Philippians is now available at The Christian Godde Project. We will be finalizing Colossians next month and will post it in October. Please let me know what you think of our work on the New Testament: Divine Feminine Version.
Month: September 2011
Paul Was Not an Evil Misogynist: Podcast with Mark Mattison
photo © 2007 Francois Bester | more info (via: Wylio)Earl
A lot of people blame Paul when part of the Christian Church claims that man is the head of the women and the head of the home , and, therefore, cannot hold leadership positions in the church. They say Paul said that:
Men are the head of women & the head of the home.
Paul told women to be quiet in church.
Paul told women they couldn’t teach men.
Too bad for them Paul didn’t say all these things. Paul’s words are interpreted to say these things, but that’s not what Paul actually said.
Earlier this year I posted on why the Apostle Paul was not the evil misogynist he’s cracked up to be. I looked at the verses in 1 Corinthians 11 that are normally used to keep women subordinated to men, and out of leadership positions, and showed that the passage can be translated to empower women instead of marginalize them. My friend, Mark Mattison, posted on the same subject at The Christian Godde Project over the weekend. In this podcast on Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down, we talked about Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthian church and why a few verses cannot be taken out of either letter to be what Godde meant for all time. Here are the verses we’ll be talking about this podcast:
Now I praise you, sisters and brothers, that you remember me in all things, and hold firm the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.
<You say:> ”But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christa, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christa is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. But every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonors her head. For it is one and the same thing as if she were shaved. For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to have his head covered, because he is the image and radiance of Godde, but the woman is the radiance of the man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man; for neither was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.”
But the woman ought to have liberty over her head because after all she will judge the angels. The point is, neither is the woman independent of the man, nor the man independent of the woman, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, so a man also comes through a woman; but all things are from Godde. Judge for yourselves. “Is it appropriate that a woman pray to Godde unveiled?” Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her instead of a covering. But if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither do Godde’s communities (1 Corinthians 11:2-6, DFV).
Mark Mattison
Mark is an independent scholar who was the founder and is still a contributor at The Paul Page, which keeps up with all the scholarship coming out on the Apostle Paul (no small task). Mark is also one of the founding members of The Christian Godde Project and the general editor of The Divine Feminine Version New Testament. Mark and his family live on the wrong side of Lake Michigan in Michigan (key words: lake effect snow) where they get a whole lot more snow than we do on the right side of Lake Michigan in Chicago.
Podcast: MarkMatthison1Corinthians11.wav
Find out what Paul really said about women keeping silent and not teaching men when you buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down. (Hint: Paul wasn’t talking about all women for all time. He was talking to very specific troublemakers in very specific congregations.)
The third full length podcast with Sandi Amorin will be posted next Monday (10/3)!
Women, the Bible, Submission & Abuse: Podcast with Lainie Petersen
Lainie Petersen
Women Don’t Need No Education
In May Lainie Petersen and I talked about the danger of women being limited to submissive “help mates” in this podcast for What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down. One of the many alarming things coming out of the Christian Patriarchy Movement is the belief that women do not need an education as they will be stay-at-home mothers. They don’t need to go to college as they will never work outside of the home. Lainie and I discussed how this movement is discouraging women from pursuing degrees in religion and theology.
Last month Lainie pointed her Facebook friends to a blogpost that showed the movement discouraging their daughters from going to college and one woman’s regret that she did not pursue more education:
I believed the “Beautiful Girlhood” spiel. I did it everything the “right way”. I stayed at home, I submitted to my father, I skipped college, I prepared to be my husband’s helpmeet, and I regret it. I had years of my life go by where I was little more than an indentured servant to my parents. My husband and I were forced into thousands of dollars of debt working for an abusive employer that we could have thumbed our nose at if I had been able to get a job. While I was without the commitments of marriage and children, I could have easily gained an education that could have served me and my husband well in early marriage. All those years living as a quiet submissive housekeeper, I could have been discovering interests, and developing as a person.
Earlier this year I published a little E-book called What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down. I interviewed four amazing people about the E-book to see what they thought about it.
Originally I bundled these podcasts with the book, but I’ve decided to make them available on the blog, free of charge. Why? Because of things I keep seeing like this blog post.
BECAUSE LIES LIKE THIS ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN OUR WORLD.
This is the reason I wrote Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down–to show that Conservative and Fundamentalist Christianity is touting only one of the ways to interpret Scriptures. There are other ways (many other ways) to interpret what the Bible has to say about men, women, and marriage.
That’s why I’m releasing the podcasts, and that’s why you’re going to hear a whole lot about both the podcasts and the E-book in the next month or so. Because people are asking women politcians if they submit to their husbands. Because curriculum is coming out that teaches: “A design for male headship — leading, protecting, and providing for the woman. A design for female submission — submitting to and helping the man; a companion-helper ‘fit for him.’” Because women are being told they don’t need an education and will never have to work outside of the home.
Godde made men and women as equals in all areas of life to stand by stand and show people what the image of Godde looks like: male and female working together to building Godde’s kingdom of love right here, right now.
Stop the lies. Learn the truth for yourselves. Then teach it to your children. Buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down Now. (Then you can listen to the brilliant podcast of Lainie Petersen.)
Lainie Petersen
Lainie Petersen is a very dear friend of mine. It’s not an exaggeration to say I would not have made it through my year of loss and new beginnings without her. Lainie is an ordained priest and bishop in the Independent Catholic Church. She holds an Masters of Divinity and a degree in Christian History from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and a degree in library science from Dominican University. A few years ago Lainie decided she wanted to learn about tea and wound up discovering a new profession for herself: blogging about her tea drinking adventures at LainieSips.com where she is known as the Bishop and the Tea Lady.
In this podcast excerpt Lainie and I talk about why it is so important to bring the women of the Bible out of the shadows and show the range of roles these women acted in. Limiting women to the roles of submissive wife and mother and telling them to shut up and sit down leads to abuse–spiritual, physical, and sexual–along with slowly pushing women out of college and seminary Bible and theology classes. Lainie talks of recent incidents in which patriarchal male leaders have been let off on sexual abuse as well as the fundamentalist drive to remove women from academia.
Podcast: LainiePetersenFull.mp3
Here is a link to the book Lainie recommended: Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations by Mark Chaves.
I was extremely glad that Lainie and I talked about these issues after reading this post from Grace at Are Women Human? Later that day another friend directed me to the Women’s Bible Programs at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. These issues are alive and well in evangelical and fundamentalist cultures in the U.S. I have written about the programs for seminary wives at places such as SBTS as well as introduced my readers to ordained female pastors and evangelists of the early 20th century in the Church of the Nazarene in this post.
Did you know there where evangelical, holiness, and pentecostal churches that ordained women as early as 1851 and continued ordaining women into the early 20th century? What do you think of the fundamentalist move to keep women out of college and seminary level Bible and theology classes?
Find out what strong, intelligent, and incredible women populate the pages of the Bible. See what Godde had in mind when she created women in her image. Buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down.
The third full length podcast with Mark Mattison will be posted next Monday (9/26)!
Biblical Women Doing What Needs to Be Done: Podcast with Catherine Caine
Madame President, will you submit to your husband?
Earlier this year I published a little E-book called What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down. I interviewed four amazing people about the E-book to see what they thought about it. I didn’t limit myself to Christians: two of my interviews were with women who aren’t Christians. Catherine Caine was one of those women.
Originally I bundled these podcasts with the book, but I’ve decided to make them available on the blog, free of charge. Why? Because of things I keep seeing. First there was the Republican presidential debate where Michelle Bachmann was asked if she would submit to her husband while president. I’m sure all of you saw the firestorm that created on both TV and the internet.
But it’s not a valid question because women are no longer the property of their husbands just like we in the Western world no longer own slaves. Just as the biblical commands to slaves are no longer applicable in today’s world, neither are the commands for women to submit to their husbands. The oldest man in the family is no longer the dictator of the entire family; therefore, the commands to the domain of his dictatorship no longer exists. It’s time for Christians to move on and refine their views of marriage to reflect the truth of marriage today: we choose who we marry and enter into marriage as two equals. Our marriages are no longer arranged by parents to get political and social power, where marriage was a power structure just as the Roman heirarchy was a power structure. There are no longer any Caesars making decrees for an entire empire, and in the Western World, there is no longer the family patriarch reigning from on high over the entire clan.
Tell me sweet little lies
The other reason I’m posting the podcasts this month is because of a horrible curriculum recently released by The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood*called “Rejoicing in God’s Good Design: A Study for Youth on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”*.
(*I’m not sending my people to these sites directly, plus I am not helping their SEO rankings. You want to see it for yourself, Google them. Ditto with Bachmann.)
Suzanne McCarthy and J. K. Gayle brought this curriculum to my attention at the end of August.
Here a couple of quotes from the curriculum itself:
While God created men to be generally oriented toward work, God created women to be generally oriented towards relationships of helpfulness and companionship.(Via Suzanne.)
This is God’s good design.
A design for male headship — leading, protecting, and providing for the woman.
A design for female submission — submitting to and helping the man; a companion-helper ‘fit for him.’
Some will be doubtful … even upset by this teaching of God’s good design for men and women. (Via J. K.)
Yes I am upset about this. But not because it’s Godde’s good design. I’m upset because it’s one big, fat lie. If you want to see a drastically different way to interpret these same verses read this: Does It Really Mean Helpmate?
Suzanne did a wonderful job showing the lie of “a man’s orientation is to work and a woman’s orientation is to helping” in her brilliant series, A Women’s Orientation to Work ( Parts 2, 3, and 4).
Yes, I released this book a few months ago with hype and marketing. And now I’m going to hype it and market it some more.
BECAUSE OF LIES LIKE THIS THAT ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN OUR WORLD.
This is the reason I wrote Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down–to show that Conservative and Fundamentalist Christianity is touting only one of the ways to interpret Scriptures. There are other ways (many other ways) to interpret what the Bible has to say about men, women, and marriage.
That’s why I’m releasing the podcasts, and that’s why you’re going to hear a whole lot about both the podcasts and the E-book in the next month or so. Because people are asking women politcians if they submit to their husbands (would a male politician be asked if he loved his wife the way Christ loved the church in a debate?).
I’m doing this because the so-called “Biblical” Council of Manhood and Womanhood are releasing curriculum that is lying to our children and teens about their relationships with each other. Sunday School teachers and youth leaders: if you want to show your kids actual Biblical relationships, buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down. You only need to buy the E-book once then you can print off as many copies as you need. Make sure your kids hear a different way to interpret what the Bible says: give them a way to defend themselves and present another view when they’re told that Godde made women to be submissive helpers.
Godde made men and women as equals in all areas of life to stand by stand and show people what the image of Godde looks like: male and female working together to building Godde’s kingdom of love right here, right now.
Stop the lies. Learn the truth for yourselves. Then teach it to your children. Buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down Now. (Then you can listen to the brilliant podcast of Catherine Caine.)
Catherine Caine
Catherine Caine is a Magnificence Amplifier. What is that you might wonder. I’ll let her tell you:
Catherine Caine
I help people uncover and amplify their absolutely best work – the work that brings the most profound impact into their lives and the lives of everyone around them. It doesn’t matter what the work IS – the world is still a better place every time there’s another person working to stretch the limits of their potential and create work that matters profoundly to them and to their bestest people.
I do that in three ways:
I translate and filter the jumble of thoughts ping-ponging around in your mind so you can identify and articulate your best work. There are no one-size-fits-all answers – it’s impossible to strive for splendiferous amazing work until you know what splendiferous looks like to you. (And feels like, smells like, tastes like…)
I light the path for you to discover the permission to strive for that amazing work. (Note that I don’t give you permission, I help you find your own permission. I’m not a permission idol: it’s much smarter for you to have your strength in your pocket.)
And I turn the dial up to 11, with effective, brand-consistent, conventional and unconventional, feel-good-in-the-morning, damn fun marketing strategy that focuses on identifying the people who would love the living hell out of your best work, and rocking their worlds until they adore you and can’t wait to buy what you’re selling.
You will find Catherine at Cash and Joy where she helps people like me figure out how to get the word out about our products and services. But that’s not Catherine’s real superpower. Her real superpower is storytelling. She doesn’t give you dried and worn-out facts and datum, she tells stories that help you connect the dots in your own business and make you think about how to go about marketing yourself. She’s one of the most brilliant storytellers I’ve come across online, and even if you don’t need any marketing advice, you should go read her stories.
Catherine is a secular humanist who lives in Australia. Why am I interviewing a secular humanist for an E-book about the women of the Bible? Because traditional belief about women and their place in the world, does not effect only women in the church. For years Western Christian Europe and the USA conquered and colonized most of the world and evangelized along the way. This means the beliefs that women should be subordinate to men and stay at home have traveled all around the world disguised as what the Bible says. The mistranslations and misinterpretations I cover in the book, along with the marginalization of the women in the Bible, effect women whether they’re Christians or not. Many fundamentalist Christians believe women joining the work force and wanting to be ordained and leaders in the church, is killing society as we know it. Feminism is the reason for higher divorce rates and the downfall of the family in the USA according to some fundamentalist camps. There are Christian men in the workforce who tell their female co-workers they shouldn’t be there. I want these women to have a safe place to come and find resources to help them deal with the Christian patriarchy wherever they might encounter it. I want this website to be a resource for both Christian women and non-Christian women. That’s why I interviewed Catherine.
Podcast: CatherineCaineFull.mp3
Find out what strong, intelligent, and incredible women populate the pages of the Bible. See what Godde had in mind when she created women in her image. Buy Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down.
The Divine Feminine Version: Mark is now available!
I wanted to let everyone know that The Good News According to the Tradition of Mark is now available at The Christian Godde Project. There is also an updated version of The Good News According to the Tradition of Matthew. This month we will be finalizing our work on Philippians, and I’m working on finishing the translation of Colossians. Then I’m back to working my way through Luke. This makes me very, very happy.
How can it be September?
Hello Company Girls and RevGals! Although I don’t know where the summer went fall is my favorite time of the year, and I’m very happy it’s on our doorstep. At RevGals for the Friday Five kathrynzj asked: What are 5 things that the beginning of September mean to you?
- HALLOWEEN IS IN 32 DAYS!
- I get to dress up!
- Brilliant fall leaves
- The wild feel the wind gets in the fall.
- CREATIVITY: this is my most creative time of the year.
Not much has happened this week. I spent some down time after all the traveling we did in August. Maid service came in and gave the place a good scrubbing, and I am so happy everything is clean, and I feel like I can keep up now. The hot and muggy weather is back, so The Hubby and I decided to stay in this weekend. Plus we have plenty of projects to work on. I did buy hot dogs and we are ready to go on grilled dogs and burgers.
Happy Labor Day to those in the U. S., and I hope everyone has a good weekend.