Pron´ ostico estacional de la precipitaci´ on en Colombia

Introduction

Callum Brown has recently argued that by withdrawing their support for institutional Christianity and cancelling what he calls their ‘subscription to [its] discursive domain’ women have accelerated the inexorable decline of a centuries-old religious culture and moral consensus in Britain. He claims that in recent centuries Christianity in all its many and various manifestations attracted more female adherents than male so that their demonstrable flight from the churches since the 1960s has resulted in a dramatic drop in attendance at worship as they, the erstwhile most pious and most diligent mem- bers of all denominations, appear no longer to find relevance in Christian teachings and ritual.1

By so forcefully inserting women into the long-standing meta-narrative of seculari- sation – however that may be defined, and whether, indeed, it may be defined at all – Brown has added a further dimension to an already complex web of explanations for the quantifiable falling off in traditional British religiosity. His argument that a simi- lar pattern of religious decline may be observed throughout most of western Europe is one with which many commentators would agree, even if they are willing to concur only cautiously, if at all, with his explanation of its causes. But the religious landscape of both Britain and Continental Europe has been enriched by more than one belief system, and it may be argued that as institutional Christianity has suffered a reduction in importance, some of the territory it has abandoned has been taken over by other religions and quasi-religions. The search for the numinous may not have been forsaken to the same extent as has loyalty to ancient traditions and institutions. It may also be seen in a wide variety of guises, including, for example, the rise of so-called New-Age movements, strongest in Europe and Britain, where Christianity is weakest. A partic- ular example of the employment of presumed supernatural agents in attempts to understand and manage life’s events may be seen in France, which has witnessed both a steady decline in church attendance and the emergence of as many as 40,000 pro- fessional fortune tellers. Can that transfer of function from a traditional to an unorthodox resource be described as secularisation? And, it may also be asked, to what extent is the cult of celebrity, so prominent a feature of European contemporary life, an attempt to fill a gap in human psychological experience? To take just one example,

is it accurate to describe the phenomenon characterised at the time by the Independent newspaper as ‘recreational mourning’ at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a ‘spir- itual’ one, as has so often been suggested? If such phenomena as fortune-telling and personality cults increase in the face of a decline in formal cultic practice, might it not be suggested that they represent a popular reaction to an increasingly irreligious cul- ture and express an unmet psychological, emotional or spiritual need?

The term ‘secularisation’, therefore, may sometimes slip off the tongue too easily without the necessary careful nuancing. But, although it evades the imposition of a gen- erally agreed definition, it remains a convenient shorthand for the decline in traditional religious belief and observance. Combined with the rapidly changing patterns of social organisation and shifting institutional loyalties that characterise most of Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it prompts a number of questions for those inter- ested in the history of women and religion. How did we get to this point? What effect, if any, has this process had on women? And what effect have women had on the process?

Most commentators would argue that the move away from conventional religious sentiment and practice is no new phenomenon but something that has been proceed- ing steadily over the past three hundred years, although it has accelerated during the past fifty. Many feminists have identified religion as a critical factor, perhaps the most critical factor, in the fostering of patriarchy and in the disadvantaging of women in relation to men, and have welcomed the benefits that decreasing adherence to some belief systems has brought. And if, as Hugh McLeod has reminded us, secularisation may be used as a catch-all description of the way in which modernisation has occurred in western Europe, then its close relationship to the increasing autonomy and oppor- tunity for women that characterises the period, particularly the second half of the twentieth century, comes as no surprise.2_{But that still leaves unanswered a funda-}

mental question: if religion has been so detrimental to women, why is it that during the past three centuries of European history, Christianity has continued to attract so many more female adherents than male? Even as recently as the 1990s, in a period of rapid decline in conventional observance in France, when fewer than 70 per cent of the pop- ulation declared themselves to be Catholic and fewer than 10 per cent were observant, it has been estimated that women accounted for 75 per cent of the active membership of the Roman Catholic church.3_{In the same period, even churches that claimed to have}

reversed the trend towards decline and to have recruited new members exhibited a sim- ilar membership pattern. Male leaders of the Black-led, generally charismatic, evangelical churches in Britain have admitted that the percentage of women in their congregations ranged between 65 and 95 per cent of the whole.4

This chapter will consider some ways in which women have experienced religious traditions, practices and institutions during the past three hundred years, noting aspects that have been impugned as disadvantageous to women as well as those fea- tures of religious observance that women have found emotionally and intellectually satisfying. It will also attempt to assess the changes that have occurred in women’s commitment. Although issues specific to Christianity will form the major part of our discussion, consideration will also be given to aspects of other numerically significant religions that have played an important part in the evolution of European culture and society, particularly Judaism and Islam. We will consider these within the chronolog- ical framework adopted in this book, but there will inevitably be some untidiness

around the edges as developments spread themselves across our artificially imposed boundaries. This also means that our consideration of Islam in Europe will be confined almost entirely to the twentieth century. Within each period, three main themes will form the basis of the discussion: women for whom religion informed their way of life, whether or not this was lived within community; women in their domestic situations and the expectation that their role should be confined to the home and family; and women and their relationships with religious institutions, particularly those aspects of institutional organisation that sought to restrict female participation. As well as their exclusion from participation in cultic practices, consideration will be given to their propensity to feature in religious discourse as temptresses or as beings particularly sus- ceptible to temptation.

Historiography

Much has been written about Christianity in Europe from its origins to the present day: both politically and socially it is tightly woven into the fabric of the European past and the impact of its institutions on every aspect of life has been an integral part of his- torical writing. During the past thirty years or so, the growing interest in women’s history has enhanced this work by adding to it scholarly examination of the experience of Christian women. Selecting just a few for mention is an invidious process and inevitably will omit important contributions to scholarship, but among recent works that give us an overview of women’s past, not just of their religious past, those by Lynn Abrams, Gisela Bock and Karen Offen demonstrate clearly the influence, for good or ill, that Christianity and Christian institutions have exerted on women’s lives.5_The

work of Callum Brown, already mentioned, has drawn attention to issues relating to women and Christianity, and sociologists of religion such as Steve Bruce, Malcolm Cook and Grace Davie have greatly added to our understanding of more recent devel- opments.6_{There is also a considerable literature devoted to European Jewry, and here,}

too, the growth of interest in women’s history and gender history has prompted inter- est in the activities of religious women. In addition to the work of Abrams, Bock and Offen mentioned above, that by Ellen Umansky, for example, has contributed to our knowledge of the historico-theological context of Jewish women’s experience, as has that of Jonathan Webber. Subject-specific web sites and discussion lists devoted to the study of Jewish women’s past also proliferate.7_{Less has been written about European}

Islam, although there is a growing literature – an inevitable consequence of the gener- ally increased interest in women’s past but one prompted also by moves to understand and appreciate those new Europeans whose background and traditions owe much to distant cultures. The work of the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi and the Egyptian-born Leila Ahmed, although not dealing with geographically specific issues, have made significant contributions to Western attempts to understand Islam, its his- tory and its demands on women. Yasmin Ali, another sociologist, and Anne-Sofie Roald, a Swedish convert to Islam, have also enhanced the discussion of contemporary Muslim women living in a Western culture.8_{Much of the literature originates in the}

work of Muslim women who are conscious of the impact that the politics associated with their religion has had on the wider political agenda. Ahmed and Mernissi, in par- ticular, draw on their faith’s historical roots in order to make its treatment of women comprehensible to a Western readership: it may well be that their confidence that they

can attract sympathetic and interested readers helps to enable them to challenge some of the traditions that have puzzled and sometimes alienated Western commentators. And the recent work by Haifaa Jawaad and Tansin Benn attempts a similar task.9

Although the more general studies have the merit of helping us to understand the importance of religion as just one aspect of women’s experience, specialists focusing on women religious, on women reformers, on women whose faith provided the impulse for philanthropic work and on women who believed their mission field to be the home have further enhanced our insight. Web sites, discussion lists, academic conferences and symposia, supported by scholars from around the world and crossing national and language barriers, are witness to the importance attached to the inclusion of women in our efforts to reconstruct and understand the religious past and the inclusion of reli- gion in the reconstruction of women’s experiences.

Comparatively little has been written about the historical roots common to all three monotheistic religions, in so far as they affect women,10_{and in many ways, writing a}

chapter about Christian Europe would have been an easier task than attempting to take a wider view of the continent’s religious history, and could have been justified as a study of the dominant religious culture as it has affected European women during the past three hundred years. But that would have been to distort the picture and to have failed to give proper weight to the experience of significant minorities of women, par- ticularly since the nineteenth century. The result is an unavoidably superficial study – three hundred years and at least three major religious traditions cannot be examined within the compass of one chapter – but by highlighting areas of common experience it may be possible to demonstrate that, in spite of theological variety, women have fre- quently experienced in remarkably similar ways the blessings and the disadvantages of their faith and the institutions that seek to guard it.

The religious landscape of Europe

If the meaning and extent of secularisation has occasioned as much disagreement as agreement among commentators, the mapping of developments within European reli- gious traditions since the beginning of the eighteenth century – a period characterised by considerable cultural, intellectual and socio-political change, and not unconnected challenges to religious faith and allegiance – also produces a sometimes untidy outline that requires careful qualification and definition. Although purporting to witness to unchanging truth, religion does not remain unaltered after contact with challenging theories or practices, and one of the characteristics of the past three hundred years has been religious fragmentation as a consequence of resistance to new ideas: the confu- sions and anxieties thereby generated have been compounded at times by a reluctance to disturb the status quo and by a degree of class-based angst. For example, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, often credited with, or blamed for, the injec- tion of a degree of scepticism towards religion was an elitist movement, directly affecting only small groups of intellectuals, some of whom were anxious to keep it that way, imagining that their new ideas might have unsettling effects on the existing order. The story of Voltaire’s wish that his wife and servants should continue to believe in God is well known but still instructive. Although he had abandoned religious belief himself, he recognised that their faith inspired in members of his household a moral- ity that protected him and his property, and he was anxious that it should not be upset.

But as literacy spread and the lower classes could no longer so easily be protected from material that might disrupt their belief systems, Christians of all classes had to become more open to both philosophical and scientific advance, and sometimes to allow the incorporation of once unacceptable ideas into orthodox belief and praxis. But, as Owen Chadwick has reminded us, this presented no long-lasting difficulty. Christian theology and ecclesiology has always shown itself capable of adjusting to new know- ledge. ‘When a theory could be shown to be well-founded [churches] hesitated and cast regretful glances backward, but accepted it because it was true and soon were again serene.’11_{Scientific observation and discovery is but one area where this has occurred.}

As we consider the changing relationship between women and religious institutions, specifically Jewish and Christian ones, we may also observe an occasionally reluctant but nevertheless inexorable move towards the acceptance of ‘modern’ attitudes to women in all areas of life, as changing ideas about women’s role in society have been shown to be ‘well founded’ and to challenge long-held perceptions about their role within and outwith religious organisations.

Although Christianity has been the dominant European religion since late Roman times, the history of the continent and its several religions is comprehensible only within the context of the wider world. Geographically and historically Europe has been and is increasingly linked with regions far from its borders, and the religions that flour- ish on European soil are witness to those connections. But the plurality that has resulted has frequently been an agent of difficulty, dissension and strained loyalties. Religion has constituted the major supra-local bond everywhere in Europe, binding together co-religionists and giving to religious adherence and loyalty the ability at times to strengthen and at others to threaten politically imposed boundaries. The resultant persecutions and wars of religion, or wars with strong religious associations, have been a frequent and are still an undiminished element in European experience, as the situ- ations in regions such as the Balkans and Northern Ireland demonstrate only too clearly.

The European past and its culture, while deeply rooted in Christian history, has also been enriched by encounters with other religions, and in spite of sporadic tensions has been coloured particularly by contributions from Judaism and Islam. European Jewish communities have a long history. They have frequently suffered the disadvantages and discriminations that attach to minorities – they have been used and abused, valued and persecuted; in some situations they have sought to maintain their ethnic and religious distinctiveness, in others they have found it politic to assimilate to the host population. In modern Europe, such social assimilation only became possible after the emancipa- tion of the Jews and the slow and uneven process of social acceptance.12_{The break-up}

of ‘classical Judaism’ in the eighteenth century meant that many experienced a loos- ening of ties with the ancient world view that had been fostered by their tradition and were challenged to reconceptualise what it meant to be a Jew. It has been argued that this sometimes painful process permitted the acceptance of Enlightenment ideas of humanity and universality and eventually led to a form of religious modernity that legitimated the adoption of a critical approach to historical sources and, in conse- quence, permitted questions to be asked about the relationship between the individual Jew’s ethno-religious identity and his or her emerging national identity.13_{The forms}

such questions have taken have inevitably been determined by local circumstances and have resulted in sometimes surprising alliances. In France, for example, in spite of its