The Gospel According to Woman - Softcover

Karen Armstrong

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006279538 ISBN 13: 9780006279532

Publisher: Fount, 1996

Synopsis

A history of women in Christianity, which reveals how women have been forced to accept cerain prescribed stereotypical roles, as virgins, martyrs, witches, wives and mothers, and which provides suggestions for ways in which women can make use of their modern improved position to amend aspects of these narrow images. First published in 1991.

About this title

From the Publisher

"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

From Publishers Weekly

One of the controversial theories of this ambitious study is that marriage and the family in the Christian West have not been accorded the value and respect they have enjoyed in other cultures. London-based feminist Armstrong traces this attitude back to Jesus and Paul. Her thesis is that Christianity's traditional hatred of women and of the body still cripples woman's self-image today. Protestantism, taking over from the Catholic Church, became the most efficient agent in controlling female sexuality. Men's fear and mistrust of the fair sex is traced from the medieval witch craze (a "giant collective fantasy") to sex-denying Victorian England. Certain specialized roles were available to Christian womenvirgin, martyr, mystic, motherbut each of these, the author argues, forced women to emulate male-created ideals of behavior.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fount
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0006279538
• ISBN 13: 9780006279532
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 310