Instead of trying to abolish religion, get the religion behind the cause. If Christianity as a whole started deprecating sexist practices, you'd see an end to it in as little as 50 years.
There are many progressive Christians who, at least consciously, don't stand for sexism, and there are even conservative Christians who mean well in this area. Such people have been around for a long time. Yet sexism persists, and thrives, in large part because there continue to be innumerable sexist Christians, and the religion provides them with every excuse and authority they might require. I've met secular sexists, but sexism is so much more native, so much more comfortable a fit, so much more natural within a religious context. After all, these religions originally began as instruments of social control, and one of the major forms of social control turned out to be the subjugation of the female half of our species.
You can't wish that away. Christianity is damned on two fronts: The premise of an all-powerful deity who people use to justify their actions guarantees that Christianity will attract people who are looking to rationalize the very worst misbehavior. Their...
wickedness, if I may borrow the word, washes outward and affects all the corners of Christianity, seeping into the customs and norms that are practiced universally within the godly community. Secondly, Christianity's history, doctrine, and organizational structure all serve to disenfranchise females. That cannot be ignored or excused; it's a part of the religion. This can be changed, and in some quarters it has been, but the religion's structure is still inherently a flawed structure. It can be modified, jury-rigged, patched up....as we have seen with many churches now welcoming divorcees, female heads of house, female careerists, female ministers and pastors...but the framework itself is bogus. If it were an airplane, it would never fly. There's a reason that more sexism comes out of the heavily religious parts of the country, that progress occurs first in the cities and other centers of culture where ideas can flow with less obstruction by the dominant religion. I am sorry Truth, but the way ahead does not lie inside Christianity, nor any of the Abrahamic religions, nor most religions in general. If you really want to do the most good, you won't patronize these social institutions which have committed tremendous injustice for as long as they have existed. If you faith is more important to you than anything else, then so be it, and I hope we can eventually look forward to your assistance in the cause of sexual equality, but to suggest that religion would be the ultimate engine of progress against sexism, when the reality is so strikingly the opposite, is ignorant.
It's not even that religion always actively schemes to perpetuate these injustices. A great deal of sexism is unwitting; if you confront such people, they will reject any claims that their behaviors or attitudes are sexist, and they will genuinely mean it. But they will be mistaken. Worse: Subtle sexism is not benign or insignificant. It may not be as glaring as "Women belong in the home!" but it still ruins or upsets people's lives and livelihoods. It's everywhere, from television to that book you read in church every Sunday. What I'm trying to say is that Christianity, like nearly all religions, is built up (in part) on sexism, and that aspect of it simply cannot be erased, and reforms can only go so far before the religion itself starts to dissolve and there is either a religious backlash (see: America in the 1970s) or else people go secular (see: Western Europe in the late 20th century). It's a part of the structure, a part of the "soul" if you will of Christianity, to promote sexism. A whole lot of the structural aspects of the religion--a
whole lot--would have to be radically altered for this simple truth to change. Much of how our society regards females and males, both as groups without context, and in the context of their relationship to one another, is Christian in design. The idea that a female breast is less appropriate to show on television than a hundred bloody murders...that's a Christian sentiment. And it's just one of tens of thousands.
As a Christian, I suppose you will say that you want to reform your religion rather than abandon it, but, not being a Christian myself, I suffer from no such loyalties or obligations. Christianity is so objectively bad that it would be far easier to simply persuade people out of the religion. Christian activists have always played a role in the advancement of social justice--especially back in the times when it was an extreme taboo not to be a Christian. But it's no coincidence that, despite being outnumbered ten to one in the general population, the people at the heart of these causes are overwhelmingly secular.
