The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West

by Karen Armstrong

"A stinging indictment of 'Christianity' by which Armstrong means not the teaching of Jesus or official Christian doctrine but the influence of major scholars and theologians throughout Western history."—Library Journal

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Theology, Spirituality, Christianity

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical Christian faith. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, while in the convent and graduated in English. She left the convent in 1969. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule.
Armstrong received the US$100,000 TED Prize in February 2008. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

So as I already said in the reviews of her biographical works, I think it pays to read those alongside this book. There is a strong sense of bitterness and anger all throughout it, and her biography helps you understand where that comes from.
At the same time, this book will probably also lead you to see that some of that bitterness is fairly justified. Armstrong's main thesis is that the church and the majority of Christian writers throughout history have been belligerently anti-woman, and she has a good number of texts to back it up.
However, the presentation is fairly one-sided, and she rarely addresses statements made by the authors she chooses that could be taken to contradict their alleged sexism. Nonetheless, if you want a treatment of the misogynistic, women-hating thread that has existed within Christianity, this is your book. And much of it is accurate, though it would probably be best to balance it with another perspective.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Armstrong traces the whole history of Christianity as women have taken it, and also "the gospel for women" as male church leaders have presented it. I was most fascinated by her accounts of conflicting versions of women's religious vocation in medieval and early modern times. Because, as Armstrong explains, nuns were fairly free to pursue their own spiritual goals within convent walls. But as for playing any role in the outside world, they were generally no freer than inmates of a Middle Eastern harem. Within such externally enforced limits, what achievements did religious women hope for? Were they creating ideal communities to heal the world, or basically hiding from worldly sin? -- "What was a virgin to do inside this fortress which saw enemies everywhere?" (p. 166.) What task was she to accomplish, besides remaining chaste?

Armstrong compares the vocations of Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Teresa of Avila. Both women faced similar externally enforced restrictions on their lives. Margaret Mary accepted those restrictions in faithful submission, feeling them necessary for her soul's discipline. For her, a nun's highest goal was the complete sacrifice of her own self, leading to total compliance with a higher will. And this obviously passed for orthodoxy in many religious orders. With this understanding she embarked on a career of self-inflicted suffering, for which she later received official approval as a saint.

Teresa of Avila, on the other hand, viewed such pious self-hatred as a mental illness. In Teresa we find a pre-modern nun who chafed at her bonds of enclosure. Though she stood for a strict religious discipline, she also felt that this involved a life of travel, teaching, and controversy. For, Teresa the requirements of self-denial and social isolation did less to protect her chastity, than to protect the world from her own loving hands.

Between these different views, Armstrong shows the gradual trend of religious women toward Teresa of Avila's attitude. Within a century after Teresa's death, religious women all over Europe were breaking out of their cloisters to serve, heal, and teach, in vocations beyond chastity that changed the world. Even long before that, Armstrong traces a shift among religious women, from a goal of world- and self-denial, to one of using the nunneries as pro-female communities, to support an exploration of women's' highest potential. In Hidegard of Bingen's Benedictine convent, the nuns put aside the traditional self-effacing garments of symbolic poverty. Hildegard urged her nuns to dress in beautiful robes, wear sparkling jewels, and treat each other as divine beings, like goddesses. Why, Armstrong asks, can this still strike us as totally unreligious? For Hildegard it was the deepest piety, and greatest love for the other as the self.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree with every little thing she says, but I love her and want to talk about stuff like this all the time.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply fascinating to me, as a woman who grew up in a very patriarchal Protestant community. I appreciated Armstrong's explanations, particularly in the first chapters, identifying the Christian anathema toward women as not originating from Jesus or St. Paul, but from early church leaders, steeped in cultural misogyny. The book wanders a lot toward the end, however, and I think Armstrong could have benefited from a more callous editor.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

1986
A necessary book but rambling. Probably Armstrong had not yet been much exposed to feminist theory at this early date. But it is important for all of us to know just how very much hatred of women is expressed all through the centuries by respected and well-known church leaders and theologians [both Catholic and Protestant].

Her main point is that the church, and entire Western Christian society, from the 2nd century became very misogynistic and that resulted in a war between the sexes that has caused a great deal of ongoing pain and suffering and division and is still so today. Certain very early and influential theologians abhorred [i.e. feared] sex and blamed women for this evil, and this went on and on, and still today we fear sex and are obsessed by it and see it as evil and therefore see women as evil and as enemies. And so on. It certainly is true that the US in particular, today, has this obsession and fear of sex, and that it messes up a lot.

I read maybe half the book some years ago; now have read the whole thing [again].

Fascinating to ponder the Three Faces of Eve -- virgin, martyr, mystic [and witch is a fourth one] -- and how you can view all of these as Power, which explains why men [male elite] feared them. Virgin, Martyr and Mystic were the only ways open to females in Catholic societies to gain respect and to be in any way in the [exclusively male] circles of power. Not only in the church hierarchy, but in any aspect of society whatsoever. Armstrong argues that nearly all of the *many* female saints earned their place through one or all of these three roles; intolerable suffering which nevertheless they endured and often did not feel at all; seeing visions, hearing voices from God directly; being 'pure' because of asexual nature or commitment, abstention from men and sex.

Yet there WERE these options, restricted as they might be, and some women did opt for them, and a few did actually gain a position of some influence. Then Protestantism happened, and Protestantism did away with ALL the saints and all these ways women had a chance at a position of respect and influence. It was Protestantism, she argues, that made marriage into an institution that imprisoned women, calling it their sacred duty to stay in their homes and concern themselves exclusively with caring for their husbands and children. And brainwashing females into thinking they were lesser, they were incapable of truly understanding God's word and so on. [Catholic girls at least had some role models of respected female saints. Protestant girls had no role models at all, outside of submissive servant to her husband, marriage being her sole and final calling.]

Armstrong suggests that Muslim and Mediterranean societies always emphasized [extended] family and clan, within which women always had and have a certain influence. The Protestant North [of Europe] did away with this, and reduced society to nuclear families in which the husband must be the boss and woman only the helpmate and servant.

Armstrong gives a page or two about a dozen or two female saints, showing how each has the characteristics of Virgin, Martyr, and Mystic [often experiencing ecstasy -- feeling no pain, surviving on water only, etc.]. It is all a bit too complicated for my brain, but she does seem to have quite a well-thought-out argument here. As I did not grow up Catholic, I have not known anything at all really about all these saints and the associated legends and the emphasis on suffering and pain as virtuous.

Where Armstrong goes too far in her musings is in her comments on modern-day women. She clearly [at least at this early date] does not have a deep understanding of feminist thought; she must not have had a friend well versed in feminism, so she utters some ridiculous commonplaces about feminist women feeling a need to HATE men, which then causes men to hate women, in a vicious circle.

She draws some brief and interesting conclusions from some novels written by women past and present: p 306 Anita Brookner, Doris Lessing, Marilyn French, drawing on Elaine Showalter's book [which I assume is excellent] though possibly not fully understanding Showalter. "IN women's fiction, then, the picture is a depressing one. The only way a woman is seen to achieve autonomy and self-respect is by withdrawing totally from men into a lonely isolation." 307

There's an endless lot to ponder in this book!

[BJ Richardson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Karen Armstrong at her most bitter and vitriolic. Normally, she has an abundance of great history tainted by a commentary that has a bit too much negative bite. In the Gospel According to Woman, there is little solid history but a hyperabundance of ultra radical feminist ranting.

Armstrong's premise is that the Church has been a hotbed of mysogonists and that every aspect of bigotry against women today has its roots in church history. To defend her point she cherry picks an abundance of source material, often without any, or adequate context, throughout time. While her research is thorough, her case is incredibly weak. Does anyone seriously think when we use words coming out of the witch hunts like "allure" and "charming" that we are "channeling" a deep seated hatred for the female species? Her own very clear bias gets in her way and it can easily be said that the Gospel According to Woman says much more about Armstrong's own "neurosis" (to use her favorite word) than it does about church history.

Yes, the Church past has a lot of mistakes to apologize for. No, the Church present has not arrived on this issue. But any open minded comparison between the treatment of women in the Christian/post-Christian west compared to Africa, the Muslim Middle East, the Hindi/Buddhist South Asia, and the Tao/Confucian/Zen Southeast makes it abundantly clear that the thread of history for women in the West has been by far the best road they have traveled. The Church, rather than being an enemy, is the greatest ally women have in a push for true equality. I'm sorry, Karen Armstrong, usually I love your work, but this book cover to cover is just one huge pile of bovine feces.

[Ann Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had read this when it first came out, I'd have rated it much higher. By the time I finally got around to reading it...this year...it reads like "old news." I love some of Armstrong's other books, and she is informative and easy-to-read in this book; it is an important addition to feminist cultural/religious thinking--for its time.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read on how Christianity has affected the relationship between the sexes in Western society throughout history. This book is heavily dated in the references to current literature and TV shows (Dallas and Jackie Collins anyone?), but there are parts which are still relevant today. An updated version might be even more on the money.

[Marty · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book.....if you want to see where all the discrimination against women comes from in the christian tradition, this is the book to read. Really thought-provoking....and most interesting. A must for women.....but it might be interesting for men to see where this all comes from.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

found it quite contradictory and biassed at times. found it useful as a reference book. a bti to heavy to sit and read.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was 17, and and reread it a dozen times over the years. Very thought provoking!

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting insights. However, I think Armstrong relies too heavily on Freudian analysis in making her case. I'm not sorry I read it, but it only gets three stars.

[Alexandra Geneve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was a catalyst for a life-time of atheistic and philosophical thought.

[Reinier Markus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really inspiring and a story which could be told shorter

[Wael Hamza]

Wish to read, as she has a self experience full of passion

[Lily]

Interesting. My first introduction to Christian feminism.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having enjoyed many of Armstrong’s books on religion I was intrigued to see what she had to say on the thorny relationship between women and Christianity. I was not disappointed. She takes the reader through a thorough analysis of the fundamental bone that Christians have had with women (their perceived sexual natures) as well as the different roles that women have taken to deal with this suspicion (that of virgins, martyrs, mystics and wives). She addresses each aspect in sufficient detail and with enough historical case studies as to convince the reader of her argument while also giving them copious amounts of material for further reading. She also manages to address what she sees as the shortcomings of the feminist attitude towards Christianity and to seek to use the historical cases of Teresa of Avila and other towering women of the Christian past to suggest a way forward for women in Christianity.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Armstrong is so enlightening about how Christianity, with its emphasis on women as servants to men, has affected women's status throughout Christian nations and cultures. This emphasis reaches into sexuality, blaming women (all Eves) for tempting men, to such an extent that men have been encouraged to see women as interfering with their spiritual aspirations, and women's sexuality as a threat to their manly virtue. The emphasis on serving and submitting to males also explains why Christian women who have accepted this view can be among the most negative toward other women, the most oppressive and enabling of oppression. Americans tend to point at Islamic oppression of women, but let's look to our own culture before condemning others'.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really illuminating study of the history of women in Christianity. It may be slightly biased due to the author's personal experience. However, the burden of proof is definitely on those who claim that Christianity has mostly been good for women (to say the least). Even considering some of the ways in which Christianity may have empowered women, especially in the early years, it seems pretty clear that the net impact of Christianity on women has been negative. It is overwhelmingly clear that the Christian religion has had a terrible effect on views on sex in the West, an effect from which we are still suffering from today. Yes, Armstrong does write somewhat angrily in this book, but she really does have reason to be angry; other Christians who are concerned with the rights and status of women should also be upset and seeking ways in which to remedy injustice. One really interesting point that the author raised was that men in Islamic cultures locked their women up in the house because of how much they valued them, whereas Christian men locked their women up because of their fear and hatred of them and of their sexuality. While the former is clearly awful, it pales in comparison to the Christian attitude towards women. Of course, this is likely somewhat of a generalization, but it is absolutely true that the Christian attitude towards sex and women has been extremely unhealthy and often cruel. As a religion, Christianity must comes to terms with this (and many other issues as well) to survive.

[Shirley Fessel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Armstrong makes her points about what omitting women from scripture without extremes or judgement. I felt she stopped shorter in some effects than she might have based on some other prominent works on women and religion.

[Monica Bond-Lamberty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Karen Armstrong's work and this was no exception.
It portrays the steps that were taken by the Church to leave women in an unenviable position.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this read despite it being about 40 years old. So much tracks with current times in America. Rec.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been kicking around for many years, but I found it still very timely. Karen Armstrong shows the long history of sexual neurosis inherited from the early Christian fathers, who decided that it was better to be a virgin, and that women, tainted by Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden, and lascivious by nature, should essentially become more like males. The misogyny of the early church valorized virginity and actually discouraged marriage, or sexual relations within marriage. For spiritual nuns, however, it did provide some influence, such as was the case with St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Theresa of Avila. The Reformation, however, did not improve women's social status, as both Luther and Calvin carried over Augustinian prejudices about original sin. Protestant beliefs put sacerdotal authority in the hands of husbands, to whom wives were expected to submit fully. She makes the point that romantic love, as understood today, wasn't considered part of the marital relationship until more modern times. Marriage was more of a practical partnership, and a nostrum for regimenting the intrinsic depravity of human beings. The Victorian ideal of the virginal and delicate wife, who was expected to be sexually repressed, has compounded our neurotic perceptions of intimacy to this day. A very absorbing read.