Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Does it matter if we use religion to oppress women?

Can we assume that one and the same religion will create the same kind of society whenever it is implemented? Will, for example, all Christian societies follow the same rules and develop the same traditions, since they are all built around the same religion?

No! I'm sure that that is not the case at all. There is a bewildering multitude of beliefs and customs that are or have been "justified" in the name of Chrisitianity. I will not go into any details, just post a few pictures to give you an idea of what I mean.




























This is an illustration of how Dante Alighieri pictured hell around the year 1300. Please note that Dante would have sentenced you to hell - with no chance of ever getting out of there - if you had more than a passing interest in food or money, for example.



My point is that it is not possible to foresee how a society will evolve just because all or most of its members belong to a certain religion.

If we could replay history, and let the last two thousand years unfold all over again, I am personally convinced that history would have turned out differently. There are a million little things that might have changed - an important thinker who got pneumonia and died before he had had time to formulate his thoughts, a rebel who got away instead of getting hanged, a ship that sank, a peace that was negotiated differently - a million little things, as I said, and the world that we now take for granted would never have happened.



And if Christianity had become dominant in that world, too, its rules and traditions would have been different.

The point I'm trying to make is that even though the Christian parts of the world today are generally less sexist than other parts of the world, I don't think it is at all inevitable that Christianity will always produce good living conditions for women. I think you can easily imagine Christian societies that are extremely sexist - indeed, many such societies have existed in the past, and some such societies are still to be found in the world today.

Does that mean that Christianity and the Bible have done nothing at all for women? Is there nothing in the Bible that paves the way for a relatively non-sexist society?

Yes, there is. It is not correct to conclude that Christianity has not contributed at all to the freedom of women in the west today. There are things in the Bible that can help women fight oppression. I think it is a toss-up whether or not these non-sexist aspects of the Bible will win out over the sexist parts. I will later post a comparison between the Bible and the Koran, where I'll try to point out some important differences between these two holy books, which can explain some of the differences between Christian and Muslim societies.

And yet, when all is said and done, it could well be that the differences between our societies are mostly caused by sheer historical coincidences.

Ann