The culture of the Bible is completely dominated by men and all the authors are men (Moses - John), though some of the most important characters are women. Our intellectual - though perhaps not political - culture is dominated by a quest to right the wrongs of governing classes imposing their will on the rest of the planet.

This includes the church propping up the arguments for doing so - mostly as a power play - though often as a belief ingrained into the adherents after decades.

Watching The Tudors recently - cracking entertainment - it was fairly crudely drawn that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In danger of going off on a tangent, it showed that the higher up someone was in a national church (Cardinal Wolsey), the more power they had to influence the fate of a nation. This patriarchal society was driven more for power and control, than by holding up scriptural references as the guide for our lives.

If we were to strip away the negatives of 4000 years of male-dominated society (there are some positives), it would be interesting to see what was left that was good and holy and right and true.

Dan and I have sometimes commented on couples who thrive through being clearly different in gender roles (and therefore complementary?), and others who are open to holding a number of roles, which can vary between the two parts of the couple at different times (egalitarian?). Clearly there’s room for both, but when one works in a very different way to the other, it can be hard for couples to ‘understand’ how the other set-up can function positively…We are limited by our own preferences in this.

There have been some interesting articles in the Guardian G2 supplement recently on feminist books, or books that made people interested in feminism in the first place. Much of what I read was not particularly overt, but generally supporting the notion that women should aspire to equality in lots of different aspects of life. For my generation, it seems quite ‘part of the furniture’ that women are equal, including in how this is handled in education, so the complementary/equal debate seems less pertinent.

We do start with the difficulty that women are far less mentioned in ‘active’ roles in many of the Bible stories, so it’s harder to compare, because there’s less ‘data’ on women to start with. It would be interesting to see how this has played out in people’s lives - almost a trawl of Christian biographies, if you will, or a series of conversations among women about which of the two they relate to. Perhaps something to ask the women’s group to share on some time?

So finally, a post on your blog…but hope that you do also continue to find the balance between blogging and the benefits of not…