The Trouble With Mixing Church and State

I was just reading on my homepage a story about a young woman in Saudia Arabia who got gang raped - and has been given a horrendous punishment herself. At least the rapists are in prison; they are being punished for what they did. But it seems this young woman was out with the wrong person; she was out with a friend, and she is supposed to go out with men only if they are relatives. At last count she has been sentenced to 200 lashes, according to what I read. Not for being raped. For being out with the wrong person.

I can't imagine that this rape victim had done anything to deserve 200 lashes. Surely being gang raped by seven men is enough "punishment" for being at that place at that time, and had she been there with a relative she would probably still have been raped. (Her companion, a friend, was also assaulted.)

I realize that there are cultural differences as well as religious differences operating here. And I am encouraged by the worldwide outcry over this woman's sentence; at least some of us have decided to join the twenty-first century even if Saudi Arabia is still back in the year 500.

This is what bothers me about all the various movements to establish government by religion. We see it in the Muslim extremists, who are exporting their violence and their version of religion to many other countries besides their own. We also see it in some Christian groups here who, if they had the chance, would clamp down on all of us just as viciously as the Muslim extremists would.

Most of these factions are more concerned about rules rather than justice, about control rather than compassion, and most of them are going to exert the stiffest controls over the behavior and lives of women. I haven't heard of any faction yet that sounds like it would have one strict standard for everyone; most of them want to move backward, and re-establish male power at the expense of women's freedoms and rights, returning to double standards that it has taken decades to eliminate.

As a woman, therefore, I can't help but be suspicious of these movements. Women have struggled long and hard for things that men take for granted - things like being able to vote, for goodness' sake, to graduate from universities, to have careers in the professions. And while the debate is far from over, women currently have at least some say over matters when they become pregnant.

How can any woman want to go back to being the property of a man? To being unable to vote or hold any kind of public office? To being unable to work in certain fields, or perhaps to be forbidden to work at all? To being told what to wear, where to go, and who to go there with? I would find it intolerable. I think a lot of the rest of us would too.

We all have our own ideas of what God wants. Some of us think God would like the kind of society I just described. Some of those people are, in fact, women, and if they really think that would be wonderful, more power to them.

But I look - as I often do - at the example of Jesus. I may not agree with what the church teaches about him, but I certainly recognize that he gave us a believable picture of God. The God I see in Jesus is unconditionally loving, accepting of all who came to him, revealing sin perhaps but not judging it. Jesus was free. Totally free. And he did not impose things on others, which makes me think he expected all of us to be as free as he was. And oh yes, he expected both men and women to be responsible for themselves, including their spiritual states.

I cannot think for one minute that God, who loves each of us, would support the kind of state that gives young women 200 lashes just for being out with someone who isn't a relative. I hope and pray that somehow the international reaction can help to ease the situation there. That is wrong. Whatever it is, it is not justice.