Gender And Christianity Essay

Gender And Christianity In the book Religion: The Basics written by Malory Nye, Nye takes a stance that gender plays a major role in the distribution of power in a culture. Throughout his writings he shows the oppression of women in North American Christianity and the world. Nye tries to give us a better understanding of what it is like to be a woman living in North America. In this paper, we will take a look at how North American Christianity contains gender inequality and the mistreatment of women.

Nye brings up many different reasons why gender is important in the study of religion. His main reasoning why gender is important in religion is that he believes gender is the main way power gets distributed. For example, Nye says, “So much writing on religion has shown so much male bias and androcentricism.” (Nye 81). Nye supports this claim throughout his book with many different points. One being that Christianity is an androcentric religion written by men talking to males. Nye’s reasoning behind his claim is that we live in a world that is an imbalance between male and

This can influence a woman in the Christian faith to feel as if she is less than a man. In doing this, Christianity is showing that women have less power than a man, due to the fact that she is not pure. Dianna Anderson is a Christian woman who talks about how she had tried to keep her purity. “Losing my virginity outside of a marriage relationship taught me how to be a better person and a better Christian.” (Anderson) Dianna stated in her article What Losing My Virginity Taught Me About Faith. She had done what is frowned upon in Christianity and still felt that she was closer to God than she had ever been before. Nye shows how women can feel lesser than a man in Christianity, but in this case Dianna had found a way to become closer to God and more