[Dialogue] Spong in Toronto and Was Jesus a Feminist?

[Janice & Abe Ulangca]

I'd love to be in Toronto Monday night!   Janice

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Announcement
an invitation to dialogue
with
Bishop John Shelby Spong 

Join us and performers 

Alana Bridgewater
Billy Newton-Davis and
Emilio Zarris 

for the Launch of a new progressive Christian faith community in Toronto, Canada 

Tickets are $21 

Markham Theatre for the Performing Arts
7:00 p.m. December 12 

To order, call (905) 305-SHOW (7469) 

Pathways Faith Community
The United Church of Canada 

For information about our new community
call or email Mary Joseph
(416) 616-5539
M-Joseph at Sympatico.ca 



Was Jesus a Feminist in a Patriarchal World?

If, as I have argued, organized religion is almost universally anti-female and even misogynistic, was Jesus different? Did he stand outside that pattern? Certainly, the religion developed by his disciples has historically made major contributions to the denigration of women. One only has to look at the church debates that have resulted in the exclusion of women from significant positions of power and authority within Christianity. Underlying these debates was a definition of women as less than human, not created in God's image or as somehow impaired or defective. At one point in our history, women were even defined as "castrated males" and the menstrual cycle was viewed as the way the female body mourned monthly for its lost organ. Given what we know today about biology, these ideas are not only illogical, but they constitute irrational nonsense. Yet they have been in the past and are still today operating in the life of a church that never seems to be concerned about its own illogical assumptions. 

The question I want to raise, however, is about Jesus and not the church that his followers created. Was Jesus also an unenlightened sexist? Does the sexism that has marked the Christian church reflect the attitude of the one the church claims as its founder? If Jesus can be demonstrated to be guilty of the sexism that the church has so overtly manifested, then the central Christian claim that God has been met in him is in ultimate jeopardy. 

How though can we discover what Jesus actually taught did? Typically, the answer traditionally given has been to search the gospels. That does not always work since we now know that the gospels were written some forty to seventy years after the earthly life of Jesus came to an end. Forty to seventy years means that before the gospels appeared his followers had already interpreted Jesus, so that we are never sure that what we read is an authentic reflection of the man Jesus or these later interpreters. Seeking to discern Jesus' actual attitude toward women in the gospels is thus not easy. Yet, despite this limitation, scholars still believe that if the gospels are examined deeply enough, both the echoes and the imprint of that incredible person who stands behind the Christian tradition can be discovered. Sometimes truth is located in the counter-intuitive nature of his words or actions, giving us clues to the authenticity we seek. Though this process is never an exact science, it is nonetheless the method we have to use. In this column I seek to probe this biblical content, opening it to my readers, for careful weighing. 

The first idea that must be engaged about Jesus' attitude toward women is the obvious but neglected fact that Jesus had female disciples. The male-dominated church of the ages has made it almost impossible for us to see these women but they are there in the gospel texts and cannot be expunged. These women disciples do not become visible until the final scenes in the life of Jesus, namely at the time of his crucifixion and resurrection. The primary reason for this is that all of Jesus' male disciples forsook him and fled when he was arrested, so the women, the only disciples left, are allowed to come into full view. The gospel writers then say, by way of identification, that these women had followed him from his days in Galilee (see Mark 15:41, Matt 27:55 and Luke 24:29). The image we have of Jesus wandering around Galilee with a band of twelve men is simply not an accurate picture. The Bible is quite clear that for his entire public ministry, Jesus had both male and female disciples. 

The assertion made by John Paul II, to justify denying ordination to women in the Roman Church, that Jesus did not choose any female disciples is thus not correct. Defenders of the Pope argue that what he meant was that Jesus did not select any women from among his followers to be included in 'the twelve.' The problem with this suggestion is that the idea that there ever were twelve male disciples is now for several reasons suspect in the world of biblical scholarship. First, there is no agreement in the gospels as to who constituted the twelve. Matthew and Mark have one list; Luke and Acts have another. John, who has no list, introduces disciples like Nathaniel whom none of the others mention. In Chapter 21, which is regarded as an appendix to the Fourth Gospel, John actually refers to seven not twelve disciples. Second, the number twelve itself appears to be shaped by later messianic expectations. It was said of Jesus that his messianic task was to build a new Israel. Since the old Israel was made up of twelve tribes who were identified as the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel, so twelve tribes must mark the new Israel. Matthew and Luke both say that Jesus intentionally appointed the twelve so that they might "sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes" of the new Israel. This suggests that the idea of twelve male disciples chosen by Jesus was a later interpretation of Jesus read back into the Jesus of history and needs to be understood that way. However, the fact is that Jesus, in a bold counter-cultural act, appears to have had male and female disciples. 

Pressing this insight more deeply, the gospels clearly indicate that the leader of these female disciples was Mary Magdalene. In almost every account of the women, Magdalene's name is listed first just as Peter's name is always first among the male disciples. Yet despite her gospel priority, Magdalene's reputation was trashed by institutional Christianity with the suggestion that she was a prostitute. There is absolutely no evidence for that charge in the biblical story. Not only was the early church itself blatantly anti-female but as it moved into the Mediterranean world it confronted a body-hating, flesh-loathing, neo-platonic mentality that exacerbated this trend. By the second century anxiety grew, that in the gospel story a flesh and blood woman was at Jesus' side in his life and that this same woman was pictured as the chief mourner at his tomb in his death. Threatened by this close proximity, traditional church leaders, decided to remove Magdalene by assassinating her character and replacing her with a more acceptable female figure. That is when the mythological portrait of the pure, spotless virgin mother of Jesus began her march into ascendancy. In the gospels themselves, outside the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, the mother of Jesus is portrayed negatively. Mark, Matthew and Luke all show her as thinking Jesus was out of his mind and seeking to take him away. John portrays Jesus as rebuking her for trying to force his hand at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. 

In recent years the idea, quite popular in the Middle Ages, that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus has re-emerged. I argued for this possibility in a 1991 book entitled, Born of a Woman. The popularity of Dan Brown's 2003 book, The Da Vinci Code carried this idea into common awareness. Harvard Professor Karen King's book on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene seeks to recover her historically as a central force in the Jesus movement. Magdalene is today escaping her ecclesiastical putdown. She was a major follower, a disciple of Jesus. 

Two other gospel stories merit notice as we seek to discern the attitude of Jesus toward women. One is told only by Luke (10:38-42) of Jesus' visit to the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany. Martha is busily engaged in the kitchen preparing to serve her guest. She was doing the tasks associated with the role of women in that culture. However, her sister Mary had positioned herself at the feet of Jesus the teacher, assuming the role of a pupil, a learner, perhaps even a rabbinic student. In the process she was redefining the woman's place in that society. Martha, irritated that her sister was not doing her share of the 'women's work,' demanded that Jesus force Mary to abandon the inappropriate posture of a pupil and return to her proper place in the kitchen. Jesus refused to do so and defends Mary's choice with the words, "Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." This can only be read, I believe, as a radical assault on the patriarchal value system of his day. Jesus appears to be a feminist! 

In the second episode, unique to the Fourth Gospel (John 4:1-30), Jesus violates the operative code of his culture, by engaging a woman in dialogue. Both she and Jesus' disciples "marveled that he was talking with a woman (vs. 6, 27, 28)." Jesus and this woman discussed theology and liturgy, that is, who God is and how to worship. Such serious subject matter would not be discussed with a woman in that time. The prevailing cultural attitude was well described by Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians (14:34-36) when he wrote, "Women are to keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but they should be subordinate, even as the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home." Jesus clearly turned that cultural expectation on its ear. Sufficient biblical data suggest that Jesus was an exception to the rule that religion is almost universally negative to the legitimate aspirations of women for equality and full human dignity. 

The church, however, that grew from this Jesus all but universally opposed the feminist revolution that occurred in the 20th century. Yet that revolution gave women in the Christian world the right to university educations, job opportunities, the vote, and equal treatment before the law. In that same century in some churches women took on the male power structure to win the right to be pastors, priests and bishops. These victories for women were won with the aid of the secular spirit of world humanism fighting against the male forces of organized religion. 

I think the record of the gospels demonstrates that the sexism in the Christian church is far removed from the ideals and passions of Jesus, its feminist founder. If the church had listened to, observed and learned from the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth about women in both church and society, then the church would have led this fight rather than being dragged screaming and kicking into this new day. If, as John suggests, Jesus' purpose is that all might have abundant life, then equality and respect for 50% of the human race becomes a compelling Christian necessity. 

- John Shelby Spong 


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Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

SXL, via the Internet, writes: 

After watching a Tom Brokaw special on the growth of Evangelicals and their huge churches, I am rather appalled that their "love" for humanity does not include homosexuals, people that get abortions or gay and lesbian couples who want to marry! How can people believe in such a narrow minded, limited God? Are they really growing as powerful as they were pictured? 

Dear SXL, 

I think that we have in recent years entered a "New Dark Age" in the Western world. It is marked by the rise of religious systems that seek to build security by encouraging prejudice against a designated victim. Both evangelical fundamentalism and the kind of ultra-conservative Roman Catholicism that is at present installed in the Vatican are publicly defined by their visceral and uninformed hostility toward homosexual persons. What the heretic was in the Middle Ages, the black in the days of slavery and segregation, and the Jew in Nazi Germany, the homosexual has become in the religious hysteria of our day. This kind of behavior is always a response to fear and to a rapidly changing world. Security-providing religion, which always requires a victim, is like a drug that carries us over the rough places of life. It is certainly not the wave of the Christian future. 

Protestant 'mega churches' are usually built on the charisma of the founding or transforming pastor. These leaders are usually sincere people who, even if they are not well informed, have a flair for showmanship. Life, however whether they like it or not, is not made secure simply by identifying the enemy and claiming the certainty of an infallible Pope or an inerrent Bible. Pain and tragedy invade the lives of even the most self-assured people of faith. The cult of the individual leader also enters a crisis when time forces a change in leadership. Many religious institutions do not make this transition well. Beyond that I think we ought to recognize that truth and unity cannot ever be built on identifying a victim that creates the illusion of unity because there is a common enemy. When these institutions say that God hates the same things that the worshiper hates, everyone should be very suspicious. 

Dark Ages do not last forever. Ten years from now this phase of our religious history will surely be over. The contemporary scientific and medical data that suggests that homosexuality is a perfectly normal but minority aspect of our humanity, that it is a given and not a chosen aspect of life, will have challenged these prejudices so deeply as to make them seem not only quaint but ignorant. Remember that less than one hundred years ago we were still persecuting left-handed people as evil, deviant and unnatural. In the meantime I share your enormous embarrassment that the Christian church is today the major voice in the Western World in the persecution of those members of our society whose only 'sin' is that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Someday we will be terribly ashamed of the Christian leaders in our generation. 

- John Shelby Spong 




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Janice Ulangca
3413 Stratford Drive
Vestal, NY  13850
607-797-4595
aulangca at stny.rr.com
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