And God Created Woman (no, not the movie)
I just finished a book by Laurie King called "A Monstrous Regiment of Women.” The title is from a quote by John Knox from the 16th Century, against Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart, and the word regiment is used in the sense of regime.
The story takes place in London of 1920, when many women, active during the war, and now facing a shortage of men, are mobilized in the suffragist movement and wherever their talents and, yes, wealth and breeding, can be used for the common good.
The heroine telling the story is Mary Russel, a scholar in Oxford who specializes in theology with a deep knowledge and understanding of bible studies. Also a friend and assistant to the now retired Sherlock Holmes..
Each chapter is preceded by a quote by scholars, writers and philosophers about the uselessness of women. And then there is quote from Corinthians stating “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church."
This, apparently sent one woman, a very charismatic one, to open her own church, and to mobilize many of the 1920 post-war women in London to establish agencies to help women and children, to offer refuge, medical attention, teaching, and, yes, birth control which was then illegal.
We are then introduced to a sermon by this charismatic woman who expressed her anger for being told not to speak in church. Why was he - the preacher - "afraid of me?"
She then repeated the story of the creation of woman in the book of Genesis.
In the first chapter, she said, we see god as a potter, working with clay and shaping a human being. A male and a female he created. Never said whether man was better than woman.
In the next chapter, god is the sculptor. God realized creation was incomplete, so he divided his human creature up and created Eve. With Eve she said, creation became complete. Adam was the first human, but Eve was the crown of god’s creation.
This is probably a common interpretation but for me - new and interesting.
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