This person twisted up the authors note. As academics in the Middle East, a person with Atwood made a statement to the effect of: thankfully this could never happen in the United States. Atwood’s response was to dive into the predominant religion: Christianity, and make it so based further on US political culture.
Abrahamic religions, all three, can get pretty fundamentally awful. Have you read the rules and regs in the Old Testament? There’s a reason evangelicals cherry pick things from it and don’t live by it.
I’ve had people straight up say “Gilead is perfectly reasonable given the declining birthrates”. Bro, you can’t think of a better way to solve declining birthrates than ritual rape? Gilead doesn’t even solve it very well in-universe, it does a bunch of stuff that is actually counter to that goal, and there’s no particular reason to think it would do any better in real life.
A friend who recently had a kid said that when she and her husband were building up to having children, she became acutely aware of the government discussing “why are people having fewer kids and how do we ensure that we have a sufficient workforce in the future” and she became increasingly exasperated to hear how out of touch politicians spoke about it, when the actual answer was so simple.
Affordable housing is one of the biggest no-brainers. For example, she is one of only a handful of friends my age (millennial) who owns a home. As someone who has been homeless multiple times due to landlord fuckery, I can’t imagine choosing to have kids if renting a home. That seems so obvious, but she said that she never heard them connect the dots in this way — the government would sometimes talk about the need for more affordable housing, but never in the context of “hmm, we don’t know why people are having fewer kids and how to encourage people to start families”. They literally don’t understand how living in precarity gets to you and it’s depressing
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all Abrahamic religions.
To break it down, essentially, different flavors of the same core “food.”
Christianity believes in Christ (Jesus Christ) as the messiah and savior. Judaism does not consider Christ to be the messiah, and are still waiting. Islam believes that Jesus was a prophet of the lord (same lord, god, etc) but Mohamed was the first, and thus best (hearkening back to early internet “first” posts that were utterly pointless).
Its all the same shit, but go on.
Mohammed was last, not first. He also said there won’t be any more prophets after him.
Damned ladder pullers! How am I supposed to start a piggyback cult now???
SNL JUST DID A SKIT ON THIS
THANKS FOR THE TIP BROTHER! I’LL CHECK IT OUT, I QUITE ENJOY FUNNY SKITS! I’M SURE IT’LL CRANK MY HOG WHEN I WATCH IT LATER. AROOO!!!
Maybe I’m on the wrong level of intelligence, but what am I missin here? Like, the stupidity of mansplaining to the author is hilarious, but am I missin context of what Islam vs Christianity in regards to women voting and shedding their red an whites?
The book wasn’t about Islam. It also wasn’t about Christianity. It was about the Dominion Theorcracy which resembles more what we see with the religious extremists in America.
Edit: I would like to add that it also fits religious extremism in Islamic countries, but that’s not what the aim of the author was. She definitely meant America and their extremists. She even created a flag that looks awfully similar to the American flag.
Dominion Theology is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their personal understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, Dominion Theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.
