Where are women within religious history?

In a class I was teaching on Robert Ingersoll, we read and discussed one of his popular lectures on “The Gods.” Among his observations on religion (“Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators”), Ingersoll calls attention to one of the most disturbing – and damning – facts in all the history of faith: None of the highest gods, of the major religions, have ever been female. We might add to his observation: None of the great religions of the world were founded by women. No scriptures, that we know of, were written by women. No major religion has been led by women. In all of recorded religious history, women were not allowed to be in the highest levels of leadership. No theological seminary has been founded by women and, until recently, none have been led by women or taught by women professors. No creeds, confessions or major theologies were written by women. Only in the most recent times, have some women, in some traditions, been “granted” the “sacred office” of the clergy. This was only achieved after centuries of resistance by the “divinely-appointed Fathers of Faith.”

Ingersoll, along with freethinking colleagues Helen Hamilton Gardener and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, knew the Bible very well. Gardener wrote her book, “Men, Women and Gods,” in the 1880s and Stanton wrote her infamous “The Woman’s Bible” in the 1890s. Both were encouraged by their friend Robert Ingersoll to stand up and speak their honest thoughts. As Ingersoll wrote in his preface to Gardener’s book: “It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are thousands of women who think, and express their thoughts ... they examine for themselves.”

Each of these freethinkers lamented the fact that churches were mostly populated by women who looked to their male clergy for guidance in matters of faith; many women looked to the authoritative reverends in robes to expound and explain to them, the Word of God – what their Father in Heaven wanted them to know, and how to stay in their appointed place.

The creation story, taught to every Sunday School and Sabbath School child for centuries, says Woman was created as an afterthought – Man was lonely – and then it was the woman who brought about the “fall” of humankind ... the Original Sinner who gave birth to Original Sin.

Though there are notable exceptions – for instance, Ruth, Esther, Mary – the whole biblical story presents women as marginal, second class at best, occasionally used as props or object lessons – instructed by Paul to keep silent in church and obey their husbands. While polygamy was blessed by the Lord in early Israelite history, the highest form