Patriarchy in Society and Religion. Debunking the Father of the Postmodern Evil Demon

Document from the year 2021 in the subject Sociology - Religion, grade: 1.0, Kwame Nkrumah University, language: English, abstract: This article seeks 'to expose the falseness or hollowness' of a millennia-old ideology. I intend to critique what I have described, with a modicum of poetic licence, as the father of the postmodern evil Demon known as patriarchy by turning on its head, an op-ed by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier entitled 'Patriarchy is not the source of all evil' which got my scribal juices flowing. I explore the origins of patriarchy going back to about four millennia ago in Mesopotamia in the Ancient Near East and show that patriarchy in both religion and society is the source of the post-modern evils of domination, colonisation, and othering others, suppressing and dehumanising them, especially if these others are women, simply because men can pee while standing. This has been the case since at least four millennia ago if not earlier. Patriarchy is not limited to domination of women. In fact, it began at the time of the shift from homo sapiens being hunter-gatherers to sedentary agriculturalists when gender roles begun to be defined. Men specialised in bringing home the bacon as warriors and bread winners while women focused on child rearing. Patriarchy is now so steeped in religion and society that men are unlikely to relinquish it any time soon because it is in the interests of the menfolk to perpetuate it. Soon after the elf-like President Frederick Chiluba came into power in a landslide election win in 1991, he was heard to remark to close aides, one of whom I know, 'Power is sweet.' I have employed two lenses to examine the evil of patriarchy: critical theory and ideology. I take cognizance of the phenomenon of patriarchy being so pernicious and widely accepted, even revered ideology that it needs to be critiqued and debunked.

Tarcisius Mukuka [Dipl. Pastoral Theol & Counselling, Dipl. Phil. & Rel. Studies, STB, SSL, PhD] is a biblical exegete by training. He holds a Licentiate in Biblical Exegesis from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and a doctorate in Biblical Hermeneutics from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Orality as Casualty: Contextual and Postcolonial Analysis of Biblical Hermeneutics in Bembaland" (2014). He is currently a lecturer in Religious Studies Education at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kabwe. His research interests include postcolonialism and the Bible, gender and the Bible, religion, politics and power. He is the author of "Spoken Voice/Written Word: Negotiating How We Hear/Read the Bible" (2016) published by Lambert Academic Publishing and "In the Eye of a Very Catholic Storm" (forthcoming), by Crown Arts Publishers