From Randal Maurice Jelks’ op-ed to CNN Belief Blog:
There is a direct link between Kate Kelly, a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter day-Saints, who was excommunicated on charges of apostasy, and Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death for her supposed apostasy.
And the link is deeper than the charge of abandoning one’s faith.
Patriarchy comes in all forms, but religious patriarchy seems particularly pernicious because it assumes that male rule is constituent of God or the gods.
In other words, God or the gods behave like men — wrathful, scornful, jealous, and imperious.
However, this is not why so many people — women and men alike — are religious.
Jelks continues by looking at the goodness found in religion, before turning to how it “can equally be mired in ideologies of exclusion that can lead to bigotry on many levels, especially toward women.”