Of late this has been an issue fiercely debated within both the Anglican and Swedish Lutheran churches (not to mention the Roman Catholic church!), the resultant arguments by the time that they filter back to the lay church are either so learned or so diffuse that the lay person often has a hardtime understanding the issue being debated, a further curiosity is that most of these arguments are based almost purely upon Tradition this being given a place that supercedes scripture itself, so what then does scripture have to say on this subject , if anything....? It should be understood from the beginning that this is a cultural problem, as we shall see as we delve into what Holy Scripture has to say on the subject, we have several questions that need to be answered such as who was the Author? Where did he come from? What was he saying and to whom was he saying it?! Becausethis is a web page and not a book I'll try to be brief without leaving anythingout!! Your job as an interested party is to check out what I have written and see if I'm telling the truth!!

Our author is no other than Saint Paul himself, no mysteries here! I doubt if any other claim to 1 Corinthians would be accepted by any serious theologian or researcher,who was he? he said of himself that he was a Pharisaic Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:4-6), the reason however that we find ourselves in the "Epistle to the Corinthians" is simply because this is the most widly cited quote as far as Pauls apparent attitude to women in the church is concerned ( 1 Corinthians 14:33-36) We need to take note of an important thing here.....Pauls continual insistance that he is a Jew, to Paul his "Jewishness" is of great importance, he refers continually throughout all of his epistles to Jewish culture and tradition, so why the does he appear to break with his own religious tradition upon which he places such strong emphasis?

When we look backwards in time into the "Old Testament" period we find that Pauls teaching on the place of womens is not the norm ! We find women as judges, as prophetesses, indeed as leaders of the people, it was not unusual either for a woman to be the Leader of a synagogue (archesynogogus). if we look at Deborah (Judges 4:4ff) we find that apart from being the wife of Lapidoth she is a Prophetess (I make no appologies for the gender distinction.) and a Judge of the children of Israel, she was a woman of great authority , knowledge and wisdom, she as a Judge had the power of life and death over those that she judged, she could actually have people put to death......but according to our modern understanding of St Paul, she could not be a pastor or hold a position in the church as a teacher! Which by any standards is a little peculiar! Can Paul actually mean exactly what he says or are we as "modern" christians putting an interpretation upon his writings here that he never intended? We have seen that for Saint Paul his Jewishness was of importance, that for the Jews it was not unusual for a woman to be invested with great authority, so why then does Saint Paul make such a major break with his own culture and traditions? Our next set of question have to be those that deal with the church at Corinth.

Corinth was a major Seaport with a huge amount of Temple's dedicated to a bewildering assortment of deities, the Christian church there was a church made up of Romano-Greeks with a pagan background mostly from poor families, they had problems with discipline within the church, which resulted in some hair raising situations! and Saint Pauls epistle to them tries to deal with these problems. What then was the Romano/Greek attitude to women?

A womans place in their society was strictly governed, we see much the same rules today in the Islamic world, indeed the Islamic world has inherited the Veil from the Romans and Greeks! in Pauls day many women in the empire were forced into prostitution or concubinage because of (mainly) economic causes, there being no social "safety net", inside of a marriage they were expected to maintain the family gods, instruct the children in their religious duties (pagan sunday school...!!) besides their household duties and maintaining their own jobs. life was brutal and often short, more than one poem of the era dwells on the terror that having a first child had for the young wife ( they more than likely being around 12 to 13 years old) child mortality as well as mortality in childbirth was high.

The womans prospects in the afterlife were not much better if they were poor, the best they could hope for was to be servants to the wealthier (Who could afford to pay priests to sacrifice in their memory, thus maintaining a priveledged place in the after life.) and this drudgery was for eternity! Then came the glorious teaching of The Risen Christ! it is to be noted here that the only women who were allowed to speak in public were not the "respectable" married women, but the prostituted, the courtesans, and here we find a large part of what Paul is talking about! we have a parallel passage in 1 Corinthians 11:14. here Paul talks about long hair on a man being a shame, this from a man whose religious belief state that God has ordered that certain types of vow should be accompanied by not cutting the hair under a certain length of time!Indeed the normal length of hair for a Jew was considerably longer than that of a Romano/Greek.

In the roman empire, at least in those areas native to both Romans and Greeks we find that men with long hair were in actual fact prostitutes, homosexual and otherwise, they were in effect trying to look like women, if you had suggested this to a British celtic warrior or to a Germanic warrior you would have probably been tied to the nearest tree and sacrificed to what ever god happened to be the most painfully conveniant!!

We have to remember that Saint Pauls audience was when all is said and done not one of Jewish background, for Paul it is vital that things should not be chaotic but ordered ( 1 Cor 14:33 and 14:40) and it can hardly be denied that the church in Corinth was not in a state of chaos, so he in order to maintain peace within that church appealed to their own cultural background! There is in fact only one doctrine that as far as I can tell (you may certainly correct me here!!) that has no need of cultural modification and that is that of Salvation itself. In fact it is unique because it crosses all cultural boundaries without modification in any way whatsoever, all others can be (within reason!) modified to the local culture, full body immersion in the arctic would probably not be a good method of baptism....assuming it was meant that the baptised should survive the experience!!

What we have here then is Pauls appeal to a church in chaos to act in a manner worthy of God, men and women should not act or appear to act (to outsiders) in an undignified or unworthy manner, but in a manner that was becoming to the people of God. this would have been understood by the original readers of this Epistle, however when the changeover at the end of the first century from a Jewish christian to a pagan christian church came, Jewish customs were forgotten or suppressed, womens place within the church was lowered until by the time the Emperor Constantine appears on the scene they were totally downtrodden, back infact where they had started from!! the power of the Roman and Greek churches saw to it that their customs were imprinted on every "client" culture until we have as we have today the ridiculous sight of men saying that women are inferior....This is a long way away from the love that Saint Paul shews his fellow man (no apologies for gender here either....)

One final word here! if you should happen to read Romans 16:7 you will note that Junias or more correctly Junia (A womans name) is an apostle......an apostle who could not preach? now there is a ridiculous statement if ever there was one ! I believe Holy Scripture is quite clear unless a woman is classed as a prostitute if she speaks openly in society in your culture, then you have no right to deny her a place as a Priest or a Pastor, and even then I think that you are probably doing violence to Gods wonderful co-creation woman.

Please feel free to E-mail your opinions to me.... the most interesting pro or con might just get published here!

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