The Persecution of Women in the Church

[SDG]

Originally Posted by crazyhomie

Early church fathers left us with a difficult heritage; evidenced by the continual denegration of...women in particular. Originally Christianity was quite positive for women, (Jesus treated them equally) but by the time of Augustine, women were regarded as responsible for the fall of man. The letters of Jerome teem with loathing of the female almost to the point of sounding deranged. Tertullian had castigated women as evil temptresses, an eternal danger to mankind:
"Do you not know that you are each and Eve? You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You so carelessly destroyed man, God's image. On account of your desert, even the son of God had to die."-

Augustine agreed; "What is the difference," "whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman."
As a matter of fact Augustine is puzzled that God should have made the female at all, "if it was good company and conversation that Adam needed, it would have been much better arranged to have two men together as friends, not a man and a woman." "Early church fathers regarded a womans only function as "childbearing which passed the contagion of original sin to the next generation, like a veneral disease. -"

Western Christianity never fully recovered from this neurotic misogyny, which can still be seen in the unbalanced reaction to the very notion of the ordination of women. - a history of God, pg.124, karen Armstrong.

My personal view is this: Satan's attempt to destroy Eve in the garden was a direct attack against her seed. A man is never greater than his mother. It's been said 'behind every good man is a better woman". Truthfully, this is usually his mother or grandmother.

The persecution of women in the church is still evident today. Catholicism teaches that women are to blame for original sin and should be avoided; thus the doctrine of celibacy. A holy man cannot be defiled by a women.

Is it possible that much of what women have had to endure relationally with regard to the church is a carryover of this wicked and insidious spirit to destroy the women, thus destroying their seed?

An angry mother produces angry children. An offended mother produces offended children. A bitter mother produces bitter children.

God's fundamental law of creation is this; "everything reproduces after its own kind."

Women, now is your opportunity to be liberated! You should love me for this!

Originally Posted by Felicity

Can also add to the above.......

3. a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religion, race, or beliefs: the persecutions of Christians by the Romans.

Actually though the word wasn't defined by the author of the thread and I'm not sure the dictionary definition was what he meant by using that particular word.

How can you say this based on his original post?