Christian Patriarchy, Universal Unitarianism and Feminist

Once upon a summer afternoon, Miss Melody Joy was looking around her parent's Xfinity On Demand to see what she could watch, since she was already all caught up with her shows.  \

At 15 or 16, Miss Melody Joy was already tuned in with her body's biological processes and relatively obsessed with anything related to S-E-X.  Not just the act of sexual intimacy, but also the biology of puberty and sexual maturity, social mating mores across cultural lines, gender roles, feminism, relationship management and the biological result of heterosexual intercourse and luck (babies) and the lifelong affect of that result.

So when she found a show titled 17 Kids and Counting she enthusiastically selected and started playing an episode with an interesting synopsis.  7 years later she isn't too sure what that episode was, but it did lead to a lot of shame-marathons (it was a REALITY TV SHOW and she thought she was much smarter than that) when her parents and solitary younger sibling were not present.  Usually in the middle of the night.  That summer afternoon was a bit of an anomaly.

Only 5-6 episodes were available at a time On Demand, and she wanted to learn more about this cheery christian family with tons of kids spanning the ages of 2 to their early twenties.  They were all relatively good looking, very well groomed and nice hair which was something Miss Melody Joy was not familiar with in regards to fundamentalist Christians   She knew they probably loathed homosexuality (a bisexual, Miss Melody Joy finds this to be irritating), Harry Potter (another thing she obsesses over) and freedom of female thought.  This did not stop her wanting to learn more.  They were like shiny foreign trinkets, snapshots of a world that she never before imagined.

By googling the Duggars Miss Melody Joy learned about Christian Patriarchy, Quiver-full  The Pearls, Goddard and various christian homeschooling networks.  The strangest thing, however, was that she learned all these things from women who left the movement.  Wives who converted to CP/QF then left when they saw how it was damaging their children (with or without their husbands).  Wives who grew up in the movement, followed the teachings, had a courtship and children but then left (with or without their husbands).  Daughters who ran away from home after rejecting the wrong suitor.

A pagan/atheist (She thinks it just averages out as Agnostic with magical leanings), these were things Miss Melody Joy had no experience with.  Her father grew up Puerto Rican in a Roman Catholic church, and left Catholicism after his confirmation with a resounding threat to HIS father over dropping out of High School if he was not permitted to transfer to a public school.  Apparently racism is alive and well in Catholicism, as the nuns who taught the High School were harsh and bigoted towards Puerto Ricans in the 70s and 80s.   Miss Melody Joy's mother frequently told stories about going to a different denomination church every available mass because membership to one ministry meant awesome youth dances, while another had a great hymnal that the family loved and the third offered a brilliant youth group.  This all came to a head with Miss Melody Joy's aunt got very sick and all three leaders came to visit her.  Apparently her aunt played it like a fiddle and the whole family was not shamed for going to so many different houses of worship.

Miss Melody Joy herself had never been a part of any church or religion.  Her first experience with religion was witnessing a family friend sit Shiva when she was 7.  Her first experience with religious services was a Jewish/Catholic wedding that was painfully long when she was 11. She thought the breaking of the glass was cool, even though no one could explain the symbolism to her. Her second service was a Catholic service when she shadowed a girl in a Roman Catholic High School she was thinking about applying to.  She accidentally took communion because she didn't know what to do.  Being 13 is awkward.  She was baptized either Methodist or Anglican, the family can't remember.  She was just baptized to be baptized to appease grandmothers and ward off bad luck.

Her family's apathy towards religion and learning more about American Evangelicalism and the CP/QF sub-movement solidified into an anti-religion sentiment.  She could not abide a group that permits or even endorses child abuse (the Pearls), taking away life decisions for daughters and sons (mostly daughters though) AND homophobia, misogyny (weaker vessel her foot), and xenophobia.  Yea, xenophobia.  Apparently not enough white Christians were banging and popping out babies so the racist misogynists started this movement to offset the "plague of godlessness" read:  Dark skinned, non-Christians.  She casually embraced her pagan leanings but found all organized religion to be suspect.

But, problem! She kept dating CHRISTIAN BOYS.  She would happily and benignly start a relationship, open about being a feminist and being bisexual and the boys would pass the jerk tests and she would figure they were, at the very least, non-practicing.  But no!  Sooner or later, after she made one too many snide jokes about religion, the young men would bring up that they were, in fact, Christian.  And believed it all too!  Flabbergasted, as she already felt like she was in love, she would start re-analyzing her beliefs.  She'd read the bible, find Christian-run blogs and take stock of every single thought and feeling brought up by Religion.  And it was always consistent.  The art is gorgeous, the rites are stunning, the platitudes are nice but the foundation is fundamentally flawed.  You don't move into a building with crumbling supports just because the hardware is artisan and it shows.

For unrelated reasons, those relationships would break up. She was a teenager after all.  She wouldn't need to try.  Until recently.  But thus comes the Universal Unitarian church!  

UU is so far from American Evangelicalism that it may as well be on a different planet.  It's progressive, peace-oriented, and isn't really Christian anymore.  Unitarianism was the first form of it, which was a progressive Christian denomination at its time, but it later evolved to be UNIVERSAL and for spiritual, community-based groups who crave the spiritual structure a church offers without the ethical dilemmas and hypocrisy.  While people who identify as Christians are present, it is actually Humanists who dominate the pews at a whopping 46.1%.  Earth/Nature centered comes in second at 19%, Generic "Theist" at 13% and THEN Christians at 9.5%.  It's mind-boggling.  And it's exactly what Miss Melody Joy can sign up for if, for whatever reason, a spouse desires to have church and it's attached community a major part of adult and parenting lives.

And there is zero risk of homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia.  That's a huge plus.