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Gender Roles from a Theological View (1) In recent years, it became very popular among Christians to suggest that Bibles message should not be taken literally. Numerous experts tell us how we should be interpreting Christian doctrine, as if they had a personal conversation with God. The same tendency can be observed within Islam. There are, of course fundamentalists, who live according to the rules of Koran, but the religious attitude of majority of Muslims, is becoming more secularized. Nowadays, the concepts of humanism, tolerance and diversity are being promoted throughout the world as the only option.
In order to make their ideas to sound more credible, the advocates of political correctness strive to make people to believe that worlds most influential religions are also humane and progressive, in their essence. Protestant theologists enthusiasm, in this respect, is especially noticeable. They tell us that Christianity is based on the principle of equality between men and women and that Gods foremost concern is promoting family values. This, of course, is far from the truth.
In this paper, we will analyze Christian and Islamic visions of genders social roles and the principles of interaction between them. We will focus mainly on Christianity, because this religion is still predominant in Western countries. However, while doing this, we are going to keep in mind that both, Christianity and Islam are Semitic religions, which explains the fact why they often adopt a similar approach, towards the issue of relationship between genders. Therefore, many conclusions about how Christianity views men and women, which we will come to in this paper, are also going to be applicable to Islam. (2) It is very amazing fact that Jewish tribal religion, which was originated in the Middle East and was only meant to serve as spiritual justification of Jewish genocidal practices, today is being considered by many people as the something that contains universal message of love and peace.
This points out to the fact that majority of Christians simply do not bother to read their holy book, while preferring to rely on priests interpretation of Christian message. There are some Christian sects, such as Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, which promote the ideas that are absolutely opposite to Jesus teachings. For example, Mormons stress out the importance of family values, while Jesus used to deny them: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14: 26). Brian Elroy McKinley in his article Why Focus on the Family is of the Devil makes a perfectly good point, while suggesting that it is utterly un-Christian to emphasize on the importance of family values: Focusing on the family damages peoples souls. The Colorado Springs-based religious organization is responsible for destroying the faith of countless believers through their radio programs, videos and books. What is worse, they do it ever so subtly by holding themselves up as defenders of all things good and decent (McKinley).
The truth is, Jesus taught his disciples not to care much about their Earthly affairs, because the kingdom of God was at hand. According to Jesus, there was no point in marrying, because he promised Apostles that they would be witnessing his Second Coming. Even though that Jesus used to say that he came not to destroy but to fulfill, the essence of New Testament is different from the essence of Old Testament. It is for a very good reason why Old Testament describes family affiliations of its characters to the slightest details. This is because in the Middle East, people think of family as social nucleus. This is why the political clans in Middle Eastern countries often consist of family members, even up to these days.
After translating the Old Testament into German, Martin Luther refused to believe that it is an essential part of Bible. Nevertheless, the Old Testament is given the equal status with the New Testament by every Christian denomination. The Old Testaments contains a very clear justification for womens inferior social status. Just as another Semitic religion Islam, Christianity literally denies women having a soul.
According to Bible, women should not even speak, unless being told to do so by their husbands. Here are the most famous pearls, in regards to the inferior status of women that could be found in Bible: Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression (I Timothy 2: 11 - 14), Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything (Ephesians 5: 22 - 24), Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church (I Corinthians 14: 34 - 35), For from garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness. Better is the churlishness of a man than a courteous woman, a woman, I say, which bringeth shame and reproach (Eccles. 42: 13 - 14), The whoredom of a woman may be known in her haughty looks and eyelids.
If thy daughter be shameless, keep her in straitly, lest she abuse herself through overmuch liberty (Eccles. 26: 9 - 10). Thus, we can see that Bible clearly does not support the idea of womens emancipation. Therefore, it is very hard to understand the logic of those people who call themselves a Christian feminists. Somehow, they think that Bible promotes the idea of womens liberation, because the true essence of Christian message is contained between Bibles lines.
Apparently, they are only the people, who were able to discover it. One of the best examples of how Christianity and Feminism could be twisted in bizarre knot is the book Feminist Interpretation of the Bible by Letty M Russell. In it, she suggests that God is a secret feminist himself and that his macho's attitudes, described in the Bible, do not derive from his heart: The critique of sexism implies a fundamental principle of judgment. This critical principle of feminist theology is the affirmation of and promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, to be appraised as not redemptive. Theologically speaking, this means that whatever diminishes or denies the full humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine or authentic relation to the divine (Russell, p. 115).
It truly does appear that Russell excelled at presuming. The irony lies in the fact that she thinks of her argument as credible. In fact, Feminist Interpretation of the Bible is being widely quoted as convincing theological work. Had Russell came up with her ideas a few hundred years ago, she would have been burned at the stake, while being surrounded by applauding crowd, because interpreting Bible leads to heresy.
The truth is, Bible could not view women as being equal to men in principle, because this book is nothing but the religious expression of Semitic mentality. The book of Talmud, for example, is considered as one of Jewish holy books; however, it is just a list of advices of how to conduct Earthly affairs, in order to be able to extract as much profit as possible. There is nothing religious about it, in Western sense of this word. The same applies to Bible, which was simply meant to give a moral sounding to the fact that women were being suppressed by men throughout millennia for very practical reasons. It is very psychologically comforting for the men to treat women as their servants, while explaining it that God himself wills it.
In European societies, many women used to play a prominent social role, even before the advent of Feminism. Even though that it was much harder for them to acquire social prominence than it was for men, under no circumstance can we say that they were being referred to as simple commodity, as it is a customary practice in Asia. During the Taliban's reign in Afghanistan, for example, women were required to cover their faces; otherwise, they would often be punished by death. If Afghanis or Iranians were Christians, their attitude towards women would not change, because it is a racial affiliation that defines individuals act more than anything else does. Christianity and Islam are equally repressive towards women; it is only the fact that White people are idealists that prevented them from accepting womens inferiority to the same extent that it is accepted in Arab countries. This is the reason why the true essence of Christian message is viewed by White people through the lenses of their idealism.
It is very ironic that Islam officially grants women with more rights than does the Bible. In her article The Koran's Spirit of Gender Equality Lily Zakiyah Munir says: Contrary to the Christian dogma, which states that women were created from the ribs of a man or that men were created first (thereby implying that women are inferior to men), the Koran tells us that women and men were created from a single source / soul (naf's wahid). There is not a single verse indicating superiority of one gender over the other (Munir). Still, it is a fact that polygamy is a commonplace practice in Muslim countries.
Author tries to explain it by the fact of social prejudices, in regards to women, but this does not clarify this paradox. The answer is simple. The inner longing towards tyranny is genetically predetermined. Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, were officially referred to as peoples republics, where the political power belonged to ordinary folks. Yet, at the same time, these countries were also being considered as the most repressive tyrannies in the world.
On the other hand, Britain is monarchy, while being simultaneously one of the most democratic countries on the planet. The same can be said about Christianity and Islam, in regards to the social application of these religious doctrines. Christianity is more repressive, yet, in Christian countries, women enjoy much more freedoms than they do in Muslim countries. While Christian feminists are allowed to openly express their views, even the mere idea of Islamic feminist sounds utterly ridiculous. In his book The Catholic Family Handbook, Reverend George Kelly provides us with a good example of how Catholics interpret Christian concept of family: In order for you to understand what objectives you should strive for as a parent, you should first realize that your Catholic family symbolizes in miniature the Mystical Body of Christ.
The husband and father is the head of the body and represent Christ. The wife represents the Church and the children, as members of the body, represent the faithful (Kelly, p. 35). It is very remarkable that Catholicism is based on holy tradition more than it is based on actual Bible teachings. We can think of Catholicism as the product of Western mental digestion of Christianity. It did not take too long for the Roman society to collapse, after being exposed to Christianity, because the biological quality of Roman citizens, at the time, was being undermined by the process of racial mixing. However, after Christianity was introduced to Europe, a few centuries later, it simply transformed itself into something different from what it was originally meant to be.
When we inject a small amount of poison into the body of physically healthy individual, it will cause this individual to simply become immune to this poison in the future. Catholicism in nothing but a spiritual vaccine that Europeans were able to come up with, in order to resist the anti-social doctrine of Christianity. The modern Protestantism undergoes the same process. It tries to renovate Christianity into something digestible, because more and more people begin to realize its discrepancy as religious concept. This is why it was necessary to transform the public image of Jesus into someone who was pro-family and pro-life, even though that this is could not be further from the truth. In her book Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics Lisa Cahill suggests that the reason why early Christians did not think much of the institute of family is that family, in Roman society, was based on patriarchal principle.
Therefore, Christian nihilist stance, in regards to relationship between genders, is best explained by the fact that they were latent feminists. This is a laughable argument. Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that one could not understand the true meaning of Christianity, without having studied the history of this religion. Let us imagine the emergence of new obscure religious cult.
Its members do not take bath, do not shave, do not bury dead bodies and often cut off their own genitals for the glory of God. They deny every principle, upon which the society is based. They even refuse to cross the street on green light and for their symbol they take guillotine. Such were early Christians.
Therefore, it is an absurd to suggest that they were concerned about procreation or about establishing social equality between men and women. (3) If we talk about the essence of Old and New Testaments in the nutshell, we can come...
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Research essay sample on Christianity And Islam Men And Women
