@an_OM_aly - 

Let’s look at the source of the problem:

St. Clement of Alexandria: “Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman…the consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame”

Tertullian: Women are “the devil’s gateway.”

“Do you know that each of your women is an Eve? The sentence of God – on this sex of yours – lives in this age; the guilt must necessarily live, too. You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.”

St. Jerome: “Woman is the root of all evil.”

St. Augustine: “I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation.”

St. Thomas Aquinas: “So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in men the discretion of reason predominates.”

From the Malleus Maleficarum(The Witch Hunters Manual): “They [women] are only ‘imperfect animals’ and ‘crooked’ whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.”

St. Paul: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12

“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God…For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” (1 Corinthians)

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5)

“As in all the churches of God’s holy people, women are to remain quiet in the assemblies, since they have no permission to speak: theirs is a subordinate part, as the Law itself says. If there is anything they want to know, they should ask their husbands at home: it is shameful for a woman to speak in the assembly.”

Martin Luther: “The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”

“No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise.”

“Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.”

I could go on and on but even women in the church try to minimize these quotations.

-Y

We have no problem with what you say here. However you are skipping over 2,000 years of relational history of how men in power treat women. Yes, there were those men that treated women as they would have themselves treated. But history shows that women were not traditionally treated or thought of like this.

Historically, the church saw women as the reason men had to live in a cracked and broken world. It was because of a woman that mankind lived in pain and had to die. And there was no forgiveness for women. Its kind of like the church blamed Jews for crucifying Jesus. They were called “Christ killers” and pogroms were carried out against the Jews for centuries, culminating in the Holocaust. Women were the “betrayers of mankind.” Obviously the Bible doesn’t call Jews “Christ Killers.” Nowhere does it say they should be punished in any way for what happened to Jesus. Nowhere does it say that Jews should be put to death because of Jesus’ death. But that’s NOT the case for women.

In Genesis chapter 3 God reprimands Eve before Adam. He says: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

He then points out that man’s sin was more listening to his wife rather than just eating the fruit. God says to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.”

These condemnations by God put women in a degraded position in the eyes of the church, a position from which they have never recovered to this day. It is why Tertullian could state, “Women are “the devil’s gateway.” And, “Do you know that each of your women is an Eve? The sentence of God – on this sex of yours – lives in this age; the guilt must necessarily live, too. You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.”

John Knox, the best known protestant theologian during the time of the Reformation after Luther and Calvin wrote in ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet’ that “God has pronounced sentence in these words: “Thy will shall be subject to thy husband, and he shall bear dominion over thee” (Gen. 3:16). As [though] God should say, “Forasmuch as you have abused your former condition, and because your free will has brought yourself and mankind into the bondage of Satan, I therefore will bring you in bondage to man. For where before your obedience should have been voluntary, now it shall be by constraint and by necessity; and that because you have deceived your man, you shall therefore be no longer mistress over your own appetites, over your own will or desires. For in you there is neither reason nor discretion which are able to moderate your affections, and therefore they shall be subject to the desire of your man. He shall be lord and governor, not only over your body, but even over your appetites and will.” This sentence, I say, did God pronounce against Eve and her daughters, as the rest of the scriptures do evidently witness. So that no woman can ever presume to reign above man”

In ‘The Hammer of Witches,’ a book on witch hunting endorsed and recommended by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 AD, and used by the church for centuries, it is stated: “It should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives.”

Martin Luther taught, “God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God’s will. ‘Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error.” And, “I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all.” And, “When I was a child there were many witches, and they bewitched both cattle and men, especially children.” And, “The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”

In modern times, this has not changed. Consider this by Christopher Whitecombe in ‘Eve’s Identity.’: “Eve represents everything about a woman a man should guard against. No matter what women might achieve in the world, the message of Genesis warns men not to trust them, and women not to trust themselves or each other. Whoever she might be and whatever her accomplishments, no woman can escape being identified with Eve, or being identified as her. In the West, the story of Eve has served over the centuries as the principal document in support of measures and laws to curtail and limit the actions, rights, and status of women. It is so deeply rooted in the socio-religious psyche of Western civilization that attempts to discredit it, or dismiss it, or simply ignore it as self-serving patriarchal fiction and myth-making have met with little success. Moreover this view of Eve and of women in general has been insinuated into the culture to such an extent that both men and women believe it defines a natural condition of women.”

Just something to think about when your paycheck isn’t equal to a man who’s doing the same job as you and not doing it as well as you.

-Y