Is Christianity Inherently Supportive Of Slavery And Misogyny?

[Angrboda]

The difference between a role and property is that in a role, the individual exercises constraint upon their actions voluntarily. In property, control and constraint of actions is enacted involuntarily through the threat of sanctions or the denial of resources. In the Judeo-Christian religion, constraint has been exercised by ruling institutions in which women have no role and dictating choices which women cannot abrogate. The Sanhedrin was male. The priesthood was male. The authors of the text are male. Rabbihood is exclusively male. Control of the household is male. Control in the synagogue is in the hands of men. Whether this control is total or involves the transfer of any compensation, control of women's choices has been denied them through sanctions and the denial of resources by the church and its male hierarchy. Even today, control of the choices a woman exercises over her reproduction is vested in others through a hierarchy that literally holds the keys to the kingdom. To suggest that this doesn't translate into making a woman a form of property can only be maintained through semantic obfuscation and cherry-picking. Beliefs, and the acts predicated upon them, have their origin in justification. The justification is the source. To suggest that justification and the source can be or are separate is simply semantic doubletalk. We believe things, hold them to be true, because of justification. Now it's true that the church and God place constraints upon the behavior of men as well, and so to some extent treat them as property as well. But the volume of choices which a women is constrained from choosing is so much greater that in the totality of such, women are treated as property to a much greater extent than men.