Is Jesus A Feminist?
Posted by truthtalklive on 20 November, 2009
How has feminism affected the modern man?
And while we’re in the subject of gender, why are so many of our images of Jesus so effeminate?
Today on Truthtalk Live, guest host Lief Moi, one of the founding pastors of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington and host of the “Sons of Adam” radio program talks about the biblical view of manhood and explores the idea of a feminist Jesus.
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3 Comments on “Is Jesus A Feminist?”
During the first eight centuries of the evolution of Christianity Christ was represented in Christian art as a lamb, and not a man, that suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world. None of the paintings in the Catacombs or any sculptures on Christian tombs pictured a human figure on the cross. A lamb or a lamb carrying a cross or a lamb at the foot of a cross was the Christian symbol. There is some art showing the lamb with a human head and arms holding or carrying a cross. At the end of the eighth century Pope Hadrian I commanded that thereafter the figure of a man should take the place of a lamb on the cross. So it took 800 years for the images of Christ in Christian art to become human. We have no physical descriptions of Jesus and apparently there weren’t any. So any physical image is not only conjecture it probably falls under the category of having “other Gods before me.”
Jesus appears to be a feminist in Mark 10:12 when he is reported to have said: “and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Women had no rights of divorce in first century Palestine. What could he have been talking about? A theoretical situation, the future or how things should be perhaps?
Women such as Phoebe (Paul calls her a deaconees), Priscilla, and Lydia were prominent in the early church. Jesus encouraged women to listen to his preaching (Mary and Martha) against the tradition of the day that temple and torah learning was only for men. It was only later that the early church fathers built the male dominated hierarchy into the church structure and selectively translated some portions of the epistles to align with their male-domination bias (for example: using the more general word “servant” when describing Phoebe, even though it is the Greek word diakonos, translated “deacon” in other places and from which we get the word deacon). Jesus was neither a feminist nor a supporter of patriarchy. He preached a gender-neutral message of what the Kingdom of God should look like for everyone, with the powerless no longer at the mercy of the powerful regardless of what power structure was in place at any given time.
Good points, Kash. I think Paul had slightly different ideas about Christianity than Jesus may have. It certainly seems Paul was way ahead of his time in his regard for women and their place in the church. On the other hand, Jesus really doesn’t advocate a radical social change. I think it’s fair to say that as a human Jesus was respectful of all people but certainly no feminist.