Christianity And Women

"Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God."

"The State, agent and slave of the Church, has so long united with it in suppression of woman’s intelligence, has so long preached of power to man alone, that it has created an inherited tendency, an inborn line of thought toward repression."

"Her children, as to-day in Christian England and America, are not under her control; she is to bear children but not to educate them, for as under Catholic and Protestant Christianity, women are looked upon as a lower order of beings, of an unclean nature."

"As early as the sixth century a council at Macon (585) fifty-nine bishops taking part, devoted its time to a discussion of this question, ‘Does woman possess a soul ?’…… Until time of Peter the Great, women were not recognized as human beings in that great division of Christendom known as the Greek church, the census of that empire counting only males, or so many ‘souls’ -no woman named. Traces of this old belief have not been found wanting in our own country within the century. As late as the Woman’s Rights Convention in Philadelphia, 1854, an objector in the audience cried out : ‘Let women first prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it.’"

"Horace Mann said that one former was worth a thousand reformers. And if you are going to keep justice and liberty alive, you lawyers, we teachers will try to become what we were meant to be, the formers of the character of our citizens."

"The future of our country depends on our educational institutions. They will be kept democratic."

"Let us not forget that the future includes more women in the ministry than we have ever known before."

"Yesterday’s woman was expected to have individual interests, caring for the brightness of the hearth fire and the comforts of the family group. Today she has inherited the community and the community’s welfare. Civics, religion and education have become her field of activity. She is homemaker and citizen."

"Religion and education meet in their responsibility to make possible the abundant life—the terms are intellectual and spiritual, rather than material. Humane living is assured only to those ... who have disciplined themselves to choose and who have the ardor to strive for the excellent “with heart and soul and mind.”"

"[E]ducation in a democracy, in our democracy, must use all the instruments of civilization, home, church, community, as well as school, for the adequate, suitable development of each child. This means that character and imagination, as well as heart and hand, are developed together."

"Today in a land where all women inherit civic responsibility, where professions and business are open to all comers without distinction of sex, leadership through direct influence is woman’s unchallenged heritage."

"There are two things one should see on a trip West: the Grand Canyon and Dr. Reinhardt."

"as distinguished a Unitarian as there is in the land"

"You felt that she cared greatly about you as an individual. She believe in you and what you could become, and her faith in you, like her optimism, was contagious, giving you self-confidence and power so that you could not doubt yourself. She had a strange capacity for making you feel capable of anything."

"She is a life member of more literary organizations than probably any other woman of California."

"He greeted them all, saying, Peace be with you. Receive my peace unto yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom."

"Be of good courage, and if you are discouraged be encouraged in the presence of the different forms of nature."

"Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body."

"What is the sin of the world? The Savior said: there is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin. That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root. Then He continued and said, That is why you become sick and die, for you are deprived of the one who can heal you."

"Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to her brethren, Do not weep and do not grieve nor be irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you and will protect you. But rather, let us praise His greatness, for He has prepared us and made us into Men."

"Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women."

"What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you."

"I said to Him, Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit? The Savior answered and said, He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind that is between the two that is what sees the vision."

"Desire said, I did not see you descending, but now I see you ascending. Why do you lie since you belong to me? The soul answered and said, I saw you. You did not see me nor recognize me. I served you as a garment and you did not know me. When it said this, it (the soul) went away rejoicing greatly. Again it came to the third power, which is called ignorance. The power questioned the soul, saying, Where are you going? In wickedness are you bound. But you are bound; do not judge! And the soul said, Why do you judge me, although I have not judged? I was bound, though I have not bound. I was not recognized. But I have recognized that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly things and the heavenly. When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath. They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space? The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome, and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died. In a I was released from a world, and in a Type from a type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient. From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence."

"Then Mary wept, and answered him: 'My brother Peter, what can you be thinking? Do you believe that this is just my own imagination, that I invented this vision? Or do you believe that I would lie about our Teacher?' At this, Levi spoke up: 'Peter, you have always been hot-tempered, and now we see you repudiating a woman just as our adversaries do. Yet if the Teacher held her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Teacher knew her very well, for he loved her more than us. Therefore let us atone, and become fully human so that the Teacher can take root is us. Let us grow as he demanded of us, and walk forth to spread the gospel, without trying to lay down any rules and laws other than those he witnessed.'"

"[The Gospel of Mary is an] intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years...[it] presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects His suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman."

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ... He who has a mind to understand, let him understand."

"Will matter then be destroyed or not? The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots. For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone."

"Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it."

"There was a lady of Eden, Who on apples was quite fond of feeding. She gave one to Adam Who said, “Thank you, Madam”, And then both skeddaled from Eden"

"Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living."

"Eve's temptation of Adam to sin, by proferring him a forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge, was generally interpreted as sexual; St. Augustine and others speculated on the nonsexual means of reproduction available to human kind before the fall. In pictorial representations Eve often holds the apple close to her breast, and the couple invariably hides their genitals after the fall. She is closely associated with the serpent, which in the bronze doors of Hildesheim (1015) inserts itself between her legs. The horizontal pubescent figure of Eve from the Cathedral of Autun, showing a repentance that is appropriate to the portal where sinners petitioned for pardon, is nonetheless conflated with the serpent gliding on its belly through the garden as its punishment. By the thirteenth century Eve may be somewhat voluptuous, but her face is often mirrored in that of the serpent, into which she gazes with homosexual desire."

"Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong."

"“Had it not been for Eve, woman would have never acted unfaithfully towards the husband.” (3471)."

"After all these years I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it."

"Eve, smiling, plucked the apple, then Laughed, sighed—and tasted it again: "Strange such a pleasant, juicy thing On a forbidden tree should spring!"But had she seen with clearer eyes, Or had the serpent been less wise, She'd scarce have shown such little wit As to let Adam taste of it!"

"Surely God must have been disappointed in Adam: He made Eve so different."

"As soon as Eve ate the apple of wisdom, she reached for the fig leaf."

"While Adam slept, Eve from his side arose, Strange, his first sleep should be his last repose."

"We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."

"When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat."

"Not a single one of our ancient sources indicates that Jesus was married, let alone married to Mary Magdalene. All such claims are part of modern fictional reconstructions of Jesus' life, not rooted in the surviving accounts themselves. The historical approach to our sources may not be as exciting and sensationalist as fictional claims about Jesus (he kept a lover! he had sex! he made babies!), but there's something to be said for knowing what really happened in history, even if it is not as titillating as what happens in novels."

"[The Gospel of Mary is an] intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years...[it] presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects His suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman."

"There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee."

"Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume."

"Mary Magdalene is a model for many Christian feminists."

"Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick...When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died"."

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”"