Could you embrace equality for all?
Alfred Brittain writes in “Women of Early Christianity” about the inferior position of women in the first Century. He says “A common prayer was: "O God, let not my offspring be a girl: for very wretched is the life of women." It was said: "Happy he whose children are boys, and woe unto him whose children are girls." Public conversation between the sexes was interdicted by the rabbis. "No one", says the Talmud, "is to speak with a woman, even if she be his wife, in the public street." A close friend once said to me ‘I am following Jesus but at a distance’. She explained that while growing up, she had internalised the message from the Bible that God was only interested in men. How sad to have this perception of Jesus who loved and valued women differently to what culture dictated and to whom women responded with love and gratitude. Women like Joanna gave up the comfort of being the wife of Herod’s business manager in order to travel on th