Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    A comment more on the suggestion that the need to insure the primacy
    of the planet is the driving force which will carry us and our
    followers for the next many, many generations.
    
    In the fourteenth century the western world was wracked by the
    black death.  It was a time of tremendous creativity in architecture,
    music, painting, sculpture, political science, natural science.
    The idea that anyone may die at any time challenged all basic tenets
    of the culture.  The supremacy of the churcha nd the feudal lords
    diminished.  The dominant idea that emerged was that the human being,
    as an individual, was the most important facet of existance.  This
    philosophy, although changed and changing, has carried up to the
    present time.
    
    We are now threatened by nuclear war, AIDS, destruction of the planet.
    All of these again threaten each individual's security and knowledge
    that I am going to wake tomorrow healthy.  We have found limits to the
    idea that humans are supreme.  (AIDS was not caused by humans, but the
    primary known transmission methods are expressions of hedonistic
    behavior.)  If we can jointly recognize limits to what we can do
    if we are to survive in the long term we will be better off.  Flowering
    of creative arts in unforseen ways may become reality as we recognize
    that it is more important to us all to preserve the earth than to
    have styrofoam cups to drink chemically treated coffee.  (I am by
    no means an example of good behavior.  There are two empty styrofoam
    cups in my garbage can as I type.)  Is there a new economic philosophy
    which will emerge which replaces monetary profits as the measure
    of success? (Marx tried and failed.)  Is there a new form of music
    which, rather than allowing humans to make sounds for each other,
    derives its sounds from the world around us, cannot be contained
    on a flat piece of 20,000,000-year-old dead dinosaur?
    
    I, personally, have ceased to accept the importance of
    Judeo-Christianity as but a philosophical trend which came and went, so
    I do not phrase questions in that context.  I don't try to think
    so much on what happened to people 1500 years ago as what will happen
    1500 years from now. 
                          
    Robbie

    
    Right, AIDS was not caused by humans, it's caused by a virus but
    the primary known transmission methods are expressions of *human*
    behavior which would involve the exchange of bodily fluids.

    You might be interested in attending an AIDS Awareness seminar that
    are given here at DEC. Check with your local Health Services for
    further info.
    
    Ann Marie

    Christianity was founded at a time when much of its source religion,
    Palestinian Judaism, was caught in the throes of eschatological
    expectations.  That, along with the persecution that early Christians
    faced, produced the sort of pessimistic apocalyptism expressed in the
    book of Revelation.   Augustine's later doctrine of original sin,
    invented long after the Bible was written, contributed to this general
    sense of pessimism about humanity. This has permeated many strains of
    subsequent Christian orthodoxy, to the point where some elements within
    the faith now actually look forward to the end of the world, the
    conclusion being that Armageddon represents an inevitable and
    prophesied nuclear war (Hal Lindsey is a fundamentalist author who has
    popularized this view.)

    This kind of pessimism, this belief that humanity is hopelessly
    wretched, that human society can never improve, and that humanity is
    ultimately doomed to self-destruction (except for the True Believers,
    who will be saved by their God), would seem inevitably to lead to a
    sort of listless acceptance of all that is wrong with the world.  After
    all, why bother to try to create a more just society if humans are so
    hopeless depraved, and if God's word says that we will all destroy
    ourselves in the end?  This lack of faith in the efficacy of struggles
    for justice may help to explain why so many fundamentalists tend to be
    politically conservative.

    In this way, the doctrine of the Realm of God that Jesus proclaimed
    would seem to seem to have been turned on its head by the very movement
    that claims him as its founder.  Instead of proclaiming the Realm of
    God by reaching out to society's outcasts and working for justice, and
    thus continuing the religion *of* Jesus, many strains of modern
    Christianity merely shrug their collective shoulders at social
    injustice, and concern themselves with proclaiming the religion
    *about* Jesus, which is another thing altogether.
    
    But it is worth pointing out that not all Christians and Jews are
    fundamentalists.  Rather than dogmatically bashing the two major
    Western religious faiths as being hopelessly and inherently oppressive
    and militaristic, I think that a little more tolerance and respect, and
    dialogue between various religions, are in order.  There are positive
    elements to these faiths that need to be noted.
    
    First of all, one must recognize that the theme of justice has always
    been very important within Judaism, especially among several of the
    ancient prophets.  The prophet Amos, in one of his more famous
    passages, decries superficial religious piety and instead demands that
    "justice flow like water".  Many prophets railed against the oppression
    of the poor that was so often found in their societies.  Many
    contemporary Jews, who have been actively involved in struggles for
    human rights and progressive social change, have seen their faith as
    the very inspiration for their actions.  Abbie Hoffman, one of the
    greatest political activists in American history, was quoted in Tikkun
    magazine as saying the following when asked what Judaism meant to him:

        "I see Judaism as a way of life.  Sticking up for the underdog. 
        Being an outsider.  A critic of society.  The kid in the corner
        that says the emperor has no clothes on.  The prophet.  You are
        talking to a Jewish prophet who used to be a Jewish road warrior
        when he was younger."

    As for militarism, it is worth remembering that Christianity was
    founded by a pacifist who told his followers to turn the other cheek
    and to love their enemies; although it is true that many contemporary
    Christians generally ignore this doctrine to one degree or another,
    there are many Christians, including Quakers and Mennonites, individual
    Protestants such as Martin Luther King, and individual Catholics such
    as the Berrigans, who have firmly adhered to these pacifist ideals.  In
    fact, going back to the very beginning of the Christian religion, many
    Christians refused to participate in Roman military service.

    This is an area, by the way, where Judaism and Christianity differ;
    most Jewish theologians would categorically reject the doctrine of
    loving one's enemies as being an impossible ideal, and pacifism as
    being potentially incompatible with what is necessary for the struggle
    for justice.  Those are legitimate objections, and I respect the point
    of view that they represent, but they are not ones that I can
    ultimately accept, because I lean heavily in favor of pacifism.  I
    might also add that, given that in this very forum, many individuals of
    both sexes have advocated gun ownership, or have defended the death
    penalty, it is clear that neither sex has a monopoly on advocating the
    use of violence, just as neither sex has a monopoly on being "life
    affirming".

    Perhaps theology can create cultural evils, but it can also reflect
    them and rationalize them.  Doctrines such as that of "just war", for
    example, are often constructed more because they provide a convenient
    justification for the forces of secular life and the powers that rule
    it than because they have any legitimate religious basis.  This sort of
    process was typical when Christianity became the official state
    religion of the Roman Empire.  Or, as the Catholic theologian Edward
    Schillebeeckx once wrote,
    
        Adaptations of a religion to its cultural environment which are
        often unavoidable in cultural terms are often given a subsequent
        religious legitimation.

    To dogmatically assert that a faith is inherently evil is to deny the
    wide diversity within the world's major religions.  It is clear that
    different individuals can draw different conclusions, and kinds of
    inspiration, from the same faith.  This is especially true for faiths
    that have a long history and that evolve as a result of various
    cultural and historical events.  It is more than acceptable to promote
    one's own religion, but when one then elevates that religion to a form
    of political correctism, and launches hostile attacks against other
    religious faiths in their entirety, in my view that is simply showing
    an intolerance and a dogmatism that goes too far.

    -- Mike

    I am curious on your catagorization of religions as patriarchal
    (versus matriarchal). Why do you catagorize Judaism as patriarchal? The
    lineage (sp?) of who is a jew or not is determined through the mother.
    If the mother is jewish the children are, if the mother is not then the
    children are not. 
    
    Wouldn't this be matriarchal?
    
    
    

    One reason, there are lots of others....
    
    Judiasm is patriarchal because they worship a male image of the
    Devine rather than a female image.
    
    Bonnie

    re: .4
    
    The term for determining descent through the female line is
    "matrilinear"; it's one of the more common ways of establishing
    lineage for purposes of inheritance.
    
    "Patriarchy" and "matriarchy" refer to whether the community power
    resides with the female line or the male.
    
    As I recall from my anthropology classes (too long ago now), the
    most frequently found pattern is a patricarchal political and
    religious structure combined with a matriarchal economic structure
    (women control the farms, household economy, etc.).  In these
    societies, it's not uncommon to have such apparently incongruous
    sitations as the senior wife negotiating the purchase of a new
    bride for her husband.  Early Judaism is believed to have followed
    this pattern.
    
    Many south seas, American Indian, and African societies have the
    reverse pattern -- matriarchal religion and patriarchal economies. 
    Such societies tend to be less structured politically.
    
    Modern Western society is unusual in that it's almost entirely
    patriarchal in all aspects.  
    
    --bonnie

    To continue   down   this   rathole,  Judaism  is  only  partially
    matrilineal.  Whether one is a Jew is matrilineal, but determining
    which  tribe  one  belongs  to  (Cohen,  Levi,  or  Israelite)  is
    patrilineal.

    I'm told  that  the masculinity of the Jewish god is partly caused
    be  the  translation  to English, and isn't nearly as clear in the
    original.

--David

    re: .7
    
    I'd read the same thing, about the translation of God's name into
    English.  Unfortunately I'm not a Hebrew or Biblical scholar to
    know whether that's correct.
    
    I know the "official" Christian position has always been that God
    is beyond gender.
    
    --bonnie

    For additional discussion of related issues, please see:
    
    Womannotes-V1
    topic 257 - Feminist Thealogy
    

>< Note 752.5 by WMOIS::B_REINKE "If you are a dreamer, come in.." >
>                                                             -< okay >-
>
>    One reason, there are lots of others....
>
>    Judiasm is patriarchal because they worship a male image of the
>    Devine rather than a female image.
>    
>    Bonnie

I do not disagree that many branches of Judaism are patriachal, however,
Jews do ***NOT*** worship a "male image" of God.  God is neither male nor
female, though some congregations do use the pronoun "He" instead of "It."
As of 15 years ago, the rabbi of my family's congregation's led a rather 
important prayer alternating gender terms, something like:
"Our Mother, our Sovereign, grant us peace.
Our Father, our King, enscribe us for a good year in the book of life. 
Our Mother, our Sovereign...")

Additionally, God is thought to have many attributes, some female, some male.
Off hand, I can only think of Shekinah which is {one of?} the female
attributes of God.

Tamar

    
    But is it not still a requirement that a minyan consist of
    10 males?
    
    

    re: .10
    
    I hope this isn't a rathole, but -- for those of us who aren't
    Jewish, could you elaborate on the attributes of God and what
    Shekinah is?
    
    thanks,
    --bonnie

    RE: .11, in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, only males are counted
    toward a minyan (a group of 10 Jews, required for certain parts of a
    service), although I believe that the Reform allows women to be counted
    also. This attitude is carried to the extreme in the Orthodox, where in
    some congregations, the women sit separate from the men (my grandfather's
    in Brooklyn, NY was like that). In the Hassidim (Ultra-Orthodox), it
    gets carried to the absurd. A case in point was in Upstate NY, where
    a group of male Yeshiva student (Jewish parochial school) refused to
    use a school bus driven by a woman!
    
    Eric

    You'll get better answers on Judaism in GVRIEL::BAGELS (KP7, etc.),
    but here are a few points.

    Judaism doesn't believe in any kind of "image" of G-d.  The pictures
    of an old man with a beard representing Him are an anathema to Judaism.

    I don't where .? got the idea that Shechina is female (although perhaps
    the word is of feminine gender, which is irrelevant).  There are many
    names for G-d in Judaism, representing different attributes (justice,
    mercy, etc.), but as far as I know they are all neuter.  BTW, Hebrew
    has no neuter gender.

    Judaism does not believe that G-d has a physical form, but the Bible
    mentions various body parts (the hand of G-d, etc.) to put things in
    human terms.  Likewise, terms like Father and King are used
    anthropomorphically.

    Judaism is indeed (mostly) patriarchal.  In Biblical times, only
    sons inherited property (with the eldest getting a double portion).
    However, if there were no sons, the daughters inherited the property.
    In such a case they were required to marry within their tribe, so
    that the property would not leave the tribe.  There were female
    leaders (e.g. Deborah), but most leaders were men.

    Judaism protects women from abuse.  Wives are guaranteed financial
    support, even when divorced or widowed.  As of about a thousand
    years ago, men were restricted to one wife at a time, and women
    generally could not be divorced against their will.

    re .-1: (Eric)

    One person's fanaticism is another person's belief.  I find your
    ridiculing of religious beliefs offensive.

    
    Eric's characterization may have been subjective but I don't
    think it qualifies as ridicule.
    
    Thank you for the pointer.

Someone (752.13?) made the comment "Reform allows women to be counted."
I feel this is quite an offensive way to put it.   Okay, okay, it is
semantics.   But, it is the difference between saying:
"Egyptians allowed women to own property." 
	and
"Egyptian women owned property."
The difference in the last two statements (in case you didn't catch it)
is that the first indicates that the term Egyptians does not include women.
(And, similarly, the first statement suggests that Reform women are 
second class!)


>"...I don't know where .? {that's me folks--Tamar} got the idea that
>Shechina is female..." 
from 752.14

What follows are quotes from a few books I have around at home.  If you
wish to do further research on the subject of Shekhina, the *female* 
aspect of God, please do.  Please, however, for the sake of more light
and less heat, do not be so quick to brush off something you apparently
know nothing about.

"The Shekhina does not appear in _The_Bible_, or in the _Apocrypha_, but is
regarded as part of Hebrew lore, as described in the _Talmud_ and the
_Kabbalah_.   The Shekhina, which may literally mean being, is used almost
synonymously with the figure known as The Bride of the Sabbath, the divine
woman image that is to be welcomed on the eve of the Hebrew Sabbath.  ...
The concept of the Shekhina appears to be a combination of a desire for the
return of a divine female image within Judaism, while simultaneously embodying
the hopes for better days for the Jewish people."

from Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood by Merlin Stone.  


"According to tradition, all references to the Shekhina, the feminine and 
indwelling aspect of the sacred were expunged from the ancient writings when
they were made canonical in the Old Testament of the patriarchs.  The concept
returns and figures prominently in the Zohar, a Jewish mystical text probably
written in thirteenth-century Spain.   According to Carol Ochs, the Zohar,
a commentary on and reinterpretation of the first five books of the Bible, 
contained for those who held it sacred 'something they had not found in
traditional Judaism....A study of the Zohar should tell us what was missing in 
Rabbinic Judaism.'  Among the missing attributes the Zohar attempts to
restore to the sacred is the Shekhina: "'Shekhina,' a feminine gender word,
derived from the Hebrew word _shakkan_ ('the act of dwelling'), was used in 
post-Biblical times to denote the physical manifestation of God's presence....
The Zohar's emphasis on the Shekhina as the feminine element, opposed to
the masculine aspect of God, responded to a deap-seated religious need.
The Shekhina became the loving, motherly, suffering, mourning aspect of
Deity who went into exile with the people of Israel and would remain with
them...."
   
from Shekhina by Eleanor Wilner. 


Tamar

    RE: .14, you may find it offensive, but when any group does not give
    equal treatment to another solely because of gender, then I find THAT
    offensive! Each person is entitled to their own fanaticism as long as
    it remains within their own group, but when they try to push their
    belief out to the general public (in my example, the buses were
    supplied by the PUBLICALLY FUNDED SCHOOL DISTRICT), then its no longer
    private. If you don't want gender equality within your own sect, that's
    your business, but it doesn't make it right. Perhaps what bothered you
    is the truth.
    
    Eric

    Would your idea of "pushing their belief out to the general public..."
    apply to your own belief .17 Feinsmith?  If it is wrong for others 
    to push their belief out to the public what about yours?
    

    My point was (back in Aug.) that within the group, they can do as they
    please, but when they want to apply their beliefs to the public in
    general (and my example was for PUBLICALLY FUNDED BUSSES), they I have
    a problem. If they didn't want female drivers, let them supply their
    own transportation! I still find their beliefs sexist and wrong, but
    since I'm not part of their group, I'm only voicing a personal opinion,
    but if they want to use my tax money to practice sexism, then I have a
    right to voice that opinion and criticize them.
    
    Eric

      Do they  pay tax also?  Then that means they have a right to voice
    that opinion also.  I am just trying to check out your thought.
    

    re: .19
    
    � If they didn't want female drivers, let them supply their own 
    � transportation! 
    
    Could you clarify something for me here, Eric?  Were the students
    demanding male drivers or simply refusing to use the transportation
    when females were driving?  If it was the latter case, it seems to
    me that they were indeed opting for their own transportation. 
    
    Steve

    RE: .21, they refused to ride on a bus driven by a female driver, and
    demanded one with a male driver. Since there were no "spare male drivers", 
    it would have required replacing the female driver with a male driver to 
    satisfy them, costing her a job. They based this desire on their "religious
    beliefs". Now if their school (Yesheva) was supplying the busses, no
    problem, but the bus was one from the public school system!
    
    RE: .20, yes they pay taxes, but they have no legal right to demand
    that the sex of the driver be different on a "publically funded" bus.
    I really don't understand why the school district supplied
    transportation to a "private school", but that's a whole different
    issue. If they want their religious beliefs to dictate who drives the
    bus, let them get their own busses!!!
    
    Eric

    From Judith Plaskow's book, _Standing_Again_At_Sinai_:

    "The thread that winds through these sometimes conflicting notions of
    action and its social or cosmic effects is the refusal to disconnect
    religious belief from its practical expression or from human
    responsibility for the world.  Whether action signifies just weights
    and measures, moral behavior, animal sacrifice, or daily prayer;
    whether its ramifications are purely mundane, covenantal, or cosmic in
    scope; faith is to be poured out in action which vivifies and embodies
    it.  The maintenance of both social justice and sacred order emerges
    from the dialogue between God and humans, and thus rests partly on
    human shoulders, endowing our deeds with serious consequences.

    "The feminist contribution to the connection between politics and
    spirituality is for the most part more indirect than this forthright
    linkage of faith and practice.  Yet many of the first arguments for
    women's rights emerged in a religious context, and religious rhetoric
    and concerns marked feminist commitment to women's emancipation from
    its very beginning.  Church sewing circles, for example, provided an
    early seedbed for discussion of women's legal and social situation, and
    Quaker women, permitted a voice in church affairs denied by other
    denominations, early took the lead in the struggle for justice for
    women.  Prominent Quaker abolitionist and feminist Sarah Grimke,
    attacked in 1837 by the Council of Congregationalist Ministers of
    Massachusetts for giving antislavery speeches to mixed (male and
    female) audiences, defended her right to do so in the strongest
    religious terms.  'Men and women were CREATED EQUAL,' she said,
    alluding to Genesis 1; 'they are both moral and accountable beings, and
    whatever is *right* for man to do, is *right* for woman.'  The
    advertisement for the first Woman's Rights Convention, held at Seneca
    Falls in 1848, announced a meeting to 'discuss the social, civil, and
    *religious* rights of woman.'  Among the eighteen grievances drawn up
    by Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the occasion were woman's subordination
    in the church as well as state, and man's usurpation of 'the
    prerogative[s] of Jehovah.'

    "The use of religious vocabulary and interest in religious reform have
    also been features of the second wave of feminism.  Mary Daly's _The
    Church and the Second Sex_, published in 1968, was a relatively early
    work that adopted the perspective of Simone de Beauvoir to illumine the
    subordination of women within Catholicism.  Protestant and Jewish women
    also applied their feminism within a religious context, raising issues
    of sexist language, exclusion from ordination, and halakhic
    disenfranchisement as items for the feminist agenda.  These concerns of
    religious feminists did not emerge in isolation from the wider feminist
    movement, but came out of and fed into a larger feminist vision. 
    Christian feminist discussions of Jesus' 'feminism' or the egalitarian
    tendencies in Pauline theology were meant to prod the churches back to
    what was perceived as a fundamentally liberating message, to call them
    to take the leadership in social change on women's issues, rather than
    dragging behind the secular society.  As feminist analysis and critique
    of traditional religion has become deeper and more sophisticated, there
    also has developed alongside it a grass roots women's spirituality
    movement that has found ways to express women's new sense of power and
    possibility in ritual and religious terms."

    	(pp. 220-222)

    -- Mike

    In Joel Kovel's article on liberation theology in the February issue of
    Zeta magazine, he discusses his sympathies with this theology that
    arose in the Catholic Church, despite his religious upbringing in
    Judaism.  The two main principles of liberation theology, he argues,
    are, first, to opt for the poor, and second, that the test of doctrine
    is in praxis.
    
    But he then continues:

        But we have to ask, what is the nature of the influence exerted by
        liberation theology?  It is a case, to be sure, of "inspiration," a
        kind of spark flowing between people.  But what can that spark
        ignite?  For me, there have been moments when, moved greatly by some
        act of liberation theology, the notion of converting to Catholicism
	has flashed into mind.  Invariably, though, the impulse runs into
	insuperable objections:  to join the Catholic Church would mean
	submitting to an all-male hierarchy presided over by a pope quite as
	awful, in his way, as any of the gangsters who run the U.S. state
	security apparatus.  It means also going along with an institution
	with more than a thousand years of repression under its belt,
	doubtless including the murderous persecution of some of my own
	ancestors.  And of course it also means going along with things I do
	not believe, the virgin birth of Jesus, for instance, or the
	Trinitarian nature of God-head.

	All these objections are rooted in history.  Ideas about God are
	ideas made by real, situated human beings, and reflect human limits.
	The same can be said for religious practices and institutions.  But
	there is, I think, a kind of "spirit" flowing through them and given
	shape by them.  That shape is always dialectical, though sometimes
	it is weighted in the direction of oppression, and sometimes toward
	emancipation.  And it can be appropriated by different people in
	different ways, because we are all situated differently.  In sum, we
	cannot abstract a movement like liberation theology from its actual
	reality.  The liberation theologists have demanded as much with
	their insistence upon praxis.  To recognize this means bringing a
	part of them down to earth, where certain limitations of their
	position become apparent:

	    o The same men who can act so sublimely on behalf of the poor
	    can also act appalling on issues of gender politics.  When
	    Daniel Berrigan speaks against the arms race, he is magnificent.
	    When he pontificates against a woman's right of choice in the
	    matter of abortion, he is trapped inside his own socialization
	    into the male hierarchy of the church.  The least that celibate
	    men whose whole adult life has been spent with other men could
	    do is to pass when matters pertaining to women arise.  Because
	    they do not, but insist upon wielding an authority which does
	    not belong to them, there has been a steady alienation of women
	    from the church.

	    o Although there is a certain beauty as well in liberation
	    theology's action on behalf of the oppressed, I wonder whether
	    it is somehow attached to the suffering it is pledged to
	    overcome.  The power of the Christian message is greatest when
	    addressed to the poor--whether to pacify them with the promise
	    of an afterlife, or offer them the "good news" of emancipation.
	    Traditional Christian practice was self-perpetuating; it
	    reinforced a status quo that would predictably grind out misery
	    to be consoled in heaven.  What happens, however, when the poor
	    are no longer poor--when the commitment of liberation theology
	    to social transformation as against pie in the sky, brings them
	    earthly happiness?  Will they then go the way of the affluent,
	    spiritless West, and lose the thread of religion itself?  Can
	    liberation theology preside over its own liquidation?

	Given the intense misery now pervading the world, and the bitter
	struggles raging in combat zones like El Salvador, the question may
	seem academic.  But it shows how liberation theology is less a
	pronouncement from God than a situation of the spirit which uses
	"god-talk" to realize itself.  Spirituality is situated--and
	therefore limited.  Yet spirituality also refuses limits, and pushes
	onward according to the kinds of meanings and practices chosen.  The
	liberation theologians took the Roman Catholic faith as it had
	developed in the Third World, and used its dialectic toward the
	transformation of both the church and history.  Their example can
	inspire us in the affluent, industrialized countries, but it can
	offer no blueprint. We have to make our own spiritual meanings and
	practices.
    
        	("Liberation Theology/Liberation Spirituality", p. 103)

    -- Mike

    Thanks Mike
    
    I always find that the material you quote on theology to be insightful
    and very thought provoking.
    
    Bonnie

"It is frequently observed that in Christian societies that the women
go to church.  The implication is that the church, or even religion, is in
some way more necessary to women than to men, although women are submissive
to the men who dominate the priesthoods.  But how and why this gender
differentiation develops in respect to religion is imperfectly understood;
we are not certain that it is inherent in Christianity itself; we do not
know why it becomes a part of the socio-religious order, what functions
it might have in society, nor what conditions produce the dichotomy."

Mary Maples Dunn, pg 27, "Women in American Religion", 1976

"A glance back to antebellum America reveals that the church has indeed
come a long way in accepting women in roles of authority.  Until the
Civil War social prohibitions bolstered by certain Biblical injuctions
kept churchwomen from speaking of praying aloud in religious assemblies.
Literal interpretation of such passages as I Timothy 2:11-12 made most
women uneasy even about speaking before their sisters in women's church
societies - or leading them in prayer, if indeed they were permitted to
at all.  Women seldom appeared at congregational or denominational
deliberations, and could neither vote not speak.  Nor could they venture
forth as missionaries, except under the protection and counsel of their
husbands.  Most colleges and theological seminaries were closed to them."

Virginia Lieson Brereton and Christa Ressmeyer Klein, pg 171,
"Women in American Religion", 1976

"One seminarian, Margaret Blair Johnstone, was examined before the Chicago
Congregational Advisory Board in the early 1930s.  After attempting to
persuade her to become a pastor's assistant or a religious educator, the
board admonished:

'We are your friends.  It is because we know so well the frustration
awaiting any woman in the ministry that we are urging you to enter
related work.  We are trying to protect you not only from heartbreak,
but also ridicule.  Think of the sensationalism of women evangelists.
No matter how earnest you would be, no one would believe your sincerity.
And consider our obligation to protect the dignity of the profession....
There's only one slight chance you'd get a church and little promotion
or professional advancement if you did.'"

Virginia Lieson Brereton and Christa Ressmeyer Klein, pg 185,
"Women in American Religion", 1976

"Most anthologies of women's liberation have no difficulty finding
anti-women texts in the religious past.  One of the most cited prayers
is a Jewish prayer that thanks God for not having created the congregation
as heathens and slaves.  Then the men say: 'Blessed are you, Lord our
God, King of eternity, who has not created me a woman.'  And the
women say: 'Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of eternity, who has
created me according to His will.'  Some rabbis say that men are simply
thanking God for having spared them women's hard lot, but the connection
women with heathens and slaves is obvious."

Martin E. Marty, pg 93, "The Pro & Con Book of Religious America", 1975.

"Nineteenth-century Americans enshrined women on a pedestal whose base
was the four ladylike virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness, and
domesticity.  It was assured that females, naturally religious and
inherently modest, would strive to maintain these attributes against
the assaults of inferior, sensual men.  Once married, as a mark of love
and femininity they would subordinate their entire being to
that of their husbands, continuing to be submissive, passive responders.
However, in affairs solely domestic they would reign supreme, for women
were uniquely qualified to rule as queens in their own domain, the home.

To many American Catholics this was not only an acceptable model but a
familiar one, resting in part on a Christian tradition that held that such
a pattern was designed by God, exemplified by the Virgin Mary, and revealed
by a Pauline interpretation of scripture and natural law.  Furthermore, it
was reinforced by biological differences and supported by a historical
tradition proclaiming the supremacy of man.  Consequently numerous Catholics
believed in distinct spheres of activity for each sex.  Woman's surrounded
her position as perpetuator of the race and nucleus of the family.  If
she moved from that orbit, critics claimed the action would be abnormal
and thus endanger  universal order and jeopardize society."

James J. Kenneally, pg 191, "Women in American Religion", 1976.

"Essayist, poet and reformer John Boyle O'Reilly, who has been hailed as
the most distinguished Irishman in America, seemed to represent a
generation of Catholic thought when he wrote:

'Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality.
It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition.  It is
a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethian abomination.  It is a quack bolus
to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity....It is the
sediment, not the wave of sex.  It is the antithesis of that highest and
sweetest mystery - conviction by submission, and conquest by sacrifice.'"

James J. Kenneally, pg 194, "Women in American Religion", 1976.

"The Protestant conviction that Scripture alone is sole authority in
matters of religion reinforced traditional biases against the participation
of women in most positions of leadership in the church.....Simultaneously,
however, the New Testament contains the outline of a view of women which
laid the foundation for their ultimate involvement as equal partners in
the work of the church."

Richard L. Greaves, pg 3, "Triumph over Silence, Women in Protestant
History", 1985.

"The Hidden Ones," Cotton Mather called them.  The women of New England,
the Boston minister said, were the "People, who make no Noise at all in
the World; People hardly known to be in the World; Persons of the Female
Sex, and under all the Covert imaginable."  Yet these "Hidden Ones,"
Mather realized years before he coined the phrase, could prove to be the
church's salvation; "as there were three Maries to one John, standing
under the Cross of our dying Lord," he observed, "so still there are
more godly Women in the World, than there are godly Men;...."

Gerald F. Moran, pg 127, "Triumph over Silence, Women in Protestant
History", 1985.

"The Fathers have shown nothing that would give us indication that we
should see essential structures in manhood and in office which would
exclude the possession of office by a woman.  And that seems significant
to me.  For in that case no connection with dogma is present, at least
not in the concept of the Fathers.  And that would leave room for a
further development."

Haye vanderMeer, SJ, pgs 88-89, "Women Priests in the Catholic Church?",
1973.

"Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution in any
particular variety of behavior.  [The behavior of man and woman is
rather dependent on the sociological and cultural circumstances.]"

Ruth Benedict, pg 14, "Patterns of Culture", 1934.