In the East, with religious approval, the feet of women had been bound to limit their mobility and, therefore increase their controllability by males. In India, the custom for years was for the widow to hurl herself onto the funeral fire that consumed her husband’s body, since a woman without her husband was thought to have no value. In Africa, women have undergone (and in some countries still do) genital mutilation designed to mute their sexual desires. In many cultures, including our spiritual ancestors the Jews, polygamy was practised in which women were defined as property. A man could have as many cattle, sheep or wives as he could afford, for all were property.

Early Christianity actually affirmed women in dramatic ways. Paul writing in the early 50’s C.E. said: “In Christ there is neither male nor female.” This liberal surge was, however, quickly stamped out by a very patriarchal orthodoxy and by the time the pastoral epistles were written (in the 70’s and 80’s) we read such things as: “I forbid a woman to hold authority over a man.” Western Christianity has generally followed this patriarchal pattern.

The primary feminine symbols in Western Catholicism were two: Mary the Mother of Jesus and Mother Church. Both were finally negative to women. For the mother of Jesus to be proclaimed as a perpetual virgin by celibate male clergy suggested that the sexuality of women was sinful, and of course, “Mother Church” was an institution totally controlled by an all-male hierarchy.

The Protestant Reformation loosened this patriarchy, but did not end it. That would be accomplished only after the rise of secular humanism, which was the child of the Reformation. Progressive Protestant churches swam in this secular stream, while the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox traditions maintained their fierce patriarchal systems. The Vatican actually still employs the old and discredited “separate by equal” doctrine when referring to women. The fact is that in those countries of the world that today most revere the Virgin Mary, the status of women is embarrassingly low.

Evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism is not much better. They proclaim the doctrine of “headship,” suggesting that as Jesus is the head of the church, so the husband must be the head of the wife. They quote Ephesians to prove their point, failing to mention that this is not a Pauline work.

Secular society has abandoned these aspects of traditional Christianity and to the degree that these patriarchal concepts are still viewed as the position of traditional Christianity, they have also abandoned Christianity. Current battles in the public arena about both birth control and abortion are manifestations of this continuing culture war.

It will take another major reformation to turn this ecclesiastical sexism around. If that reformation does not come, the Christian church will fade deeper and deeper into irrelevance. There is no chance that attitudes of Western society will ever turn back toward the religious patriarchy still practiced by the Church.