Chapter 2
Women in History: Less than Human
What is striking about the "Danvers Statement," which asserts patriarchal roles in church and home, is that it is not striking at all. It represents, rather, a reaffirmation of the principle of male dominance and female subordination that has characterized virtually all human societies since the dawn of recorded history.
Women have constituted the most discriminated-against majority in every civilization, culture, race, nation, and religion. They have been relegated to a second-class status and treated as a subhuman species. They have been denied citizenship, education, civil or legal rights, and a voice or vote in any public assembly. For instance, women did not gain the right to vote in England until 1919 and in the United States until 1920. They have been treated as property to be bought, sold, or cast aside when they no longer served men's purposes. "Woman has been treated as man's inferior so long," protests Patricia Gundry, "that this practice has become accepted as truth."1
There have been rare and isolated exceptions to this devaluation of women. In Egypt, Greece, and the later Roman empire, there were periods of time in which some women attained a high degree of emancipation. Some Greek women in Sparta attained an education and took
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part in public life. Many Roman women achieved a high degree of wealth and influence, although none ever became Caesar or were elected to the senate. But even in these relatively brief periods of history, it was generally only the well-born and highly positioned women who were able to break the bonds of inferiority and subordination. Even as water seeks its own level, these brief episodes of women asserting themselves faded back into the servility of social patriarchalism.
In order for us to develop some sense of appreciation for the radicalness of the New Testament's noble vision of women's emancipation, it is vitally important to gain some comprehension of how women have been regarded and treated.
WOMEN IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES
An extreme but not atypical example of the oppression and brutalization of women in primitive cultures is reported by Robert Hughes in his definitive history of Australia. He cites an earlier account by George Barrington (1802), which describes aboriginal courtship as follows:
In obtaining a female partner the first step they take, romantic as it may seem, is to fix on some female of a tribe at enmity with their own . . . The monster then stupefies her with blows, which he inflicts with his club, on her head, back, neck, and indeed every part of her body, then snatching up one of her arms, he drags her, streaming with blood from her wounds through the woods, over stones, rocks, hills and logs, with all the violence and determination of a savage, till he reaches his tribe.2
As overdrawn as this portrait might seem, courtship by violence and rape was not uncommon. Aboriginal women had no rights at all and could choose nothing. A girl was generally given away when she was born. She was the absolute property of her kin until marriage and then
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the virtual slave of her husband after that. She was merely a "root-grubbing, shell-gathering chattel, whose social assets were wiry arms, prehensile toes and a vagina."3 Aborigines were nomadic wanderers. On the march it was up to each woman to carry her infants as well as food and implements. Since she could carry only one child, the others would either be left to starve or be beaten to death. Wives were lent to visitors and swapped as a sign of brotherhood. They were sent out to test the intentions of a potentially threatening aggressor. If peaceful, the intruders would have relations with them. If the women returned untouched, that was regarded as an insult that had to be answered in battle. An exchange of wives capped a truce between enemies. If a woman showed the least reluctance to be used for these purposes, or seemed lazy, or otherwise offended her lord and master, she would be "furiously beaten or even speared."4
Another example comes from the journal of Samuel Hearne, the first European explorer to venture far north into the Canadian arctic in the mid-1700s. He and his party would have perished of starvation had they not been rescued by a native Indian chief by the name of Matonabee. Farley Mowat quotes Hearne's journal in which a typically demeaning view of women is graphically expressed:
Matonabee attributed our present misfortunes partly to the misconduct of our guides, but mainly to the insistence of the Governor that we should take no women.
"For," said he, "when all the men are heavy laden, they can neither hunt nor travel any distance. And in case they should meet with some success in hunting, who is to carry the produce of their labour? Women were made for labour. One of them can carry or haul as much as two men. they also pitch our tents, make and mend our clothes, keep us warm at night — and in
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fact there is no such thing as travelling any considerable distance without their assistance. More than this, women can be maintained at trifling expense, for, as they always cook, the very licking of their fingers in scarce times is sufficient for their sustenance."5
Even though Africa has been heavily influenced by Western culture, traditional attitudes toward women persist among most tribes. Women are virtual slaves. They not only carry the full responsibility for domestic duties but also do all the work toward maintaining their home and family. They plow, plant, till, and harvest the crops. Then missionaries, as recently as the turn of the 20th century, suggested that farmers could increase the yield of their fields by utilizing oxen to pull their plows, the tribesmen protested that cattle should not be used to do women's work. Women draw and carry the water. They gather, cut, and haul the firewood with no help from their husbands. A traveler to Africa is immediately struck by the anomaly of women carrying immense loads on their heads or on their backs supported by a strap over their foreheads, while men are rarely seen carrying anything. Furthermore, men and women never hold hands in public, or otherwise display any sign of affection. Rarely does one see a man carrying on a conversation with a woman, least of all his wife.
Husbands are the undisputed monarchs of their households. A man can have as many wives as he can afford while the woman has no choice in the matter. Among some tribes husbands do not sleep with their wives except for purposes of procreation. They do not eat with their wives and children. When the wife brings him his food, she places it on the ground before him so that he will not be contaminated by her touch. He then pulls it toward himself with his foot. Wives and children may be beaten, burnt, stabbed, and even slain by their husbands and fathers
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at their will and whim. If a woman's husband dies, she becomes the property of the husband's family. Any male family member may have her. Children born of these unions will carry the name of her deceased husband.
WOMEN IN GREECE AND ROME
Greek philosophers not only bequeathed to the world the settled conviction that women were inferior to men but taught that it was an indisputable fact of natural law. Around this prejudice they wove such a tight web of reason that it became an unquestioned assumption throughout the subsequent course of Western history — at least until the 19th century. It is ironic that such an unflattering view of women would originate in Athens, the city name after Athenia, the lovely goddess of wisdom.
Pythagoras (ca. 580-500 B.C.) one of the earliest Greek philosophers, wrote, "There is a good principle which created order, light and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness and woman." Socrates (ca. 470-399 B.C.) described women as "the weaker sex" and taught that they were halfway between a man and an animal. He asked, "Do you know anything at all practiced among mankind, in which in all these respects the male sex is not far better than the female?"6
Plato (ca. 428-347 B.C.), who recorded and immortalized the teachings of Socrates, was embraced by the Church fathers because his philosophical framework was so compatible with many features of Christian theology. It was inevitable, then, that Socrates' low opinion of women would be accepted as authoritative. Plato's influential disciple, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) wrote that all females, both animal and human, were inferior to males: "While still within the mother the female takes longer to develop than the male does . . . because females are weaker and colder in their nature; and we should look upon the female state as
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being as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature."7
Aristotle further taught that men are made for commanding and women for obeying and that this inequality is permanent. The difference between man and woman is like that of soul and body: the man is to his wife like a soul is to a body, commanding and guiding its members with intelligence and wisdom. Aristotle used the same analogy to define the relationship between master and slave. He warned that the "equality of the two or rule of the inferior is always hurtful."8 This sentiment still reverberates in the 20th century. Marabel Morgan writes, in her popular "submissionism" text The Total Woman, that "it is only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him, and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him."9 A Texas state senator was recently quoted in a newspaper, echoing the philosophers' view of women when he asked, "Do you know why God created women? Because sheep can't type."
Respectable Greek wives lived secluded in their homes. They were denied a voice or vote in any public affairs and were forbidden to either eat or socialize with men. Women were excluded from the marketplace, sporting events, and the agora where philosophy was discussed. Women were married at an early age to men they did not know. They received no education apart from learning domestic duties. The ideal woman, according to Xenophon, a contemporary of Aristotle, was one who "might see as little as possible, hear as little as possible, and ask as little as possible."10 A friend of Xenophon described his wife in these terms: "She was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear anything or ask any questions."11 Pericles stated
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that it was the duty of an Athenian mother to live so retired a life that her name would never be mentioned among men, either for praise or for shame.12
WOMEN IN PALESTINE
Nowhere do we witness the dehumanizing and demeaning effects of religious and social patriarchalism more clearly than in the Judaism of Jesus' day. New Testament scholars, such as Joachim Jeremias, have been able to reconstruct a detailed portrait of how women were viewed and treated.13
Women were to be secluded from public life. They were to remain in the inner chamber of the house and devote themselves solely to domestic duties. When they went out in public their heads were covered and their faces veiled so that their features could not be recognized. Only on the day of her wedding was a bride seen with head uncovered, and then only if she were a virgin. For woman to appear in public with her face uncovered was sufficient cause for her husband to divorce her. Rabbinical literature expresses high regard for those women who kept their head covered even in their own house, so that their children would grow to maturity without ever seeing their mother's face. On one occasion a chief priest in Jerusalem failed to recognize that the woman before him, charged with adultery, was his own mother. It is difficult to imagine any social custom more depersonalizing and dehumanizing to women than covering up their faces. men did not treat their animals like that.
When a woman ventured out, the Mishnah (Traditions of the Elders) forbade a man to give her a greeting or even to look at her. It was disgraceful for a rabbi to speak with a woman in public. It was preferable for a woman, especially unmarried, to avoid going out at all. "I was a pure maiden and I strayed not from my father's house," boasted the
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mother of seven sons martyred during the wars of Jewish independence (ca. 150 B.C.). The Talmud interprets the words of Ps. 45:13, "The king's daughter is all glorious within" (KJV), as a description of the secluded life of women who never leave their houses. There are numerous accounts in Jewish literature about women, such as Salome who danced before Herod's guests, flouting dress codes, but they are always viewed with extreme disfavor as representing "loose women." There was one exception to this rule: twice a year dances took place in the vineyards around jerusalem when unmarried maidens, whose fathers had been unable to arrange a marriage, were allowed to parade their facial beauty before eligible Jewish males. There is evidence that headdress codes were not as strictly observed in the country as in the town, yet even there it was not proper for a man to talk with a woman.
A Jewish woman had the legal status of a slave and was regarded as a possession of her father and then of her husband. She had no legal rights of her own. This was based on a rabbinical interpretation of the 10th commandment, which reads: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Exodus 20:17, NASB). A woman thus had the same status as a house, slave, ox, and donkey. She was denied any education other than learning domestic arts. She could not receive an inheritance nor keep any money she earned. A father could sell his daughter into slavery until she was 12. Daughters were valued primarily as a source of profit and cheap labor. Her father, or her husband, represented her in all legal matters, in which she had no voice whatsoever. He could cancel any vows that she made.
A father arranged for his daughter's marriage, generally shortly after she was born. He retained the dowry,
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which her fiancé had to pay. Up until the age of 12 she had no right to refuse such a marriage. He could marry her even to someone with a crippling deformity. The Mishnah provided that a wife could be acquired "by money, or by writ, or by intercourse." Marriage contracts were drawn up with wives considered as the acquisition of their husbands just as if they were Gentile slaves. Marriages among relatives were preferred. For a man to marry his sister's daughter, his own niece, is praised in Jewish literature as a pious act. There are frequent accounts of intrafamily marriages, like that of Abraham to his half-sister Sarah, and Jacob to his cousins, Leah and Rachel. While a woman could have only one husband, a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Upon marriage, ownership of the woman passed from her father to her husband. Her sole reason for existence was to bear him children and to meet his every need. Failure to bear children was a great misfortune and was even considered a divine punishment (cf. Luke 1:25). Her only hope of gaining any respect whatsoever was to bear her husband a son. If her husband died without leaving her with a son, she was still bound by Moses' Levirate law of marriage to her husband's brothers until they either raised up a son by her to carry on her deceased husband's name and inheritance, or until they published a refusal to do so. Without this she could not remarry (Deut. 25:5-10; cf. Mark 12:18-27).
A wife's role was strictly domestic. Her duties were to spin, weave, sew, and wash clothes for her husband. She was also responsible for grinding meal, baking, cooking preparing and serving his meals. She was not permitted to eat with him but was to remain standing behind him while he ate. Other duties included clothing him, washing his face, hands, and feet, preparing his bed, and caring for him when he grew old. She had to turn over to him all money earned from manual work. She rendered to her husband
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unquestioning and absolute obedience in all things. This was a religious duty. Children were commanded to put respect for their father before that of their mother. If the family's life was in danger, the husband was to be saved first, sons second, then mother and daughters.
A husband could take another wife or concubine without consulting his first wife, and she was expected not only to welcome them into her home but also to live in harmony with them. Only the husband had the right of divorce. Moses permitted divorce if the husband found "some indecency in her" (Deut. 24:1, NASB). There were two schools of interpretation over the meaning of Moses' divorce law. The school of Shammai held that "some indecency" meant unchastity. The followers of Hillel, however, maintained that a husband was justified in turning his wife out of house and home for any reason of displeasure, even if he chanced to find more pleasure in another woman! The only stipulation was that he had to give her the sum of money prescribed in the marriage contract, which served as a form of alimony and child support. If she violated any number of rules, however, such as allowing a man to speak to her in public, she would forfeit the money. In practice, a divorced woman rarely was paid anything.
Women were denied any active role in religious life. With only a few exceptions, they were bound under all the prohibitions of the Law and were subject to the full force of the Law including the death penalty. They were not bound, however, to fulfill many of the positive commandments of the Law. For instance, they were under no obligation to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to celebrate the three major festivals of the year, or to recite the daily Shema (Deut. 6:4-9). Girls were barred from attending rabbinical schools lest they learn how to read and thus gain access to the Law. Rabbi Eliezer (ca. A.D. 90) warned, "If a man gives his daughter a knowledge of the Law it is as though
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he taught her lechery." The reasoning behind this was that if a young woman should become conversant in the Law, she would want to discuss it with men. In so exposing herself, they would be more likely to become enticed into immorality.
Women could not offer sacrifices. They were forbidden to go into the inner courts of the Temple. They were not permitted to be in any part of the Temple precincts — even the Court of the Gentiles — while menstruating, nor for a period of 40 days after the birth of a son and 80 days after the birth of a daughter. Women were barred from participating in synagogue worship. The synagogue service was divided into two parts. Women could attend the sabbateon, devoted to the liturgy of worship, as long as they sat in a balcony or behind a latticework at the back of the sanctuary, thereby remaining hidden from the view of the worshiping men. They could not enter the synagogue by the front door but only by the back. They were not permitted to participate in singing, prayers, or responses in deference to "the dignity of the congregation." They had to maintain absolute silence. They were dismissed before the second part of the service called the andron (male), the "men's service," which was devoted to reading and expounding the Torah by the scribes. The rationale for excluding the women was based upon the belief that since Eve was deceived, and thus was responsible for bringing sin into the world, all her daughters were thereby bound under a curse that rendered them unworthy to hear — much less to discuss or to teach — the Law of God. One rabbi said that "it would be better that the Torah be burnt than spoken from the lips of a woman." Philo, a contemporary of Jesus and Paul, taught that had there been no Eve, Adam would have remained happy and immortal. This practice of excluding women continues in force to the present day in Orthodox Jewish synagogues.
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Women were forbidden to pray aloud over a meal at their own table. Even today women are barred from praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and can only look down upon the men at prayer from an observation area on top of the wall. Also, Jewish mothers are still barred from participating in their own sons' bar mitzvah.
Women had no civil rights, nor could they serve as witnesses in legal proceedings. Women were regularly described as being in the same class with Gentile slaves and minor children. Jewish literature is full of expressions of joy over the birth of a son and sorrow over the birth of a daughter. Two hundred years before Christ, Jesus ben Sirach lamented the excessive burdens a father had to bear over his daughter. He concluded, "Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good; and it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace." A rabbinic verse-by-verse commentary on Genesis describes women as "greedy, eavesdroppers, lazy, and jealous . . . also querulous and garrulous." Rabbi Hillel taught that wherever many women were gathered together, there was much witchcraft. The Shabbath, which dates from around the time of Christ, describes woman as being "a pitcher full of filth with its mouth full of blood." Rabbi Judah encouraged Jewish males to utter three thanksgivings daily: "Blessed be He who did not make me a Gentile ... a woman ... a boor [ignorant of the law]." Another version of that popular prayer went, "Blessed be He who did not make me a Gentile, a dog, a woman" — in that order. The Gospel of Thomas, a second-century Gnostic letter widely circulated among the churches, contains supposedly "secret teachings" of Jesus. It concludes with this dialogue:
Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, because women are no worthy of life."
Jesus said, "Behold, I shall guide her so as to make her male, that she too may become a living spirit like
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you men. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."14
It is in light of this cultural and social background, dominant not only in Palestine but throughout the Mediterranean world, that the New Testament must be read. We will discover that neither Jesus nor Paul ever reflected such a low estimate of women. To the contrary, the New Testament explodes upon its world as one of the most egalitarian documents in history in the way it smashes walls and bridges chasms that have divided people from each other, all across the religious, racial, social, and gender spectrum. The gospel of Jesus Christ elevates women as coequal with men in all matters pertaining to the kingdom of God and to their life together as fellow members of the Body of Christ. The New Testament presents us with the earliest and most compelling vision of what a community of believers can become when "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
WOMEN IN CHURCH HISTORY
The emancipation and elevation of women that began in the ministry of Jesus and flowered in the earliest Church was, unfortunately, soon compromised and then finally lost. The rapidly growing and expanding Church, flooded by recent converts from Judaism and paganism, began to revert to the prevailing cultural estimate of women's inferiority until, by the middle of the second century A.D. Tertullian, the influential Church father and theologian, spelled out this rule as one of the precepts of ecclesiastical discipline concerning women: "It is not permitted for woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor claim for herself a share in any masculine function — not to mention any priestly office."15
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There were a number of seemingly justifiable reasons for this retrenchment. First, the Church was primarily concerned with carrying out the Great Commission and establishing the Church in an alien and often hostile environment. It is too much to expect that it would immediately challenge unjust social institutions and undertake massive social reform, given how tiny, fragile, and vulnerable it was in its earliest decades. It was in a continuous fight for its very survival against heretics from within and harassment from without. There was scandal enough in the proclamation of the Cross without pressing for social reform. It was easier, and necessary, to conform to accepted social customs and cultural traditions rather than challenge them. It was revolutionary enough that they welcomed slaves and women into their fellowship at all.
More determinative in the Church's retrenchment back into patriarchalism was the rise and rapid spread of gnosticism, the first all-out assault upon the integrity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly in the second and third centuries. As we shall see, the precursors of this insidious heresy can be found in the church at Ephesus while Timothy was its pastor. One of the seductive aspects of gnosticism, especially attractive to women, was its insertion of the female principle into both God and Christ. It represented an accommodation of Christianity to various features of goddess religions, and their veneration of the divine Mother as the complement [and sometimes consort] of the Father God. Many Gnostics regarded the Holy Spirit as female in gender — and with some justification in that the Hebrew word for Spirit is in the feminine case. In the Gnostic gospel the Apocryphon of John, the beloved apostle reports a vision in which God says, "I am the one who [is with you] always. I [am the Father]; I am the Mother; I am the Son."16 The Gospel to the Hebrews has Jesus speaking of "my Mother, the Spirit."17
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Many of the Gnostic writings portray women as recipients of "special revelation" from the risen Christ. Thus they became authoritative voices within some Christian communities, bearing "secret knowledge" that enabled the spirit to escape the imprisonment of body and soul until it ascended into the presence of absolute light, God. Women not only are prominently featured in Gnostic literature but were active in its propagation among the churches. One of the most influential Gnostic preachers, during the second century, was Marcion. He was a radical Christian who rejected the Hebrew Scriptures along with its repressive laws. He appointed women as priests and bishops and relied heavily upon them to spread his brand of Christian theology. Among the Valentinians, another Gnostic sect, women were encouraged to preach, teach, travel as evangelists and healers, and also functioned as priests. This prompted Tertullian to express his outrage: "These heretical women — how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and, it may be, even to baptize!"18
The Montanists were another second-century radical movement. Though not Gnostic, they rejected the orthodox church with its priests as being corrupt and worldly. They relied upon direct messages from God rather than the Scriptures and believed that Montanus and two of their prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, were mouthpieces for the Holy Spirit.
In their efforts to combat false doctrine and rid themselves of these heretical movements, the Church fathers reacted against not only their doctrines but their propagators as well, which were, in the main, women. By denying women access to platforms from which they could disseminate their pernicious heresies, they hoped to deprive gnosticism of its voice and thus choke it out altogether.
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Clement, bishop of Rome, wrote a letter to the still unruly church in Corinth early in the second century in which he counseled that women were to "remain in the rule of subjection."19 While men and women sat together in the earliest church for worship, the orthodox catholic congregations began to segregate them once again, as in Jewish synagogues. By the end of the second century, active participation of women in worship was expressly condemned. Christian communities that defied this ban were branded as heretical. While strains of Gnostic teaching persisted in various segments of the Church for many centuries, women were barred from assuming any prophetic, priestly, or episcopal roles in Catholic — and later Orthodox — churches from A.D. 200 to the present.
By the second century A.D. Paul's letters were widely circulated among the churches and carried the authoritative weight of Scripture even though they were not formally declared so until Bishop Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter in A.D. 367, at which time our present canon of sacred Scriptures was established and sealed. The Church fathers frequently appealed to those passages in his letters where Paul restricts the active participation of women in the church. And so it has continued, down across the centuries, right into our own day. It wasn't until the Second Great Awakening and the rise of the American holiness movement in the last century that any serious and sustained challenge to gender discrimination against women was launched (see chap. 7).
We must note another factor that played a key role in the historic subjugation of women: namely, spiritually-minded men have long viewed women as carnal and seductive, the flesh-and-blood incarnation of temptation to evil, and thus archenemies of the soul. This attitude of horror and contempt for women by many Christian men, especially ascetics devoted to a life of separation and contemplation,
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was given gross expression by the French monk Roger de Caen in Carmen de Mundi Contimptu: "If her bowels and flesh were cut open, you would see what filth is covered by her white skin. If a fine crimson cloth covered a pile of foul dung, would anyone be foolish enough to love the dung because of it? . . . There is no plague which monks should dread more than woman; the soul's death."20
Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Church theologian whose Summa Theologia became the textbook of Roman Catholic doctrine and teaching, had this to say about women:
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness according to the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active power, or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist . . .
Subjection is twofold. One is servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit; and this kind of subjection began after sin. There is another kind of subjection, which is called economic or civil, whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their own benefit and good; and this kind of subjection existed even before sin. For the good of order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves. So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discernment of reason predominates.21
Martin Luther's courageous stand on the authority of the Word, over against the excesses of the Roman church, brought release from bondage to religious superstition and precipitated the Protestant reformation. Yet, unfortunately,
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his democratizing doctrine of the "priesthood of every believer" did not extend to women. He regarded them as unfit for preaching, ministering the sacraments, or holding any positions of leadership in the congregation, a position still maintained by Missouri Synod Lutheran churches today. Luther's offhand comment reflects his low estimate of women: "Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops."
The Church not only has historically embraced patriarchalism with its low regard for women but has actively enforced it in the rare instances where a local culture was oriented otherwise. Annie Machisale-Muscopole is an active lay member of the Church of Central Africa-Presbyterian. She has traveled widely in Europe, Africa, and the United States speaking on women's issues. The Chewa culture of her native Malawi is one of the few where women were, for centuries, accorded high respect. They were regarded as the source of life because both male and female children come into the world through them. "The art of creating and sustaining life," she reports, "is understood to be a secret between God and women. Women are considered to be co-creators with God."22 The Chewa culture was matriarchal. Their social and religious history is peopled by numerous heroic female prophetesses, priests, and rulers.
With the advent of the white missionaries, however, accompanied by militaristic colonialists in the 18th century, there came a radical destruction of the Chewa religion, of much of their culture, and of their social relationships. These African women who had historically enjoyed respect and equal status with men became enslaved in their own country. There were taught to submit unquestioningly to their husbands, who in turn submitted to the white man whose greater intelligence was a sign that he was nearer to
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God. Under the umbrella of civilization, many Malawi were captured by Arabs and sold as slaves to European and American merchants. When gold was discovered, the white men claimed African territory for the English crown.
Since gaining their independence, Malawi women have regained much of their former respect and status in society, tribal leadership, and education — everywhere except in their churches. Even though their parent Scottish Presbyterian church now permits the ordination of women, the African branch does not. It is still trapped in the colonial caste system. Nevertheless, Annie Muscopole points out that women are the backbone of the church. They hold the revival meetings, convert people and form them in the faith, teach Sunday School and adult education classes, visit the sick, and carry out other charitable acts. She relates a proverb of her people that describes their situation, "The hen knows when it is daylight, but it leaves it to the cock to make the announcement."23
Our generation can scarcely comprehend that one of the most basic of human rights, the opportunity to seek a college or university education, is a freedom only recently granted to women. The first institution of higher education in the United States — or in history for that matter — to accept female students was Oberlin College in Ohio, and that not until the 1830s. Hillsboro College is proud of its record as the first in Michigan to open its doors to women, yet that wasn't until 1865. Both were distinctly Christian colleges founded as a consequence of the great spiritual awakenings of the mid-1800s. Such historic and prestigious universities as Harvard and Yale did not follow suit until around the turn of the 20th century. The University of North Carolina grudgingly opened its doors to women only after they gained the right to vote in 1920. They had to agree, however, to abide by certain rules: they must "(a) be accompanied to a class by a chaperon; (b) sit in a group in
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the rear of the room; (c) wear gloves and hats; (d) remain in their seats till the men had left; and (e) not participate in the graduation ceremonies nor have their picture in the yearbook."24
This is only the briefest sketch of what Elise Boulding calls, in the title of her book on women, The Underside of History.25 In this pioneering work, she tries to tell the other half of history: namely, herstory. It was a formidable task given the fact that the history of humankind has always been written by men as if it were the history of men. She has been able, nevertheless, to document the fact that women have occasionally transcended their culturally defined limits, carved out a space for themselves, and made significant contributions to their world in virtually every arena. She points out that "women have never been simply a subjugated people. They have always participated in a secondary way in the prevailing dominance structures of society."26 Nevertheless, she concludes:
Structures of dominance are ordinarily hierarchical. When the work of a number of people needs to be coordinated, hierarchical organization with successive levels of overview of the social scene eliminates a lot of explaining and teaching. if people do what they are told, "aboveness-belowness" works well. We have had ten thousand years of experience with progressive centralization of social organization. Few social scientists, let alone lay persons, could imagine doing without it.27
Even with "equal rights" consciousness so pervasive throughout the Western world today, it is difficult to imagine how things could work — in church, home, or society — apart from gender-powered social hierarchies. Most Christians cannot imagine anything different and thus defend the status quo as if it were God's first and final will for humankind. However, the question before those who have become new creatures in Christ Jesus, where the "old has
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passed away" and "everything has become new!" (2 Cor. 5:17), is this: Can we afford to continue our traditional patterns of being socially "conformed" to this present fallen world? Or is there a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit seeking to "transform" us by the renewing of our minds to "prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect"? (Rom. 12:2, NASB). Can we, as children of God, continue to live as children of the world by denying to women full inclusion as coequal human beings with all the rights and privileges extended to men, simply because it has always been that way? Must we settle for the value systems of a fallen world under the shadow of sin's curse? Are we going to allow "this present age" to squeeze us into its narrow, restrictive, and prejudicial mold?
The Scriptures do reveal an alternative: a powerful, purifying, and exalted vision of how we can relate to each other in such a way that women are not de facto dehumanized and discriminated against but enjoy a status as coequal with men by virtue of the creative intention and the redemptive action of God in Christ. It is a truth that has been, for too long, denied. It is a story that must be told. To it we now turn.
Chapter 3 || Table of Contents
1. Gundry, Woman, Be Free, 17. [BACK]
2. George Barrington [pseud.], The History of New South Wales, 17, cited by Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (New York: Random House, 1988), 15. [BACK]
5. Farley Mowat, Tundra (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), 40. [BACK]
6. Plato, The Republic, W.H.D Rouse, trans. (New York: Mentor, 1956), 456. [BACK]
7. Susan G. Bell, Women: From the Greeks to the French Revolution (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), 18, cited in Gundry, Woman, Be Free, 18. [BACK]
8. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Oxford University, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McDean, ed. (New York: Random House, 1941), 1:1254B, as cited in John Temple Bristow, What Paul Really Said About Women (San Francisco: Harper, 1988), 6. [BACK]
9. Marabel Morgan, The Total Woman (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1973), 80. [BACK]
10. Xenophon, "Within the Home," The Greek Reader, A.L. Wholl, trans. (New York: Doubleday, 1943), 625. (As quoted in Bristow, What Paul Really Said About Women, 7.) [BACK]
12. Bristow, What Paul Really Said About Women, 7. [BACK]
13. The primary source for the status and role of women in Judaism is Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 359-76. It is instructive to note that this chapter, "The Social Position of Women," is not part of the main work but is included in the Appendix. Even as recently as 1969, a major European New Testament scholar is not willing to include his chapter on women as part of the main body of his book!
Also providing valuable source material on the status and role of women in first-century Judaism are Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Women, Men, and the Bible (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 2-22; Bristow, What Paul Really Said About Women, 14-29; and the Jewish Encyclopedia, Isidore Singer, ed. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905), 12:556-59. [BACK]
14. The Secret Teachings of Jesus, Marvin W. Meyer, trans. (New York: Random House, 1986), Codex II, 51. [BACK]
15. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1981), 72. [BACK]
19. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 76. [BACK]
20. Susan G. Bell, Women, as cited in Gundry, Woman, Be Free, 18. [BACK]
21. Ibid., 18, as cited in Gundry, Woman Be Free, 18. [BACK]
22. Annie Machisale-Muscopole, "Toward a New Ecumentical Movement: A Malawian Perspective," May, Women and Church, 141ff. [BACK]
24. Paul K. Jewett, The Ordination of Women (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980), 103. [BACK]
25. Elise Boulding, The Underside of History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976). [BACK]