Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway
From: travis@liberty.cs.columbia.EDU (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Feminism & Religion (was Re: Newspaper Article)
Message-ID: <9010191803.AA14586@liberty.cs.columbia.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 90 18:13:53 GMT
References: <4836@sarah> <1990Oct12.214229.23575@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
	<60497.271b504a@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
	<1990Oct18.003900.28134@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Lines: 94
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu

In article <1990Oct18.003900.28134@nntp-server.caltech.edu> morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:
>
>   phs265y@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au writes:
>   >Well, I am afraid that I totally disagree with this.  I find the teachings
>   >of Jesus and the tenets of feminism (and socialism for that matter)
>   >absolutely compatible.
>
>   You're missing the point. A *male* god sent down a *male* to redeem
>   us.  That's a significant sign of androcentrism.

Well, if a male god really had sent down his male son, there wouldn't
be much to argue about, would there?

There are other ways to consider the issue.  A large number of
writings were gathered into two canons of the Old and New Testaments.
Many of earlier Old Testament writings had been written and edited by
several different people, some of which wrote of a god with no
specific gender.  For example, compare the two different creation
myths that appear in Genesis 1 and 2.  As a Catholic, you were only
pointed at the parts of the Old Testament that reinforced Catholic
doctrine.

When the earlier form of the Catholic Church was gathering writings
for the New Testament, they were explicitly choosing which would
appear, and in which order.  The Gospels, for example, were chosen to
reemphasize the Christian assertion that Jesus was the messiah, with
the very first lines asserting his lineage.  John the Baptist's
revelatory encounters with him were stressed, and so on.  All of these
editorial acts were to convince a skeptical or hostile Jewish public
of Jesus' divinity.

Much, if not all, of this writing and editing was performed by males,
for males, in an androcentric society.  When considering the Bible,
one cannot ignore these elements of choice, that they occured in a
particular societal context, or that influential people like Paul
changed the way that the Church would view women.  It was Paul who
declared that no women could perform church services -- they had been
for some time -- and Paul's epistles were included in the canon while
others were not.  Other early figures of the Church, such as
Augustine, helped to cement the secondary status of women and its
horrified fascination with the flesh.

People like Paul and Augustine convinced others by the force of their
personality.  However, we live in a different sort of society now.
Because we are aware of explicit acts of interpretation, such as the
creation of the Christian bible, we can recreate and reinterpret them.

For instance, I read a fascinating book on the internal battle fought
by some Christian missionaries who are seeking to change the church's
attitude towards polygamy, arguing that the monogamous relationships
defined by the New Testament were only the reflection of societal
conditions at that time by those people.  They had to argue within
fine lines, naturally, but this is precisely the type of
reinterpretation that some Christian Feminists feel they can do.  (The
reason polygamy, nearly always polygnous polygamy, was advocated by
these missionaries is because of the damage inflicted on families in
parts of Africa, where polygamy exists for other than religious
reasons.  Male converts to Christianity are forced to divorce all but
one of their wives and abandon their children.  The missionaries could
not reconcile this with the monogamous doctrines they had been
taught.)

>   >I am no feminist theorist but I believe feminism is about true equality
>   >between men and women.  Jesus was about true equality among all people
>   >("love your neighbour (male or female) as yourself")
>
>   Jesus sounds like a really wise *man*.  Get it?  Like his dad and the
>   overwhelming majority of prophets, Jesus was male.

Well, there were only two choices, unless you count hermaphrodites.  I
suppose the Christian God could have sent down a Messiah with no
gender at all, just smooth like a Ken doll, if He had really thought
to make a big deal about it.

I'm not a Christian either, obviously, but I can say that Jesus'
gender did not completely determine his message.  A female Jesus could
have said Love thy neighbor as yourself.  Even though one didn't,
there's nothing wrong in considering it as an important message.

Note also that you subvert your own message -- i.e., that gender is
not important -- when you refuse to overlook the gender of the
Christian Messiah.

>   I'm impressed by the misguided tenacity with which people attempt to
>   rationalize and even deny the gender bias of Judaeo-Christian-Islamic
>   tradition.  I realize now that I was quite lucky to survive my years of
>   Catholic indoctrination with my ability to question reasonably intact.

Although one might note a tendency to insist on your own dogmatism;
perhaps this is the legacy of Catholicism that you have kept.  Many
people have found meaning and beauty in Christianity; let them.  There
are few absolutes here.

t