Biblical and extra-Biblical accounts about Christian women
My Least Favorite Passage of the Pastorals: Those Silent and Submissive Women….
I'd like to conclude this thread on the Pastoral epistles by discussing at greater length the one passage that I think has done more damage than nearly any other. It involves women in the church. The story of women in the entire Bible is long and complex, but it starts in the beginning (Genesis 1-2) and continues all the way through. The traditional Christian views ultimately derive from the New Testament. In an earlier set of posts I explained why women were actually prominent, important, and authoritative leaders of the Christian church in its earliest days – they were unusually present and active in the Jesus movement while he was living, as well as in the earliest churches we know about, those connected with Paul (who has received a rather unfair rap as one of the world’s great misogynists). But it was not long before men took over the movement and suppressed women’s voices and roles. We are obviously still living with that today, in a world where the largest Christian body, the Catholic Church, still [...]