September 2005

Why are we even talking about this subject? What is wrong with us? Women are marvelous creatures. They are loving, hard working, nurturing, social people who are the glue of any society. The men go off to work or to war, playing their stupid power games and war games, flexing their muscles and showing their hormones. Meanwhile, the women stay home, raising the children, educating them, getting food on the table, improving their society. Good mothers are the essential ingredients to a good society. Women should be respected and revered. They deserve no less. Not that there are not bad mothers and/or single women who have misdirected morals. There are extremes at either end of any bell shaped curve. The great majority of women, however, play the role of keeping life and keeping society going regardless of how many disasters occur or how many wars their men get them into. Through death, deprivation, sorrowful loss, hunger and loss of habitat, they keep going and continue nurturing. There is no more marvelous creature. A beautiful, cultured, intelligent and loving woman is the epitome of the best a human can be.

Having said as much, our record is pretty dismal. Women in Biblical times were treated as no more than pieces of property. They were expected to have children, stay at home, take care of the home, and do no more than that. Men fought over women just as if they were sheep, a piece of land, or any other piece of property. The great popularity of the early Christian movement was that it was ecumenical. Women were fully accepted, as were slaves. They at last had a society which accepted them for their own value. It was women who went to the tomb of Jesus, not men. When the early disciples went out on the road, they went by twos. Who do you think the other person was? We have a clue for you; it was not a man. For several centuries, mother Mary and Mary Magdalene were worshiped as much as Jesus. Then came the priests, seeking to establish their power over this new church. Their first move was to remove mother Mary from deified status, make her an asexual virgin, in other words, a myth, and remove all women from status in their church society.

The persistence of this patriarchal society throughout all of Christendom has been a blight on all Christian societies. Women have been scorned, denigrated, burned as witches, abused and tortured, while in the meantime they have been raising the children and holding the society together. You can’t have a much worse church record than that.

We are finally making some progress in the treatment of women as equals. They have equal educational opportunities and equal political rights in some countries. Even in the most advanced countries as to women’s rights, however, there is still not full equality. Women lag behind men in career opportunities and in salaried income in almost every career category. And that is only in those countries that are the most enlightened in their treatment of women. There are multitudinous countries that still hold women in total and utter subjugation.

Thanks a lot, Christianity and other faiths which have fostered the degradation of women. You have certainly done that denigration well. That does not however leave cause for admiration. You are all to be condemned for putting men above women. The God of Chance condemns you for your stupidity. The God of Chance demands that all men and women be treated as equals, that all of life be respected, that we protect our home, planet earth, and that all creatures should be given the opportunity to reach their full potential, whenever possible. The God of Chance decrees that if we do not show complete respect for one another, whether man or woman, black, white, yellow, red or brown, young or old, our whole race will pay dearly.

‘Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Women are the gate of hell.”

- Tertullian

 

"Any Woman who does not give birth to as many children as she is capable of, is guilty of murder.”

- St. Augustine

“Women should stay at home, sit still, keep house, and bear children. If a woman grows weary and dies of childbirth, it does not matter. Let her die bearing children; that is all she is here for.”

- Martin Luther

“Wife, be content to be insignificant. Of what loss would it be to God or man had you never been born?”

- John Wesley

“Woman was made to serve and obey man.”

- John Knox

“The institutional church either through its blatant sexist theology, which has blessed the subordination of women, or through its silence, blindness, or lack of courage, has allowed itself to be one of the leading actors in the tragedy of abuse.”

- Ellen Kirby, The United Methodist Church

“No act is to be done according to her own will by a young girl, a young woman, though she be in her own house. In her childhood a girl should be under the will of her father; in her youth under that of her husband; her husband being dead, under the will of her sons. A woman should never enjoy her own will. Though of bad conduct or debauched, a husband must always be worshipped like a god by a good wife.”

- Brahman rule