Tell women they should submit to their husbands.<\/p>\n
This goes so much against the Zeitgeist, is so politically incorrect and seems so outrageous to contemporary sensibilities that the Guardian<\/a>, Daily Mail<\/a>, Telegraph<\/a> and Times<\/a> all carried the story.<\/p>\n Something that was not mentioned in any of the articles is the fact that it was Christianity that elevated women from being the property of a man to being his equal, a child of God. From a review of Rodney Stark\u2019s The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History<\/em>:<\/p>\n Stark produces impressive evidence that Christianity was deeply appealing to pagan women, for within the Christian sub-culture, women held a much higher status than did women throughout the Greco-Roman world. Women were recognized by Christianity as equal to men, children of God with the same superantural destiny; moreover, the Christian prohibition of polygamy, divorce, birth control, abortion and infanticide contributed to the well-being of women substantially, securing them dignity and rights within both Church and state. One effect of this higher status was to increase the number of Christian women, which in turn led to a superior fertility rate for Christians, another factor in the growth of the faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The papers also made little mention of the fact that in Ephesians 5, just after the \u201cwives submit to your own husbands\u201d<\/em> verse, we find: \u00a0\u201cHusbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.\u201d<\/em> While women submit to their husbands, husbands have to love their wives as Christ loved the church: in other words, a completely selfless love: the husband would die for his beloved.<\/p>\n Islam makes an interesting contrast<\/a>: women are considered inferior to men and the Koran encourages a Muslim husband to beat his wife – an activity that is so common it ceases to be news:<\/p>\n When I first began to study the topic I did not realize that an Islamic marriage is not equivalent to a Christian marriage. Its rules, roles, and requirements are different. In a Christian marriage the husband is given the role as head of the household and the wife is expected to submit to the husband\u2019s leadership. However, she is his equal in terms of social status; she is not inferior to him. In Islam the husband is also the head of the marriage, additionally he is his wife\u2019s manager. Women are considered to be “in-between a slave and free man”. Slaves are not equal to their masters, rather they are subservient, managed, and controlled. Similarly, Muslim wives are inferior to their husbands and are managed and controlled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As for, \u201cIf there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.\u201d<\/em> women have the advantage of being able to sleep through the sermon and ask their husbands about what happened later; husbands have to be wide-eyed in rapt attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tell women they should submit to their husbands. This goes so much against the Zeitgeist, is so politically incorrect and seems so outrageous to contemporary sensibilities that the Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times all carried the story. Something that … Continue reading