Dear Suse,

It's interesting you bring up gods and
goddesses.

The Ashanti of West Africa,
who have a rape-free society, emphasize an earth
goddess, treat women with great respect, and admire
nurturant rather than aggressive traits.

On the other hand, the Gusei of Kenya, who have a
rape-prone society, emphasize male gods, treat women
as inferiors, and conceive of normal heterosexual
intercourse as an assault on women.

Interesting.

Yes indeed Foxy.

Sometimes I wonder if we had religions dedicated to goddesses, and a majority of female leaders in our world, whether we would living in a less aggressive, less conflict-ridden world?

Goodness knows, we couldn't do any worse than what is happening now...

Dear Suse,

It would be worth a try wouldn't it?

Things certainly couldn't be any worse.

Of could they, - remember Margaret Thatcher?

And I'm not too thrilled with Hilary Clinton.

Indeed Foxy, quite right but in Western democracies Christians have rethought those particular texts and it is only a fundamentalist few who adhere to them.
They are instructions issued by Paul and are not binding on Christians, and you really ought to have quoted more and not been so picky.

Koran 2:223 is however, we are assured, the word of Allah as revealed to Muhammad, so cannot be deviated from without committing grave sin.

Dear Is Mise,

Like most ideologies that justify social
inequality of various kinds, the ideology of
sexism is everywhere endorsed to some extent
by religion.

The Judeo-Christian religious tradition of the
West also seems to value men above women.
According to the Genesis story, God made man in
His own image, with women as a subsequent and
secondary act of creation. The ancient Israelites
were a strongly patriarchal people and even today
a male orthodox Jew is expected to say the prayer
that I cited earlier.

This bias was transmitted to Christianity, not
through Jesus, buth through the later teachings of
Saint Paul, who explicitly saw the inferior role of
women as part of a divinely ordained natural order.
Hence the citation I gave.

Even today many denominations reserve their priesthoods or
equivalent positions for men. Although, as women gain
greater equality elsewhere in society, they are slowly
achieving higher statuses in religion also.

We can hope that in the future this may also change
for all religions.

I agree Foxy.
I know many women would be happy with equal roles in their religion as the men have.
Maybe then, women could expect more equality in the rest of their lives.

With the female leaders, I was thinking more of Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto or Golda Meir