Editorials & Other Articles

xchrom

(108,903 posts) Mon Mar 12, 2012, 09:46 AM Mar 2012

15 Ways the Bible Is Used by Christians and the GOP to Control and Malign Women

http://www.alternet.org/visions/154466/15_ways_the_bible_is_used_by_christians_and_the_gop_to_control_and_malign_women/

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Because fundamentalist religion of all stripes has degradation of women at its core, and fundamentalist Christianity is no exception. Progressive Christians believe the Bible is a human document, a record of humanity’s multi-millennial struggle to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other. But fundamentalists believe the Bible is the literally perfect word of the Almighty, essentially dictated by God to the writers. To believe that the Bible is the literally perfect word of God is to believe that women are tainted seductresses who must be controlled by men.

Listen to early church father Tertullian: “You [woman] are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.”

Or take it from reformer John Calvin: “Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.”

Both Tertullian, a respected Catholic theologian, and Calvin, a leader of the Protestant Reformation, took their cues on this matter straight from the book of Genesis:

To the woman [God] said, 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

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15 Ways the Bible Is Used by Christians and the GOP to Control and Malign Women (Original Post) xchrom Mar 2012 OP

It's Hypocrisy GopperStopper2680 Mar 2012 #1

I don't think anybody is saying what you claim longship Mar 2012 #2

GopperStopper2680

(397 posts)

1. It's Hypocrisy

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Mon Mar 12, 2012, 10:21 AM

Mar 2012

xchrom-Not stalking you here-I know I've replied the same thing more or less to a couple other of your posts but I want to assure you that genuine Christians do not hate Gays or Women. No way. My pastor is a woman, and she's also African American. And I can tell you she does the job as well as any white man. These hypocrits are taking things out of context and cherry picking the Bible for the parts they want out of it and then using it to their advantage to spread their message of hate. Somehow (and I do not know how) the terms 'Christian' and conservative have become one in the common parlance. They are NOT the same.
I just don't want anyone to think of us as all bigots because that's all they've ever seen about us. The reality of what we are does not jibe with the GOP's twisted false color version of it.

longship

(40,416 posts)

2. I don't think anybody is saying what you claim

Reply to GopperStopper2680 (Reply #1)

Mon Mar 12, 2012, 12:41 PM

Mar 2012

Rather, it's that these Biblical passages and others have been used by clerics --- No! Not all clerics --- to argue that women must obey their husbands. In no other sects is this more prominent than in the desert religions, specifically Christianity and especially Islam.

Merely saying it isn't true doesn't change the history, nor the situation today, that a great many clerics are spewing these same repressive pronouncements.

I applaud your church for rising above the gender fray. But the so called liberal religions still have the same burden to bear as the rest of us. We all have to stand up against the lunacy.

No where is help needed more than for the liberal religions, and its members, to stand up and be heard that the conservatives are wrong. Atheists cannot do that as effectively as people like you can. I applaud your activism but you need to acknowledge that the problems here are part of Christianity's history itself.

Thanks for your respectful opinion on this.

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