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How Religion defined  Women as the Source of Evil  
We began this series of columns by searching for the source of the almost  
universally negative definition of women that is held in religious circles.  
Somehow it has been imperative for men to portray women as weak, dependent  
wards, wrapping that portrayal in the garments of patriarchal religion. This  
definition used what they called God-given facts of biology as the source of the  
prejudice. Males actually thought of themselves as the originators of life. 
They  believed that they alone planted new life into the womb of the woman who 
was  little more than fertile soil that nurtured the male seed to maturity. They 
took  this analogy from the farmer planting his seed into the womb of Mother 
Earth.  The woman, like Mother Earth, was not a contributor to life but a 
passive  receptacle designed to sustain life. This biologically imposed 
inferiority was  thought to have come from God, so to rebel against it was to rebel 
against God.  
Next we focused on the biblical story in the Judeo-Christian faith tradition  
to see how this ancient definition became incorporated into our own religious 
 tradition. The Bible asserts in its oldest creation story, that the woman 
was  created because the birds and the animals failed to satisfy the man's need 
for  "a helper fit for him." This secondary status in turn set the stage for 
the  woman to be considered the property of the man, which enabled polygamy to  
develop since, if women were property a man could have as many wives as he 
could  afford. We noted how this definition actually got enshrined in the Ten  
Commandments (see numbers 7 and 10). This week I want to examine another  
biblical strand of our religion-based anti-female bias. It is the idea that the  
woman is the source of that evil which infects our common humanity.  
In the biblical story, after God had created the woman, she took her place as 
 Adam's "helpmeet" in the Garden of Eden. While tending that garden alone, 
the  man had managed to obey the divine injunction not to eat the fruit of the 
Tree  of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on pain of death. Now, however, in this 
 obviously male-authored story, through this weak, subhuman creature called  
woman, that injunction was destined to be disobeyed.  
In chapter three of the Book of Genesis, the story unfolds dramatically. Here 
 we see the woman alone in the Garden of Eden. She is staring at the 
forbidden  fruit and probably fantasizing about its taste and perhaps wondering why it 
was  prohibited. In this weakened state of brooding temptation, she is 
approached by  a remarkable snake, which appears to walk on two legs and to be able 
to speak  perfect Hebrew since that would be the only language that Eve 
understood.  Sensing a vulnerable target for this phallic-shaped creature, the 
serpent  confronts the woman. A conversation ensues, "Eve, did God say you shall 
not eat  of any tree of the garden?" "Mr. Snake," the woman answered, "We may 
eat of the  fruit of the trees of the garden but God said you shall not eat of 
the fruit of  that tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you 
touch it lest  you die." The snake responded, "You shall not die! For God 
knows that when you  eat of it, your eyes shall be opened and you will be like God 
knowing good and  evil."  
The temptation was framed in such a way as to create in the human being a  
yearning for divine qualities. The temptation developed slowly. First, the  
woman's fantasies convinced her that the fruit would be good for food. Second,  
she observed that this fruit was a delight to look at! Now she is told that it  
would also make her wise and enable her to transcend the boundaries of her  
humanity. The combination was something she could not resist. She took of this  
fruit and ate it. Then she gave it to her husband and, gullible and trusting 
as  this stereotypical husband is portrayed as being, he also ate. According to 
the  Hebrew myth, this was the moment when human awakening arrived. Later it 
would be  described as "the Fall," the cause of the brokenness of life, the 
source of  "original sin."  
In that moment, the writers of the Bible believed that everything changed.  
Perfection was destroyed. Shame and guilt entered the human mind. Our oneness  
with God was broken, to be replaced by a sense of alienation. God, who had 
once  walked with the first man and woman in the garden as their friend, was now  
looked upon as their judge, the elicitor of their guilt. Armed with this  
primitive understanding of God, the first human couple sought to escape the  
divine presence by hiding among the bushes of the garden.  
Befuddled by their sudden absence, God calls out, "Where are you?"  
Confrontation ensues, "Have you eaten of that fruit?" "It was not I, Lord," said  Adam, 
"It was that woman, that woman you created, she gave me the fruit and I  
ate." Turning to the woman, the divine interrogation continues. The woman  claimed 
the snake had beguiled her. Blame and defensiveness enter the human  arena.  
Punishment is handed out next. The snake is cursed. It will never again walk  
on two legs but must slither on its belly through all eternity, eating the 
dust  of the earth. The woman is doomed to experience pain in childbirth but 
will  never escape it because her "desire will always be for her husband." Adam, 
whose  sin is defined as listening "to the voice of your wife," is condemned 
to scratch  out a living from the hostile earth. The ground will bring forth 
thorns and  thistles, making him sweat to have sufficient bread to eat. All of 
them would  eventually die. Death was thus interpreted as punishment. Because 
all flesh  died, it followed that all flesh must be sinful. Finally, Adam and 
Eve were  banished from the Garden of Eden. From that moment to this, the Bible 
asserted,  it would be the human destiny to live filled with guilt, shame and 
alienation  somewhere "East of Eden" to borrow a phrase from John Steinbeck. 
All of this was  blamed on that person, the woman, who was understood to be 
the weak link in  creation. Male hostility to women was said to reside in the 
fact that the woman  brought this pain, this sin and this degradation to the 
man, destroying if you  will the perfect original image of God within him.  
That there is hostility and fear directed toward women by men is beyond  
doubt. Every religious system seems compelled to explain its origin. The battle  
between the sexes is a perennial conflict. In almost every culture, man has  
always sought to subjugate the woman. For most of western history, the woman has 
 had few rights. The husband could quite legally abuse his wife, beat her, 
rape  her, divorce her and even kill her without any threat of punishment. Yet 
his  dominance over this creature was always threatened by her power over him. 
Her  feminine power was based on the woman's ability to tempt him with desire 
for her  body. The dominant male felt powerless in that attraction. He felt 
vulnerable  since after emptying his sperm into her womb he was left weak, 
exhausted and  sleepy. Patriarchal society was thus organized to keep the male in 
his position  of dominance. That is why the woman's independence had to be 
prescribed by local  customs. For centuries the woman was not allowed in the 
workplace. That did not  mean that the woman was unemployed, but only that she was 
not compensated and  thus was chronically dependent. She actually worked long 
and hard to make her  family's well being possible. She not only bore the 
babies and nursed the young,  but she also cooked the food, made the clothes and 
cleaned the house. In return  she received the protection of her husband to 
whom she had to promise obedience.   
Later in history, however, driven by economic necessity, the woman was  
finally allowed to enter the work place but only as a source of cheap labor. She  
became the low-paid nurse helper to the male doctor, doing the bedpans the  
doctor did not want to do. She became the teacher of the children because the  
teaching profession paid so poorly that males no longer wanted to enter it  
except as the better-paid principals and superintendents who had authority over  
the women teachers. She was the dutiful secretary to the male executive, who 
did  not want to do the routine work that business requires. Once outside the 
home  she was always regarded as the potential temptress, who might lure gulli
ble men  into 'sin.' Sexual abuse in the workplace was so commonplace as to be 
expected.  Males tended to divide women into the two categories of virgin and 
prostitute.  Men sought virgins to be their wives and the mothers of their 
children, while  viewing all other women as prostitutes or potential prostitutes, 
who were out to  seduce them so that their indiscretions were not their own 
fault but the result  of being unable to resist the evil spells cast by the 
feminine wiles of the  opposite sex. It was a fascinating cultural explanation of 
the source of evil.  Women have paid a tremendous price historically for being 
defined as such in the  Bible. We have been very slow in coming out of this 
definition. Until very  recently, spousal abuse was not a crime because a wife 
owed obedience to her  husband. She had promised it in marriage. Rape was 
something the woman brought  on herself by "provocative clothing." Men kept women 
under economic control and  no woman could own property in their own name 
until relatively late in western  history. Women were not allowed to receive 
university educations until the 20th  century so they could not achieve economic 
independence.  
All of these things arise directly or indirectly out of the cultural  
assumption, based on an ancient biblical story that women are dangerous to men,  the 
source of potential male weakness and of sin. So to keep weakness and sin  
under control, women must be kept under control. That was thought to be the will  
of God. The feminist revolution in the last century therefore, has been  
traditionally viewed by men as anti-Bible, anti-Church and anti-Christian.  
Can the Christian Church ever escape its sexist past? That will be my topic  
next week.  
— John Shelby Spong 



Question and  Answer
With John Shelby Spong 
Beverly Shade, via the Internet, writes:  
Much is in the news of late about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. In the past,  
the focus has been on condom distribution that has helped Uganda in particular 
 to reduce AIDS infection. But now, with the influence of Pope Benedict, the 
Bush  administration and ultra conservative religious groups, the BBC and 
MSNBC and  other news agencies report that abstinence is now being promoted as the 
only  workable solution. This had resulted in a shortage of condoms and an 
increase in  HIV infection.  
BBC reported that Stephen Lewis, U.N. Secretary General's special envoy for  
HIV/AIDS in Africa has said that fundamental Christian ideology is driving  
Washington's AIDS assistance program known as PEPFAR with disastrous results,  
including condom shortages in Uganda. Uganda has previously cut HIV infection  
rates to about 6% from 30% in the early 1990s. Now U.S. legislation requires 
1/3  of AIDS prevention funding be spent to promote abstinence.  
I see the promotion of abstinence as an unrealistic solution in countries  
where literacy and knowledge of modern science is often very limited. Do the  
Pope, President Bush and the ultra conservatives have their heads in the sand on 
 this? I would be interested in your opinion on this.  
Dear Beverly,  
I share with you a sense of horror about the misplaced priorities of both  
Benedict XVI and the Bush administration. They seem to place opposition to birth 
 control methods above the issues of life and death. I find that narrow 
religious  passions operating in the political arena are always destructive. I 
watch values  being lived out by the President of the United States. They are 
almost beyond  credibility. Here is our nation in a time of a war gone wrong in 
Iraq, with the  safety of this nation badly compromised by hurricane Katrina, 
facing a scandal  involving the crime of identifying a CIA operative that is 
eroding the  confidence of the people in this government and yet the biggest 
issue of debate  in Washington is over where Supreme Court nominee, Sam Alito, 
stands on  abortion. I do not minimize the abortion issue, but this nation is not 
going to  reverse Roe V. Wade. Politicians like to be re-elected and 
opposition to Roe V.  Wade is not a pathway to national election for anyone. This 
means that  Washington's politicians are engaged today in an act of political 
posturing that  is quite irrelevant and grossly dishonest. This debate also gives 
them moral  cover so that they do not have to face the fact that they have 
voted to go to  war on trumped up and dishonest intelligence in order to make the 
oil industry  happy, while at the same time voting to give tax breaks to the 
top ten percent  of this nation's income group. Now they want to cut Medicare, 
the school lunch  program and the job training programs in order to cover the 
deficit created by  this ill-conceived war and their tax cuts for the rich. 
On top of that we now  discover that the press in the persons of Judith Miller 
and Bob Woodward are  working hand in glove with this administration to keep 
honesty from appearing in  their reporting! When will the electorate of this 
nation reorder our national  priorities? Too many of our young citizens have 
died already. Too many of our  nation's poor have lost hope. Too many of the 
people of the world have stopped  looking to America for any shred of moral 
leadership. I do not care whether the  necessary re-ordering of our national 
priorities comes in a rebellion within the  Republican Party or from the opposition 
Democrats but this nation cannot drift  in this present quagmire for three more 
years.  
— John Shelby Spong 
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