Modesty Culture Part 8: Sexism and Misogyny
Try to remember the last time you heard a “hard hitting” sermon on the problem of classism in American Christianity. Crickets, more likely than not.But did you know that this was one of greatest concerns of the apostles? In I Corinthians, Saint Paul is appalled that the rich are getting drunk while the poor go hungry. Saint James warns against showing favoritism to the rich. Christ himself warns that it is more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.
But we have made it so that wealth is equivalent to Godliness in far too many things.It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss all of my observations on this point. I’ll simply say that if you analyze a lot of what is considered to be “godliness” by the conservative church, you will find that it is much easier to attain if you have money. And nearly impossible if you do not.
.. In fact, if you look at much of what is deplored as “immodest,” you will find that it is the sort of thing the “hoi polloi” wear.
The sort of stuff you find on the rack at WalMart.
The sort of stuff that people of limited means wear. I do not think it would be stretching at all to say that a lot of what is deplored as “immodest” is really just “low class.”
The big elephant in the room of conservative Christianity is an out-of-control classism.
.. This followed naturally from the limited medical understanding of the time. A man “planted a seed” in a woman. That seed would grow to resemble the parent (the father) unless something went wrong. (Our understanding of egg and sperm and DNA has superseded this idea, but the treatment of women as defective compared to males lingers.)
Thomas Aquinas, who attempted a unified philosophy and theology blending the ideas of Aristotle with Roman Catholic teaching in his Summa Theologica, put it this way:
“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.”
Protestants are not exempt from this. Martin Luther:
“Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops.”.. An orthodox Jewish prayer, dating back to antiquity – but still in use today – states:
“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God and King of the Universe, that thou didst not create me a woman.”
(The same prayer also gives thanks for not being created a Gentile and for not being created an uneducated man. Get your racism, sexism, and classism all in one place. It is possible that Christ was referring to this prayer or a predecessor when he chastised the pharisees for saying “I thank God I am not like other men.”)
.. Early church theologian Tertullian wrote the following:
Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also. You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?
Perhaps St. Clement put it most succinctly:“Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman.”