Preacher: When Women are Raped, It's Their Own Fault


When women are pregnant, it is their fault. They must give birth as punishment. When a woman is raped, let's check out what she was wearing or how she acted. If a woman did not scream when she was raped, she was not raped (re Donald Trump in a department store women's changing area).

I'm sure a large majority of self-identified Christians would criticize a preacher who says women are the cause of rape. But, across much of Christianity there is a cloud over women. With Catholics, women are "blessed" with the power to give births. Only men were blessed with the ability to be priests. Men in Conservative Protestant denominations make up other reasons why they do not allow women to be preachers. I heard a preacher in a conservative branch of Lutheranism explain that "Men came first, Adam. God meant for them to remain first." 

The sad result of "freedom of religion" is that there are winners and losers in the aftermath. In a large share of Christianity men are the winners and women the losers. A preacher in the link back tracked and apologized for saying he would vote to acquit a man who raped a woman wearing shorts. He should do some self-reflection on why he said it in the first place and where such cruel thinking entered his circle of family and friends and came to take over his mind. Catholics and conservative Protestants should do the same. 

Catholics and conservative Protestants should re read the Bible and come to understand why they treat women as lessors. Does their explanation come from the favorite phrase in all of Christianity, "What this means is....." Surely everyone agrees slavery and later segregation and the prejudice against black people and against mixed marriages came from Christianity. I know there is always available another favorite phrase, "They were (are) wrong. Genuine Christians do not believe this." Or, "It's clear the Bible is telling us something different than that."

It's time for Christians who claim to support equal opportunity for all genders to demand their own church modernize its thinking or leave. The old saw of, "Well, our tradition sees women and men as different so we divide up the jobs by gender" needs to be buried in the sands of time.

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