Toto

Sarcasm is sometimes hard to detect. I would recommend reading Stark.

But you quoted a particular passage from the second book.

Stark uses secondary material. But he uses it well. He is not engaged in textual interpretation.

I guess I missed Bede's original argument. I don't think that "egalitarianism" would have been the key issue for 2nd c. women any more than miracles.

mata leao

Christian cultures led the way with giving women access to universal education and higher education, and in suffrage, and giving women the right to contract and own property and in promoting child welfare and the early reforms leading to welfare for the poor. etc. Compare Christain societies with non Christian ones and you will see a marked difference, even to this day.

yalla

Look what happens when you leave the computer to go to bed. Lots of good responses. Thanks for the split Diogenes.
I haven't read Stark, nor can I get the book, so I will check out the threads and the reviews later.

What prompted my initial curiousity was looking at Kirby's ECWs site.
Virtually ALL the writers in there are male. Even the anonymous are presumed or shown to be male. Females are invisible as authors. [Gnostics may be different].
That is strong patriarchy.

So I checked out the sticky at the top of this forum re recommended texts about [1] The Whole Bible & OT, [2] NT & the Church.
Again the authors are overwhelmingly male. Only a very few women.
This is strong patriarchy.
That is, the world view, the authority, the understanding is from a male POV.

So then I wondered WHO controls modern Christian churches, who has the POWER?
I tried to find out who, gender-wise, governs modern Christian churches. I did a web search looking for such as provided by the major denominations in Australia.
It was confusing and difficult to get specific information but what I did get was the following...obviously open to various interpretations:
1. Catholic....well pretty obvious actually ...the church is run by males. [Archbishops,Bishops, all male].
2.Anglican...took the names from their National Council and the membership of their 7 Commissions...16 females and 65 males with females in a minority in each commission and the top positions always male.
3. Uniting church...1 only female name represented in their list of pres/sec of their National Assembly for the past 20 plus years.
4.Assemblies of God in oz...[minor mob but responsible for a political party with reps in our parliament]....their web site had profiles of "our leaders" ...9 of them...ALL male.

And finally, and sadly, and a matter of concern, I know, even the governing board of the Infidels is ,currently, entirely male.

And those taking an interest in this thread and this forum???

Power and authority being key concepts, what do you make of this?
What is the US/European/wherever version of the above?

lpetrich

First, I'm skeptical about Rodney Stark's claims for Xianity, because he presents Xianity as absolute good, good, good, good, good. There must have been some warts somewhere, especially given the gross sexism present in the New Testament and in many Church Fathers' writings (why no Church Mothers?).

That explains all the long history of female Catholic priests and bishops and archbishops and cardinals and popes. Wait, there aren't any and there have never been any.

As Susan Jacoby notes in Freethinkers, feminism was a secular movement, and many Xian Churches fought against many feminist reforms. Many fundies still hate feminism and feminist sorts of things, like what you attribute to Xianity.

I wonder when we'll see certain apologists claiming that biological evolution was discovered as a result of Xianity and that it supports Xianity and no alternative to it.

As to yalla's comments, I invite yalla to check on Forum Leaders -- some sizable fraction of them is female, and they have had several female predecessors.

Lafcadio

It's a bit weird to see somebody waving scholars around but on another hand to make such hazardous statements.


What can you say about the classic Greek and Roman authors?

Bede

Just to reiterate a point I made in my first reply:

Once Christianity became mainstream, it picked up many of the patriarchical aspects of the surrounding pagan society (although not all - it continued to deny infanticide, abortion and adultery all of which are serious inimical to women of the time).

There is a tendency to mythologise Christian and pagan attitudes towards women. The old legend of an ancient matriarchical society still crops up from time to time as do the ideas that various 'native' tribes gave women a more powerful role. All of this has now been revealed as wishful thinking. It is likely that even medieval Europe gave women a higher status than any previous civilisation (ie, allowing female sovereigns, females can hold property and sue, some education, important although inferior religious functions, monogamy and chastity expected of men). Not much compared to today but the foundation that we built modern society on.

As for MacMullen, I'll have to read some more of his books but his work does contradict Robin Lane Fox, Keith Hopkins (no friend of Christianity), Chadwick and everyone else I can think of. This is probably a good thing as we need iconoclastic and revisionist historians - I'm usually accused of being one myself.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

yalla

lpetrich...Bit hard to decipher sex there although obviously there are some women. Even so it would be nice to have more women here in general and I wonder why it is not so.
To put it simplistically, I regard Christianity as largely being opposed to women's rights and urge my women colleagues to "know thy enemy'' better but they seem to find my interest in this area rather boring and trivial.

Lafcadio...I don't know, "What can you say about the classic Greek and Roman authors?". What would you say...more misogynist or less than Christianity?
I'm wiiling to be informed here. My impression is that their [famous women] numbers and repuation were restricted relative to an egalitarian non-sexist ideal. I understand there were only a few pagan women prominent in arts, literature, science etc.
I believe there were none within Christianity, which is why I cited ECWs list which contains zero women.
About 2000 years later, most of which time western society has been dominated by Christianity, the list of authors relating to Christianity is still overwhelming male.

That's little change in a long time.

Lafcadio

Isn't the list of classical Roman and Greek authors overwhelming male? Most famous woman philosopher was Hypathia and she is quite an exception in a long line of male philosophers. There are some accounts of women being patrons of philosophy, but not much more.
The Roman education was different for men and women (and that was significantly better than in Greece, where women had almost no role in educating their male children).

That there was no sexism in Antiquity and all came with Christianity seems a dangerous claim to hold.

yalla

Lafcadio "That there was no sexism in Antiquity and all came with Christianity seems a dangerous claim to hold."

Where did you get this from?
It seems to be directed at my post but I give no such hint of that.
Quote "I understand there were only a few pagan women prominent in arts, literature, science etc." states quite strongly that pagan society was sexist with "only a few'' prominent pagan women.
But perhaps less sexist than Christianity which appears to have nil.
Within Christianity women seem to have been principally considered regarding their sexuality from the male POV.
That is not a liberating concept.

Marina Warner."Alone of All Her Sex"
"It is crucial to remember that in spite of the misogyny that underpins the Christian religion it offered women a revolution as long as they subscribed to it's precepts...and that included accepting it's views of sex and childbirth" p.73

"The fallen state of the unchaste was stressed in contrast to their virgin sisters"

"...when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world then she will cease to be a woman and be called man". Jerome.

For the church to emphasise virginity and marriage for women was not a liberating process for them.

Bede

Exactly the same as we see in paganism. To a pagan Roman or Athenian a woman was just a baby making machine, and male babies at that.

Here's a list of medieval Christian women writers with bibliography. It is far longer than any list of pagan women writers, even allowing for the difficulties of preservation. There are even a few from late antiquity.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason