Conservatism and Women's Rights/Feminism

by John

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate provides an opportunity to highlight the role that Christian principals have played in the conceptualization of women’s rights.

From the perspective of world history, women have been viewed with a quiet disdain or, in the worst cases, as possessions to be bought, sold, or discarded. The historical record is replete with examples of women being relegated to subservience and abuse. Sadly, women still suffer under oppressive societies to this day. However, in this country, informed by Christian principals, women enjoy a status equal to their male counterparts. Though this nation may have been slow in acknowledging the true status of women, the seeds for this enlightenment were always there.

Despite what pundits may say, this country is still rooted in Christian tradition. Perhaps, then, we should begin at the beginning. The book of Genesis is about beginnings. The first verse begins with the only rational epistemological presupposition possible, “In the beginning God.” More to our point, Genesis describes God’s view, in the Christian tradition, of woman. God made woman from man and God made woman in his image just as man was made in God’s image. (Genesis 1:26, 27) This single statement carries profound implications. In an age where men ruled in absolute, the statement that women were created, just as men, in God’s own image was positively revolutionary. Here we find the basis for the concept of individual rights. Individual rights, not granted by the state, but individual because of mans’, and womans’, inherent value as bearing the image of God. This concept forms the theoretical basis for all of our founding documents. It is the essence of our national way of life. Without individual rights, the Bill of Rights cannot exist. The rights we commonly know, freedom of speech, press, etc., would not exist apart from the concept set forth in the book of Genesis. No other religious tradition can claim it, the enlightenment thinkers didn’t invent it, nor did the ancient Greek democracies understand this essential truth.

The political struggle we see unfolding is not about race or sex but about the eons old struggle between humanism and Christian principal. The conservative movement finds its guiding tenets in Judeo-Christian principals, where God is understood as the first principal. The left operates from a worldview that is humanistic, where man has formed a golden image in his own likeness. Humanism has produced all of history’s twisted philosophical horrors. Humanism produced the barbarism of the French Revolution; biblical principals produced the free republic of the American Revolution.

While the Democratic party flounders in the cesspool of humanisms’ philosophical detritus, the Republican party clings to some of the Divine principals that made America possible and which enable a woman to ascend to the high office of Vice President. The left would attempt to highjack Christian principal to suit their agenda, while the principals of the right form the basis for a woman’s inherent right to stand in equal position to her male counterparts.