A couple of days ago, I mentioned The Marriage of Figaro. Beaumarchais' play, upon which Mozart's opera was based, was banned in Austria at the time because it mocked the aristocracy. The driver of the plot is that although the Count has publicly renounced his right to the servant women on his estate, he is (as it were) prepared to make an exception in the case of Suzanne, Figaro's intended. However, he has not reckoned on Figaro's cunning and neither he nor Figaro have reckoned on Suzanna and the Countess, who join forces to stop the Count.
My point was that this is a small illustration of the power play around women's sexuality and how marriage is potentially a means to enable women and men to make their own choices publicly.
I'm no idealist as far as marriage is concerned but the more we study its inadequacies and how it is used against women in many cultures, the more we are forced to recognise the struggle women face to maintain any sort of status as autonomous citizens.
In terms of economic and political power the cards are stacked against women. When I hear Christians voice the most strident opposition to abortion, I suspect behind their words there is the not quite unspoken view that women should know their place.
There is a whole raft of other issues. Contraception for example has enabled woman to take a fuller role in politics and the economy. If we go back to the time of the English Civil War, some radical dissident sects, such as Diggers and Ranters, allowed women a place of equality. But it seems lack of contraception meant this freedom was short lived.
The place of women in first century Palestine was probably similar to that of women living in that part of the world today. Women were to all intents and purposes owned by their men. It is a miracle that some were able to follow Jesus and later became leaders in the earliest centuries of the church. Paul may have been able to write in Galatians that there is no male or female in God, the reality for most women was significantly different.
The arguments against ordination of women would be more credible if the people making them were supportive of women's leadership in general. If some of the anger expressed by those opposed to women's ordiantion were directed at domestic violence, the many women in the world living in forced marriages effectively as slaves, for women forced into prostitution after being kidnapped and trafficked and so on their arguments would perhaps be a little more credible.
That is the minimum I would expect of any Christian. My personal view is the arguments against women priests are specious. I belong to a tradition that has ordained women for a few decades. Whilst I understand sexism is still a problem in my own church, most of us appreciate the leadership women are able to offer through ordination. To argue that God is opposed to this is absurd.
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