If you honestly believe the Bible is a moral lighthouse leading you on a path to Heaven, then you cannot in good conscience believe in feminist ideals.
I am not talking about straw-man feminism, the movement that televangelist Pat Robertson decried as a “socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
I am talking about the movement consisting of the men and women of the world that can see the oppression of half of the world’s population, which pervades nearly universally throughout modern society, and who want to bring about equality between the sexes. Feminism is just egalitarianism with a focus on women’s issues.
Seventy-eight percent of respondents in a recent study believe in the social, political, legal and economic equality of the sexes. Now, that being said, we still live in a country where four out of five of our national lawmakers are men, and in a state with the third fewest women in the legislature.
We also live in a country where almost half of its citizens strongly agree the Bible contains everything a person needs to know to lead a meaningful life, according to a 2015 study conducted by the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm. Over 50 percent believe the Bible is either the literal word of God with no errors, or the Bible is the inspired word of God with no errors, but some passages are symbolic.
Although these numbers may need to be taken with a grain of salt due to their source, even if their numbers are halved, that still leaves a quarter of the nation believing all women are punished with childbirth and subjugation to men because Eve decided to eat a magic fruit (Gen 3:16), whether they believe it literally happened or was a symbolic passage. If this study’s results are even somewhat correct, then some significant part of the US is using a book that implies women are worthless if they cannot bear children (1 Timothy 2:15) as a source of inspiration.
And if these are the flavor of believers who claim the all-knowing timeless being in the sky changed his mind when he wrote/inspired the New Testament, then they can sure get inspired by Romans 1:27, where Paul explains the natural use of a woman: to act as sexual objects for the pleasure of men, as long as the women aren’t compensated monetarily for it.
We have a problem if a majority of our country wants equality between the sexes, but a majority also think an all knowing being laid out 10 specific rules to follow, and none of them say anything about rape being wrong. In fact, the punishment prescribed by Moses in Deuteronomy for the rape of a virgin is for the rapist to marry his victim and pay her father 50 shekels of silver.
In the Bible women are:
- Property, “And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom…” (2 Samuel 12:8)
- Impure “Also you shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness during her menstrual impurity.” (Leviticus 18:19)
- Usually wicked “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.” (Proverbs 31:10)
- Not allowed to speak in church “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” (1 Corinthians 14:34)
The Bible is also a big proponent of slut shaming, a serious double standard in our society where women are looked down upon for harmlessly enjoying themselves, while men are encouraged to sleep with everything that moves (unless the thing has a dick).
To see the effect these words in that hallowed book have today you only have to look at about half of modern day churches where women are not even allowed to preach. Or look at our country, one of the most Christian of the industrialized nations, which has the most homeless women and children out of these nations. In a society that values the misogynist teachings of the Bible so highly, women in the military are more likely to be raped by their comrades than killed in battle. Our country is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t mandate maternity leave to accommodate women. Clearly there is some confusion within the majority of our country that both value biblical teachings and want to support equality between the sexes, and for some reason, the biblical side of the argument has prevailed historically.
This leaves all of us with two choices. We can choose to debase women through our tacit support of Biblical morality and influence, or we can leave the good book behind and contribute to a more egalitarian future. If we want to strive for the equality of the sexes in our society, we must disregard the Bible as a source of morality.
