Women and Christianity

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 25

Women and Christianity

The Gospel according to Woman. By Karon Armstrong. Pan Books, 1987. 323 pp. $12.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Colin Brown)

The sub-title of this book — "Christianity’s Creation of the Sex War in the West” — is less misleading than the title as an indication of its contents. It is not, however, a rabidly anti-Christian tract by a wild-eyed feminist. Certainly it is critical of much in Christianity and in male attitudes, but It is well and widely informed and — in these inflationary days — quite good value for money. Karen Armstrong, while a Roman Catholic nun, was sent by her religious order to study English language and literature at Oxford. There she left the order, completed her degree and has since taught at tertiary and secondary levels, and is now a free-lance writer who has done some work for television programmes on religious topics. She comes across as a modern incarnation of the type of woman she makes much of — shaped but not stifled by the Christian tradition. Much of the work is taken up with a historical survey which ranges from S. Paul to Marilyn French, and from Dante to "Dallas.” The author argues that, deeply engrained in Christianity, although derived more from extrabiblical than biblical sources, is men’s disquieting distrust of women and of sexuality in general. This distrust was given expression to in the figure of Eve, the seductive temptress, and, with even more tragic consequences, in woman as witch. Women have not, however, been passive victims of the Christian tradition and in the roles of virgin, martyr, and mystic (sometimes all three), they have, at least in some instances, anticipated the independence of their more modern sisters and created "a room of their own."

These views are not entirely novel

or original, but Karen Armstrong popularises such notions effectively and makes especially good use of her knowledge of English literature to suggest parallels and survivals. Despite some weaknesses the earlier chapters seem to me the best in the book. That on witches is not, however, informed by some recent work on the subject: the name of Christina Lamer is curiously absent from an extensive bibiography. This is important because, in "Enemies of God” (1981) and “Witchcraft and Religion" (1984) Lamer carefully qualifies the view that women-hunting and witch-hunting were virtually identical, which Armstrong fails to do. The chapter on mysticism employs the term too widely and, in discussing the origins of mystical experience, lacks real philosophical sophistication; while an over-crowded chapter deals with “The Protestant Solution: Wife and Mother.” Throughout, the critical reader will need to weigh parallels and historical connections with care: sometimes both are too loose to be altogether convincing. The book does not quite fulfil the promise of its title. Throughout the author has so stressed the deeply embedded "sexual neurosis” of Western Christianity that it comes as almost a surprise to be told, as the book draws to its close, that Christianity can offer women redemptive possibilities. What this amounts to Karen Armstrong does not really spell out, beyond referring to earlier chapters in which she has shown that, as virgins, martyrs, and mystics, some women have found that “it is possible to use the Christian myth creatively to obtain a new and healthy freedom.” If the conclusion had treated this matter more fully the book might have fulfilled the promise of its title as effectively as it fulfils that of its subtitle.