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The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth QUOTES

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth QUOTES

1 " Ideas matter. Ideas that depict women as less than men influence men to treat women as less than men. Ideas that objectify women result in women being treated like objects (sex objects, mostly). "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

2 " From Mary Magdalene to Waldensian women, Ursuline nuns, Moravian wives, Quaker sisters, Black women preachers, and suffragette activists, history shows us that women do not wait on the approval of men to do the work of God. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

3 " Historically, one of the greatest problems for women is that we do not remember our past and we do not work together to change our future. We do not stand together. But what if we did? "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

4 " She [Christine de Pizan] realized that misogyny hurts all of us, whether we recognize it or not, and it especially hurts those already marginalized by economics, education, race, and even religion. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

5 " When we differentiate women because of their sex, we objectify them and deny them their humanity. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

6 " Instead of being a point of pride for Christians, shouldn't the historical continuity of a practice that has caused women to fare much worse than men for thousands of years caused concern? Shouldn't Christians, who are called to be different from the world, treat women differently?

What if patriarchy isn't divinely ordained but is a result of human sin? "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

7 " In a world that didn’t accept the word of a woman as a valid witness, Jesus chose women as witnesses for his resurrection. In a world that gave husbands power over the very lives of their wives, Paul told husbands to do the opposite—to give up their lives for their wives. In a world that saw women as biologically deformed men, monstrous even, Paul declared that men were just like women in Christ. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

8 " The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. Their God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

9 " Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

10 " Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

11 " I knew the problem wasn’t a lack of women leading in church history. The problem was simply that women’s leadership has been forgotten, because women’s stories throughout history have been covered up, neglected, or retold to recast women as less significant than they really were. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

12 " Like racism, patriarchy is a shapeshifter—conforming to each new era, looking as if it has always belonged. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

13 " Women have always been wives and mothers, but it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that being a wife and a mother became the “ideological touchstone of holiness” for women. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

14 " If we look at the broad sweep of history, we find some interesting patterns regarding the size of women’s rooms. When political and social structures are less centralized and less clearly defined, women often experience greater agency; their rooms are bigger. It is no accident that the stories of the most authoritative women in Christian history stem from the fourth century through the tenth century, when the authority structures of Christianity—not to mention the political structures to which Christianity became attached—were more fluid. It is also no accident that, after the ecclesiastical hierarchy became more centralized and more powerful during the central Middle Ages, women’s ability to exercise formal authority diminished; women’s rooms became smaller. There are always exceptions, of course, but these general patterns are clear. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

15 " Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

16 " Once I finally came face to face with the ugliness and pervasiveness of historical patriarchy, I realized that rather than being different from the world, Christians were just like everyone else in their treatment of women. When Dobson upheld a battered woman's desire to remain with her husband, he was just one more voice in more than four thousand years of history that agreed: women's place is under the power of men. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

17 " The historical reality is that social systems that invest some people with power over the lives of other people result in the destruction of people. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

18 " Patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism, and it always has. The same biblical passages used to declare black people unequal are used to declare women unfit for leadership. Patriarchy and racism are "interlocking structures of oppression" Isn't it time we get rid of both? "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

19 " Glorifying the past because we like the story better isn't history; it's propaganda. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

20 " Virginity empowered them. Women became nuns and took religious vows, and some, like Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen, found their voices rang with the authority of men.7 Indeed, the further removed medieval women were from the married state, the closer they were to God. After the Reformation, the opposite became true for Protestant women. The more closely they identified with being wives and mothers, the godlier they became. "

― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth