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Thursday 9 September 2010

Religious institutions are by nature conservative, resisting change. On issues such as slavery and individual rights, religions have generally followed social change rather than led it, and not always immediately. In the coming century, as the pace of social change accelerates, a third trend will be the struggle with the patriarchy that still pervades many religious traditions even in the west. Significantly this is not simply an east-west divide: although the status of women in Islam is an increasingly debated issue with Islam itself, it is notable that the three countries with the largest Muslim populations in the world — Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh — have all had women heads of government, while the United States for example has not. So a quasi-Oedipal ending of patriarchal domination is still in process, both culturally and hence religiously as well. Other issues having to do with sex and gender will continue to challenge both individual believers and communities of faith, most prominently, perhaps, that of sexual orientation. Michael Coogan

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