Original Egalitarian Order of Most Religions "Hijacked" by Men: Part 1

Not one of the world religions has, in practice, been good to women and this is one of their major flaws.

They did not set out to be hostile to women, but they developed in patriarchal societies, where masculine skills, such as warfare, had become more highly prized in the newly developed cities than they had been in the villages and rural areas, where women contributed more to the economy.

Thus Confucius, a genial man, seems quite indifferent to women. The same is true of Socrates. Nevertheless, some of these faiths did initially attempt to give women a role. In the early Upanishads, women take part in the abstruse mystical discussions. This is simply taken for granted and there is no need to comment.

In Buddhism, women were allowed, eventually, to become mendicant nuns. Nevertheless, there is a story that the Buddha originally opposed this. But when it was pointed out to him that women were able to attain enlightenment and be proficient yogis, he relented, but commented sadly that they would fall upon the Buddhist order like mildew on a field of rice. Some scholars believe that this was a later story, projected back onto the Buddha by monks, whose lustful thoughts interrupted their meditations and blamed their failure to attain Nirvana on women. In fact, Buddhism gave women an opportunity to have a role other than the domestic that was absolutely unprecedented at that time, even though the nuns were seen as subordinate to the priests.

Both Christianity and Islam were initially very positive towards women. In the gospels, women are the first to receive news of the resurrection of Jesus; St. Paul insists that in Christ there was neither male nor female. He greets women as co-apostles and fellow workers, on the same level as the men. But in later books of the New Testament, notably the epistles of Titus and Timothy, which were not written by Paul, women have lost this equality and are told that they are subject to their husbands. What has happened is that the originally egalitarian gospel has been hijacked by the men and dragged back to the old patriarchy.

The same happened in Islam. The 7th century Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce that women in the West would not get until the 19th century. There is nothing in the Quran to suggest that all women should be veiled or secluded from society. Only the Prophet's wives were to be covered, and this was a security measure. Muhammad's position in Medina was very insecure and his enemies were harassing his wives. But the other Muslim women were not veiled and took a full and lively part in the life of the city. The Quran makes it clear that men and women have equal rights and responsibilities.

But later, the position of women deteriorated. The early Fathers of the Church were sometimes viciously misogynist. In early Christianity, women were blamed for the sin of Eve and, as the cult of celibacy grew, were castigated for being sexual temptresses. Tertullian called women the devil's gateway: they were responsible for Jesus' death. St. Augustine said that all women, even wives and mothers, must be avoided, because they were all associated with Eve, who was responsible for the fall of humanity into sin.

Most religious law codes were devised in the premodern period, when all women in all societies were regarded as second-class citizens. The emancipation of women has been one of the hallmarks of modernity, so that in 'fundamentalist' movements, which rebel against modernity, the traditional inferior status of women is stressed as part of this counter cultural revolt. And people are always reluctant to lose power.

Things are beginning to improve. Buddhist nuns are demanding that the men recognize their status in the Sangha, the Buddhist order. Women are becoming priests in many of the Protestant denominations, and except in Orthodox circles, Jewish women are becoming rabbis. Muslim feminists are developing an Islamic feminism, which looks back to the Quran and the Prophet, pointing out that the emancipation of women was a project dear to Muhammad's heart. In the Roman Catholic Church, there is no chance as yet of women being ordained as priests.

But there is still much work to be done. Historically, when a community feels threatened, the bodies of women come to represent the beleaguered society, and this applies to some Muslim communities, which feel threatened by he West, and to those religious groups that feel threatened by the secular world.

By: Karen Armstrong