The View of Women Espoused by the Evangelical Christian Right by Gini Paulson

In Scandanavian nations and cultures women have always held such a high position, quite possibly as a consequence of their common Germanic heritage. In the 4th century AD Tacitus, a Roman historian, writes of the Germanic tribes that the women in these tribes had equal political power to men in the tribal councils, a situation not unlike that of most native American native tribes. Since the Scandanavian languages are all variants of German, it is likely that the immigration of Germanic tribes to Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, brought with it customs and traditions and political institutions that gave women equal status to that of men.

More recently, in the hopes of teaching this course, I got some very recent books on ancient Sumeria and Mesopotamia, where the author, Nagel, describes women's roles as having equal capability to marry, divorce, carry on businesses as men did, and to be protected within the law. As well, the first poetry writer of the world, according to this author, was a woman. In Egypt also women had high status, equal to men, and were especially cherished. I have only just begun reading this section. I also know that in ancient Greece, despite claims by some to the contrary, women were held in high regard, with women being able to own and to operate their own businesses, to own and transact commercial exchanges including property. And Athena was a goddess revered for her intelligence and women.

It is ONLY in the Jewish Old Testament (OT) which opens up its concocted history with the faults and sins of a woman, Eve, that results in the subjugation of women to men. And it is the OT in which women consistently have low status, and in Jewish law, especially, Orthodox Jewis rabbinic law that women are subjected to terrible humiliations by their husbands, in which a Jewish male could clap his hands and be divorced of his wife, for whom there were no alternative roles to that of domestic slave.

Any reading of the New Testament reveals that Jesus cherished women, and responded to their needs, breaking with the harsh rabbinic law, despite the fact that the interpretatin of the Jewish word - ruah - for the sprit of God is a feminine word, leading some to state unequivocally that the spirit of God/Creator is feminine.

It is my opinion that this subjugation of women is an attempt to destroy the universe, since men seem prone to hormonal induced propensities to violence, and given their relative size, strength and endurance especially at younger ages, it is easy to coerce and be violent towards women.

Evangelical Christian rightists swear by the OT and its harsh degrees,and history. It gives them a favored chance to be one of the chosen ones, although what kind of a God is it who would order a man to violate the commandments just given, to murder the Caanites who had land that the greedy Hebrews coveted. Talk about contradictions, as well as lies.

Gini Paulson is a retired sociology professor and member of theLake Forest Park, SNOW group http://www.snowcoalition.org/contact.php