Sally Quinn Asks 'Does God Hate Women?'
"Thank God for Jimmy Carter. He takes on the tough ones."
That's how "On Faith" moderator Sally Quinn ended her April 26 post "Does God hate women?"
Quinn insisted that it was "a question that never occurred to me until I began to study religion" and that the 39th president of the United States had a role in her examining the topic:
Recently Jimmy Carter spoke on the subject at a religious conference. “The discrimination against women on a global basis,” he said,” is very often attributable to the declaration by religious leaders in Christianity, Islam and other religions, that women are inferior in the eyes of God.”
This may not seem an earth-shaking comment but it was courageous of Carter to speak out against this practice, particularly since he came from a Baptist tradition where women were not even allowed to be ministers. He is also, in this statement, calling on those of faith to question his God’s attitude toward one half of the earth’s population.
Carter was also the impetus for the pre-Easter "discussion" question, "What is religion's role in gender discrimination?"
Quinn, who professes no religious faith but has partaken of the eucharist at at least one Catholic funeral, complains:
Long before Jesus’s time, Eve was the temptress, Adam the unwilling dupe. Mary had to be a virgin. Joseph did not. Even the Apostle Paul, who had women work with him, was overruled by the church leaders less than 20 years after his death.
So, again, what are we to make of this? A feminist would argue that it is clear that the most developed countries are those with the most educated and liberated women. The poorest and most underdeveloped are those with the least educated, least liberated women. Are those women held back because of religious beliefs? The case could be made.
With thousands of years of discrimination behind us and so much still existing, and with 95 percent of the world’s population adhering to some faith or other, how could those beliefs not be held accountable. And for those who believe in an all loving God, a God who loves men and women equally, how could one not ask the question: Why would He (She?) allow this to exist unless he hated women?
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Comments
Atheist liberals like
Submitted by misterbee241 on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:27pm.
Sally Quinn should just go out and make a god in their own image. Then they could just shut up about my God.
They can't handle the Truth.
Submitted by Soldat44 on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 2:08pm.
They can't handle the Truth. So they try to change and twist it to fit their guilt.
Nope...just you, Sally...
Submitted by liberalsarefunny on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:28pm.
Nope...just you, Sally...
You took the words right outta my mouth!
Submitted by brutony1 on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 2:39pm.
It must have been while you were kissing me, lol!
When will liberals WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE! -Me
Dadgummit, JW....
Submitted by almostacowboy on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 5:41pm.
You stole my thunder! :-)
Slly
Submitted by desert3030 on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:39pm.
What flavor of kool aid is it you enjoy most? Is there anything that you favor that doesn't require everyone but you to give up their lifestyle, well being, and what you have lots of...money?
god doesnt hate women sally
Submitted by scarletandgold on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:49pm.
the lord our god hates progressive women,,,im sure of it..i mean really...who doesnt..
For shizzle.
Submitted by johnsonl on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 1:09pm.
Remember, Sally, (why is an atheist writing a column about religion?) that religions were started by people who discovered that they could control others through their faith if they could explain the unexplained by invoking an unseen being and that they alone could control that being. They could have been male or female, but males eventually took over because they were bigger and stronger. Religions are nothing more than mass behavioral control mechanisms. They are run by men beause they keep women in line. Since women have more religious faith than men do, it works. Nothing in the Koran says that women must be stoned to death for going unveiled. Men make those rules and use religion to justify them. I believe that we are all equal in God's eyes. It's called faith. You should try it.
The only difference between progressive men and women is the width of their ties. They both sit down to pee.
you have zero evidence
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 4:05am.
for this, and plenty against. Moses did not start a dynasty, neither did Jesus nor Paul. The priests in the first Temple did not run things, the kings did. The prophets spent very little time defending those in power. The rabbis were always being persecuted.
She is a moron
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 1:48pm.
plain and simple like her mind.
Sally Quinn Please Read This Post
Submitted by Gothampc on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 2:16pm.
Please liberals read your Bibles. And don't read them with your agenda in mind, read them for what is there in black and white.
"Long before Jesus’s time, Eve was the temptress, Adam the unwilling dupe. Mary had to be a virgin. Joseph did not."
There is no mention of Eve being a temptress. It merely says she gave the fruit to Adam and he ate. Satan was the one doing the tempting.
God preferred that everyone be a virgin when they married. There is no proof that Joseph wasn't required to be a virgin.
Sally Quinn should read her Bible and take note of the awesome women contained in its pages:
Deborah was a wise judge of Israel and has the privilege of having one of her songs taking up valuable real estate in the Bible
Esther won a beauty pageant and was made queen, thereby saving the Hebrew people from extinction and also given her own book in the Bible
Rahab helped the Hebrew people against their enemy and had the privilege of being grafted into the lineage of Jesus
Ruth was a Moabite (enemies of the Hebrews) yet she was grafted into the lineage of Jesus and given her own book in the Bible
Anna was one of the first people to see the Saviour Jesus had been born and was given the opportunity to spread the news
Mary Magdalene and the women accompanying her were the first to see Jesus resurrected
The woman with the issue of blood was one of the few that showed exemplary faith when she touched the hem of Jesus' garment and was healed
These are the examples that I can think off the top of my head. There are many, many more women in the Bible who were portrayed as strong women.
Excellent points, gotham.
Submitted by Ken Shepherd on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 3:28pm.
Excellent points, gotham. Plus, in Jesus' time, women could NOT give testimony in courts. They were considered unreliable. Yet they are the first witnesses of the resurrection! Jesus appears first to the women. What's more, there are plenty of women held in high esteem in the early church as evidenced by passages about Dorcas, Priscilla, Lydia, and of course Timothy's mother and grandmother, who nurtured him in the faith before he became Paul's protege.
There are many others -
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:55am.
Miriam, the daughters of Tzlephchad (whose names the Torah repeats over and over), Avigail...
I will point out that in our our era, Sarah Schneir, an unmarried seamstress, created the greatest revolution in traditional Judaism in since at least 1600, maybe since 500.
But mostly their names are not mentioned, because women are not in the public sphere. The idea that to accomplish something one must be in the public sphere is precisely one of the questionable premises that her reasoning is based on. In Judaism, the anonymous act is greater, and I think Christianity has similar ideas.
I am troubled when
Submitted by Lord-come-soon-... on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 4:04pm.
When I read the words hate and God tied together when talking about human beings - God's most marvelous creation. He doesn't hate anyone, including "progressive women". He hates sin. He sent His precious son to die a horrible death for EVERY person - even an obnoxious atheist like Sally Quinn. There is no one who is unreachable by God and His Holy Spirit. Pray for Sally Quinn!
To say Adam was duped is reading into the Bible. Adam
Submitted by VanPastorMan on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 4:31pm.
sinned willfully. Whereas Eve as deceived by the serpent. The reason why men have been the rulers in this world is because of sin. God said in Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." This doesn't mean God hates women, but that one of the consequences of sin is that men would rule. By the way check out what the muslims do to their women. You will find that the Christian faith is far superior.
Paul says this in Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Where in the Koran does it say that men and women are equal in their standing before Allah?
Paul also said this Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her I would ask Ms. Quinn if this sounds like hate? No way.
One final thought. Who was the first person to see Jesus Christ after He was raised from the dead? It was Mary Magdalene. What is significant about this is in the ancient culture the testimony of women was not valid in a court of law. Yet, the Lord showed Himself to a woman first who went and gave testimony. Ms. Quinn Jesus Christ is the liberator of women. Go to any country that is not Christian and you will find women being treated terribly. I don't believe modern feminists realize how much Jesus has done for them as far as elevating their status in the culture. Yet they see Christianity as the problem. Hmmm, I need to lie down because I am getting a headache.
Actually, even that -
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:30am.
The traditional Jewish interpretation of "he shall rule over you" is simply is related to the words before it, and has nothing to do with the man being in charge. Adam is never let off the hook in Jewish tradition, simply because he should have known better than to listen to his wife. In fact, he is blamed for improperly transmitting God's word to her, so she thought she could not even touch the tree ,as she said the the serpent.
At the end of the day, women have the trouble of childbirth which men do not. Which is to say, "nature" discriminates agaisnt women. So let Sally start there and stop blaming the men.
Does God Hate the People of the USA
Submitted by Marsh on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 4:42pm.
because he gave the despicable Ben Bradley and Sally Quinn so much media power?
Don't forget the beheading of
Submitted by redfish on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 5:17pm.
Don't forget the beheading of Holofernes by Judith. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes )
There are plenty of examples of strong women in the Bible. The fact that women don't serve as ministers is the result of the fact that people believed that men and women had different social spheres, but one social sphere was not considered superior to another.
In fact, at many times in history the Virgin Mary was venerated to a larger degree than Jesus himself ; this is referred to as 'the cult of the virgin mary', and it was common that women were considered to be moral than were men (who were described as nasty and brutish).
Our society is different today because of democracy, industrialization, technology, etc., which is what lets men and women be free to do what we please. But the whole idea from feminism that we had a 'patriarchy' of men controlling women is ignorance and a product of people today just not understanding or relating to the culture we had 200 years ago.
What we see in the Islamic world, China etc., is just reactionary politics, the result of resisting adaptation to the modern world.
Women Ministers
Submitted by Gothampc on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 5:41pm.
This woman should also take a look at the number of women ministers in the Protestant Church in the last 100 years:
Maria Woodworth-Etter, Aimee Semple Mcpherson, Kathryn Khulman, Anne Graham, Joyce Meyer, Gloria Copeland, Paula White, Taffi Dollar, Marilyn Hickey...the list goes on and on
Look it up in Proverbs,
Submitted by Slyrr on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 5:55pm.
Look it up in Proverbs, Sally-poo. There's some gems in there called 'things the Lord hates'.
Among them?
A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.
Sounds a lot like the Lord doesn't much care for the climate that you liberals and atheists are promulgating there, Sally-poo.
She is not a brethren so that
Submitted by ricklail on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 7:27pm.
She is not a brethren so that does not fit. All the rest do.
One of my favorite passages
Submitted by ricklail on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 7:24pm.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible, Proverbs 31:10-31. It reminds me so much of my mom.
So what's the problem?
Submitted by The Irishman on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 7:31pm.
Did she say something that was blatantly false?
yes
Submitted by lotr on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 8:20am.
Everything she said was either blatantly false or misconstrued, motivated by a political agenda.
She gave a common point of
Submitted by redfish on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 10:41am.
She gave a common point of view, but her write-up is leading in that it glosses over contrary examples and interprets things as indictments of women that were never meant to be indictments, or as male chauvinism that were never meant to be chauvinistic.
Men and women have traditionally had different social roles, and in some ways continue to have different roles since they're inescapable (being a mother vs being a father), but it didn't come from religion, religion justs reflects them.
I'm not sure that's true
Submitted by The Irishman on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 11:53am.
Many of our beliefs come directly from religion, from morality to social issues. It may no longer be a common belief in Christianity but there's no denying it dictates the role of women in the Muslim world. And while the intention may have been innocent enough, we have evolved both socially and emotionally. One person may believe dogma can't be broken, while the other wonders why all other aspects of women in society have progressed over the century where women are equal to men, except when religion dictates. In other words, religion doesn't seem to have evolutionary elements.
Locked
Submitted by bkeyser on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 12:03pm.
-
Well done, BK.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 6:05pm.
.
What may no longer be common
Submitted by redfish on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 1:01pm.
What may no longer be common belief in Christianity?
First, Christians never, on the whole, had any doctrine that said women are inferior. -- It wasn't even the most common belief in Western culture. The most common idea, like I said above, was that men and women had different, but equal, social roles. Men had been posed at times as more rational than women, but women were said to be more moral than men, men were posed as brutes, and women were said to be moral because they were intuitive as opposed to rational (a belief you still see today). The whole cult of the Virgin Mary comes from typifying her as a mother figure, a loving, caring mother, meant to be an embodiment of morality.
Second, in Christianity, interpretation is allowed, that's why theology exists as a field -- its the principle that matters more than the literal statement. Conservative Christians just prefer to see principled interpretation, they don't believe in the "anything goes" morality they see in our culture. Islam is, and has always been, a reactionary religion. Islam was founded on a rejection of the idea of interpretation, they felt interpretation had led to corruption in both Christianity and Judaism. Today, Islamicists continue to be reactionary.
I think you can only come to the conclusion that God hates women if you view Christianity and Islam as similar things.
I disagree as well
Submitted by The Irishman on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 1:14pm.
I do not believe God hates women, nor do I think the author believes that either. It was a provocative statement/question, intended as defined by its accomplished mission.
Oh look.
Submitted by The Vet on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 1:54pm.
Another Angry Black Dead Kitten Eating Pickled Zippers is dissing on Christians again. Shocker.
I agree, I have nothing
Submitted by redfish on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 3:14pm.
I agree, I have nothing against her .. but I think the view she's outlined is very common and very fiercely argued in liberal publications like the NYT, and you don't often hear the contrary view, so I'd question her approach to it.
Important to this, there's debate right now over the ordination of women priests -- or in conservative Judaism, women rabbis -- and the refusal to put women in these roles is argued as evidence that religion is regressive and anti-woman. But there are good arguments for leaving religious traditions how they are even as we move to be more open as a society.. there's no reason religion should act as a mirror of secular society.
I think we kind of need an open discussion of different points of view on this in the press, instead of a one-sided discussion that only repeats the feminist point-of-view.
It's possible
Submitted by The Irishman on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 3:45pm.
The reason you don't hear the counter-point is because that's the view of the status quo. The author is offering an opinion regarding just that, so the opposing view to hers is already stated. The traditional view is written and holds all of the arguments against her views.
Its the status quo, but the
Submitted by redfish on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 3:59pm.
Its the status quo, but the defense of the status quo is rarely argued in public forums.
The point
Submitted by The Irishman on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 9:34am.
The Why is already written. The Bible clearly states the position, and if it isn't clear the church has historically been nothing but pleased to clarify any confusion.
So when a piece is written such as this, it is only a philosophical question intended to get people thinking. I don't know what kind of argument or discussion is needed when the opposing position has been printed over a bajillion times.
That's the view of the status quo?
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:58am.
It's not the view of the itelligentia, continually being blared at us from every direction.
Actually, in Conservative Judaism
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:38am.
they have long given in on women rabbis, and to some extent the women are taking over, which is one of the problems with it. There is a slight debate on the issue in Orthodoxy, but the pro side is very small, and part of Orthodoxy is going the other way. What IS clear in Judaism is that women cannot be priests in the Temple, although there are opinions, going way back, that they could be priests for some things like redeeming the first-born, although I have never heard of a woman doing this.
(Yes, Jews still have priests. What he you thing Cohen means? When I was 30 days old, my fahter redeemed me by giving the priest five silver dollars.)
It's not the question -
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:47am.
It's the false propositions that she backs up the question with. Also, that she assumes the assumptions of feminism as facts.
If you want to ask if the Creator hates women, why not start with nature? Genesis 2 is meant to ANSWER this question, to show that women are not inherently inferior, but that the extra difficulties they have were caused by a historical incident, for which women today cannot be blamed, and which will eventually be rectified.
"evolution"
Submitted by lotr on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 3:55pm.
The notion that homo sapiens has somehow "evolved" since, say, birth of Christ is positively false. Other than the fact that we owe our entire existence to them, we are 100% the same beast as our ancestors. Nothing has changed in our fundamental makeup. The only thing that can be said to have changed are cultural attitudes in the affluent Western world, and indeed, even this (cultural attitudes in the West) didn't change for the vast majority of human history, with the most radical changes occurring only within the last 50-100 or so years.
Now, I cannot help but to wonder: Just what precisely has happened in the Western world during this tiny fraction of historical time that has caused the change in the widespread acceptance of Christianity as giving the closest account of the truth about God and our existence? As being understood as the truly "progressive" religion (by "progressive" I don't mean the phenomenon of post-Clintonista era political correctness), elevating humankind far above that presented by any other world view, yet completely grounded in reality?
Hi Squirrel
Submitted by The Irishman on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 5:49pm.
Humans haven't evolved since the start of the common era in a noticeable sense other than our total lifespans, but a couple millennia neither proves nor disproves evolution in the traditional sense. Human evolution is a different concept than social evolution, which has undeniably occurred not only during the common era but over the entire existence of humanity.
The answer to your question regarding what happened over the past 100 years is simple: Humans learned answers to many of the questions once answered by faith. People began to question the establishment because we no longer had to worry about being afraid to question the authority. We were given the right to disagree relatively recently. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that we were burning "witches."
You talkin to me?
Submitted by lotr on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 7:42pm.
Point-by-point response:
Where do you get 300 years from?
Submitted by The Irishman on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 9:29am.
It is generally accepted that AD is also known as the Common Era, so let's make sure we're discussing the same time period here.
What do you think evolution is if not micro? Evolution doesn't simply mean change from one generation to the next; evolution takes place over millions of years. That you already noted a general height increase in the human population over a mere 300 years means you acknowledge at the very least a basic understanding of evolution.
Which to me means you're entire argument is dishonest, as it appears to me you're trying to disprove the theory of evolution based on...based on... I don't know, I'm still looking for the argument.
whoosh
Submitted by lotr on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 8:35pm.
Yes, A.D. = C.E.; but I prefer to use the traditional notation.
The argument has nothing to do with the validity of macro-evolution -- I am actually assuming it's valid in my argument (although I do have my own criticisms of it as a theory, but that's a discussion for another day).
The point of that particular argument is that humans have not changed one iota. We are the same creatures as the ancients (other than we owe our existence to them), complete with the same physicality, spirituality, urges, desires, prejudices, anxieties, intellectual capacity (although sometimes I wonder about that one...), etc.
Western religion from the
Submitted by redfish on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 8:20pm.
Western religion from the beginning was always a scholarly endeavor, never meant to be in conflict with discovery about the natural world. Rabbis were all scholars and Christians opened up the first universities. Many of the early Christians worked in the library of Alexandria alongside pagans. St. Augustine and later St. Thomas Aquinas discuss how religion never needs to be in contradiction with science.
What religion is concerned with is not natural science, but truths -- ethical truths, moral truths, truths of the human condition, truths of existence. We don't know any more about these subjects than we did thousands of years ago when they were first discussed, everything that could be said about them has already been said.
Belief in witchcraft didn't come from religion, it was popular superstition. And in fact one of the appeals of Christianity, for academics and scholars, was that monotheism was a more 'rational' basis for religion than having a pantheon of gods, or believing one could channel nature through magic. The Church wasn't so concerned about witches for fear of the 'dark arts' but because they thought the beliefs of witchcraft was heresy. They saw radical alchemical beliefs as gnosticism, and resisted attempts to introduce kabbalah and other types of mysticism into Church doctrine.
What happened?
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:41am.
"widespread acceptance"?
Among Christians. Not among Muslims or Jews, or members of any other religion.
I'm only an expert
Submitted by The Irishman on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 9:35am.
On Christianity.
→ Expert?
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 9:38am.
Yuck yuck yuck it up
Submitted by The Irishman on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 9:43am.
I'll bet you've been saving that one all morning.
"Quinn, who professes no
Submitted by LaVallette on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 2:14am.
"Quinn, who professes no religious faith but has partaken of the eucharist at at least one Catholic funeral, complains:"
The cheek and the arrogance, and this from a gate crasher.
I am sure she now claims that "transubstantiation" is just a myth and so much rubbish. She can report from experience that the Body of Christ tasted like a communion wafer after all. It did not taste anything like raw flesh. .So there you duped Catholics. But at least you are saved from cannibalism.
Catholics hate women so much that according to most Protestants they have raised one of them to the status of a Deity with all that idolatrous Mariology. They need to make up their mind: Do we hate them or make them God?. Plus the thousands and thousands of women Saints ranking equally with male saints; Theresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Theresa of Lisieux to the rank of Doctors of the Church. Thousands upon thousands of them to the rank of Heads of Abbeys and Convents, Heads of Monastic Orders, Heads of teaching Orders but especially those dedicated to the education of other women, of hospitals, hospices and every type of social organizations etc etc (Why are nurses still called Sisters?) . No organization, ecclesiastical or secular, have done more for the respect for women and their education and liberation and recognising and utlising their talent then the Catholic Church over the last two millennia,
As to the ordination of women; you need to take that matter up with Jesus Christ! If you want tyo argue that he was a victim of the mores of his time, then you are saying that his divinity is at stake as eternal vision for his Church was limited by temporary human mores and you will alos have to explain why he spent so much time in the presence of women and why so many of them featured in his life, he failed to appoint any of them as Apostles and to have any of them present at the time of his institution of the priesthood on the occasion of the Last Supper.
In this case
Submitted by panzerakc on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 4:21am.
I can't decide if the problem is that Sally doesn't read her own words (whether ones she wrote or quoting Jimmy Carter) or that Jimmy doesn't listen to what's coming out of his own mouth.
She entitles her posting "Does God hate women?", then quotes Carter, who first says the discrimination against women "is very often attributable to the declaration by RELIGIOUS LEADERS . . . that women are inferior in God's eyes." God didn't say women were inferior, the so-called religious leaders made that declaration.
Of course, then Carter goes on to speak about "his God's attitude toward one-half of the population". I've never noticed that God has any kind of discriminatory attitude toward women at all. He did choose to be born of one.
an agenda-driven ramble
Submitted by lotr on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 8:25am.
I mean, was she actually serious? It's almost as if it's a self-parody.
well, it says
Submitted by Patriot II on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 10:53am.
she has "no religious faith"....aw gee, no REALLY? dam dumb dimwits!!!
I'm a Christian,not a conservative;they(Pharisees)killed Jesus
Submitted by russedav on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 11:50am.
Sadly most of the people posting are as Biblically illiterate as Quinn, having no clue as to God's order for the world, much less saving it, most imagining lost man has free will, not God, versus God's Word teaching the reverse, in Psalm 115 "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased." and Ephesians 2 "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins," and in the John 11 account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead without his permission!/asking him! Hallelujah!
I suggest you read Ezekiel
Submitted by mzk1 on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 4:01am.
if you do not believe in free will.
P.S. I'm a Pharisee, and I don't remember killing anyone.