Women in the Church

Since the death of Jesus, to the modern era, the Christianity has gone through many changes in doctrine, practices, splits, and beliefs. As the church grew from charismatic communities to a global church organization, certain groups lost power while others gained a comparative advantage. No more has the shift in power affected a group more than the role of women in the church. The role of the woman in Christian Churches transformed from their role as leaders in small charismatic communities to supportive roles, to a quiet and almost invisible role to that of silently praying for the men in the background.

After the death, or disappearance of Jesus from historical records, the apostles dispersed across the Mediterranean to spread Jesus’s message. As Jesus’s words spread, small communities in Rome and other major cities began to appear. These communities were extremely tiny, usually only consisting of several dozen members, and there might be several of the small communities in close proximity to one another. The services for these communities usually took place not in a church with an organized structure, but small apartments called “insulae” which is Latin for an apartment building. This fact would become vitally important to the role that women would play in the early Christian church.

The effect of small worship in these tiny apartments and in homes around the Mediterranean gave women great power. During this period, as well as throughout most of history, with a few exceptions, society considered women the homemakers, until the modern era. With the husband away at work, traveling for business, or deferring to his wife when it came to household duties, the wife or lady of the house, was in charge of all the domestic duties, incl...

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...e, and then fell drastically form leaders and patrons to playing supportive, quiet roles. They moved from potions of power to symbols of the ultimate sacrifice. While they still have roles as the era of the Christian church, they lost significant power, which still influences the church today.

Works Cited

Torjesen, Karen Jo. When women were priests: women's leadership in the early church and the scandal of their subordination in the rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. Print. pg. 14

Ibid. pg. 16

Ibid. pg. 18

1 Corinthians. New Revised Standard Version. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print

Cf. Gos. Thom. #114.

Gospel of Mary

Ehrman, Bart D. . After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity. New-York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. pg. 279

Ibid. pg. 281

Augustine, and Henry Chadwick. Confessions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Ibid.