"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" That was the exasperated question posed by Professor Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady." These days, many male theologians looking over their shoulders at women encroaching ever closer to their male-dominated enclaves probably feel a similar frustration, but as most of you know, it wasn't always like this. I am now going to try to compress 11,000 years, more or less, into 20 minutes. Expect simplification.

Eons ago, most of the early civilizations exalted Woman, yea verily worshipped Woman. Their lifestyles were based on the earth and its cycle of seeding, blooming, harvest, and dormancy, or to put it another way, birth, growth, fading, and death, mirrored by the seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and the constant waxing and waning of the moon. The spirit of the natural world was acknowledged to be female, then as now. Woman's bodily cycle paralleled that of the moon and made Her, supposedly, more sensitive to the subtle changes in the world around Her. Besides, whoever heard of Father Nature?

The myths of these various ancient civilizations often shared similar components. The Earth Mother-Goddess figure generally ruled over both the terra firma world of the living and the subterranean world of the dead as well. She traveled easily among the flowers and trees and among the roots and detritus underground. Early Man accepted the fact that Life and Death are parts of each other; both were embraced by the Mother-Goddess. In fact, many of the primitive drawings of the Goddess showed her with symbols of both life and death.

Another ancient symbol that we see repeatedly in the myths of various civilizations as long ago as 7000 years before the writing of Genesis is the Serpent. The Serpent was frequently the consort of the Earth Goddess. I won't go further into that area. The wonderful ability of the serpent to slough its skin and seemingly renew its youth earned for it the reputation of representing the Mystery of Rebirth or, in other words, immortality. This skin-sloughing-immortality con is also why many ancient drawings depict the snake entwined around the Tree of Life or sometimes the Tree of Knowledge. [That, actually, is the origin of the caduceus, by the way. Did anybody relate that to Loren Crow?]

Next, come some more facts that you probably already know: With the coming of the Bronze Age and the manufacture of weapons and such, more and more tribes attacked each other, ignoring the gentle ways of the goddess-worshipping, agrarian types and frequently bringing with them male-dominated religions filled with powerful, angry gods. Quite often, the mythology imitated life. Stories were told of horrible wars between a goddess figure and the upstart gods. Sometimes, as in the case of Gaia and the Titans with which you may be familiar, the goddess was the mother of the adversary. In some stories, she would mate with a demon and create an army of despicable, foul-smelling types who would fight with her. Not a pretty picture. This was also a common mythological pattern. When a goddess figure defied the gods, she was demonized until few could remember the fecund Mother Nature image they had worshipped so passionately.

We now fast-forward to Genesis. On your program you see two Biblical quotes. The first says that God created Adam and Eve together. The next says he created Adam first, then did the rib-thing. What's up with that?

The first is said to be sort of a wink and a nod to an early Hebrew story that states that Adam's first wife was Lilith. They were created together. But Lilith was no Eve. She felt that since she and Adam had been created out of the same dust at the same time that they were equal. Adam, being a man, believed that he should be the dominant one. Eventually, they separated. The story goes that Lilith lay with demons (where have we heard that?) and spawned all the evils of the world. See, we get blamed for everything. Adam went whining to God who then created Eve, a more compliant mate. Another variation of this story is that Lilith's consort was the snake and that it was she who was responsible for the Fall from Grace. The Serpent, formerly in high esteem as symbolizing the Mystery of Immortality by the goddess-worshippers was then demonized by the patriarchal God who condemned it to be the enemy of Man forever.

Another interpretation of the first Genesis version is that as we know, Adam was created to perfection. He was created in the perfect image of God or in Hebrew, "Elohim." Of course, God is not seen as being either male or female, but as both at once. Even the name Elohim is a feminine word (Eloah means goddess) with a masculine plural suffix. Thus, if God is male and female, the mother and the father, then Adam (which translates as "Mankind") must also have originally been male and female in one. To be otherwise would have been to be unbalanced, and thus imperfect. The trans-gender folks should be happy to know that. Then we add the Genesis II passage that is interpreted to mean that God then separated Adam into his two halves just as he did the light and the darkness. The woman part was separated, making Adam an unbalanced creature-a human. Eve translates to mean "Life." Mankind was given Life. Only when a man and a woman are joined, are they whole.

Among the many cults of goddess-worshippers today, are some that worship Lilith as a symbol of independence, sexual freedom, and mischief, which reminds me of one additional historical trend: every time a patriarchal religion took over a goddess-based religion, two things happened. One was that small, underground groups continued worshipping the goddess. For example, there were some worshippers of Isis long after Christianity had gained a foothold in that part of the world. The other is that some vestige of the goddess worship was usually included in the new religion, like a courtesy gesture. That may explain why today we have conservatively 100,000 pagans, a strong Wiccan movement, and countless goddess-worshipping cults I found on the internet, some of which are too bizarre to discuss even with Unitarians. That may also explain why Catholics revere Mary, have icons in her honor, and pray to her for intercession in spite of the fact that she is considered even by Catholics to have allowed herself to be impregnated somehow by her father and her son.

Women have not fared well under Judaism nor Christianity. In the Bible, the penalty for adultery was death for both the woman and her lover, because of their insult to the husband and defilement of his property. The notion of adultery by men, however, was not frowned upon, especially when the man was a king. Refer to David and Bathsheba).

Another example, this by a writer almost no feminist ever quotes-Saint Paul wrote, "A man shouldn't cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man was not born of the woman; but the woman born of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:3-8). See what we have to put up with?

Paul also wrote, "Women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they want to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." Makes you want to say something, doesn't it?

Here's a bit of trivia you may not know: Compare the vows taken by Catholic nuns and priests. They're different. Nuns take vows of chastity; priests take vows of celibacy. You may think those words mean the same thing, but they don't. Chastity means the nuns will not have sex; celibacy means the priests will not marry. Catholics say that women can't be priests because there were no women among Jesus' disciples. If we want to get picky about it, we could say there were no Polish guys among Jesus' disciples, either. We could even take it one step further. There weren't any Christians among his disciples. All this time, maybe we should have been having Jewish popes. Think about it.

Gender bias isn't just the domain of the Catholics, nor the Jews. Its waters surge through every fundamentalist religion on the planet. They are all patriarchal. They are all somewhat disdainful of women. In Islam there are many passages of scripture to support the notion that an autonomous woman is seen as a threat to both religion and society, and a blasphemy against Allah.

Even the Buddha fought against allowing women into the religion. When he was finally persuaded to allow orders of nuns to begin, he made it clear that the most senior nun would always be inferior to the most junior monk.

Thousands of women over the years have been burned at the stake or drowned or stoned or set on fire for supposedly going against the prevailing male-dominated religious beliefs in some way. Not in repressive Afghanistan, but even in the "free and enlightened Christian" world.

The irony is that all the great spiritual leaders have taught what are essentially female values:

Confucius taught that social harmony comes through learning the art of living graciously and generously with others. Lao Tzu said The Way was one of an interlocking balance of the masculine and feminine forces of the universe. The Buddha taught people to trust life and relax into it. Jesus taught us to love each other.

According to several comprehensive studies that examined behavioral and language patterns from males and females ranging in age from 3 to over 80, females are driven by the need for connection, intimacy, and harmony. Males are driven by the need for independence and control. Neither is necessarily better than the other-just different.

It's clear that a woman can't be more like a man because most women see both life and religion very differently than most men do. As women have been entering the ministry and other segments of the workplace over the last 40 years, they have brought a very different approach to their jobs. Men tend to see things logically or functionally, where women tend to see them organically and in relationship.

Thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of women seeking a spiritual home have found it in the study of ancient nature-based religions where the giver of life was not an Angry God, but Mother Earth. I have been to only two Wiccan services. They acknowledged the four directions, cast a circle of flower petals to mark the sacred space. They noticed and rejoiced in the rhythms of the seasons. The equinoxes and the solstices were celebrated. While I watched, I knew I was at a worship service that came from a very different kind of consciousness than I'd experienced before, an older-than-dirt kind of feeling. It came from a spiritual awareness far more sensitive to nature and our place in it, to the rhythms of nature and the corresponding rhythms of our own lives and to the never-ending cycles of birth and death of which we are all part.

As science and scholarship make traditional religious beliefs less valid, it somehow feels good to participate in ancient rituals that celebrate things we know, without doubt are true: the wonder of our world and of life.

Last winter, First Church in Austin held a Wiccan-led winter solstice celebration that was attended by some 150 people. Among them were some very old women dressed up with lights in their hair, with evergreens dangling from them. Strange as it may sound here and now, it didn't seem silly. It all seemed exactly right.

SOURCES: A sermon written by Davidson Loehr at the First UU Church of Austin, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen, and bits and pieces from the internet and my checkered past.

Kathy Lansford
5/6/01