The Church and Women
Was the historic Christian Church a sexist and patriarchal institution? Sure. It is silly for Christians to try to claim otherwise.
The question is can the Church be redefined to be more equitable while still being relevant?
Northwest American Republic
One of the cool things of doing videos is that it has allowed me to meet all sorts of interesting people (both on the Left and the Right). It is amazing how many doors a camera will open. While I was in Washington Harold Covington agreed to an interview. Harold currently advocates a creation of a homeland for White people in the Pacific Northwest. To me it basically sounds like Zionism for White people. As Harold is a controversial character, the security measures to arrange a meeting were interesting. But everyone was quite nice. I hope do to more video interviews with interesting characters across the world. There is a famous Russian that I hope to meet soon and get an interview. Below is an interview Covington did for Vice magazine: http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-wants-to-start-his-own-aryan-country Blow is a link to his weekly radio show. And there are links on that web site to his novels. Harold was kind enough to provide me with a signed novel called "The Brigade". h...
Good post, Paul.
ReplyDeleteI actually think what we will see is the continued trend of certain churches (the more traditional ones) blossoming while others gradually fold.
Christianity can't work other than in patriarchal context -- as you point out, the religion is, in its core, patriarchal. In the Orthodox Church, our most senior bishops are outright called "Patriarchs". Doesn't get more patriarchal than that. But any church that confesses God as father is of course going to be patriarchal.
What is currently happening in the churches is that Christianity is being morphed into something else. As you point out, Paul was crystal clear about the role of women in the church, and this has now been completely ignored, as have numerous other passages in the NT about the relationship between men and women. By effectively deleting these passages from the bible, the new christianity that emerges is a different faith, and one that re-spins the faith in a feminized way: about your feelings and relations and so on, and not about hard and fast moral rules.
But in any case, the more a church veers in that direction, the fewer men find appeal in it, and the more it becomes a female ghetto. On the other hand, the very conservative evangelicals are thriving and have lots of men engaged, and the Orthodox and Catholics are also doing reasonably well, still (and of course both of the latter are completely male led).
Interestingly, the church ELEVATED women from being chattel to being co-heirs in Christ. People forget what a difference that is.
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