Women & Spirituality

7 Pages 1800 Words

lasted for tens of thousands of years, generally living in peace. Males and females were treated equally. Their society was matrilineal--children took their mothers' names, but not a matriarchy (Christ 58-59). Life and time was experienced as a repetitive cycle, not linearly as is accepted today. Even the movie we saw in the lecture reflected this basic idea of women being the soul of every living thing on this earth and the gist of life was women.
However, Easterners soon brought modern civilization to this culture, including war, belief in male Gods, exploitation of nature, and knowledge of the male role in procreation. Some of these so called religions would be Christianity including the Roman Catholic Church, Protestants, European Religions and also Judaism who thought of as god being male i.e. Jesus. Goddess worship was gradually combined with worship of male Gods to produce a variety of Pagan religions, thus losing some of its singular focus on the female as a deity. Goddess Worship during the Christian era was molded by more dominant outside forces. As Judaism, Christianity & eventually Islam evolved, the Pagan religions were suppressed and the female principle was gradually driven out of religion. Consequently women were reduced to a level inferior to men. The God, King, Priest & Father replaced the Goddess, Queen, Priestess & Mother (Miles 24). A woman's testimony was not considered significant in courts, women were no...