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Thinking about the future inevitable puts you in position to think about what value your research offers the world. What does it matter whether or not a couple of 12th C medieval nuns wrote about saints the way they did? I’ll tell you why it matters. A thread 1/
In the last 30yrs we’ve been facing an unparalleled push from the religious rt in N.A. to allow fundamentalists to act as an arbiter of moral values in our society. This has become a push against democratic principles & against open/pluralistic societies as we understand them. 2
We’re facing a creeping evolution of populism on a level last seen in Europe prior to WWII. Except now this is happening on a world wide level and is changing the way we are interacting with our own social values and the discourses around them. 3/
Religion in the world matters to billions of ppl in countries in the North & South. It affects us on a regular basis even if we’re not adherents ourselves. But with religious moralism being played out in the public political forum it now bombards us regularly on a daily basis 4
At 2.3 bil or 31.2% of the world, Christianity is the dominant religious tradition in the world and growing. This dominance in our social, pol & psychological worlds will inevitably affect the way we see ourselves, our political engagement and each other. 5/
Half of those 2.3 bil christians are women, a great majority of whom whether liberal or conservative in upbringing are taught to understand their femininity and womanhood from an entirely patriarchal point of view. 6/
Some ppl believe that you can’t be a religious person without abiding by the full patriarchal interpretations of gender or sexuality and what it means to be a person as a woman in the world. And that you either are a complete adherent of these ideas or you are not 7/
But, the reality of women in Christianity (like women in all religious traditions) is much, much more complicated. And, like any other religious tradition women engage with their spiritual world in a way that is often of their own making. 8/
The social history of women in 2000 years of Christianity is sometimes difficult to determine because so many examples of women’s lived experiences in late antiquity and the early medieval period are limited, sometimes forgotten and very often ignored. 9/
Historians have access to a number of early texts, incl biblical ones, that were if not entirely written about women then at least partially focused on their contributions to the ancient world. The majority of these works, however, are believed to have been written by men. 10/
Even those like Perpetua and Thecla who are directly quoted in their accounts & are said to have kept journals or letters show very little evidence of being historical figures let alone evidenced writers giving us insights into their own thoughts and ideas about their worlds 11/
That means nearly all our understanding of women in Xtn thought that continues to inform the way we understand women today is in largely misogynistic terms, and produced by clerics who were mostly trying to control them or diminish their influence in early communities. 12/
But, in the 4th/5th C across Europe, Xtn teaching spread & women of standing in society were converted. These were wealthy and powerful women, queens and mothers of kings who held sway with powerful men and who would eventually convert entire tribes, citadels or kingdoms. 13/
These women were celebrated as social & political influencers & elevated to the semi-divine status of saints. By the 5th c Augustine is said to have written that old Xtn women were better learned in religious discourses than philosophers. Women were influential ppl. 14/
But, it wasn’t until the 8th/9th & 10th C that we begin to see consistent contributions from women. Many of these were the same kind of women who came from high levels of social/ political standing, but who now were dedicating themselves to religious life on a permanent basis 15/
Nuns, esp abbesses held important roles as the mothers, widows, sisters and daughters of powerful families but also as arbiters of religious power. In the 11th & 12th c they took that power into religious communities & either wrote or directed women to write on their behalf. 16
We see the composition of letters, histories, theol treatises, prayers, liturgy, plays, and yes, we see accounts of saints lives/martyrdoms. Vitae are especially prominent bc they provide a particularly creative outlet and a source of religious authority to women in a new form 17
It’s a form of lit that allowed women to reinterpret powerful religious symbols from their political contexts w new meanings & to argue political positions from the safety of their veils that might not otherwise have been acceptable to powerful overlords or violent rulers. 18
They used them to indicate gendered social values that are pro-women. They valued women’s direct connections to divinity, a relationship that offered them authority in a world where they’d have been told they inherently had none as members of the weaker sex. 19
They argue for religious women to have independent leadership roles. They highlight female political influence. They acknowledge women in positions of power, & define religious women as inherently powerful esp when independent or separate from men. 20/
But, perhaps even more importantly, they deign to chastise kings, and shape religious narratives to provide a guide of behaviour for those governing or in training to govern entire realms through justice toward the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, and the oppressed. 21/
These texts are records of women’s political outlets & outlooks at a time when we’re told that women had none. They are records of their voices & their roles in an oppressive Christian society as beacons of awareness for women’s experiences under patriarchal systems of power. 22
They’re records of how women have expressed themselves politically through and with religion in times of political upheaval and regime changes. But, perhaps more importantly for us, they’re an argument against the monolithic populism of fundamentalists today. 23
Christianity has never been a political or cultural monolith. The concepts of pluralism, of protest/resistance against oppressive or unjust rule, ideas of science and philosophy have all been a part of the tradition at various points. 24/
The value in researching these women’s worlds, their work, their ideas and the images they created and re-created from old ones show that the ideas in Christian thought are made and re-made according to the era and the need of their time 25/
They have never stayed static & they never will, but ultimately they’re a search for justness/humanity within the familiarity of tradition, faith & narrative. Like any other tool, it can be used for the good of others or for destructive purposes. 26/
Don’t believe anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. The history won’t support it. fin/
