A rare visit to the Aussie board (or any board for that matter).
Here's my take on the issue. I hope it doesn't turn into a dissertation.
If you look at Christianity and Islam, in both religions there are two basic camps. On the one side you have the more modern, liberal camp. These believe in the basic story of the Bible (or Koran), but they keep the details at a distance (the devil is in the details after all), and live their lives and form their opinions based mostly on their own personal sense of right and wrong, rather than slavishly following every letter of their holy book. I don't have a problem with these types of believers. I might not agree that their watered-down religion is even necessary, but they're basically harmless, and that's what really matters. Yes they pick and choose, and I'm glad they do! At least they're willing to think for themselves!
On the other side you have the fundamentalist camp. These folks believe that every jot and tittle of their holy book is inerrant and inspired by God, and must be followed to the letter. These are the young-earth creationists, science-deniers, gay-haters, dominionists, etc. in the Christian religion, and the suicide bombers, beheaders, and other crazies in Islam. Is Islam worse? Absolutely! But even in Christianity it turns people into bigoted, narrow-minded and out-of-touch-with-reality people.
What does it say about both religions and their holy books when the ones who follow the book most closely are the ones we need to be โconcernedโ about?
Now what about the question of the possibility of being both a Christian and a feminist? My answer will focus on Christianity here, not Islam. If you're a liberal Christian, then yes, you can be a feminist, and more power to you for it! High-five liberal Christians! Yet that does not mean that they are technically right according to the Bible. A number of people brought up the old, predictable argument that one must understand those difficult passages about women by seeing it as a โculturalโ thing. That may have been the cultural norm two thousand years ago, but things are different now. But is it really a culturally-relative thing? Let's find out:
1 Timothy 2:11-14...
โA woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.โ
Here Paul begins by asserting that women should not teach or exercise any authority over men. They are to keep their mouths shut in church. Elsewhere he says if a woman has a question, she is not allowed to ask that question in church, but has to wait until later and ask her husband (as if he will know the answer โ lol). Paul then proceeds to give us his rationale for this teaching. His rationale consists of two parts. The fist part is this:
For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
There you have it. His rationale has absolutely nothing in it that could be in any way construed as โculturally-relativeโ. On the contrary, in Paul's mind, the reason men should have authority over women is so fundamental that it's built right into the very order of creation! The man came first, then the woman. That sets the pattern of authoritative priority for all time! To defy that is to defy God's very creative order - a serious error.
The second part of his rationale is this:
And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
Which basically means that since Eve, the first female, was deceived, all women thereafter must be understood as also having this same vulnerability to deception. Again, in Paul's mind, what happened in the Garden of Eden forms the pattern by which future generations need to fit into. Women are too vulnerable to deception, therefore, to allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man is inviting all kinds of error to enter the picture. Again, this has nothing to do with cultural-relativity. It's far more fundamental than that. Paul would certainly be appalled by the suggestion that one can by-pass this teaching using โcultural relativityโ as a tool.
Personally, I find Paul's rationale to be utterly ridiculous, but then I'm not a fundamentalist Christian (or a Christian at all for that matter). But to those for whom โThe Bookโ means everything, this is something that can't be easily dismissed.
A quote from a poster earlier on this thread (not to pick on that person):
โThere is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.โ
Therefore everyone is equal in the eyes of God and the argument is over.โ
Well, if the argument is whether or not men and women are equal in the eyes of God, then yes, the argument is over. But in the Bible, โequalityโ and โgender rolesโ are totally different things. Yes, โin Christโ, there is equality. There is no male or female. But that is sort of a โspiritualโ reality, not a practical reality. Real life is a different thing altogether. After all, it was the same man who wrote this beautiful passage (Paul) that also wrote all those other passages stating that women should be subject to men. Though Paul does believe that โin Christโ there is male/female equality, how each gender is actually supposed to live their everyday lives is a very different thing. In practical everyday life, they have very separate roles. I've heard far too many Christians quote that verse, as though it somehow trumps or supersedes all the other passages he wrote about gender roles. It's an excuse they use to brush aside those difficult passages that they don't want to believe or obey. This is a mistake, though an understandable one.
One last thought and then I'll end this lecture (sorry I'm so long-winded). I have stated that the more liberal branch of Christianity freely uses the pick-and-choose approach. But the reality is that ALL Christians pick and choose, even the most fundamentalist among them. The New Testament has a great deal to say about the whole issue of divorce and remarriage. According to Jesus, if a person divorces their spouse and later remarries, that person is committing adultery. Yet the divorce/remarriage rate in evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity is pretty much exactly the same as it is among the general population. In a couple of the most fundamentalist of denominations, the divorce rate is actually higher! Clearly Christians, even most fundamentalists, don't care one bit about what the Bible has to say on this topic.
Another example: Gluttony. I have a facebook friend who is a very devout born-again Christian. She's a wonderful person, but she's huge! It seems like every other day she is posting a photo of her and her husband feasting at Red Lobster or some other restaurant, with a huge bonanza of food on the table in front of her. The problem is that the New Testament ranks gluttony right up there with all kinds of nasty so-called โsinsโ, including homosexuality. The Bible takes a very seriously negative view of gluttony. Yet clearly, this friend of mine obviously couldn't care less, even though the Bible is the most important book in her life. And come to think of it, I've never met a Christian of any flavor who takes the sin of gluttony seriously.
It's much easier for them to focus on people who commit โsinsโ that they themselves are NOT guilty of, than it is to point the finger inward at their OWN sins. Gays are easy targets in this respect. It's the one sin that most evangelical/fundamentalists are NOT guilty of, so naturally that's the thing they like to focus all their righteous indignation on.
They either can't, or won't, see the mote in their own eye.
And the truth is, even in most fundamentalist churches these days, women are popular speakers and teachers. Joyce Myers comes to mind. She's an extremely popular Christian teacher, beloved by millions of even fundamentalist Christians. So much so in fact, that she has become extremely wealthy. So in the vast majority of Christendom (Catholicism excluded), the Bible's teachings about women are mostly ignored.
And in my opinion, that's a good thing.
