The Rt. Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, wrote this for the Huffington Post Religion blog:
Saying Christianity is bad for women is like saying science is bad for children. One has taken an entire category of values, practices, history and heritage and made a blanket statement apply to an impossibly exhaustive, undifferentiated category of human beings. Sure, there have been times in the history of Christianity when people supposedly practicing that faith have acted contrary to the faith’s core values. Yes, for much of the faith’s 2,000 year history, the role of its women has been overshadowed by that of its men. None of the world’s religions have fully lived up to the ideals they espouse. And granted one can take particular and often isolated verses from the Bible: Christianity’s sacred scripture, to prove that Christianity is bad for women, just as people at one time in our history proved, using scripture, that it was all right for some human beings to own others.
But at its core, Christians are not a people of the Book. We are a people centered in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we know as the Christ. Jesus, in his life on earth, was equally comfortable in his relationships with women as with men.
Bishop Glasspool then goes into a very quick history of the early church and how repression of women developed into the institutionalized church. The good news is, of course, we are still changing:
We are not centered in the particular events that happened over 2,000 years ago in a tiny outpost of the Roman Empire. We are centered in the life of the living, risen Christ as it is expressed through the life of community today! A former Archbishop of Canterbury (symbolic head of the Anglican Communion in the world), William Temple (1881 – 1944), was fond of saying that compared to the life of the universe, and even other of the world’s religions, the Christian faith is a young religion, and we’re still working on getting it right — which is to say — working to truly live out the values of radical egalitarianism, total inclusion, and healing and reconciling the world to God. As we do that, women are playing increasingly critical roles as leaders of Christianity today.
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“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.- Princess Bride
True love conquers all- Sleeping Beauty
“God is Love”
“The greatest of these is Love.”
et. al. 🙂
“Religious beliefs serve only two purposes…”
You don’t believe something because believing it serves a purpose. You believe something because you think it’s true.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
—William Goldman, _The Princess Bride_
“In order to tear anything down, it has to have a foundation and a structure”
In the beginning… GOD
That’s the structure- God is the structure. Its still the beginning to God. God is still the beginning, the middle, and the end. Wherever we awaken with the gift of life and consciousness, –
GOD
GOD is the structure.
If God can continue to create everything in a moment by moment basis, we should not be afraid to create. Ever seeming “new” doctrine is a variation on the theme of
GOD
As long as it is rooted in
LOVE
Eventually, the theme of the divine symphony in our hearts goes like this
….LOVE GOD, LOVE SELF, LOVE NEIGHBOR WITH HEART SOUL, MIND STRENGTH
…..OK, so “LOVE THE WHOLE WITH YOUR WHOLE”
….THERE IS NO OTHER!
…. and all that’s left is
LOVE
If we could communicate that to the world, in any way possible, we would be doing our job as the church.
In order to tear anything down, it has to have a foundation and a structure. Good night,Josh.