Women are not permitted to speak in churches 1 Corinthians 14:35

[Kevin from WI]

34 The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. 35 If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church...
I am curious how left leaning Christian women feel about this. How do they reconcile this type of biblical instruction with their liberal beliefs?

[PeaceNikki]

1. I was raised in a WELS church and this 'rule' being enforced was the straw that broke my mom's back.

Women are not allowed to be on the church board and are typically disregarded. My brother, sister and I were attending the grade school and it was discovered that there was asbestos in the gymnasium. The church wanted to postpone the costly removal and my mom was pissed. She spoke up about it and was literally told to shut up and let the men deal with it.

Boom, we were out and 30 years later, never went back. We've all become raging liberal agnostic/atheist/anti-theists.

So, in my case, the reconciliation was... GTFO.

[eShirl]

2. Pretty sure most Quaker meetings have always ignored this.

It sounds like something out of Paul's mouth rather than Jesus', amiright?.

[Stuckinthebush]

28. Pure Paul

But Paul is the founder of Christianity as we know it today, no?

[Stuckinthebush]

33. The BEST kind of fist fights...

are the religious ones!

I've been reading an Ehrman book on the lost Christianites. Great stuff!

[LiberalAndProud]

6. That seems like a long way around to decide to ignore some passages.

The treatment of women in the Bible is a really ugly thing. If you understand the Abraham story through the eyes of Hagar, it's hard to see why any god would count the man as righteous. A liberal Christian may be able to brush away the blatantly misogynistic passages, but the message remains.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. Oh, I know.

My point is that no matter how much cherry picking one does, the deplorable status of women in the Bible is insidious throughout. It can only be explained away by placing the misogynistic message in a cultural envelope and sealing it tight. And even if you can do that, the message will bleed through.

[edhopper]

4. Simple

"You have to understand that era..."
"Religion evolves..."
"You're just a literalist..."
"Some Christians are feminist..."

yadda, yadda, yadda

[FiveGoodMen]

21. "Religion evolves..." ???

They told me, "God is eternal and perfect. His laws are the same yesterday, today, and forever."

(Even as a kid, I thought that sounded a little suspicious since religious beliefs obviously do change over time)

[RussBLib]

5. my questions are

If you overlook this passage in the Bible, what else do you overlook?

And finally, why bother with this ancient bullshit in the first place?

Just the thought of us being "ruled" by an ancient book of unknown authorship is rather absurd. Which reminded me of today's FFRF Freethought of the Day

ERNESTINE L. ROSE
and especially this quote from her:

“Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, . . . Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.”

read the whole item here

[DawgHouse]

30. Wow, this is so true!

My youngest son was always questioning me about things, demanding more explanation than "the bible says so." His questioning led me to dig deeper and I realized that I had only been repeating what I'd been told my whole life.

[onager]

11. They ignore that verse, and quote Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

They quote that one over and over and OVER. Especially when someone brings up the verse from Corinthians that you quoted. I've been to that rodeo many times on the Internetz.

It's just the usual cherry-picking. "The verse in Galatians is the Real Deal, ignore that verse in Corinthians, etc. etc."

IOW, Saint Paul wasn't a True Xian...

[Curmudgeoness]

12. I cannot answer how liberal Christian women feel about this,

since I am not a Christian woman. But I was in my youth, and these were the kinds of scripture readings that made me an atheist. My opinion was that I was taught that the Bible was the word of God. That meant that all of the verses in the Bible came from God. If that was the case, I felt that I had no part in it. I cannot believe that some god would create women with a brain and not allow her to use it, therefore, this god cannot be real.

But as with all these verses that do not jive with what we believe, they are ignored by people who disagree with the sentiment and they are embraced by those who want to dominate their women. That is the thing about the Bible, everyone can find something to appreciate and embrace, as long as they are willing to ignore the rest of it.

[CrispyQ]

13. "I cannot believe that some god would create women with a brain and not allow her to use it..."

That's cuz we came from a rib. I can't even talk to friends who are religious cuz I think it's all such a charade.

When I was going through something called Confirmation, which I'm still not sure what it was all about, except I was qualified to take Communion afterwards, I asked why God was always referred to as a man, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. "Where are the women in this trinity?" I asked our pastor, who didn't have a decent answer in him. "That's just the way it is," he said. I asked why it couldn't be God the Parent & God the Child & he just gave me a blank look while the class snickered. I told my mom that I would continue with Confirmation, she only wanted to appease my grandmother, but that I was never going to be part of the church.

My first break with the church was 6 years earlier, when a Sunday school teacher said you could reconcile the Big Bang (science) with God because, "Where did the hydrogen come from?" she asked. I blurted out, "Where did God come from?" & the entire class gasped & the next week I was taken to the main chapel & had to endure a lecture from a different pastor on faith.

My personal belief is that we will not make inroads against the patriarchy until the big three are toppled.

[Curmudgeoness]

14. A lecture on faith!

Sounds like a lot of bullshit, amiright. Faith----just believe but don't think.

I never had a problem with God being portrayed as a male until years later, but I had a lot of problem with the role of women in their society and religion. I can tell you that I know more about religion than a lot of males, who I am supposed to ask for guidance in religious matters. Sure.

You were that Sunday School student who they wished would just go away. I also did the Confirmation thing, and also have no idea what that was all about. My impression was just to teach us some of the finer things about our particular denomination. All I remember is how they bashed all the other denominations, even though they were all Christians. And don't get me started on how evil the Catholics were. We spent more time on the reasons that they were all going to Hell than anything else. It was lovely.

[CrispyQ]

15. That's pretty much what I took away from Confirmation, too - our way of believing is better.

When I was 7, my mother & I moved to a very small town of 1,500 people & we marveled that there were 9 churches in town, some of them very nice ones!

I did get one good thing out of church - I learned to sing harmony. Those old hymns are prefect for harmony & in church you can belt out the wrong note & no one knows who did it or cares.

[LiberalAndProud]

17. Would you desribe your background as Liberal Christian?

[Curmudgeoness]

19. Not at this point in my life.

I am an atheist now. But when I was a teen, I was a liberal and I was a Christian.

[LiberalAndProud]

20. I ask because I think it took me longer to rise to reason

because of the liberal bent of religion practiced in my parents' household -- the bible isn't the literal word of god, just pay attention to the good bits. I have spent the better part of my life living with that conundrum. While it has been a huge relief to end the mental exercise of trying to make liberal sense of the nonsense, it took me a good long while.

I envy folks who caught on early.

[Curmudgeoness]

23. It is always a long journey.

Getting to the point where you are willing to turn your back on all the things that they fed you from when you were young is not easy. The church that I went to was not what I would call liberal (United Presbyterians were always the conservative uptight sorts), but my family was not particularly religious either. In my early teens, I got involved in the first of the nondenominational born again groups, and that is where I started to do a lot of Bible reading. By my late teens, I had sorted out a lot of my problems with what I had been reading in the Bible and all the contradictions, and knew that I did not believe that it was the word of God. It still took years for me to accept the word "atheist" though. The journey was not easy and did take a long time, but looking back, I knew much earlier than I was willing to admit.

[Lordquinton]

16. One of the main reasons my Mom left the church

I always have to ask, if it's wrong, not from Jesus, no one follows it then why is it still in the book? Why don't they remove all the passages which are not followed because they don't fit with "god's message"?

Sure, they don't follow it now, but the message it sends that it's in there is a strong one, like the laws on the books about atheists not holding office, sure they're not enforced, but they are still on the books, and even if they are unconstitutional they could still be used to ruin someone's chances even once, and how many non-believers chances that they don't even try? How many women have not spoken up for fear of reprisal? (cause the penalties for doing so are pretty stiff in that book).

[Warren Stupidity]

18. It is allegory. You can't take things in the bible literally.

"If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church"

really means: ___________

[LiberalAndProud]

22. really means: Jesus loves me.

That what it really means.

[Tobin S.]

24. "Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich."

[Arugula Latte]

25. You can't take things in the bible literally,

except Jesus really did die and come back to life and he will return to Earth some day. Of course THAT makes perfect sense.

[Warren Stupidity]

26. just the indefensible odious bullshit if you are a "liberal" christian.

the other stuff, the stuff that is merely ridiculous but benign is ok to take literally.

[LiberalAndProud]

27. I have long conversations with one Christian who believes

that Jesus was not crucified, because the crucifixion story can't be made to make historical sense. This same person, earlier in his life, pinned his faith on I Corinthians 15:14. When I reminded him of that, he smiled ruefully and said, "My faith evolved." He and I have great fun. I challenge his belief and he challenges my disbelief. He doesn't punch me in the face and I don't kick him in the groin. Nothing ever even close to that, although sometimes our voices become strident in the exchange.

I really enjoy those conversations.

[onager]

31. Muslims will tell you the same thing

They mostly believe Jesus was sky-hooked directly to Heaven, like Mohammed. He wasn't crucified and never died, so he was never resurrected.

They also believe Jesus will fight alongside them at the end of the world. At least that's what several Egyptian Muslims told me. For obvious reasons, I didn't go around aggressively seeking out theological discussions when I lived in the Middle East. If they wanted to talk about it, I would listen. Quietly.

I have to say that the Egyptian Muslims, mostly, were polite about religion. I only remember once incident when a guy started asking me pointed questions about what I believed. His friends immediately told him to STFU, that I was a guest in their country and my beliefs were none of his business, etc.

During Ramadan, when Muslims can't eat during the day, one co-worker noticed I wasn't eating either and asked why not. Told him I was just trying to be polite (you know, Mom taught me not to do stuff in front of people if they can't do it, etc.) He said "You're not a Muslim and our rules don't apply to you. Go eat your lunch."

One funny thing about the "not crucified" stuff - once when I was living in Saudi Arabia, the holidays of Easter, Passover and Eid al-Fitr (end of Ramadan) all happened about the same time.

The English-language newspaper ran a special edition about The Three Great Religions!1! which was mostly the usual propaganda.

Except they mentioned the Muslim belief that Jesus was never crucified or resurrected. The American Xians on our compound were furious about that.

[Act_of_Reparation]

32. The parts of the Bible they like are "divinely inspired"

The parts of the Bible they don't like are allegory, mistranslations, or the corrupted words of primitive men.

It's very convenient.... completely dishonest, but very convenient.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

34. I wish they had the guts to edit out the bad stuff.

And the contradictory stuff. And have a consistent set of rules.

Why don't they just turn their scriptures into a small pamphlet with the sermon on the mount, judge not lest ye be judged, and as you did it unto the least of them, so also you did it unto me, and the other good parts?

Instead of just ignoring the bad and cruel and contradictory stuff? Like the family values of incest with Lot's daughters?


For instance, there is nothing in Hinduism or Buddhism (I have studied both of them) that is contradictory where they have to say "Oh, Lord Buddha didn't really mean that when he said such-and-such" or "Krishna really didn't mean such-and-such".

Besides, you can be an atheist and a Buddhist too. Buddha said gods were irrelevant when he was asked about them. He said he wanted to teach people about how to live their lives, not worry about gods or an afterlife. And that kind of a practical philosophy about how to act appeals to me because you don't have to debase yourself worshiping some petty little god that must be fawned over. Since he was raised Hindu, he basically got rid of the gods and distilled Hinduism down to dharma (the truth or the teachings), karma and reincarnation.

But I digress on Eastern religions that seem to make a lot more sense. I think of the gods and goddesses as archetypes of various human qualities. You could analogize the Virgin Mary to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, if you wanted to.