Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women QUOTES

1 " The end of the persecutions was, paradoxically, a source of disappointment for many Christians. In the new climate of imperial favour, bishops were increasingly at war with their congregations and with one another, arguing about matters ranging from the mundane to the mystical. Money was often at the root of the problem, and this was distressing. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

2 " But this does not take away the fact that Luke sees the frustrations women face, including the constant discipline of being quietly useful while others crowd in to take the more obviously attractive roles. Furthermore, he remembers Jesus as a teacher who was willing to recognize the value of women's contribution. Working in partnership with a man also protected the women from being bothered by other men who resented their independent activity or simply wanted to meddle. For the women of Galilee, Jesus was invaluable as a sympathetic male focal point around which their activity could be organized. The presence of such a person in their midst would have been a godsend even if the man in question had not been a miracle-worker. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

3 " In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is never unkind to the weak. He treats Martha with humiliating honesty, just as he would treat the male disciples. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

4 " The brief story of the supper at Emmaus carries within it a number of core principles of the Christian life as Luke understands it. First, the idea that one comes to know Christ through acts of generosity to other human beings. It is because of their kindness to a stranger that the disciples find the beloved teacher whom they had lost. Second, there is the idea that they can conjure his presence in prayer and in communal acts such as the breaking of bread - by remembering his life, death, and resurrection - even in an undistinguished house in an anonymous village. The simple acts of generosity and community in daily life are the acts that make real the living presence of Jesus. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

5 " It is an axiom of modern social psychology that the stories that tend to get repeated are the ones that somehow have the potential to strengthen the communities in which they are told, or to enhance the relationship between the teller and the hearer. This principle seems to be reflected in the stories that were handed down from the community around Jesus. Again and again, early Christian stories suggest that virtue is not enough. The lives of families and communities can only really flourish where virtue takes second place to love. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

6 " Yet in Paul's letters we can hear something more than his own genius: an echo of female voices, of conversations over the years with the women of the Aegean cloth trade who were his close collaborators. During this long fellowship, the apostle has not only been talking to women: he has been listening. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

7 " The instinctive attraction of the daughters of high society to noble ideals was probably reinforced by an idea that, in dedicating themselves to the Church, they could escape the sometimes grim realities of marriage. It was not only the problem of volatile husbands raised in a society that prized aggressive masculinity and constant pregnancy; there was also the painful fact that only a few of the numerous babies would survive to adulthood. Against these harsh realities, the new monastic communities offered an appealing alternative, a rigid but somehow delicious atmosphere similar to that of a girls' boarding school. To a virgin, this must have seemed attractive, and to a teenage Roman widow weighing the dangers of a second marriage, it must have seemed positively utopian. And, of course, there was the chance to do good work. We should not underestimate the delight that these women found in being able to pool their resources in trying to better the lot of the city's poor. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

8 " Even if three centuries of outsider status and intermittent persecution had tested the endurance of individuals and communities, coping with the patronage of a newly Christian emperor posed a challenge. The challenge was all the more threatening for its moral complexity. Was it right for the churches to accept the Emperor's favour, knowing full well that if they did so, they also tacitly accepted his right, so evident in all other aspects of life in the Roman Empire, to call the shots? "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

9 " In many early Christian sources, if a man behaves stupidly it is because he is a fool, while if a woman does so it is seen as typical of her sex. Many readers will wonder why women were so passionate in working for a cause that seems often, on the face of it, to have taken an unnecessarily demeaning tone in speaking of women. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

10 " Mary is no theologian in an academic sense. But as Luke tells the story, she and Elizabeth are the first theologians of a new faith. Their gift is an intrepid willingness to look for God's purpose in their own and one another's lives. If they are blood kin, they are also kindred spirits, helping to build up one another's strength and courage. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

11 " The new ideal of virginity and widowhood opened up a new era of sympathetic collaboration between men and women, and for male-female friendship. By establishing a category of women who were understood to be off-limits with respect to romantic entanglements, writers like Gregory were able to support and even celebrate a feminine version of Christianity without being afraid to seem as if they had fallen under the influence of feminine charms. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

12 " For the first three centuries, affiliation with the Christian movement had been against the law, even if the authorities were often prepared to turn a blind eye. Yet adversity can sometimes bring out the best in people. During this period, the Christian leaders had been comparatively humble individuals, who knew it was not in their interest to attract unnecessary attention, but who could be counted on to exhibit fortitude in the face of trials. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

13 " [T]he new interest in asceticism came at a time when many Christians were reassessing their relationship to the institutional Church. Whether by becoming an ascetic or by showing support for the ascetic movement, ordinary Christians could take a stand against the greed and corruption that threatened to erode the values of the Church in its new, privileged, circumstances. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

14 " When Eugenia turns the experiences of Thecla over in her heart, we know she is thinking about how Thecla's experience measures against her own. And of course our writer is reaching out to his or her own reader here: just as Eugenia was changed by Thecla's story, so the reader's own life should be somehow changed by Eugenia's. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

15 " Gregory's idea was of God as Being, itself mysterious and unknowable, and yet understandable. What mortal humans could understand of this mystery was captured in three Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these three reaches out to humanity in a loving relationship. In one sense, they are artificial: God's own Being remains unknowable except in mysticism, but the Persons are his way of giving humanity a glimpse of Himself. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

16 " This is why humility was so important. It was the soul's way of short-circuiting the damage that could be done by the constant need to know where one stood with respect to others.

The point of humility was not to think ill of oneself but to protect oneself from this craving for status. This, in turn, would free the spirit to see life in a new way. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

17 " Within the desert setting, women faced an additional challenge because they had to manage not only their own spiritual progress but also the constant tension caused by men's reactions to them. A story about an anonymous leader of virgins demonstrates the need to deal gracefully with men who often treated them as a source of temptation rather than as fellow seekers. When some monks made a detour to avoid encountering her and her sisters, she commented, 'If you were a perfect monk, you would not have seen us as women. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

18 " A story is told of one of the most revered abbots of fourth-century Egypt, Pachomius the Great, who refused to see his sister Maria when she came to visit him. The explanation was his own urgent need to avoid someone who might entangle him in the bonds of family feeling, and he was even praised for his self-control in being able to forgo the pleasure of her visit. It is not surprising that women sometimes found the self-involvement of male ascetics irritating. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

19 " Amma Sarah knew that her spiritual power was infinite if she could truly forget herself and allow Christ to work through her. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women

20 " Women were accustomed to making substantial efforts to please men, while men spent comparatively little of theirs trying to please women. The reports women received from their mothers and married older sisters about intimacy with men probably suggested that it was not all sweetness and light. Living with men required something of the caution needed for handling wild animals. Even for women who were skilled at managing them, there was always an element of danger because of their power and unpredictability. So it would not be at all surprising if women were less troubled by distracting thoughts of the opposite sex. "

― Kate Cooper , Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women