Monday 7 July 2014

Satanic feminists

George Eliot, in Silas Marner:

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that  the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

There is no shortage of dull minds behind the world's most astonishingly prolific and successful publishing enterprise. A billion copies sold every year of their flagship publication. It's the most widely distributed magazine in the world, appearing in 240 languages and with a monthly print run of 60 million copies. The Watchtower (less well known by its full title The Watchtower - Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom) is an evangelical publication produced in Brooklyn, New York, headquarters of The Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania - better known to the world as the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now read this:

Throughout the developed world, an increasing number of people, inspired by feminist movements and disenchanted with mainstream religions, seek spiritual fulfilment in various forms of witchcraft.


It comes from The Watchtower, and is the only reference to feminism I can find in their online archives. To test a theory I went online to confirm a hunch by comparing citations. This rough list of lexical frequency in the Society's publications (including their version of the Bible) only covers the period 2000-2012, but is nevertheless suggestive in its bizarre priorities, its unequal weightings. Here's what I found:

Subject            Mentions

Jehovah           8,392
Jesus                5,464
Faith                2,912
Truth               2.549
Power              2,433
Fear                 1,666
Jews                1,479
Blood              1,409
Satan               1,357
Followers        1,169
Salvation            818
The Devil           766
Mercy                 652
Obedience          603
Sex                     586
Afraid                 557
Illness                 498
Crime                 490
Discipline           465
Demons              438
AIDS                  431
Alcohol              389
Eternal life          318
Adultery             302
Caesar                285
Evolution           253
Armageddon      244
Homosexuality   122
Hitler                  114
Masturbation        34

This blog is prompted by the recent appearance of members of this cult on the streets where I live. No longer diligently knocking on every door they now operate mobile bookstands, displaying their publications (which appear these days to be free) at busy traffic junctions.

I don't like to see religious hucksters of any denomination promoting their dim bigotry in public spaces, unchallenged. So I wrote a letter to the local Council and received a phone call the other day saying that there was nothing they could do about it and in any case when they sent an inspector he couldn't see any evidence of the bookstand or its attendants so there was clearly no problem.

But why on earth should we have to tolerate religious pedlars on our street corners promoting homophobic, misogynist, creationist, anti-intellectual, bug-eye'd nonsense? If you doubt their toxic priorities look again at the archive lexicon above.

More on this tomorrow.

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