Anita

I spent 15 years in a powerfully authoritarian and abusive church run by a group of men who were infinitely happy to proclaim that only if you obeyed them were you obeying God. My husband and three children and I have been out of that place for eight years now but during that time I have found that the place we went to and the ‘theology’ it practiced was not unique it was and is the thin end of the wedge.

In the last eight years I have undertaken a great deal of study and research into church practice and theology in America and Australia (my home) and have discovered that even in many so called liberal churches this idea of male dominance is really just a cover for the normal human bias. Whether in the world (just about every primitive culture and every civilized one has subjugated women) or in religion (every major religion in the world also subjugates women) this idea of women being ‘lesser than’ is fully realised. Why are christian men not recognising that they are not any different to their unsaved brothers in this pursuit of male dominance? There seems to be a spiritual blindness afoot.

Jesus introduced the idea of “no more division btw Jew/Gentile, Slave/Free, Male/Female” and humans just can’t get their heads around it. Of COURSE we have to keep those divisions. Religious, economic and social/sexual laws dictate that we must have these compartments otherwise how will the rich, Protestant/Catholic white male continue to have the upper hand – or the rich Roman/Jewish male as in Jesus time.

Unfortunately women, and christian women in particular, bear equal responsibility for female oppression. Yes, we were cursed at the fall to be in continual conflict with men, and men being bigger and stronger and more aggressive have simply bullied us into submission for millenia. We, being physically and socially given to pregnancy, breastfeeding and rearing small children, over millenia have accepted our positions as keepers of the home and servants to the men. We didn’t have the resources or inclination to start wars, and when you go through that much pain and effort to produce children, you are not going to make it easy to destroy them. Our propensity has been to nurture not destroy, so conflict, whether it is in the home or out, is something we go out of our way to avoid. If the big strong man wants to run the place, we will let him do it, mainly because it is that much easier. We have however been lazy, both spiritually and mentally.

But we also allowed our natural fleshly ways to assert themselves. We used subversion and manipulation. It is a shameful matter but it is something our sisters throughout history have had to engage in for survival. If you are physically weaker, use your intellect. Christian women are still invested in continuing the wordly status quo. I am continually disappointed to see how many women prefer holding to the ‘domestic goddess’ persona (transfered to the Proverbs 31 woman in christian parlance) and think its preferable to being – in their eyes – feminist. As an aside, the term ‘domestic goddess’ has a strong pagan element to it, and witches are condemned in scripture. Something to think on.

Their christian brothers, husbands and fathers also abhor the feminist, the ultimate female terrorist. Yet feminism began as Women’s Sufferance (by christian women no less) in order to be accepted as intelligent contributors to the democratic process. It took thousands of years for us to stand up to men – overtly – and realise that not only are we psychologically equal to them but spiritually so, and I thank God that women are showing their capacity to debate this topic intelligently on blogs like this one. Not only that, but many educated christian men are now joining the ranks of those ‘coming to their senses’ as the prodigal son did.

I know I was lazy. I believed the ‘big strong man/knight in shining armour’ myth even before I became a christian, and both Hollywood and the church have a lot invested in perpetuating that idea.
God has shown me that if I had pursued my concerns about joining an abusive church we wouldn’t have had to spend 15 years in it. If, instead of capitulating to the cosy idea that I was a perpetual child who simply had to do as I was told by either my father or my husband I had stood up for what I had truly believed, my family would not have suffered for all that time at the hands of abusive authoritarian religious dictators.

If we all recognised that the spiritually minded person is going to think differently to the fleshly-minded person then it will make perfect ‘sense’ to see that both Jesus and the apostles upheld the fact that women were no longer under the curse and free to live and move in the Spirit as much as their brothers in Christ. When we finally stop beating each other about the head with scripture and beating our chests in order to put down those pesky females who are so ‘easily deceived’ (yet how many women run cults?) it will be a much calmer, happier , and dare I say more powerful body of Christ.