The weaker sex shame the strong.

I have always felt that it was hypocritical of society to celebrate mothers' day and then treat women as inferior, and also realized that it is considered necessary because of the worlds'collective ego (sad statement about society), but also noticed that this shameful, childish and hateful attitude carries over into, not just Christianity (which scholars very conveniently justify scripturally), but seemingly most, if not all, religions. The bible does mention many things that are not understood about womens' roles and status, including sex and marriage, but doesn't go into detail and is not explicit about cultural aspects versus spiritual aspects of women. The most recent part of scripture is close to two thousand (at least 1900) years old, but these marriages that are mentioned are even older than that and present even more confusion in modern society. Women have endured 'interpretational injustice' for thousands of years because of their forgiving nature, but, especially because of the downfall of the nuclear family, it has become more obvious that a better understanding of how to address women and marriage in relation to scripture is necessary. It seems that, since "woman is the weaker sex", societys' reaction to the status of women can be understood as an expected outcome because of the nature of things ("...God chose the weak in the world to shame the strong" 1 Corinthians 1:27). Sadly, I never really took it so seriously as I do now when I heard women complain of spiritual and interpretational injustice because I thought it was an isolated case of 'misbelief', but I just came to realize that this is not so (check out the website I've listed at the bottom). I have not had a chance yet to check out the doctrinal beliefs of The Church of God, but they seem to address some of the misunderstandings about women in scripture and claim that Jesus was a feminist. This is an exerpt of the article on their website.

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JESUS WAS A FEMINIST

by
Leonard Swidler

An Editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and a member of religion department at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA at the time this article was written. The article first appeared in Catholic World. January, 1971.

Thesis: Jesus was a feminist

Definition of Terms: By Jesus is meant the historical person who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago, whom Christians traditionally acknowledge as Lord and Savior, and whom they should "imitate" as much as possible. By a feminist is meant a person who is in favor of, and who promotes, the equality of women with men, a person who advocates and practices treating women primarily as human persons (as men are so treated) and willingly contravenes social customs in so acting.

To prove the thesis it must be demonstrated that, so far as we can tell, Jesus neither said or did anything which would indicate that he advocated treating women as intrinsically inferior to men, but that on the contrary he said and did things which indicated he thought of women as the equals of men, and that in the process he willingly violated pertinent social mores.

The negative portion of the argument can be documented quite simply by reading through four Gospels. Nowhere does Jesus treat women as "inferior beings." In fact, Jesus clearly felt especially sent to the typical classes of "inferior beings," such as the poor, the lame, the sinner --and women --to call them all to the freedom and equality of the Kingdom of God. But there are two factors which raise this negative result exponentially in its significance: the status of women in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and the nature of the Gospels. Both need to be recalled here in some detail, particularly the former .

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Junia, A Woman Apostle
By Dianne D. McDonnell
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For many years many thought Junia(s) was a man--or if they admitted she was a woman, they discounted her as just someone highly regarded by the apostles. Recent scholarship proves she was both a female and an apostle! But let's start by looking at each piece of this scripture puzzle.

Romans 16:7
"Greet Andronicus and Junias (Junia) my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was." NIV (The NAS and NASU both use "outstanding", the KJV uses "of note" meaning notable.)

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Not isolated cases of misbelief.

http://www.churchofgoddfw.com/monthly/junia.shtml