www.quondam.com/44/4372.htm

God's will as urban planning?
2006.03.03 16:29

Regarding "the continuing discrimination they have against women," you might be interested in Church Fathers, Independent Virgins by Joyce E. Salisbury, which shows how and when a lot of the discrimination started. Ironically, in its early centuries, Christianity very much empowered women; it may well have been one of the first human "institutions" where women had a chance to make a choice about their lives. Granted, their choice was to remain virgins, as opposed to being told who they had to marry, but a choice women never even had before, nonetheless. Plus, as usual I suppose, the more wealth a Christian woman had, the more choices she could make for herself. This female freedom even got the pagan Romans upset, and thus even fueled the Great Persecution of the early 4th century.

In Church Fathers, Independent Virgins we see the lives and choices of some notable Christian women, and we see how some notable Church fathers, in their sermons, letters and writings, very much did not like the independence of these women, and thus laid out a whole new restrictive life for Christian woman.

Personally, I see the women as having made the far better choices. Melania the Younger and her grandmother Melania the Elder are two of my favorites, besides Helena and Eutropia, of course.

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