phonebook and pick out a church of their liking. If running the show is more important to them, they should move on. It’s a tad bit silly to say you’re there for Christ when it’s really all about you. I missed all those times when female followers of Christ had poor health because they didn’t have the same vocation as the 12 apostles. Sadly, however, there are those completely self-centered people who think that churches and their creeds, disciplines, beliefs, etc., need to revolve around them instead of God. That is a cancer as we can see in our own Catholic church in Germany.

What these “researchers” have really shown is that the definition of sexism in a church is flawed right from the start. It’s their opinion and they’re trying to make the numbers fit that opinion.

They then matched churches in both the sexist and inclusive categories with health data about individuals who attended those churches from the GSS.

The GSS asked participants to rate their overall health using this question: “Would you say your own health, in general, is excellent, good, fair, or poor?”  Their answers were then rated on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being poor and 4 being excellent.

Women in inclusive churches had an average self-reported health score of 3.03. Women in sexist congregations had an average score of 2.79.  That difference is equivalent to a person having at least three years of additional education (which has been shown to impact health) or at least 15 years’ difference in age, said Homan.

Oh my gosh! Room for margin of error or other factors??? This is just plain stupid. Actually, it’s beyond stupid. Maybe women who attend “sexist” churches worry more about the salvation of their children than being large and in charge because HELL is all too real for them. Again, Stupidest. Study. Ever.

“We found that only women who attended inclusive congregations got that health benefit from religious participation,” Homan told Religion News Service. And the more restrictions there were on women’s participation in the life of a congregation, the worse the reported health outcomes were. There was no conclusive data showing whether or not sexism had any effect on men’s health in the study.”

So, let’s see. Women being in charge or women being on the board will somehow alleviate the stress of women and result in fewer health problems? I dunno. Maybe that’s not what they’re saying. Maybe “women being heard?” Seriously, if women being in charge of one more thing helps health, please let me know. I’ll volunteer for one more thing.

The role of women in churches has been the subject of a national debate over sexism in religious groups. Southern Baptist Bible teacher Beth Moore made national headlines after telling RNS she no longer identified with that denomination after years of controversy over sexism, abuse and racial divides in the church.”

So, now we’ve already wandered from health to narcissism.

Homan said she has a great deal of respect for Christians who hold so-called complementarian beliefs — the idea that men and women are equal in God’s eyes but have different roles in the church and at home. She grew up in a Southern Baptist family and attended complementarian churches for years as an adult and had a good experience.

Uh…. Apparently not so much.

The study also seemed to draw a line between complementarian beliefs and sexist structures in religious groups.

“Complementarianism provides a clear guide for the acceptable roles of men and women within gender-traditional religious groups, but the reality is more complicated. Rather than being simple-minded victims of patriarchy, numerous studies show that conservative religious women display a great deal of agency within church and home,” the authors wrote.

Homan said her research of sexism and health outcomes at the state level prompted her to follow up with the study in religion and health and she can’t deny what they found: Policies and practices that limit women’s participation can undermine the health benefits associated with church attendance.

These three paragraphs kind of show how ridiculous it is. It’s all over the map. Nice of them to at least acknowledge that belief of “complimentarianism” doesn’t make us “simple-minded victims of patriarchy.” What would we do without them telling us that? Regardless, there’s still an epic failure in showing causality.

“The full equal participation of women in church and society is important for the health and well-being of everyone,” Homan said.

Bahahaha! Again, much of a leap? Honestly, this is one of THE lamest conclusions based on an attempt at number crunching I’ve ever seen.  Shoudn’t Homan at least attempt answering the “why” if you are going to make simpleton statements like this? We’re just told to believe it has to do with sexism when it could very well have to do with what part of the country these so called sexist or inclusive congregtions are found IF the stats are right in the first place.

Ladies, if you want going to church to help your health all the way around, go to worship Our Lord. Don’t go with the will to be in charge. Go with the will to overcome you sins and bad habits. Go with the will to surrender and find the peace and healing that only God can give.

10 thoughts on “Unhealthy Motivations Cause Unhealthy Responses”

  1. Women as clergy is a road to ruin. Protestant Denominations that open up to women die in less then a generation, I have experienced this first hand.

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  3. A short list of what negatively affects my blood pressure at church:
    female altar servers, lay lectors, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, ushers in jeans and t-shirts, parishioners in yoga pants, clapping for the choir

    Solution: TLM

    1. Wow Heartland Mom…we must go to the same parish. What gets me is the jeans and t-shirts, but the clincher is the stretch or yoga pants. Why wear anything at all? Seriously! Wearing those to Mass is beyond comprehension.

  4. It’s disappointing that a clearly manipulative and biased “article” such as the one here from RNS can actually work on anyone. The vocabulary such as “sexist” and “restrictions” show without a doubt they wrote the article to convince the stupid, the easily led, those with few defenses against anything that requires cognitive facility. It may work sometimes. Probably does. As a people we’re getting stupider.

    Feminism is a divisive lie and battle plan used to encourage women to all the vices mentioned, resentment, anger, envy, and to create division between man and woman. It’s right out of Eden, the old lie with a new snake. No, same old snake actually. Satan attacked woman with the lie, he went after her, and succeeded. She was fooled, she was gullible, she bit, and is still fooled by the lie. Modern woman rejects authentic femininity and willingly subsumes her amazing identity into a pale imitation of men and considers that a success. One sees effeminate men often but more often young girls and women who look like odd boys or men. Studies tell us this is true, girls buy into gender madness more easily than boys.
    Women have been told they must be priests and the church hates them if it does not allow it.
    Silly gooses believe that and see the church as a glass ceiling they must smash. What God intends is irrelevant to them.
    Might the manipulated health outcome numbers have something to do with age groups? Wouldn’t one tend to think older women would be in churches where women are not in “leadership roles” and younger women might be in churches where women are running the whole show? One would expect different health status by that factor alone. This is an absurd premise and easily dismantled. Women must learn to be discerning and stop being so easily led. Stop believing everything you are told, learn to question motives, see bigger pictures.

    The mainstream church, often fomenting these kinds of resentments, (Francis et al) has so turned itself into a larger version of the Picture of Dorian Grey, the film by Oscar Wilde about a man so enamored with his own beautiful, young self he offers to sell his soul if he can stay young. See at the end what his handsome veneer hid, and see what the church has turned herself into with all this claptrap, modernism, divisiveness, gender madness, climate change nonsense, and such. The beauty of the church is still there, but every day it is more hidden by such satanic attacks as this pathetic one.

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