PAULA KIRBY writes in The Washington Post of the depiction of women in the New Testament:

The woman who engages in sex with multiple men is held up as the epitome of fallenness, brokenness, wickedness; as one so corrupt that Jesus’s willingness to forgive her is seen as bordering on the miraculous. And at the same time we are offered as our ideal, our aspiration, our role-model – the eternal virgin: sexless, locked forever in a childlike state; devoid of sexual passion or sensuality; obedient, self-sacrificing, selfless: a woman, in other words, from whom all that would make her fully human, let alone fully woman, has been stripped. Here, finally, is the woman that religion need not fear. This is the highest ideal to which a Christian woman may aspire: a cardboard cut-out of womanhood, a mere handmaid, silent, submissive, a vessel for the production of babies, passively and gratefully accepting her fate.

She’s right, the woman of today is infinitely preferable. Take April Kuchta, 16, and already a molester of boys.

                                               — Comments —

Mrs. H. writes:

Ms. Kirby needs to read The Eternal Woman by Gertrud von le Fort. It is a profound philosophical meditation on true womanhood as typified in Mary, extolling the procreating, fruitful mother (the anonymous who is “lost” in her connection and dedication to the previous and consequential generations) and the barren or celibate woman (the individual, separate from the generations, but timeless in her self, and in a sense also “lost” to the waves of time). The book hinges,though, on the Christian virtue of self-denial, of not desiring to make a name for oneself.

It also hinges on the theological concept of the Church being hidden in Christ–Christ covers her with Himself, and she finds her true identity in Him. This is why the feminine is always veiled and hidden. Femininity is a picture of the Hiddenness of God–those attributes and “ways” He does not wish to reveal to us.

Laura writes:

Excellent suggestion. Ms. Kirby might gainfully venture beyond the fundamentalism of the National Organization for Women.

Ms. Kirby might also step out her front door.  Or at least momentarily leave the self-created bubble in which she dwells.

She might talk to women who have had abortions or career women who find themselves unexpectedly infertile when they try to have children in their thirties. She could strike up a conversation with single mothers; men who have been left by their wives, including pseudo-Christian wives; or girls and boys who have never met their fathers. There’s millions of people she might talk to, so pervasive are the effects of the paganism she admires. But then, I don’t expect Ms. Kirby would be readily enlightened. Her womanly ideal runs closer to the temple prostitutes of ancient times.

By the way, that an article such as this, containing outright hatefulness towards Christianity, should appear in The Washington Post is shocking even today.

Jesse Powell writes:

Kirby seems to be associating Christianity, and religion in general, with patriarchy. I think this in itself in noteworthy. Growing up I might have associated religion with “cultural conservatives” but I certainly didn’t associate it with the idea of “patriarchy”; I associated the past, say 1950 and before, with patriarchy but I didn’t associate religion with patriarchy. If Christianity itself, as a whole, in America today, promotes patriarchy, as Kirby suggests, then that is great progress. I wouldn’t agree with such an assertion; patriarchy still seems to be a fringe phenomenon within the Christian church today; but the very fact that some people claim that the Christian church is now a promoter of patriarchy is in itself an indicator that patriarchal beliefs are gaining popularity within Christianity, which is a good thing.

Laura writes:

Christianity is patriarchal. Kirby distorts and perverts the Christian understanding of man and woman. But she is correct that Christianity is patriarchal.

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