Deborah, you be the judge

How the Bible was never the driving force behind the emancipation of women

International Women’s Day—it’s all about female empowerment, right? I can dig It—women have been treated as a lower species altogether for most of history.

Yes, our ancestors have worshipped not only gods but goddesses – Inana and Ishtar, Lakshmi and Saraswati, even the Virgin Mary embody that ancient concept of the Sacred Feminine.

But we’re not here to talk about that—this one is about why Christians should think twice before touting their religion as one that has championed female empowerment and lifted women out of the terrible burden they have had to bear for most of human history, by the mere virtue of their sex (assigned at birth, lol).

What we take for granted when it comes to the Bible simply blows my mind, not least due to the fact that this is a book that contains graphic portraitures of arguably the worst periods of human history, ranging from barbarism, slavery, mindless murders, rape, incest, pedophilia—virtually everything that gets you to do life without parole federal prison.

It would’ve been all well and good if the authors had left it at that—what I can’t wrap my head around is the glaring absence of condemnation of many of these practices, not only among the ancients but well into modernity.

It’s also worth mentioning the painful irony of American parents in the 70s and 80s going into full-blown Satanic panic and freaking out over the fact that their children are exposed to a Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd song lyric that contains a hidden meaning when played backward, or some video game or film that depicts gore and violence, while a book riddled with things the likes of which any English rock band lead vocal would never even begin to utter.

I just remembered this while writing, but I recall reading some heaven and hell testimony from a magazine as a kid (probably in middle school?) and this person tells us they saw little boys in the depths of Hell, being tormented; and when they asked the ever-present character who accompanies them in this guided tour (a staple of such tropes, by the way), he tells them the kid used to watch “Ben 10” (yeah, you heard it right, that daring boy who has a cool watch and a riveting emerald gaze, who every man aspired to be in their boyhood). The story goes that the boy started lashing out at his parents (in typical child behavior) and one day was involved in a car accident, died, and ended up in Hell.

This isn’t to say that Christians generally believe kids can deservedly go to Hell after they die, but this is coming from an avowed Christian himself, who’d somehow seen it fit to share what is supposed to be a cautionary tale to kids against disobeying their parents and whatnot. (You have no idea how anxious that made me when I read it! Thank heavens it was all bullshit.)

Well, that was a weird segue, but now that we’ve gotten that side rant out of the way, let’s go back to the Levant in 3000 BCE.

Mind you, these can be historical fables and urban legends among the people of the time, but that is beside the point. All I’m interested is the fact that they were widely held to be true and circulated as pithy anecdotes, hell even divinely inspired words that need not be tampered with. And they have braved a grueling trek down through the centuries, having made their way into every bedside drawer in Western bedrooms—an incredible feat, doubtless, but one that is not without its demerits, which we shall visit in this blog.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth---six days later, Man was created (yes just, “Man” because “woman” came from “Man” from his side. (it’s been theorized by some that this was the baculum, not the rib that she was made, and they’re welcome to speculate—it’s a free country.)

It’s here that we see the first signs of female subjection—if that wasn’t enough, God utters the following judgment on Eve in the wake of the Fall.

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Genesis 3:16

These pronouncements would lay the groundwork for a rhetoric that would echo throughout the rest of Scripture—Canon or not—and would reverberate in all of subsequent history.

The picture I want to paint here is not the negative impact humanity’s fallenness has had in the world. Rather, this is a watershed moment in the beginnings of the most modern misogyny, rivaled (maybe even exceeded by the doctrines of Islam).

I am not judging these ancients wholesale as backward and barbaric, sexist dolts—they are held to the same standard as their contemporaries.

What I find kind of shocking is that these views have persisted well into the modern era, and are held by people I’ve gone to school with, college friends, classmates, fellow churchgoers (not all of them men by the way!), and even my former self.

Think back to the start of this rant where I pointed out some ‘don’ts’ that are ubiquitous in the Old Testament and that—far from being glossed over as an uncomfortable aside—are shockingly condoned in many places.

Unfortunately, it just so happens that many of these evils are of a sexual nature, and women have had to bear the brunt. Again, that is not to say the world has at last become civilized enough to rid itself of all moral ails, but we have made significant progress toward liberating women from that predicament.

Now we’re coming to the crux of this whole debate—which is between those who owe these changes to the Christian religion on one hand versus those who take the opposite stance, namely that religion in general and Christianity in particular (due solely to its far-reaching influence on culture and society) have been a hindrance that flies in the face of evolving understandings of humanity in the realms of biology, religious studies, and the social sciences.

There is a lot of arguments put forth by apologists to credit Christianity for female empowerment, but it takes a few points to realize that all of them come short in the form of fatuous claims, wrong history, willful ignorance, and pure illogic.

So instead of addressing these endless arguments and their countless mutations, we will instead tackle the flawed assumptions that they are based on.

Before we dive in, let me give you a snapshot of the macabre history of the Old Testament that had so far been only hinted at in passing.

We’ve covered how Eve was the ‘weak link’ in humanity’s first power couple, and as such received the more severe punishment. But that doesn’t end there.

Even today, I was talking to someone and erroneously claimed that Jacob had twelve children. He said to me, “No, there’s actually 13,” and even then he had to remind me who it was before I remembered. Now can you blame me? This is his only daughter who is taken completely taken for granted throughout the narrative, her only spotlight being an incident in which she was raped.

Speak of the Devil—a woman is gangraped in the Book of Judges and upon finding out, the husband (who was a Levite) severs her body to pieces and sends them out to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. (I’m just speedrunning cringe “girl power” moments in the entire OT at this moment, but more people need to know what horror lurks beneath these dreadful stories.)

Oh, and remember Lot? The author of Hebrew calls him a hero of the faith, and so does the guy who forged the Epistle of Jude—but here is a man who is so courteous to his revered ‘guests’ who he just met that he had the gall to say to those guys to do as they please to his two virgin (and probably underage) daughters. (Thank God they weren’t straight, lol). Honestly, I am incessantly mind-blown at this—the fact that a guy like the mighty Lot is a champion of the faith shows you how low they’ve set the barrier of entry on that one!

We have barely scratched the surface. The above were the more extreme versions, but the ‘milder’ stuff actually has a lot to reveal to us, and is arguably more insidious. It’s not just the ambiguous nature of the Pentateuchal prescriptions regarding rape and sex slavery, but the fact that wives and concubines are completely taken for granted.

It’s almost as if every macho guy in the Bible has some misstep with regards to women. Well, no wonder, as they’re half the population, but isn’t it bothersome that these encounters are treated very lightly?

Let’s fast forward to Christianity and its long history of sexism. Cradled in the Roman Empire where pre-existing social norms maintained a rather rigid hierarchy with the Emperor (the son of the gods) at the top and female slaves at the bottom rungs, the growing movement can be excused for holding itself to the same standards as its pagan peers of the time.

However, as Christianity dominated the Roman Empire and grew to cover the Western world in the course of a millennium, its problematic stances on many topics including the treatment of women, had grown worrisome.

Christian thought owes a lot of its core tenets to a few towering figures, who are celebrated like Plato and Aristotle in the secular philosophy department, and who in fact draw a good deal of their ideas from them as well.

Chief among them is early church father Augustine of Hippo, who is considered as a saint by Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, and the Anglican Communion (a rarefied feat, by the way).

Here’s some quotes by the great Augustine concerning women:

"I don't see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?”

Augustine does not shy away from clarifying his unwavering stance—he doubles down on the inferiority of women in no uncertain terms.

"The woman together with her own husband is the image of God, so that the whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one. It is the natural order among people that women serve their husbands and children their parents, because the justice of this lies in (the principle that) the lesser serves the greater."

Few have come close to the stature of Augustine and the generations of Christian thinkers he went on to influence. It might be argued that Thomas Aquinas, with his magnum opus the Summa Theologica, might have matched (even supplanted) the former’s massive influence.

Perhaps Aquinas is a little more forward-thinking, progressive, when it comes to women? (Spoiler alert: he’s worse!)

“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 a defect in the active power, or from some material indisposition.”

Oh blast! Hmm, maybe the Catholic church is in need of some quintessential reformer? I’m sure the legend Martin Luther fits the bill?

"Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders and broad hips. Women ought to stay at home; the way they were created indicates this, for they have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon, keep house and bear and raise children."

Woah, hold on there, bud. I wonder if he enjoyed writing that bit a little too much? XD

Sadly for us, that observation is not as incisive ethically and philosophically as it is anatomically, haha.

In a rather weird analogy, the “wolf of Wittenburg” (shall we call him?) resorts to botany to demonstrate his terrible point, further.

"A man takes many years to mature (like a rose), but a woman matures more quickly (like a weed)."

This is just to illustrate how lacking Christian thought has been for all its history in accommodating half of its population. (So much for, “we are all members of one body”.)

The whole topic is quite nuanced and a lot has been written about it, so it’s far more nuanced than a light, humorous, and satirical read that is presented here.

While, although one can dismiss the view averred here as caricatured, blatantly biased and intentionally misleading, I am right in saying that the main point still stands.

Far from being a champion of women’s rights, a sort of emancipator for womankind from the bonds of the Patriarchy, Christianity has had quite the opposite effect. And that is evidenced by its followers allegiance to a poorly written mishmash of Bronze-Age literature, and their insistence that it is the eternal, unchanging, inerrant, and infallible divine word.

It has been a dilemma I will never wrap my head around, and it’s not just me—there’s a reason the decline of religion has coincided with, first the Enlightenment, and now the Information Age. (No it has nothing to do with the Antichrist wanting to barcode the shit out of us, folks!)

Suffice it to say that I’d love to see how this will work itself out---we already have more Nones than nuns, so that’s a good start, I suppose?