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The Age of the Mother,Father, Son & Daughter
The Age of the Mother & Daughter
Deny it or not, we as a human race have seen far too many changes since
our world was started or discovered. Some changes are good, some are
not. If we look to the ages of the Mother vs the Father, we witness
patriarchal power that suppressed women and took control of every aspect
of life. When the Father age gave way to the Son age, the Mother returned
to a supporting, nurturing role that the Father age kept stifled. The Son did
not totally suppress women, but he was still under the influence, guidance,
control and manipulation of the Father. The Ages do overlap…there is no
‘defined’ beginning or end to each ‘Age’.
The Mother age was primal, trusting, innocent, believing. The Father age
was based in duality: right or wrong, black or white, male or female, wild or
tame. Control was the premise in which they operated. The Son age was/is
still based in masculine power. The Age of the Daughter, in my opinion, will
be based on balance and responsibility of a whole new generation.
AGE OF THE MOTHER
The ideas of a God or Goddess have always corresponded with the
current opinions regarding the importance of either sex in human society.
Plainly stated: as long as female power and influence were in dominance,
the creative force was regarded as embodying the principles of the female
nature; later, however, when woman’s power waned, and the supremacy of
man was gained, the creative force began gradually to assume the male
characters and attributes. In ancient times, a woman’s functions were
considered of more importance than those of man. In the beginning, man
was in awe of woman. The woman could bring forth new life; she could
bleed once a month (menstruation) and not die; and she knew how to use
herbs to help or cure illnesses.
The worship of female energy prevailed under the Matriarchal system, and
was practiced at a time when women were the recognized heads of
families, and the lineage of these families was determined by the mother
NOT the father.
I believe that the earliest religion was pure Nature worship,
that whatever the object adored (earth, trees, water, or the sun), it was revered simply as
an emblem of Nature.
AGE OF THE FATHER
This is the beginning of Christianity. According to the Catholic Church,
‘God is a spiritual, substantial, personal being, infinite in intelligence, in will,
and in all perfection, absolutely simple or lacking composition, immutable,
happy in Himself and by Himself, and infinitely superior to all that is or can
be conceived apart from Himself.’
By the end of the second century, you begin to see hierarchies of bishops,
priests and deacons emerge in various communities and claim to speak
for the majority.
When men changed the tide to masculine power. Women were treated
like chattel (personal property). They were expected to be submissive to
men; to have children (preferably male children); to stay home; to cook; to
clean; and to do man’s bidding. Women were also prominent as martyrs
and suffered violently from torture and painful execution by wild animals and
paid gladiators. Children and women were the spoils of war.
AGE OF THE SON
This is the age of the coming of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 B.C.29
A.D.), a Jewish mystic was believed to be the Messiah and the son of
God. Jesus’ actions and teachings, as recorded decades after his death
by subsequent writers, are reported in the four Gospels of the Bible. The
only gospel writer who may have been an actual witness to Jesus’ life was
John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were chroniclers of the time (5080
A.D.).
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or any
thing else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own
writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people.
Christianity is a religion of obedience to a single Father figure, and thus
women and children had to obey males (husbands and priests).
In Acts 45,
Jesus preached tolerance, forgiveness, and prompt payment
of taxes. But he never said a word about sacraments, bishops, the
suppression of literature and scientific knowledge, the persecution of
heresy, birth control, or homosexuality. His peaceful teachings have been
twisted and misinterpreted to justify such horrors as the Crusades, the
Inquisition, and the Holocaust. Ideas of male supremacy were derived
from the Biblical narrative.
The Novationists, a sect led by Novatinius of Rome, who held that those
whose faith or obedience had lapsed might not be received again into
communion with the church, and therefore, second marriages were
unlawful. He was the one who created what is known as
‘excommunication.’ It was really tragic for women, because it forced them
to stay in marriages with violent and unfaithful husbands. Unfortunately, in
my opinion, this is still recognized today by far too many women and
churches.
In the early part of the 4th century A.D., the Catholic Church was
transformed into royalty; they were ennobled by Emperor Constantine, who
was converted to Christianity as he lay dying. In a very real sense, the
Catholic Church invented Western royalty, creating a system of regional
kings and vassals subject to Rome. The ‘world prince’ is called the Pope
(Latin for ‘father’). His pronouncements are supposedly infallible.
Many religious communities have been slow to reevaluate
their traditions and to actively challenge the those parts of their belief structures that
support violence against women. Religion is often sited as a reason to limit
women’s rights across cultures and at the international level.
The ‘Age of Reason’ was a European intellectual movement of the 17th
and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and
man were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent and
instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. The
powers and uses of reason had first been explored by the philosophers of
ancient Greece, who discerned in the ordered regularity of nature the
workings of an intelligent mind. Rome adopted and preserved much of
Greek culture. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose
for personal salvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of the
Christian religion. The product of a search for a natural rational religion
was Deism, which, although never an organized cult or movement,
conflicted with Christianity for two centuries, especially in England and
France. It should be noted that ‘Deism’ refers to what can be called natural
religion, the acceptance of a certain body of religious knowledge that is
inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason, as
opposed to knowledge acquired through either revelation or the teaching
of any church. Plainly stated, Deists believe in God but not in Christ; nor do
they believe in orthodox Christianity. The high point of Deist thought
occurred in England from about 1689 through 1742, during a period when,
despite widespread counterattacks from the established Church of
England, there was relative freedom of religious expression
Even in the Bible I find there are insults to women. Lev.21: 37
tells you that men are monetarily worth more than women. Lev.15 1930
says that when a women is menstruating she is unclean and instructs that the woman
must be put away for seven days, and anything or anyone who touches her
or her belongings is also unclean. Deut. 22:5 tells women not to wear
mens clothes. 1 Cor.14: 3435 instructs men to keep their women (meaning
mother, sister, wife, daughter) silent in the church for it is a shame for
women to speak in the church. Eph.5: 2224 tells women to ‘submit’ to
their husbands. From those days to this, women have struggled to assert their right to live
free, to be respected as living sensual beings, and to enjoy the protection
of civil (nonreligious) law as equals of men, equally worthy of dignity and
due process.
AGE OF THE DAUGHTER
I think the Age of the Daughter was begun in the late 1700’s.
In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John (The Feminist Papers:
From Adams to de Beauvoir, New York: Columbia University Press, 1973):
“In the new code of laws, remember the ladies and do not put such
unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.”
In 1848, at the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott convened a two day
meeting of 300 women and men to call for justice for women in a society where they
were systematically barred from the rights and privileges of citizens.
Women had been discussing and organizing to demand equal rights…at
first their cries fell on deaf ears…but as time has gone on, more male
children were being raised and taught to be more conscientious about the
female role in our world.
THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of
ratification.
As supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment between 1972 and 1982
lobbied, marched, rallied, petitioned, picketed, went on hunger strikes, and
committed acts of civil disobedience, it is probable that many of them
were not aware of their place in the long historical continuum of women’s
struggle for constitutional equality in the United States. From the very
beginning, the inequality of men and women under the Constitution has
been an issue.
The United Nations adopted in 1979 the ‘Convention the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women’ Article 11 1 d) reads as follows:
‘States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in the field of employment in order to
ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights, in
particular: (…) (d) The right to equal remuneration, including benefits, and
to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value, as well as equality of
treatment in the evaluation of the quality of work.’
The Equal Rights Amendment , first proposed in 1923, is still not part of
the U.S. Constitution. It has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states.
When three more states vote yes, it is possible that the ERA could
become the 28th Amendment.
Equal Rights is not just about women, it is about men too. Men have been
given rights to care for their children, to assist in the upbringing of their
children, to monetarily care for their children after a divorce, and to have
‘family medical leave’. Men are also moving to new career areas. And its
not just here in the US either. In the ‘Proclamation of Teheran’, made at the
International Conference on Human Rights at Teheran on 13 May 1968,
article 15 states: ‘The discrimination of which women are still victims in
various regions of the world must be eliminated. An inferior status for
women is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations as well as the
provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The full
implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women is a necessity for the progress of mankind.’
No woman living in the 20th century can leave unexamined the spiritual
assault on the nature and rights of women, perpetrated by 2000 years of
Religions of the Book. It is time to look elsewhere for a philosophy which
celebrates the living human being, gives honor and respect, and embraces
the divine in all things.
In the last twenty years, the history of women in ancient Christianity has
been almost completely revised. As women historians entered the field in
record numbers, they brought with them new questions, developed new
methods, and sought for evidence of women’s presence.
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