Sexism and religion

pauls words told women to bw silent !we do not worship paul we worship Jesus who often surrounded himself with women and even thought them important enough to give them the good news of his resurection to take to thier bretheren if you realy study the scriptures you will find that jesus did not discriminte at all after all was not Mary magdeline one of his disciples?

Hi victoria, Well women were always a second class to men women were only there for the purpose of men to serve them and to bear cheildref for them and no they didn't have a voice. When men are in the same room as a woman she had to leave the room and the bilble was written by men. It was a mans' world. When I was young I was always told to respect men and my question was why? if they respect me then I respect them and no man will tell me what to do. Tamara

To be honest there are some verses in bible which gives less importance to women when compared with men, but remember that in genesis god created eve from Adam's rib, which says men and women are equal and there are also female prophets in bible, so don't get carried away by those things, because some people use to take those things in a wrong manner, a very good example is the word called jihad.

Shall I be sexist and say that Women were the most important people of Biblical times and men were actually afraid of them. Hashem created all, but as far as they could see Women created children. It took a very long time for folks to figure out exactly how babies were conceived, and even after they did, there was still an element of superstition surrounding the conception and birth. That is why women had so many rituals surrounding their mensus and birth. In primative cultures that have little or no contact with modern man, these rituals continue to this day. Some of them are very simular to the ancient ones even though there was no way they were ever exposed to the people of our ancient times. Why? Shalom~Adoniah

There is a book called When God was a woman. It tells about the time when woman were the religious leaders. Its one of the most interesting books you will ever read. When my daughters were old enough I made sure they had it. Mans answer to ever thing is to kill it. This sounds nasty but I am sad to say its true. If you have read any history you know that war is the only thing men understand. Woman see the horror in this so men choice to keep us under their thumbs. Thank God we have reached a time in our history that woman may be able to save the world. This is if men don't destroy it first. I have always believe that the Bible and other holy books was written by dirty old men who had no use for woman other then as maids or some one to take care of them.

In Buddhism women is given a great place. When it comes to achieving the ultimate objective in Buddhism there is no difference between men and women. Both can achieve it if they have the determination and work towards it. No matter what, there are differences between men and women. Based on that in Buddhism also there are certain restriction for women but that does not ill-treat women. Buddhism considers women must be protected and cared by men.

I think, the whole thing stems fom the nature of man itself-God created man first-then a woman was crafted out of man's rib, and from then, women have been considered less than a full human being-which to me is bul*sh*t

In all honesty, even though I've not been a Christian in ages..one thing to remember is that not only was the bible written by MEN BUT it was also written in a time when women WERE LESS THAN....Way back in the day, women WERE considered to be beneath men on all levels....BUT..what boggles my mind is the fact that there are women in TODAYS world that still hold that sort of mindset to be true and right....I personally would like to slap the stupid out of all of them...but thats just me

I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. First of all, The Bible is either the Word of God or it isn't. If it isn't then it doesn't matter how sexist or enlightened it reads, it's just a book of fables. If it is then it doesn't matter how sexist or enlightened it reads, it's the truth. Rejecting truth because it makes us feel uncomfortable doesn't do us any good. If there really is a heaven and hell, rejecting truth will be much more painful than a little discomfort over perceived sexism. Now, as for the perceived sexism. Yes, there is sexism but most of it is based on the culture of the time. The other sexism is more perceived because we look at it through the prism of modern Western culture. We do our future generations a disservice when we try to change the past because we don't understand why they did things the way they did. As far as women being of little value in the past. Think about why? The pat answers are "Because governments and cultures were run by men". But that isn't exactly true (although it isn't completely false either). There have been cultures run by women. Were the women of Cleopatra's Egypt treated any differently than during other dynasties? Was the Helenic period of Egypt any better for women than the reign of the Caesars? In modern times, have the women any of the 26 nations who have had a female head of state seen a difference in how they are treated in their societies? Not to be crude or anything, but one of the biggest reasons women weren't considered equal to men throughout history is, they were basically homebound for 1 week out of the month. For reasons I won't get into right now, I did a pretty extensive study of feminine hygiene in different cultures. My findings showed that it wasn't the suffragettes or the women's rights organizations that secured more freedom for women... It was actually two men... Dr. Earle Haas and Dr. Kermit E Krantz... and a patented product first sold by a company called Tampax.

When you speak of women were made to serve men, I assume that these are married. There is a saying that when a woman is married, her existence is temporary suspended as long as she remain in the marriage. Check it out, technically it is not practiced openly in western cultures but if a man exercises this technicality then the only option to regain her existence is a divorce. Religion say also that when a man takes a wife they are both one - him.

Actually there are but I'm too lazy to look for. Just check the keywords at biblegateway, you'll find some there. Now, in regard of status of women in the bible. You have to consider that the writers of the NT (where you took your verse), were purely patriarchal. I believe that the reason as well why women are not valued as they should be is because it is the design. No other reason, I just see that it pleases God that way.

I don't believe it is a brush off to take into account what era the bible was in. The simple face is that the world/people/culture have (very thankfully in a lot of cases) evolved and developed since the writing of the various books of the Bible. Taking that into account set the wisdom contained in those books into a better, more useful, context. Taking what is useful from a text, and leaving behind the outmoded portions that no longer serve any use (if they even ever did) is not a "brush off", it is a fine example of skillful means.

I believe the docturin you are referring to is often misunderstood. Yes, it does say that a woman should obey her husband, but if you would read further into those teaching you would see that a man has many responsibilities toward his wife. You also must look at the context in which the bible was written. The time period in which it was written. Women at that time were seen as less then men. The books of the bible atcaully talk about elevating a womans status. It talks about how a husban must treat his wife like a princess. It is his responsiblity to take care of the woman. And it is the woman's responsiblity to take care of her husband. The bible often speaks well of women. Jesus himself took a woman as a disciple (something unheard of at the time in history). If you truly care about what the bible is saying, you have to read more that one line at a time. You have to read the background behind what is being said. One verse taken out of context does not give you a whole and correct picture of what is going on. For example: the most misquoted bible verse is this "Money is the root of all evil." But in truth the correct verse says "The LOVE of money is the root of all evil." As you can see, by missing the first three words of that verse, you have really lost the meaning of the verse.

The women cannot be a head of a church, thats what say in the bible. It is only in the church but not outside of the church like everyday life

Because they were written centuries ago, when women WERE property. Now, if they're horribly outdated in this respect, you might think they'd notice other aspects are kind of outmoded too, but no...