Gender segregated ministries: Good or bad?

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

I appreciate those views, but even if they were correct (and I don't entirely agree) surely the issue is about what these mass fundamentalist movements think about gender, no matter how some individuals interpret the Bible today.
I doubt those arguments will convince them.

The gender disparity already begins in Genesis, and according to Genesis chapter 2, God made man as his companion, and Eve was simply another concession to His creation, and as is repeated in Timothy, it was Eve who was to blame for the fall, and not Adam.
Adam merely has to work and sweat, while Eve must have their children screaming in pain (and women are only given painkillers in labor today due to Queen Victoria - that was once seen as total blasphemy).

What follows is a narrative of patriarchy, with an odd female hero, but ultimately a lot of commanded trading of females, mass rapes, and some astoundingly misogynistic metaphors.

For sure, the male bloodline was very important, which is probably why female virginity is more crucial than male virginity. Illegitimate children were classed by the father, and no "bastard" could be a member of the congregation. Only the male's contribution to reproduction was seen as relevant (a complete reversal of biological fact, where male sperm is almost inconsequential compared to the role of the female body), and even male genitalia becomes sacrosanct - in the OT a woman who grabs a man's testes in a fight between men must have her arm cut off, and a male with crushed testes is an outcast.

Firstly having a male God and His son (Himself) as central figures is very patriarchal, and women in that system should probably be grateful for whatever concessions they receive, and questioning specific verses will do as little good as the Gay Christian Movement questioning homophobia for fundamentalists.
Of course misogyny and homophobia are closely connected, and in a system of patriarchy no man should "lower" his fellow man to a position of a woman.

If it was really gender equality then why could men have many wives, but women could never have several husbands?

Even in the NT divorced women who remarry commit adultery, and cause the man to commit adultery too, but it says nothing on the remarriage of men.

I simply don't see how this was the fault of the pagans.

Agora: A very sanitized and romantically stylized death of the female philosopher Hypatia.

We read that the Christian zealots actually skinned her with shells and removed the flesh.

What would Jesus have done?
We simply don't know from the current scriptures either way.
She certainly wasn't the sort of woman to accept a pat on the bottom and shut up for the rest of her life.
Perhaps it was the turning point in the new cult that would signal the mutual burning and finger-pointing to come.