Christianity, misogyny and women

Abstract

Misogynistic tendencies are not strange to society, rather, these attitudes pervade various strata of our existence. They are vocally audible and visibly present within the political, economic, social, cultural and religious spheres of our societies. Misogyny is an extreme hatred against women by men and women. The purview of this paper is to explore misogyny in Christianity, analyze the origin and extent of misogyny within Christianity and how it has affected the position of women within the church. The work adopted the historical and survey methods of data collection and it utilized the qualitative method to analyze the collected data. This paper discovered that misogyny was deeply rooted in Christianity in the period of the early church fathers and it negatively affected the placement of leaders in ecclesiastical positions, especially those assigned to women in the Church. The paper argues that misogyny also has negative implications for Christian ethics which focuses on love and affection. This paper recommended amongst other things that churches and related organizations must shun Misogynistic attitudes and related vices against women since it negates the teachings of Christianity which primarily are based on love.

Keywords: Misogyny, Christianity, Church fathers, Ecclesiastical, Christian Ethics, Women, Horizontal love, Vertical love