{"id":5990,"date":"2024-02-26T15:52:45","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T21:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/?p=5990"},"modified":"2024-02-27T12:32:46","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T18:32:46","slug":"frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/","title":{"rendered":"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The recent consternation about frozen zygotes, in vitro<\/em> fertilization and \u201cfertilized egg personhood\u201d laws made me think of the American Zen teacher Robert Aitken (1917-2010), who said a lot of wise things. In Aitken\u2019s book The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist<\/a> Ethics<\/em> (North Point Press, 1982), he wrote, \u201cThe absolute position, when isolated, omits human details completely. Doctrines, including Buddhism<\/a>, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.\u201d I think this is a good description of the trap some politicians are stuck in now.<\/p>\n

Please note: It\u2019s my understanding that a newly fertilized human egg is not an \u201cembryo\u201d but a \u201czygote.\u201d<\/a> The fertilized egg doesn\u2019t develop into an \u201cembryo\u201d until after it\u2019s implanted in a uturus. So I\u2019m calling them \u201czygotes.\u201d I also do not intend to argue with anyone\u2019s sincerely held belief that abortion is morally wrong. I do intend to argue that separation of church and state<\/a> is a really, really good idea.<\/p>\n

Why Frozen Zygotes Are in the News<\/h2>\n To recap, the Alabama Supreme Court recently decided that frozen \u201cembryos\u201d are children<\/a>, with all the rights and protections of children.\u00a0 The decision came about because some frozen zygotes stored in a Mobile hospital were removed and inadvertengly destroyed by a curious patient who wandered into the storage area.\u00a0 The\u00a0 couples whose zygotes were destroyed wanted to bring a \u201cwrongful death\u201d suit against the hospital. Lower courts had said this wasn\u2019t permissible, but the state Supreme Court reversed the rulings of lower courts and sided with the couples.<\/p>\n In the court\u2019s majority opinion, Associate Justice James Mitchell wrote that \u201can unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization and ends at death. The parties further agree that an unborn child usually qualifies as a \u2018human life,\u2019 \u2018human being,\u2019 or \u2018person,\u2019 as those words are used in ordinary conversation and in the text of Alabama\u2019s wrongful-death statutes.\u201d So there we are. A zygote, which is defined in a biology textbook as \u201ca diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes,\u201d has the same legal status as a child.<\/p>\n A human zygote, enlarged. It would be about 0.7 mm in diameter at the time of fertilization. Image by Nina Sesina. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFrozen Zygotes: Unintended Consequences<\/h2>\n Anti-abortion activists had barely finished their first hurrah when the unintended consequence appeared. Fertility clinics in Alabama announced they were suspending operations. Clinics have been sued for damages before when zygotes were accidentally destroyed. But \u201cwrongful death\u201d can<\/em> result in criminal charges, not just civil suits. This created too much legal liability<\/a> for Alabama fertility clinics.<\/p>\n The in virto<\/em> fertilization (IVF) process results in many destroyed zygotes. And this is not just accidental. The process of obtaining eggs and fertilizing them in a lab very often results in more fertilized eggs than the couple will ever use. Not every egg\/sperm combination will result in a viable zygote, so doctors typically fertilize several eggs at once. This increases the odds of achieving at least one healthy implanted embryo, but it also often creates a surplus. Fertilizing fewer eggs greatly reduces the chances for a baby, or might force the couple to undergo the expensive process of harvesting eggs several times.<\/p>\n The couple may choose to have the surplus eggs stored by cryogenically freezing them, or they can choose to donate the eggs to another childless couple, or to a research lab, or discard them immediately. If the eggs are stored it\u2019s understood they won\u2019t be stored to the end of time. For that matter, clinics are charging couples hundreds of dollars a year to store eggs; what if they fail to pay? Will the zygotes become wards of the state? There\u2019s even a quesion whether unused zygotes can be frozen at all under Alabama law. And accidents do happen, and the cryogenic freezing process can fail for a number of reasons. Of course, in nature approximately 60 percent of fertilized human eggs will perish<\/a> before developing into a baby. But by bestowing personhood status on zygotes, the Alabama court decision greatly complicates the IVF process and could force IVF clinics to go out of business.<\/p>\n Frozen Zygotes and Muddled Messaging<\/h2>\n It turns out IVF is very popular, and most people think it should be available to infertile couples. The attorney general of Alabama promptly assured the state he had no intention<\/a> of prosecuting fertility clinics. Of course, he can\u2019t speak for future attorneys general. And the clinics remain in suspension. A state lawmaker quickly introduced legislation that would make frozen zygotes into frozen zygotes again, legally speaking.\u00a0 ABC News reported<\/a>, \u201cFacing a wave of shock and anger from the decision, legislators prepared separate proposals in the House and Senate that would seek to prevent a fertilized egg from being recognized as a human life or an unborn child under state laws until it is implanted in a woman\u2019s uterus.\u201d As of this writing the legislation has gone nowhere, however.<\/p>\n In \u201cSmoke and mirrors: What Republicans are really saying about IVF<\/a>\u201d by Judd Legum at Popular Information, we learn that many conservative politicians are issuing statements in support of IVF while continuing to push for \u201czygote personhood\u201d laws that would shut down IVF clinics. \u201cIn this Congress,\u00a0124 House Republicans<\/a> \u2014 including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) \u2014 are co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act,\u201d Legum writes.\u00a0 He quotes from the bill \u2014 \u201cthe terms \u2018human person\u2019 and \u2018human being\u2019 include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.\u201d Further, \u201cCongress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being.\u201d This bill, if it became federal law, would devastate the IVF industry nationwide. But its sponsors are not going to tell you that. They probably can\u2019t tell themselves that.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to add that to conceptualize a zygote as a \u201chuman being\u201d because it is living human tissue is only one way to define \u201chuman being.\u201d I don\u2019t think science would agree that a zygote is a being . To extremely<\/em> simplify Buddhist teaching, a \u201cbeing\u201d according to Buddhism comes about from the confluence of five types of attributes \u2014 a body, senses, the mental functions of cognition or perception, the psychological functions that include predilections, biases, and the rest of our general psychological messiness, and awareness or consciousness. To a Buddhist, a zygote is not a being, human or otherwise. A woman, however, is.<\/p>\n Moral Absolutism or Moral Blindness?<\/h2>\n Ethicists tell us that moral absolutism is a form of deontology<\/em><\/a>, which is an ethical theory that applies fixed rules to distinguish right from wrong. Some philosophers have proposed that there are universal moral laws that every human civilization has followed. I would suggest that there are some<\/em> rules that everybody has to accept before civilization can happen. If communities couldn\u2019t agree to prohibit theft and murder, for example, we humans would still be huddled in caves guarding our flint arrowheads.<\/p>\n But this takes us to separating which moral rules are essential for maintaining civil order \u2014 and usually are written into law \u2014 and which are not. If you are a religious person, your religion might be telling you what the rules are. But in a secular society, laws are strictly about maintaining civil order, not pleasing gods. Just to pick a non-controversial, I hope, example, some religions require women to keep their hair covered in public. But there is no civil<\/em> purpose served in mandating hair coverings for women in public.<\/p>\n If you are a moral absolutist, I assume it makes logical sense that application of moral absolutes must be pure and unsullied. If killing a human being is wrong, it must be always wrong, although some do make exceptions for the death penalty. And if we then apply the Alabama justice\u2019s argument that a fertilized human egg is human life<\/em> and a unique human being<\/em>, we must conclude that destroying a zygote is wrong and must be legally prohibited. But, as we\u2019ve seen, there are consequences.<\/p>\n And there have been lots of consequences from overturning Roe v. Wade<\/em>. Every week since Roe v. Wade<\/em> was overturned has brought some new horror story of women who nearly died<\/a> \u2014 or actually died<\/a> \u2014 because doctors would not terminate their disasterous pregnancies for fear of prosecution. Even while news media were full of stories and editorials about the Alabama court decision, there was another story out of Texas about a woman with an ectopic pregnancy<\/a> who was denied treatment by a Texas\u00a0 hospital that feared prosecution for performing an abortion. In some cases, lawmakers who are confronted with the suffering caused by the laws they passed respond by insulting women nearly killed by abortion bans<\/a>.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if they are angry with women who aren\u2019t able to follow some happily-ever-after-Roe<\/em> script.\u00a0 How do we reconcile this?<\/p>\n Hang the Consequences?<\/h2>\n Moral absolutism results in a lot of willful denial of consequences. For years anti-abortion activists have declared that there is never a legitimate medical reason to terminate a pregnancy<\/a>, which is just plain not true<\/a>. Pregnancies can become life threatening in several ways. The notion that rape never results in pregnancy<\/a> is also popular, and also not true. From a recent article in Scientific American<\/em><\/a> \u2014 \u201cA new study estimates that more than 64,000 pregnancies resulted from rape between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, in states where abortion has been banned throughout pregnancy in all or most cases.\u201d I propose that if you have to tell lies to yourself to maintain your moral purity, there may be a problem.<\/p>\n There are other approaches to morality beside deontology. One is the consequentialist <\/em>approach, in which one weighs the consequences of an act to determine if it is moral. This approach gets sneered at by absolutists as \u201cmoral relativism.\u201d An obvious weakness of a consequentialist approach is our infinite human capacity to BS ourselves.\u00a0 Consequentalism requires some degree of self-honesty, or else it\u2019s much too easy to persuade ourselves that an outcome good for us<\/em>, never mind everybody else, must be a moral one and serve a greater good. But the absolutist approach isn\u2019t free of the same pitfall of willful delusion, as we\u2019ve already seen.<\/p>\n One of the oldest recommendations for weighing consequences comes from a sermon of the Buddha, delivered about 26 centuries ago. In the Kalama Sutta of the Pali Canon<\/a> (Anguttara Nikaya 3:66), the Buddha walked his audience through some rigorous criteria to determine if a course of action might lead to harm and suffering and should not be taken. He also advised cultivating the virtues of compassion, loving kindness, mudita<\/em> (empathetic joy for the good fortune of others), and equanimity; and to be be free of greed, ill will, and delusion. Perhaps hanging on to a few rules while one works on that is not a bad idea.\u00a0 It is unfortunately the case that there are mistranslations of the Kalama all over social media that make it sound like a permission slip to believe whatever you like, which it is not; see \u201cLost in Quotation<\/a>\u201d by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.<\/p>\n The Middle Way of Compassion<\/h2>\n Now we come back to the quote by Robert Aitken: \u201cThe absolute position, when isolated, omits human details completely. Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.\u201d In context he was not talking about moral absolutism, exactly but about a Buddhist doctrine regarding the absolute and relative aspects of reality. I\u2019m not going to attempt to explain that here (although I have attempted to explain it elsewhere<\/a>). His point was that focusing exclusively on the absolute whiile ignoring the relative can lead to some horrific consequences. And, in a way, that\u2019s what our moral absolutists are doing.<\/p>\n And I think this quote perfectly describes the problem right-wing politcians have created.\u00a0 They are so invested in their absolute rule that it has ceased to be any sort of moral guide. Now it\u2019s just a box they are stuck in. Moral theory that completely ignores the consequences, the infinite messiness and complications of human life, is not moral.\u00a0 Moral theory that prioritizes zygotes, morulas, blastocysts, and embryos over all else, including women facing strokes, limb amputations, organ failure, and death is not moral. It just isn\u2019t. And when written into law, such moral theory is nothing but theocratic dictatorship.<\/p>\n Later in The Mind of Clover<\/em>, Aitken wrote of the middle way of compassion. This middle way includes both absolute and relative, both the moral principle and the messy consequences. Genuine morality requires being aware of both, and not letting one erase the other. Genuine morality sometimes requires making hard decisions, but it also requires compassion. I\u2019m looking for compassion in the effort to save every zygote no matter what. I\u2019m not seeing it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent consternation about frozen zygotes, in vitro fertilization and \u201cfertilized egg personhood\u201d laws made me think of the American Zen teacher Robert Aitken (1917-2010), who said a lot of wise things. In Aitken\u2019s book The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (North Point Press, 1982), he wrote, \u201cThe absolute position, when isolated, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4714,"featured_media":5996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,7],"tags":[232,100,97],"class_list":["post-5990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buddhism","category-christianity","tag-establishment-clause","tag-religion-and-current-events","tag-religion-and-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nFrozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Religious History Nerd\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-02-26T21:52:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-02-27T18:32:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1525\/2024\/02\/Zygote1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Barbara O'Brien\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1525\/2024\/02\/Zygote1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Barbara O'Brien\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/\",\"name\":\"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-02-26T21:52:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-02-27T18:32:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/12df86bd5c1654f3852d06bbe5314f56\"},\"description\":\"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/\",\"name\":\"The Religious History Nerd\",\"description\":\"The origins, mysteries, disaster, success, and surprises of religion's history,\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/12df86bd5c1654f3852d06bbe5314f56\",\"name\":\"Barbara O'Brien\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc3effce6e5369f9df9aef0a003edb1?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc3effce6e5369f9df9aef0a003edb1?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Barbara O'Brien\"},\"description\":\"Barbara O'Brien grew up in the Ozark Mountain section of the Bible Belt, a place of Perpetual Holy Spirit Gospel Tabernacle Revivals. This fueled a lifelong fascination with religions. Being a natural-born nerd, she couldn\u2019t just believe as she was told but preferred to explore what academic historians had to say about how religions originate and developed through time to what they are today.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/author\/bobrien\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion","description":"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion","og_description":"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/","og_site_name":"The Religious History Nerd","article_published_time":"2024-02-26T21:52:45+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-02-27T18:32:46+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":480,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1525\/2024\/02\/Zygote1.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Barbara O'Brien","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_image":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1525\/2024\/02\/Zygote1.jpg","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Barbara O'Brien","Est. reading time":"10 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/","name":"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#website"},"datePublished":"2024-02-26T21:52:45+00:00","dateModified":"2024-02-27T18:32:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/12df86bd5c1654f3852d06bbe5314f56"},"description":"Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/02\/frozen-zygotes-and-the-middle-way-of-compassion\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Frozen Zygotes and the Middle Way of Compassion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/","name":"The Religious History Nerd","description":"The origins, mysteries, disaster, success, and surprises of religion's history,","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/12df86bd5c1654f3852d06bbe5314f56","name":"Barbara O'Brien","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc3effce6e5369f9df9aef0a003edb1?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc3effce6e5369f9df9aef0a003edb1?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Barbara O'Brien"},"description":"Barbara O'Brien grew up in the Ozark Mountain section of the Bible Belt, a place of Perpetual Holy Spirit Gospel Tabernacle Revivals. This fueled a lifelong fascination with religions. Being a natural-born nerd, she couldn\u2019t just believe as she was told but preferred to explore what academic historians had to say about how religions originate and developed through time to what they are today.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/author\/bobrien\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}