Christianity and Women

Christianity And Women

Gender roles in Christianity can vary considerably today, as they have during the last two millennia. This is especially true with regards to marriage and ministry.

Certain Christian traditions ascribe different roles to men and women in certain aspects of church life—as for example in the Catholic and Orthodox churches, where men may serve as priests and women may serve as nuns or sisters, and where women may hold senior positions such as abbess, but not bishop, patriarch or pope. While various conservative Protestant denominations also hold that only men can be ordained as clergy, ordination of women is becoming increasingly common in some Protestant churches. Women have led denominations such as the Salvation Army.

Both men and women are remembered as saints within the various Christian traditions: among the women considered saints, there have been contemporaries of Jesus, subsequent theologians, abbesses, mystics, doctors of the church, founders of religious orders, military leaders, monarchs and martyrs, evidencing the variety of roles played by women within the life of Christianity.

According to the Gospels, Jesus instructed his followers to address God as "Father". Within Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a particular place of veneration is reserved for Mary, the Mother of Jesus, which has kept a model of maternal virtue central to their vision of Christianity. Marian devotion is however, generally not a feature of Protestantism.

Christianity emerged from patriarchal societies that placed men in positions of authority in marriage, society and government, but, in various respects, Christ and early Christianity were more inclusive of women. According to the New Testament, Christ appointed only male apostles, but women were active from the beginning as followers of Christ. As devotion to Mary rose in popularity in Catholic Europe through the Middle Ages, so did the warrior code of chivalry which encompassed notions of courtly love and ideals of behaviour between warrior males and courtly females. From early centuries, women were not ordained to the priesthood but Christianity developed a monastic tradition which included the institution of the convent, through which women, as religious sisters and nuns, played an important role in church life and have continued through history to be active - particularly in the establishment of schools, hospitals, nursing homes and monastic settlements.

Today, gender roles in Christianity are a matter of debate among theologians and secular thinkers alike.