Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts

Five Books On Christianity and Women

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There's something very important you should know about traditional conservative biblical scholarship on the status and the roles of women in the Bible, and that is, it doesn't exist anymore. Poof! It's gone. Find me a book defending male patriarchal headship in the home or church or society and it's either not written by legitimate biblical scholars, or it gives way too much ground to current scholarship, such that traditional authors would've rejected it--or I'll be damned!

Theologians need not apply. Apologists need not apply.
There is a reason why. The traditional male headship position can no longer be maintained under critical study or research. That's because the Bible is a sexist, misogynistic book and honest biblical scholars cannot in good conscience say otherwise. Everyone should be a feminist. I am, as much as a male can be. Since the Bible is anti-feminist we should reject the Bible and the Christian faith. But many of these moderates and liberals are trying to reinvent the Christian faith, trying to force their faith into a Procrustean Bed of their own making.

Galatians 3:28, says: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The same guy who wrote Galatians 3:28 also told women not to speak in church (I Corinthians 14:34) and is believed to have said they are to submit to their husbands "in everything" (Ephesians 5:22-24). Seriously now, in a patriarchal society why would a perfectly good god merely say women were equally valuable to him? Even Muslims say this, and better, that women are even MORE special, and so they have to be protected...blah blah blah...while believing in an utterly misogynistic religion. The only reason Christians see more in Galatians 3:28 than is actually there, is because of social changes that opened their eyes to see it. Now for the five recommended books:

The Status of Women in the Bible and in Early Christianity

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I'm linking to a site that has biblical and theological quotes on the status of women. It's found gathered together by a group advocating religious tolerance as their goal in a world filled with religious hatred. They do this by educating their readers. LINK. While I think they don't look deep enough into the roles of women in the life of Jesus, there is a YUGE difference between how an apologist like David Marshall deals with this data and how they do. They tell the supposed good, but also the bad and the ugly. At least they're trying to deal honestly with the status of women in Christianity, even if they don't completely succeed at it with regard to Jesus.

Marshall's big complaint has been I only highlight the bad and the ugly, not the good of women under the reign of Christianity. He can say that no longer. Nonetheless, my task is to uncover the dirty little secrets apologists and theologians try to keep hidden from the fleeced flock. That MUST be my focus since that's what they do. If they wouldn't hide (or obfuscate) the truth, I wouldn't have to expose (or clarify) the truth they try to hide. Get it? There are thousands and thousands of Christian essays and books and sermons extolling the supposed high status of women in the Bible and how Christianity liberates them. Very few Christian voices can be heard above this rabble telling the rest of the ugly truth. Marshall only tells us a partial truth (at best), and because it's only a partial truth (at best) it's also misleading and dishonest. Think of it this way, a partial truth can be more misleading precisely because it has some truth to it. Apologists know this. So they are experts in deception and obfuscation.

If you want to know the biggest dirty little secret theologians and apologists try to hide, which needs to be exposed, read The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics, by Dr. Hector Avalos, especially chapter 9, with these sections in it:
The Misogynistic Jesus: Christian Feminism as Male Ancestor Worship
Mark 7//Matthew 15: The Misogynistic Jesus
Mark 10//Matthew 19: Divorcing Equality
The Womanless Twelve Apostles
The Last Supper: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner
The Egalitarian Golden Age under Jesus

David Marshall On How NOT To Defend Christianity's Terrible Record Towards Women

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Annie Laurie Gaylor is the co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (with her late mother Anne Nicol Gaylor) and currently its co-president (with her husband Dan Barker), which does some fantastic work on behalf of a secularized world. She wrote a superior chapter in my anthology Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, titled, "Woman What Do I Have to Do with Thee: Christianity's War against Women." I bid everyone to read it. Not everyone likes it though, due to the fact it means the god of Christianity is to be blamed for a war against half the people on the planet (an effective rhetorical title, I'll admit). So you'd expect a defender of the indefensible faith would try to rise to the challenge, and so enters David Marshall. For my part, I'm on record as saying,
I am against sexism and especially misogyny, most emphatically, without any doubt at all. In fact, one of the main reasons I do what I do is because of what religion has done--and continues to do--to women. I argue against religion for that reason alone.
Ever since Gaylor's chapter was published Marshall has been egging and taunting and badgering me for a debate on the topic of women in Christianity. I have repeatedly said his views have already been refuted in a few books I recommended, and that I would no more be scared of debating him on this topic than I would a flat earther. But I do think his defense contains a few lessons in how NOT to defend Christianity's terrible record towards women. So along the same lines as my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist--which is the one every defender of the faith should read--I can easily show how his defenses fail, miserably.

On Women, Science and Democracy in the Bible.

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The tenth commandment alone, all by itself, shows Christians to be indoctrinated to the point of blindness not to see that women were regarded just a bit below a man's property, yet higher than his slaves. If not, paying a dowry to a father for his daughter's hand in marriage, as if she was a commodity, all but proves this. [For more on Christianity and women see Annie Laurie Gaylor's chapter in Christianity is Not Great].

It's like claiming Christianity was responsible for science, even though the Bible depicts a 10,000+ year old flat earth, while stressing the virtue of faith over objective empirical evidence. [For more on the flat earth depicted in the Bible see Edward Babinski's chapter in The Christian Delusion, and for more on the origins of science see Richard Carrier's chapter in The Christian Delusion.

It's like claiming Christianity is responsible for the rise of democracy, even though the biblical god is pictured as a king who sets up kings and kingdoms on earth, and who condemns free speech from people who live different lives, even to the point of death if they fail to comply. [For more on the origins of democracy see Richard Carrier's chapter in Christianity is Not Great].