The following is an email I received about an old essay I posted on this blog about the role of women in early Christianity, and my response.
I sent an email to the address mentioned on your profile page then I saw this email addy so I'm guessing this is the right one.
I read this: http://liminald.blogspot.com/2009/05/role-of-women-in-early-christianity.html
and I don't agree with the conclusion, I don't see any evidence for jesus preaching equality between men and women and I was wondering whether you could elaborate on that.
RW
Hi RW,
Thanks for your email. The piece you refer to is an old essay of mine for a philosophy paper at Massey University called Sex, Gender and Religion. Unfortunately we have word limits on the essays and I couldn't make space to elaborate on the teachings of Jesus in regards to women, my focus being on women's place in Christian communities in the time after his death. I believe this is the section that could have been expanded:
"Certainly the retention in early Biblical texts of such accounts as these, and of Jesus praising women for putting spiritual growth and learning ahead of domestic responsibilities (thus rejecting the equation of a woman with her domestic, sexual and reproductive roles) demonstrates the early Christian community’s awareness of the centrality of the message of equality in Jesus’ teachings (Swidler, 1971:182-183)."
The papers by Brown (1988), Heine (1986) and Swidler (1971), which I cite at the bottom of the essay, were particularly helpful, Leonard Swidler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Swidler) goes into some detail about the messages about women's place in society that were central in the teachings of Jesus. He makes particular note of the gospel story of Mary and her sister Martha, how Martha busied herself with household chores - fulfilling her 'womanly' duties - while Mary sat at the feet of Jesus eager to learn. Sure, it was religious education, but there really wasn't any other sort in Israel at the time. The point being, Mary is praised, and Martha criticised. The message of the story can be interpreted as being that spiritual growth and education supersede social roles.
Another account in the gospels (Mark 5:24-34, Luke 8:43-48, Matthew 9:20-22) is of Jesus being touched by an 'unclean' woman, that is, a woman who was ritually unclean due to her hemorrhaging or prolonged menstruation. An 'unclean' woman was subject to all sorts of social restrictions, about the company she could keep, where she could go in public and so forth, to say nothing of the social stigma, and this woman, with her perpetual 'uncleanness', had suffered more than most. She hoped for healing, and by touching Jesus she had broken the laws regarding ritual cleanliness and had made him 'unclean' also. But Jesus did not rebuke her for this, he said that her faith had made her well, demonstrating explicitly that faith, or spiritual cleanliness, was more important than ritual cleanliness, and implicitly stating that a woman's menstruation was not valid reason to exclude her from social or religious life. again, the message is couched in religious tems, but the message is clear that there should be no barriers to participation in social and religious life, which for the Jews of the time were one and the same.
Again and again throughout the gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry we find him aligning himself with the poor, the 'unclean,' the outcasts, whether Samaritans (a race whom the Jews particularly despised), Gentiles, (who the Jews regarded as heathens and hated for their occupation of Israel), beggars, tax collectors (seen as blights on society), the lame and blind and those afflicted with leprosy (all of which made a person 'unclean' and unfit for participation in social/religious life) and women, the most systematically excluded and restricted underclass in that society. The central message of Jesus was therefore one of equality for all -- a profoundly social message that sadly is often overlooked in contemporary Christian teaching.
I'll leave it at that, but again, thank you for your interest, and please feel free to email back or post comments on the blog - I love feedback :)
Danny
Actually in review I have to say RW has some very valid points - outlined in his excellent site www.answering-christians.com, the Bible does not seem to support equality for women when taken as a whole. And that's the crucial point - I do not advocate taking the Bible as a whole - it is riddled with contradictions because it was composed by many different authors over many centuries, and has been subject to all sorts of editorial interference over the years. We cannot even state that Jesus himself (if he even existed) espoused the views outlined above - he never wrote anything himself that we know of, we only have the words attributed to him by the authors of the Christian scriptures. And it cannot be stressed enough that the four canonical gospels were written decades after the first Christian scriptures (which are attributed to Paul and are, on the whole, rather misogynistic).
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's because I genuinely love cooking and decorating homes (if not most housecleaning), but I always felt so sorry for Martha as a kid! Here were all these dirty, hungry travelers, and she was trying to feed them and keep them from tracking dust all over her house, and Jesus *criticized* her for it?!?! Nuh-uh. Spiritual discussion is great and all, but someone's gotta keep things running. I know there's a larger point, but I will never like that passage, even though it's not my holy book anymore. One thing I love about Paganism is that household work is respected.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how what you thought you'd put to bed a long time ago can still get people talking sometimes, isn't it?
Yeah, I always thought Martha should have got a bit more respect, it takes a lot of time, energy and skill to keep a home and too often the work of women is dismised as inconsequential. I say 'the work of women' but I don't mean that housework is 'women's work,' I mean that whatever a woman does, it's often taken for granted, and it just so happens that housework is usually unevenly distributed, with women doing the greater portion in addition to their other roles, whatever those might be.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the Christians who wrote these accounts of the life of Jesus fervently believed that the End Was Nigh, and so in their narratives the important thing for everyone -- regardless of sex, nationality etc -- was spiritual enlightenment, readiness for Christ's return, and housework be damned. There's an equality there of sorts ;)
Hi Danny,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reply. I appriciate your feed back.