Women And Apologetics

[BlueDreams]

Do I ID as a mormon apologist? If not, as a defender of the church?

 

I do not see myself as a mormon apologist. I never have. When I was younger and coming here, I didn't  because I was young, really young. So I was glad when people just took me seriously. I didn't feel knowledgeable enough to be considered anything more than someone who wanted to express my personal gut-sense that my faith was a good faith. I became critical of negative claims and dug into them at times to find answers that were more accurate than what was then largely anti-mormon claims coming from a christian/evangelical base. I wasn't the best at it....I didn't have some random specialty in any given subject....so in my mind I wasn't an apologist....though maybe a defender of the church.

 

Now, I still don't consider myself an apologist...and I'm not sure if I would consider myself a defender of the Church. I think most of the time I fall on the side of defending the faith. But I think I attribute it to allowing my own feasible errors to go unchecked. It's a short road from defending to becoming defensive. I've seen that a lot and IMHO it seems to stunt learning and block understanding.  

 

The same critical eye that I had for arguments against the church I find used to also note concerns with other arguments for. And there are holes in my faith that I still don't have a satisfactory answer for myself, let alone others. 

 

On the same note my overall passion isn't generally in this. It's in social issues in general and more concrete change in people's lives (thus the pursuit in therapy). Apologetics are on the side....where it converges there are parts of it that I definitely have more critique than defending for.

 

 Let's take sexuality. I find that I have had spiritual experiences and some doctrinal points that bouy a good sense of sexuality that doesn't fit either the mainstream dialogue or fully the church's. I think much of the dialogue about sexuality is so scewed that it often leaves just as much mess as it was trying to solve. I think about this a lot. Consistently. But I wouldn't be able to even bring this up here...even without the block on sexual topics it would likely devolve into nonsense in 3 pages, at best. And the topic is still a taboo one in many regards.   

 

Why is apologetics so male dominated?

 

No idea. Probably for the same reason the other fields can remain male-dominated (social constructs, general beliefs, and micro-cultures that are less welcoming to female thought within the study). I do think that there is a good sub-section that are feminists who may not match up in direction with apologetic arguments surrounding gender. I ID far more as a feminist than I do an apologist and often the discussion around gender is so off-putting and restrained that it seems ridiculous to shackle myself to a similar group.  

 

Where are you most comfortable?

 

Probably message boards online as that's what I frequent the most.....but honestly probably more discussing things in small groups with people outside the online world. 

 

 

 

With luv,

Bd