Christianity and women

Christianity and women

Joan of Arc led battles in the fight to free France from England. She believed that God had commanded her to do so. Upon capture, she was tried for heresy by an English court and burned at the stake. She is now a saint venerated in the Roman Catholic Church.

Many feminists have accused notions such as a male God, male prophets, and the man-centred stories in the Bible of contributing to a patriarchy. Though many women disciples and servants are recorded in the Pauline epistles, there have been occasions in which women have been denigrated and forced into a second-class status. For example, women were told to keep silent in the churches for "it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church." Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said in The Woman's Bible that "the Bible in its teachings degrades Women from Genesis to Revelation".

Elizabeth Clark cites early Christian writings by authors such as Augustine, Tertullian and John Chrysostom as being exemplary of the negative perception of women that has been perpetuated in church tradition. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, only the names of very few women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years were widely known: Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, disciple of Jesus and the first witness to the resurrection; and Mary and Martha, the sisters who offered him hospitality in Bethany.

 

Harvard scholar Karen King writes that more of the many women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years are becoming known. Further, she concludes that for centuries in Western Christianity, Mary Magdalene has been wrongly identified as the adulteress and repentant prostitute presented in John 8–a connection supposed by tradition but nowhere claimed in the New Testament. According to King, the Gospel of Mary shows that she was an influential figure, a prominent disciple and leader of one wing of the early Christian movement that promoted women's leadership.
King claims that every sect within early Christianity which had advocated women's prominence in ancient Christianity was eventually declared heretical, and evidence of women's early leadership roles was erased or suppressed.
Stagg and Stagg, in a scholarly book entitled Woman in the World of Jesus, document very unfavorable attitudes toward women that prevailed in the world into which Jesus came. They assert that there is no recorded instance where Jesus disgraces, belittles, reproaches, or stereotypes a woman. They interpret the recorded treatment and attitude Jesus showed to women as evidence that the Founder of Christianity treated women with great dignity and respect. Various theologians have concluded that the canonical examples of the manner of Jesus are instructive for inferring his attitudes toward women. They are seen as showing repeatedly and consistently how he liberated and affirmed women. However, Schalom Ben-Chorin argues that Jesus's reply to his mother in John 2:4 during the wedding at Cana amounted to a blatant violation of the commandment to honor one's parent Ex 20-12. 




  He mistakenly assumes Jesus's response to be an offensive statement, when in all actuality, the term "woman" was used to show respect in the Hebrew cultures. Also, Christ was an adult at the time, thirty years of age. He had the Biblical right to refuse a command by his mother, and he did so stating that he was doing his Father's (God's) business.



There are three major viewpoints within modern Christianity over the role of women. They are known respectively as Christian feminism, Christian Egalitarianism and Complementarianism.

• Christian Feminists take an actively feminist position from a Christian perspective.
• Christian Egalitarians advocate ability-based, rather than gender-based, ministry of Christians of all ages, ethnicities and socio-economic classes. Egalitarians support the ordination of women and equal roles in marriage, but are theologically and morally more conservative than Christian feminists and prefer to avoid the label "feminist." A limited notion of gender complementarity is held by some, known as "complementarity without hierarchy."
• Complementarians support both equality and beneficial differences between men and women. They believe the Bible teaches that men and women have distinct complementary roles in both marriage and in the church. They maintain that men have a responsibility to lead and women have a responsibility to submit to the leadership of men.

Some Christians argue that the idea of God as a man is based less on gender but rather on the dominant Patriarchal society of the time in which men acted as leaders and caretakers of the Family. Thus, the idea of God being "The Father" is with regards to his relationship with what are "his children", Christians.


In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to revise its "Baptist Faith and Message" (Statement of Faith), opposing women as pastors. While this decision is not binding and would not prevent women from serving as pastors, the revision itself has been criticized by some from within the convention. In the same document, the Southern Baptist Convention took a strong position of the subordinating view of woman in marriage: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband. She has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not allow female clergy. The Chaldean Catholic Church on the other hand continues to maintain a large number of deaconesses serving alongside male deacons during mass.
In some evangelical churches, it is forbidden for women to become pastors, deacons or church elders. In support of such prohibitions, the verse 1 Timothy 2:12 is often cited: 

“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

Christianity and politics

Some leftists and libertarians use the term Christian fascism or Christofascism to describe what some see as an emerging proto-fascism and possible theocracy in the United States.
Reverend Rich Lang of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Seattle gave a sermon titled "George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism", in which he said, "I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied."

Christianity and violence

Many critics of Christianity have cited the violent acts of Christian nations as a reason to denounce the religion. Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said that he could not forgive religions for the atrocities and wars over time.^[91] Richard Dawkins makes a similar case in his book, The God Delusion. In The Dawkins Delusion?, Alister McGrath responds to Dawkins by suggesting that, far from endorsing "out-group hostility," Jesus commanded an ethic of "out-group affirmation." McGrath agrees that it is necessary to critique religion, but says that Dawkins seems unaware that it possesses internal means of reform and renewal. While Christians may certainly be accused of failing to live up to Jesus standard of acceptance, it is there at the heart of the Christian ethic. The relationship of Christianity and violence is the subject of controversy because some people assert that Christianity advocates peace, love and compassion while others view it as a violent religion.
Peace, compassion and forgiveness of wrongs done by others are key elements of Christian teaching. However, Christians have struggled since the days of the Church fathers with the question of when the use of force is justified. Such debates have led to concepts such as just war theory. Throughout history, certain teachings from the Old Testament, the New Testament and Christian theology have been used to justify the use of force against heretics, sinners and external enemies. Heitman and Hagan identify the Inquisitions, Crusades, wars of religion and antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence".To this list, J. Denny Weaver adds, "warrior popes, support for capital punishment, corporal punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to men." Weaver employs a broader definition of violence that extends the meaning of the word to cover "harm or damage", not just physical violence per se. Thus, under his definition, Christian violence includes "forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, and sexism."



Although some Christians have relied on Christian teaching to justify their use of force, other Christians have opposed the use of force and violence. Some of the latter have formed sects that have emphasized pacificism as a central tenet of their faith. Christians have also engaged in violence against those that they classify as heretics and non-believers. In Letter to a Christia Nation, critic of religion Sam Harris writes that "...faith inspires violence in at least two way. First, people often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it... Second, far greater numbers of people fall into conflict with one another because they define their moral community on the basis of their religious affiliation..."
Christian theologians point to a strong doctrinal and historical imperative within Christianity against violence, particularly Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, which taught nonviolence and love of enemies. Weaver says that Jesus's pacifism was "preserved in the justifiable war doctrine that declares all war as sin even when declaring it occasionally a necessary evil, and in the prohibition of fighting by monastics and clergy as well as in a persistent tradition of Christian pacifism." Others point out sayings and acts of Jesus that do not fit this description: the absence of any censure of the soldier who asks Jesus to heal his servant, his overturning the tables and chasing the moneychangers from the temple with a rope in his hand, and through his Apostles, baptising a Roman Centurion who is never asked to first give up arms. Criticism of the violent acts of Christian societies to non-believers, as Christian pacifists would argue that Christianity has been co-opted by militant states to simply provide justification for political agendas. Violence is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, and as such war and genocide are regarded as un-Christian acts.

Science

During the 19th century an interpretive model of the relationship between religion and science known today as the conflict theory developed, according to which interaction between religion and science almost inevitably leads to hostility and conflict. A popular example was the misconception that people from the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat, and that only science, freed from religious dogma, had shown that it was spherical. This thesis was a popular historiographical approach during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but most contemporary historians of science now reject it. 

The notion of a war between science and religion remained common in the historiography of science during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of today's historians of science consider that the conflict thesis has been superseded by subsequent historical research. The framing of the relationship between Christianity and science as being predominantly one of conflict is still prevalent in popular culture. Similar views have also been supported by many scientists. The astronomer Carl Sagan, for example, mentions the dispute between the astronomical systems of Ptolemy (who thought that the sun and planets revolved around the earth) and Copernicus (who thought the earth and planets revolved around the sun). He states in his A personal Voyage that Ptolemy's belief was "supported by the church through the Dark Ages…[It] effectively prevented the advance of astronomy for 1,500 years."

Many scientists throughout history held strong Christian beliefs. Isaac Newton, for example, believed that gravity caused the planets to revolve about the Sun, and credited God with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he wrote: "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Other famous founders of science who adhered to Christian beliefs include Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Blaise Pascal.

Medieval scholars sought to understand the geometric and harmonic principles by which God created the universe. 

Historians of science such as J.L. Heilbron, Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg,

Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein, and Ted Davis also have been revising the common notion—the product of black legends say some—that medieval Christianity has had a negative influence in the development of civilization. These historians believe that not only did the monks save and cultivate the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but the medieval church promoted learning and science through its sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's "model theologian," not only argued that reason is in harmony with faith, he even recognized that reason can contribute to understanding revelation, and so encouraged intellectual development. He was not unlike other medieval theologians who sought out reason in the effort to defend his faith. Some of today's scholars, such as Stanley Jaki, have claimed that Christianity with its particular worldview, was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science.

David C. Lindberg states that the widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages was a time of ignorance and superstition due to the Christian church is a "caricature". According to Lindberg, while there are some portions of the classical tradition which suggest this view, these were exceptional cases. It was common to tolerate and encourage critical thinking about the nature of the world. The relation between Christianity and science is complex, according to Lindberg. Lindberg reports that "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led. There was no warfare between science and the church." Ted Peters in Encyclopedia of Religion writes that although there is some truth in the "Galileo's condemnation" story but through exaggerations, it has now become "a modern myth perpetuated by those wishing to see warfare between science and religion who were allegedly persecuted by an atavistic and dogma-bound ecclesiastical authority."  In 1992, the Catholic Church's seeming vindication of Galileo attracted much comment in the media.