Faith vs Fundamentalism

Earlier this month, the already-missed Natalia Antonova, guest blogging at Feministe, riffing off co-guest-blogger Fatemeh's point about anti-religion and kyirarchy, said

...when some bearded guy somewhere tells me “cover up, whore” or “repent, whore” or “be quiet and stir that borscht, whore,” I pity him most dreadfully. His God is indeed dead, and it was he who replaced his God with an embalmed version that rests in an ugly-ass Great Mausoleum in the Sky. ... Being a feminist and being religious is totally possible, if you just ignore people who tell you you’re going to hell/you’re a brainwashed idiot in need of re-education camp. Or so I’ve decided for myself. She spake thus here.

It's a great point! Antonova and Fatemeh point out that failure to engage further than "does not / does too" dismisses the belief systems of many feminists.

But most important as far as I'm concerned is that "does so / does not" dangerously cedes the debate in the event you can't talk your interlocutor out of the totality of his or her belief system. You're then left with, effectively, no leverage to argue from *within* the system of belief.

(That's why, by the way, the religious-right anchor Reverend James "Daddy" Dobson flipped out so thoroughly when Senator Obama advanced a Christian-influenced vision of liberalism. A simple recitation of the Sermon on the Mount utterly refutes Dobson's philosophy of government based on "Biblical Principles" just as even a cursory engagement with Matthew 6 illuminates his schism's philosophy of religious virtue.)

Anyway, two pretty cool posts on faith and feminism.