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“The Bible is against Women, Especially the Old Testament”

This is something I regularly hear either spoken outright or intimated.

• “women were treated as property, not persons”
• “women were not free to express themselves, their desires, needs or rights”
• “women were treated as second class citizens”
• “women were only there to serve the needs of men”

I don’t believe the Bible supports any of these ideas.

Equality and Diversity

That isn’t to say that our ideas of equality are found in the Bible. Our notions of equality are our own and of our cultural context. I believe that in many ways the rise of Christianity put Western civilization on the road toward some of the ideas of equality we currently have but to assert either that the Bible reflects or demands out concept of equality would be myopic given the fact that ideas vary not just over time but also over cultures even around the world today. The Bible was written to people of different cultures in the ancient world, is read and has been read by a tremendous diversity of people throughout time and across the world today.

I’m also not saying that there wasn’t injustice or discrimination against women in the ancient or modern world, including our own. A tenet of Reformed theology is that these kinds of sin always dog us to contaminate or destroy our relationships with each other.

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