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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charliss who wrote (20492)	4/15/1998 11:26:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, certainly paganism has gotten a bad rap over the ages. This happens even now, when it is wrongfully confused with satanism, which is a Christian concept and has nothing whatsoever to do with paganism at all. The Bible is full of strange rituals and mysticism and animal sacrifice and superstitions of all sorts. On the other hand, Celtic women had equal rights, could leave their marriages every year on a certain day--I believe it is February 1st--had equal property rights, and could run their own businesses. In medieval Europe, pagan men and women worked side by side in the fields, and really depended upon each other, because everyone's strengths were needed. The Chinese saying, "Women hold up half the sky" is very true. It is obvious from all the uninhibited carvings of primitive fertility figures, large and small, that women's bodies, and the power and energy women had, were very important in the development of modern life. Certainly, the women around Christ were strong and independent, and were his primary supporters, emotionally and financially. To actually rewrite the Bible to turn Mary Magdalene into a prostitute, and deliberately twist and pervert the role of women in the early church, goes way beyond inaccurate translations of early Christian documents, and seems sinister to me. It is interesting that additional ancient texts are just being discovered which show the calculated deception in subjugating women in the several hundred years after Jesus died. I think Jesus had enormous affinity for women, and early Christianity was not a male-dominated religion. Here are a few related points from the PBS series: Jesus was understood primarily as a teacher and mediator of wisdom rather than as ruler and judge. Theological reflection centered on the experience of the person of the risen Christ more than the crucified savior. Interestingly enough, this is true even in the case of the martyr Perpetua. One might expect her to identify with the suffering Christ, but it is the risen Christ she encounters in her vision. Direct access to God is possible for all through receiving the Spirit. In Christian community, the unity, power, and perfection of the Spirit are present now, not just in some future time. Those who are more spiritually advanced give what they have freely to all without claim to a fixed, hierarchical ordering of power. An ethics of freedom and spiritual development is emphasized over an ethics of order and control. A woman's identity and spirituality could be developed apart from her roles as wife and mother (or slave), whether she actually withdrew from those roles or not. Gender is itself contested as a "natural" category in the face of the power of God's Spirit at work in the community and the world. This meant that potentially women (and men) could exercise leadership on the basis of spiritual achievement apart from gender status and without conformity to established social gender roles. pbs.org