Christianity and the Rise and Decline of Women in the Church

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Published: 28Jan2010
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The evolution of this change in stereotypical roles first becomes highly present in the writings of the New Testament. Whereas most writing before had showed the prevalence of women as religious figures, the New Testament brought about the first major example of women losing their position in society (Torjesen, 13). Although the New Testament did in fact mention women as religious figureheads it did so only in passing. This shows how the social convictions of the world were slowly shaping the beliefs of early Christians. The male authors of the New Testament did this by only touching on instances of female roles and doing so in a biased fashion. Even in his later letters the Apostle Paul showed a great amount of anxiety in regards to women and their power in regards to religion (Torjesen, 28). This is seen in the fact that four of the Gospels dictate that Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the newly risen Jesus and that he told her she was the be the one to tell the other apostles, and that in Paul's version Mary is never mentioned. Instead Paul says, "He was raised on the third day...He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brethren at one time...Last of all...he appeared to me" at no time does Paul mention the presence of Mary as one of the people to see Jesus rise (C.G.G.).

In the Gospel of Mary, this view of Paul's ultimate sexism is discovered further. Within this Gospel Mary is encouraged by Peter to tell the other disciples what Jesus asked her to do, to lead the disciples. Even though Mary story was probably the truth, as is seen by four other disciple's Gospels, Paul, still deigned her by saying, "Did he really speak to a woman without our knowledge? Our we to turn about and listen to her? Did he prefer her to us" (Torjesen, 22)? No matter what, Paul is a man of his time, he will not believe a woman because she is of the inferior sex, and she would not have been trusted with such information. Even with this representation of the view of women for the time there is still a representation of the nonsexist male in Levi who addresses Peter calling him "hot tempered" and mentioning that Paul is behaving like the "adversaries" or the Greco-Roman's whose beliefs are very much sexist and wholly apart from early Christian beliefs. We see this again in another Gospel, the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke it is an unspecified woman who tells Luke and the other disciples of the resurrection of Jesus, to which the gospel responds, "but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them" (C.G.G.). Even though women were a great force in early Christian Religion it was the influence of the Greco-Roman beliefs in gender roles that slowly changed the beliefs of women being in power.

Thus, it is this original influence that lead to the eventual lack of representation of women leaders in the bible. Even so, why did the influence of the other Gospels outweigh the Gospel of Mary? In fact, the answer to this is very simple. The Gospel of Mary was lost for a hundreds of years and was not discovered again until 1945 when "a collection of manuscripts at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt" was discovered (Torjesen, 12). Within these manuscripts, was a very worn and only a partial copy of the Gospel of Mary. Up until the rediscovery of this gospel many people believed that Mary Magdalene was in fact a whore due to a mistake (or perhaps a lack of mistake) made by the Catholic Church. It was not until after the discovery of the Gospel of Mary that the Church actually looked into Mary Magdalene in depth within the bible. Upon really reviewing both the New and the Old Testament they determined that Mary in fact had no connections to being a prostitute or any less a woman of virtue in 1969 (Howland, 103). Soon after all materials that regarded Mary as anything less than another great follower of Jesus was removed from the Roman Missal and the Roman calendar.

Still, even now, in 2009 there has been no official statement by the Catholic Church on the matter of misrepresenting Mary Magdalene for over a thousand years, resulting in the formation of several religions that still believe her to be a prostitute (Howland). With all of this in mind, however, what was the eventual fall of women in the Church? Was it really just the lack of the Gospel of Mary that lead to the lack of women in western religion? In fact, this was not the reason for the lack of women in the western religions. When Christianity entered the end of the third century it began evolving from an ideal into a public and well excepted religion. "By the fourth century Christians" were worshipping publically and forming their own churches as this happened the need for house churches became less and less prevalent (Torjesen, 28). Since the churches were becoming more and more public, a sphere that was dominated by men and not a place that women were allowed to speak freely as the Greco-Roman beliefs dictated, women began to see a decline in their ability to participate on a large scale in the Christian religion. Many men of the time criticized a woman that spoke from within the public sphere, calling her own chastity and sexuality into question when she broke into the male dominated part of society. Therefore, women lost their ability to be heavy participants in the Church because Christianity formed itself to the Greco-Roman beliefs of the time period (Torjesen).

In the case of Christianity and the slow decline of female influence in religion, it is very obvious why women slowly lost their power. The main reason is seen through the cultural influences of Greco-Roman Society, which believed that men and women had separate spheres in which they should live. Women lived in the sphere of the household, where their chastity could be easily monitored and kept in check, while men lived in the public sphere where they could speak their minds freely. In the beginning this was fine because as an early Religion Christianity was confined to household churches where women could exert their power freely. As Christianity evolved into a more public religion, however, women were once again suppressed because Greco-Roman society would not allow a woman to extend herself from her house. If a woman did so, she would endanger her own moral character and be heavily criticized to the point that her life would become miserable. This initial exclusion of women was further backed by the somewhat sexist ideals of other figures in the early church and because of the disappearance of the Gospel of Mary. All of these things combined contributed to the eventual downfall of women in power and lead to the exclusion of women in the church for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It was not until very recently, within the last hundred years, that women were once again given some power within the church. There is still a long way to go to recover the power that women once processed in regards to religion. By understanding the reasoning behind women's exclusion, however, women in the church are able to form a strong bond with religion once again, as they once did in the times of pre-Christianity and pre Greco-Roman beliefs.

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