From the Rib of Adam To This Day ……

Propaganda is so well mastered by the Christian missionaries when it comes to making supremacist claims by branding Hindus as oppressive and spreading the false narrative of the inferior status of women in Hinduism. This article is not to be apologetic to put forth defensive arguments for we all know the exalted status of women in Hinduism. This article is to question the locus standi of the Christian missionaries to query the status of Hindu women when their own track record is so abysmally poor and their religious history is replete with instances of women being placed at a lower level than men. 

The inferior position of women in the Christian religion starts with the Genesis and continues to the 21st century!  In March 2026, Dame Sarah Mullally was enthroned as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, across 106 countries including India. It is the first time this happened in the 491 year history of the Church of England. But Gafcon, a movement of Conservative Global Anglicans, did not accept Mullally as the Archbishop when the proposal was mooted as it is opposed to the ordination of women to holy orders. Laurent Mbanda, Chairman of the Gafcon Primates Council said that the majority of the Anglican Communion still believed that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy (Ref. news in Times of India of 4.10.2025).

Needless to say, the elevation of Mullally was prompted by the resignation of her predecessor Justin Welby over his handling of a child sex abuse scandal. In her first address in the Canterbury Cathedral in 2025 as the Archbishop-Designate, she condemned the sexual abuse scandals and safeguard issues that plague the Christian Church. In June 2026, Mullally, as the Archbishop, also apologised for the role of the Church of England in forcibly separating 185,000 children from their unmarried mothers after World War II and putting them up for adoption, after shaming and coercing the unwed mothers to give up their babies against their will! This scheme was similar to the one followed in Ireland by the Catholic Church (Ref. Times of India of 19.06.2026). 

Was this ill-treatment of women by the Christian Church an aberration? No. Ask any Evangelist about the status of women from the time of Genesis as recorded in the Bible, the various pronouncements in their Holy Book and the disgusting record thereafter; the Evangelist will cringe in discomfort as he gets stripped of the moral high ground he stands on. He cannot condemn their history because it is condemning their Holy Book itself and he cannot defend their history because it will be intellectual dishonesty as people are no more ignorant of the bloodied Christian history.

The degradation of women as inferior to men in Christianity starts with the Genesis which states that the first woman was created by the Lord God by taking a rib out of the first man   (Genesis 2:21 and 22) to be his helper (Gen. 2:18) whereas the first man was created in His (God’s) own image (Gen. 1:27). When the first woman ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge upon the advice of the evil serpent and also shared it with the first man, the Lord God was greatly annoyed and cursed the woman “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you!” (Gen. 3:16). And it is believed that this cross is carried by women even now, for a simple offence of the first woman biting the forbidden fruit!

This is only the start of the Holy wrath against women, who are considered to be men’s subordinates and even their properties. A man has the right to sell his daughter off as a servant or a slave (Exodus 21:7-11); he cannot marry a widow or divorcee (Leviticus 21:13); a woman is ‘unclean’ for fourteen days after giving birth to a girl child but only for seven days after birthing a boy (Leviticus 12:2 and 5); the Lord God is even critical about woman’s menstruation, His own creation, as to how unclean they are, how polluting that requires atonement through sacrifice (Leviticus 15: 19-30); sanctioning the killing or marrying of captive women (Numbers 31:17-18 and Deuteronomy 21:11); a woman who cannot prove her virginity at the time of marriage is to be lynched to death (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21); and how a rapist gets approval to marry the victim (Deuteronomy 22: 28-29).  

“Horror and indignation at every page” is how the French Philosopher Voltaire castigates the nauseating degradation of women in the Old Testament. 

The Christian apologists extend a meek argument that the demeaning language found in the Old Testament belonged to a barbaric age and was required to reform a barbaric people. The question in that case is why God considered such barbaric people as the chosen ones? Such condemnation of women, half the population of the human beings, recur in New Testament also. St. Paul, for example, commands that the women should cover their heads when they worship. He justifies that “… man is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (I Corinthians 11:3-9). The covering of head is followed even today in Indian churches.

This spewing of venom against women continues in New Testament further: (in the Church) “women should remain silent … they are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission … it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the Church” (I Corinthians14:34-35). In I Timothy (2:11-14), “a woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived (by the serpent); it was the woman who was deceived and became the sinner”. Saints, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, followed the cue. 

In line with Paul, other writers like Tertullian (2nd Century) wrote: “Each of you women is an Eve … You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law” (Ref. From ‘Why women need freedom from religion’ by Annie Laurie Gaylor @ http://ffrl.org/nontracts/women.php). “… On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die” (Ref. Quoted by Helen Ellerbe in ‘The Dark Side of Christian History’ 1995, p.115). St. Clement wrote “Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman” (Ref. ibid., p. 114). Chrysostom considers woman as ‘a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination and a painted ill” (Ref. Quoted by Matilda Joslyn Gage in ‘Woman, Church and State’ republished by Voice of India, New Delhi, 1997, p. 74).

The story of Hypatia of Alexandria who was violently butchered and burnt with her books for being intelligent and of independent mind is well known. Such barbarity continued in Christian history in different forms for ages. One such fanatic act was the ‘Witch Hunt’ practiced in the Middle Ages. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the rural doctors who practiced magic, charms and herbal extracts as a ‘cure’ for illnesses were associated with the Devil. Believing the Bible proclamation “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), the Church considered any woman practicing magic and herbal cure as associated with Devil and so an enemy of Christ. Such ‘witches’ were feared to fly on broomsticks, take part in Satanic orgies, fornicate with Satan and kill children to prepare magic concoctions. 

Founded in the bias against the women attributed to the Bible, the Church did not target men who practiced witchcraft as much as they indulged in the ‘witch trials’ against women. As brought out by the French historian of the 19th century Michelet in his book ‘The Witch’ (1862), most of the victims were women. The witch hunts spread throughout Europe, legitimised by Pope Gregory XI in 1374, that witchcraft could only be carried out with Satan’s help and constituted a heresy. This was again reiterated by Pope Innocent VIII also. Pope John XXII formalised the persecution of witchcraft by authorising inquisition against sorcery. In 1486, two Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, published ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ (‘The Hammer of Witches’ – Ref. www.malleusmaleficarum.org). This was referred to theologically to justify the existence of witches and witchcraft driven by Satan, and was followed for the next two centuries by the Inquisitors to detect the witches, mostly women, and punish them for heresy. 

Malleus maleficarum pours spite against women: “… the world suffers through the malice of women … For truly, without the wickedness of women … the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers …. The first defect in (women’s) intelligence is that they are more prone to abjure the faith … (Woman) is a liar by nature, so in her speech she stings … She is more bitter than death, … the sin which arose from woman destroys the soul by depriving it of grace, and delivers the body up to the punishment of sin … All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, Which is in women insatiable. For the sake of fulfilling their lusts, they consort even with devils …” The Inquisitors continue: “The heresy of witches is the most heinous of the three degrees of infidelity (i.e., the Pagans, Jews and the heretics). (Ref. Malleus Maleficarum, Part I, question VI and XIV). 

The Church was endowed with powers to arrest and torture the suspects till they confess. Any mole, freckle or wart on the body was enough to condemn someone as having Satan’s mark and therefore a witch. The torture culminated in being burned at the stake in a public auto-da-fe. From Europe, the witch hunt spread to America also. In the Salem witch trials of 1692, 19 ‘witches’ were hanged to death. In Mexico, the Franciscans declared the native beliefs as the work of the Devil and persecuted the local population. Harassment of the ‘witches’ continued even into the 20th Century, all ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (quoting Malleus maleficarum), as the inquisitors believed.

The prejudices against women, sanctioned by religion, continues to the present times. Matilda Joslyn Gage, the author of ‘Woman, Church and State’ has detailed several forms of abuse perpetrated upto the 19th Century, including the most revolting sexual exploitation ordered by the Church authorities and Christian nations. She has this to state: “…I see the Church … everywhere teaching an inferiority of sex; a created subordination of women to man; making her very existence a sin; holding her accountable to a diverse code of morals from man; declaring her possessed of fewer rights in Church and in State; her very entrance into Heaven made dependent upon some man to come as a mediator between her and the Saviour it has preached, thus crushing her personal, intellectual and spiritual freedom” (Ref. Matilda Joslyn Gage in her book,  Woman, Church and State, p. 544).

The case of the ‘Magdalene Laundries’ that shocked the human conscience evidences what Matilda J Gage wrote in her book. In the 19th Century, the Good Shepherd Sisters of Ireland established the ‘Magdalene Asylums’ for prostitutes. The asylums came to accommodate pregnant or abandoned destitute girls, unwed mothers and rape victims and got transformed into prisons to ‘repent’ in the 20th Century. The girls were held as slaves with numbers designating them instead of names and were made to clean homes and wash laundry for long hours, starved, prohibited from speaking to anyone, beaten and sexually abused. At least 30,000 ‘refugees’ were held so in the asylums and buried in unmarked graves after their death. The last of such asylums closed in the year 1996. 

Talking on ‘Gender justice in the Church’ at the Triennial National assembly of the Conference of Religious India (CRI) held at Kochi in Kerala in January 2006, a Sister observed that ‘Power and money are used to control women religious’. Several Superiors spoke about the treatment of nuns in Churches as someone subordinate to the priests and the discrimination they face as the priests play up the patriarchal stereotype (Ref. Union of Catholic Asia News – https://www.ucanews.com – on 1st Feb 2006). So much for the status of the ‘Brides of Christ’ in the Church hierarchy.

An Associated Press investigation on ‘The sexual abuse of nuns from within the Church’ was published in The Hindu on 2nd January 2019. The report speaks about the nuns who have to suffer in silence even when they are sexually exploited by the priests. The nuns who dared to protest were accused of slandering the Church and ‘worshipping the Satan’. The alleged sexual abuse of a nun by Bishop Franco Mulakkal at St. Francis Convent in 2014 made headlines. Repeated complaints to the Church authorities were of no use. The report says that the Vatican is aware of the sexual abuse of nuns by the priests but did little to stop it. It is a fear of being isolated if one speaks up. The nuns live in constant fear and the result is engulfing silence. 

Matters India (Ref. https://www.mattersindia.com – 13th July 2021) states that a survey was commissioned by The Conference of the Religious India, which brought out the challenges faced by the Catholic Women Religious in India by way of verbal abuse, sexual abuse, clericalism, low wages, sacramental blackmail and property disputes. The study report was later published as a book written by a team led by Sister Hazel D’Lima in June 2021 titled: ‘It’s High time: Women Religious Speak Up on Gender Justice in the Indian Church’. The subordinate treatment and harassment faced by nuns in the Church are brought out in two distressing books – ‘In the Name of the Lord’ by Sister Lucy Kalapara and ‘Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun’ by Sister Jesme – both poignantly penned by the nuns who suffered. 

Reuters news of 6th December 2025 by Joshua McElwee reports that a high-level Vatican Commission voted against allowing Catholic women to serve as Deacons, maintaining the global Church practice of all-male clergy. Deacons are those who are ordained and can assist with Church services ranking below a priest or pastor and who cannot celebrate Mass. Pope John Paul II had, in 1994, reaffirmed the ban on women serving as priests. In 2023, Leo (the present Pope) had expressed scepticism about ordaining women, repeating what Pope Francis considered as the risk of ‘clericalising’ women. 

Any religion is basically built on three fundamentals – one, the foundation on which it is built – like its history, belief, pointers etc., second, the philosophy which rationalises the religion’s world view and the third, the way of life i.e., the rules that govern their day to day life and worshipping methods. The status of women in Christianity is governed by two basic, non-negotiable principles – that the first woman was created by God by taking a rib out of the first man, to be his helper. While Adam was created in His (God’s) own image, Eve was made in the image of Adam, and so inferior to man. The second is that the first woman, Eve, caused the first sin by biting the forbidden fruit upon the advice of the evil serpent and so the cause of unending misery and sin of the human race!

Any faith that builds its worldview on two fixed premises that woman was made from man’s rib to be his helper, and that she alone brought sin into the world will always struggle to give women full dignity. As long as these doctrines remain non‑negotiable, the hierarchy will find theological cover to keep women subordinate, from the pulpit to the parish council. The contrast with Hindu thought, where the feminine is revered as Shakti, the very source of creation and power, could not be starker. From the rib of Adam to this day, the position of women in Christianity remains a mirror of its founding texts: honourable in rhetoric, restricted in reality, and irredeemably unequal in structure.