Christianity didn’t begin as an empire. It began in kitchens and courtyards, led by women and the enslaved. Yet by 325, only male bishops of the proto-orthodox were seated at the council of Nicaea. This is the story of how a noisy minority spun themselves into the mainstream, won Constantine’s favor, and rewrote history.
Just a holy WOW. I want to shout this from the rooftops as I see everyday in my work with women, the fallout of this. The fear, self-silencing, the pain and illness. I truly believe ti stems from this intergenerational silencing. So much of trauma therapy blames the mother and family dynamics without looking further than that. I can imagine a completely different world.
Madeleine, holy wow right back. You are naming the cost of empire’s silencing in real time. The fear, the self-erasure, the illness—it is not just “family dynamics.” It is centuries of women told to disappear their own voices.
You are right to imagine a different world. That imagination is itself resistance. Every time a woman refuses to carry the blame and names the deeper wound, the old spell breaks a little more.
Dawn, yes. That “what could have been” haunts the whole story. A movement of love and freedom was welded to an empire of power, and the shape of history bent under the weight.
The good news is the memory of what might have been still flickers. Every time we imagine it, we keep the flame alive.
Thank you for your posts. You are opening a world of mind bending but confirming ideas for me. Ex Catholic, as a child recognized something was very wrong. 50 years later married an Episcopalian, active!! Service looks just like the old patriarchal mass… not uplifting, especially because I am constantly inserting, Lorddes, SHE, Her, Mary, haha hardworking. I a loving your posts…. Learning and longing for more, you are I gift! And funny!
Patti, what a journey. No wonder the Spirit in you kept whispering “She, Her, Mary” under the drone of the old mass. That is not rebellion, that is remembrance.
Very fun to read. Humans! We have such a hard time with diversity. That Bart Ehrman book you reference looks great. I reserved it at the library. I have loved lots of his books.
Tim, you nailed it. Diversity has always been our stumbling block, from house churches in Rome to denominations today. What began as a chorus of voices got pressed into one official tune once empire got involved.
Ehrman is a sharp guide for tracing that story. Lost Christianities especially makes clear how much richness was silenced in the move from many to one. Glad you reserved it. I think you’ll see echoes of the same struggle we keep replaying in every generation.
Sigh, yeah... :-/ Our country's motto here in the U.S. was "E Pluribus Unum," or "Out of many, one," like a quilt or a mosaic or millefiori glass, all the disparate elements coming together...not that I'm sure we ever quite lived up to that ideal as a nation; maybe here and there, but at least it gave us a goal to strive for. Then in the 1950s, with everyone freaking out about the "godless Commies," they changed it (apparently; not sure how official it is) to "In God We Trust," even though we're supposed to be a secular country. X-P
It's kind of discouraging that as we grew "older" and more powerful as a country and forgot our own revolutionary roots, we were less and less keen to help out people who wanted to break away from their European (or other) empires, from being mere colonies to separate countries on their own. :-/
The rebels in French Indochina (= Viet Nam) asked us for help first... X-P When we weren't forthcoming, they turned to the other revolutionary power: the U.S.S.R. (nope, they would NOT have asked China for help, from everything I've heard, no more than Greece would ask Turkey, for about the same reasons). THEN we got involved...
It's not a problem just with christianity. Ofcourse with different shades and colours (Though I will refrain from stepping beyond).
All I can say is, this is my reason for stepping away from the institution/s and embracing spirituality. Where its just me and my creator... Nothing more, nothing less, only truth.
St. Peter: "For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
the Devil: "For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!"
--from "Tomlinson," R. Kipling
It seems that no matter the settings, change must come from within ("Wherever you go, there you are."), and we have to own up to that, whatever comes of it. :)
I can’t decide whether to cry, smash something, or throw up. I literally was taught NOTHING about what happened between the crucifixion & Constantine’s bullshit takeover. That goes for what i was taught in Sunday School or Catechism or the required random class in religion in public school followed by the Methodist college i went to. I was done with church’s patriarchy & left. I found more presence of God/the Divine/the Universe/the Creator Creatrix in AA & shamanic practices than in most Christian Churches & felt very fed by it so never felt a need to return or to delve into why it became what the majority of Christianity is.
So THANK YOU. I think. Depends on what nightmares, if any, i have tonite.
No, truly, very grateful. Hiding from truth never serves me well & this was a brilliant albeit heartbreaking, infuriating & unfortunately truth laden history lesson. I kept thinking this could be the basic script that birthed Game of Thrones, just minus the dragons.
Yes, i mean the thank you. May sound weird but makes me even more grateful that i was born female. I’ve got enuf self-created guilt I’m wrestling with & if I’d been born with different genitalia i can’t imagine the mess I’d be. Tremendously enlightening & while I may feel betrayed, it’s better than being blind & not knowing. At least when you KNOW you can try to DO SOMETHING about it 🤞
Beth Ann, you are not alone. Most of us were handed a children’s coloring book version of history while empire wrote the script in blood. No wonder you found more of the Spirit in AA circles and shamanic practice than in churches chained to patriarchy.
Grieve it, smash it, laugh at it if you need to. But know this: women like you have always been the ones keeping the embers alive when empire tried to snuff out the fire. Your gratitude in the middle of betrayal is the kind of fierce faith empire cannot steal.
This was absolutely amazing. Thank you for this gift of a ready friend. I’ll be following up with some of the suggested reading. While I’m very happy in my current tradition, I recognize the harms and the power plays that have occurred. Instead of throwing the “baby out with the bath water”, and as you said, we need to reclaim what was lost and fight against the American nationalist and literalism that currently plagues North American Christianity. Blessings on you !!!
Reclaiming without discarding is holy work. The bathwater was fouled by empire, but the child still carries the face of love. I am glad you see both the harm and the hope. May your tradition be strong enough to heal, and soft enough to listen.
I pray for the same brother. I’m Lutheran formed, and a practicing Anglican ( Canada) so while we have done much work in many spaces like indigenous reconciliation, gender l , and LGBTQAI+ equality and healing, there still is many more mountains to climb. Bless your day and the work you are doing.
I’m Lutheran formed as well - grandfather was a Lutheran minister & missionary in China, where my mother was born & grew up till she was 12 & the Communists were taking over. My religious experience wasn’t horrific, it just didnt feed my soul the way my soul needed to be fed. Love your posts & appreciate the work you & your fellows are doing 😍🫶
In my early years as I devout Protestant, I immersed myself in church history, lauding the Council of Nicea’s decisions as the foundation for the joyous gospel. Now older and having long since left the rhetoric of institutionalized Christianity, I’ve returned to studying the history in a different way, delving into the facts that many Christian sects existed with a preponderance of texts available all telling a version of Truth. Most disturbing as you know, and as another comment stated, is our history of intolerance towards diversity which has the. moved us to violence. As we know, the Holy Roman Church was no exception to this violence and total obliteration of all sects that followed the Magdalene traditions ensued as well as their texts. Thankfully some have been recovered but here we are thousands of years later, slowly waking up to the lies and manipulations of institutionalized “truth”.
Anyway, it’s nice to have discussions around this other than with myself or the walls. 😁
The walls make poor conversation partners, though they have heard centuries of prayers and secrets. What you name is exactly the wound that empire carved into the body of the faith: one voice enforced at the cost of all the others. The Magdalene line was never erased, only buried, waiting for those willing to dig through rubble and rhetoric. I am glad you are among the ones listening past the walls.
Vas, grateful you are here. The books are trail markers, but it is the shared path that keeps the learning alive. Glad to be walking some of it alongside you. ❤️
Thank you for all of this. It is important. Important to be informed. Important to understand what goes on “underneath” our experiences of encounter, worship, and belief. I came up in a deeply intellectual faith but with no willingness to dig in for what was underneath. Also absent was any comfort with encounter. Grateful to have moved on from all of that. Grateful for honest conversation.
Donna, moving from intellect without encounter to conversation with depth is its own resurrection.
The empire taught us to polish beliefs like relics and never ask what they were built on. But once you start digging underneath, you find both the rot and the roots. That’s where honest encounter lives.
Gratitude is a fierce teacher. It keeps us from mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
Both are needed, I think; a monk fictional character had described faith and reason as "the shoes on your feet! You can travel further with both than you can with just one" while he was trying to reassure an anxious, much younger monk, who was having yet another crisis of faith...yet he saw much potential in him. (Babylon 5, Season 4 finale) :)
If nothing else, reason helps us question things. :)
I love this post, VMB! It further demonstrates that the subjugation of women isn’t a recent strike back of incels against feminists: it’s ALWAYS been here. All that testosterone demanding that women shut up and submit.
The church patriarchy mirrors the society-at-large’s attempt to silence women.
Why can’t more people realize that this is NOT at all what Jesus intended, as evidenced by the Gospel of Mary Magdalene?
Sharon, you got it. The patriarchy didn’t suddenly appear with online trolls and fragile egos, it’s been baked into the cake since empire got its greasy hands on the movement.
Jesus wasn’t grooming a boys’ club. He trusted women with the first resurrection announcement, lifted Mary Magdalene as a true apostle, and spoke to power with a different cadence entirely. What followed was Rome and its bishops clutching at control, rewriting the script, and burying the Gospel of Mary to keep the feminine voice out of the pulpit.
Christianity as empire is messed up. But the subversive current is still alive, whispering through texts like Mary’s gospel. And every time we say it out loud, we drag that truth back into daylight where it belongs.
Yep. We were taught all of this in seminary -- and they told us this was success!! This was how the church came to be The Church, the one, holy, apostolic, Top-of-the-Heap God Club. We learned about the 'heresies,' i.e., all the ways people got the gospel wrong, and the orthodoxies -- all the right ways to think about God.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would pass those exams any more...! ;-)
I went to Lutheran private school (K-7). Around the age of 10 I was pondering in my room, "who where these people that Paul said had the wrong gospel?....What if they really had the right gospel! -- <gasp> Satan put that thought in my mind!!!!"
That scared me so badly at the time I was afraid to question for another 20 years!
June, I included a “Sources and Further Reading” section at the end of the post. It lists both primary texts and modern scholarship for anyone who wants to follow up. Those references should give you a clear path to dive deeper.
The Council of Nicea principally met to debate Jesus divinity and the Arian controversy and little to do with women, but it is an astute observation there were no women amongst the bishops. , and had there been, then the ferocity of the debate and persecution would never have been so hostile IMO. My beef with the Council of Nicea is that I think they landed on the wrong spot, and that Arius was closer to the truth than Athanasius and the Trinity doctrine which the official 'church' embraced is itself heresy. Jesus is not God. He is the Son of God, and subordinate to the Father. In my reading of the Bible, this is the overwhelming conclusion with the exception of a few dubious verses.
This aside, the silencing and subordination of women is very evident in Paul's epistles written circa 50-60 AD where he wouldn't allow a woman to usurp authority over a man and wouldn't even allow them to speak in church meetings. Just a continuation of that patriarchal heritage that you have rightly been challenging.
Robin, I agree with you. The Council of Nicaea was about the Arian controversy, not women, and you are right that there were no women among the bishops. The subtlety is that this was not an accident. Only male bishops were invited. By then the church had shifted from house gatherings where women led and taught into the empire’s model of male-only clerical power.
And the texts used to justify silencing women—like 1 Timothy—were not even Paul. They were later forgeries stamped with his name to give patriarchy divine weight. The genuine Paul worked with Junia, Phoebe, and Priscilla, women who shaped the movement long before Constantine crowned bishops as his new senate.
So yes, had women been present at Nicaea, the ferocity of the debate might have looked very different. But they were written out by design. That is the scandal beneath the creeds.
AH! I'd always heard fairly horrible things about Paul, how divisive he was (he'd been persecuting the early Christians as Saul, then turned to persecuting anyone who wasn't as Paul), how a lot of the hate "baked in" to Christianity came from him...but I've also heard others reading from the /entirety/ of the books he'd actually written and gotten to the point he was actually trying to make. Seems the folks who /wanted/ hate mixed in with their...Prince of Peace? never got past just skimming their curdled, nasty cream off the top. :-/
Just a holy WOW. I want to shout this from the rooftops as I see everyday in my work with women, the fallout of this. The fear, self-silencing, the pain and illness. I truly believe ti stems from this intergenerational silencing. So much of trauma therapy blames the mother and family dynamics without looking further than that. I can imagine a completely different world.
Madeleine, holy wow right back. You are naming the cost of empire’s silencing in real time. The fear, the self-erasure, the illness—it is not just “family dynamics.” It is centuries of women told to disappear their own voices.
You are right to imagine a different world. That imagination is itself resistance. Every time a woman refuses to carry the blame and names the deeper wound, the old spell breaks a little more.
Thank you for writing this. I often think about what could have been, if not for the empire and the church joining forces.
Dawn, yes. That “what could have been” haunts the whole story. A movement of love and freedom was welded to an empire of power, and the shape of history bent under the weight.
The good news is the memory of what might have been still flickers. Every time we imagine it, we keep the flame alive.
Thank you for your posts. You are opening a world of mind bending but confirming ideas for me. Ex Catholic, as a child recognized something was very wrong. 50 years later married an Episcopalian, active!! Service looks just like the old patriarchal mass… not uplifting, especially because I am constantly inserting, Lorddes, SHE, Her, Mary, haha hardworking. I a loving your posts…. Learning and longing for more, you are I gift! And funny!
Patti, what a journey. No wonder the Spirit in you kept whispering “She, Her, Mary” under the drone of the old mass. That is not rebellion, that is remembrance.
Very fun to read. Humans! We have such a hard time with diversity. That Bart Ehrman book you reference looks great. I reserved it at the library. I have loved lots of his books.
Tim, you nailed it. Diversity has always been our stumbling block, from house churches in Rome to denominations today. What began as a chorus of voices got pressed into one official tune once empire got involved.
Ehrman is a sharp guide for tracing that story. Lost Christianities especially makes clear how much richness was silenced in the move from many to one. Glad you reserved it. I think you’ll see echoes of the same struggle we keep replaying in every generation.
Sigh, yeah... :-/ Our country's motto here in the U.S. was "E Pluribus Unum," or "Out of many, one," like a quilt or a mosaic or millefiori glass, all the disparate elements coming together...not that I'm sure we ever quite lived up to that ideal as a nation; maybe here and there, but at least it gave us a goal to strive for. Then in the 1950s, with everyone freaking out about the "godless Commies," they changed it (apparently; not sure how official it is) to "In God We Trust," even though we're supposed to be a secular country. X-P
It's kind of discouraging that as we grew "older" and more powerful as a country and forgot our own revolutionary roots, we were less and less keen to help out people who wanted to break away from their European (or other) empires, from being mere colonies to separate countries on their own. :-/
The rebels in French Indochina (= Viet Nam) asked us for help first... X-P When we weren't forthcoming, they turned to the other revolutionary power: the U.S.S.R. (nope, they would NOT have asked China for help, from everything I've heard, no more than Greece would ask Turkey, for about the same reasons). THEN we got involved...
It's not a problem just with christianity. Ofcourse with different shades and colours (Though I will refrain from stepping beyond).
All I can say is, this is my reason for stepping away from the institution/s and embracing spirituality. Where its just me and my creator... Nothing more, nothing less, only truth.
Thank you my friend 🙏
St. Peter: "For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
the Devil: "For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!"
--from "Tomlinson," R. Kipling
It seems that no matter the settings, change must come from within ("Wherever you go, there you are."), and we have to own up to that, whatever comes of it. :)
True words…
Thank you 🙏
I can’t decide whether to cry, smash something, or throw up. I literally was taught NOTHING about what happened between the crucifixion & Constantine’s bullshit takeover. That goes for what i was taught in Sunday School or Catechism or the required random class in religion in public school followed by the Methodist college i went to. I was done with church’s patriarchy & left. I found more presence of God/the Divine/the Universe/the Creator Creatrix in AA & shamanic practices than in most Christian Churches & felt very fed by it so never felt a need to return or to delve into why it became what the majority of Christianity is.
So THANK YOU. I think. Depends on what nightmares, if any, i have tonite.
No, truly, very grateful. Hiding from truth never serves me well & this was a brilliant albeit heartbreaking, infuriating & unfortunately truth laden history lesson. I kept thinking this could be the basic script that birthed Game of Thrones, just minus the dragons.
Yes, i mean the thank you. May sound weird but makes me even more grateful that i was born female. I’ve got enuf self-created guilt I’m wrestling with & if I’d been born with different genitalia i can’t imagine the mess I’d be. Tremendously enlightening & while I may feel betrayed, it’s better than being blind & not knowing. At least when you KNOW you can try to DO SOMETHING about it 🤞
Beth Ann, you are not alone. Most of us were handed a children’s coloring book version of history while empire wrote the script in blood. No wonder you found more of the Spirit in AA circles and shamanic practice than in churches chained to patriarchy.
Grieve it, smash it, laugh at it if you need to. But know this: women like you have always been the ones keeping the embers alive when empire tried to snuff out the fire. Your gratitude in the middle of betrayal is the kind of fierce faith empire cannot steal.
This was absolutely amazing. Thank you for this gift of a ready friend. I’ll be following up with some of the suggested reading. While I’m very happy in my current tradition, I recognize the harms and the power plays that have occurred. Instead of throwing the “baby out with the bath water”, and as you said, we need to reclaim what was lost and fight against the American nationalist and literalism that currently plagues North American Christianity. Blessings on you !!!
Reclaiming without discarding is holy work. The bathwater was fouled by empire, but the child still carries the face of love. I am glad you see both the harm and the hope. May your tradition be strong enough to heal, and soft enough to listen.
I pray for the same brother. I’m Lutheran formed, and a practicing Anglican ( Canada) so while we have done much work in many spaces like indigenous reconciliation, gender l , and LGBTQAI+ equality and healing, there still is many more mountains to climb. Bless your day and the work you are doing.
I’m Lutheran formed as well - grandfather was a Lutheran minister & missionary in China, where my mother was born & grew up till she was 12 & the Communists were taking over. My religious experience wasn’t horrific, it just didnt feed my soul the way my soul needed to be fed. Love your posts & appreciate the work you & your fellows are doing 😍🫶
I love so much that you’re writing about this.
In my early years as I devout Protestant, I immersed myself in church history, lauding the Council of Nicea’s decisions as the foundation for the joyous gospel. Now older and having long since left the rhetoric of institutionalized Christianity, I’ve returned to studying the history in a different way, delving into the facts that many Christian sects existed with a preponderance of texts available all telling a version of Truth. Most disturbing as you know, and as another comment stated, is our history of intolerance towards diversity which has the. moved us to violence. As we know, the Holy Roman Church was no exception to this violence and total obliteration of all sects that followed the Magdalene traditions ensued as well as their texts. Thankfully some have been recovered but here we are thousands of years later, slowly waking up to the lies and manipulations of institutionalized “truth”.
Anyway, it’s nice to have discussions around this other than with myself or the walls. 😁
I’m grateful for your work 🙏
The walls make poor conversation partners, though they have heard centuries of prayers and secrets. What you name is exactly the wound that empire carved into the body of the faith: one voice enforced at the cost of all the others. The Magdalene line was never erased, only buried, waiting for those willing to dig through rubble and rhetoric. I am glad you are among the ones listening past the walls.
Excellent quick history lesson much needed right now.
Thank you. I’ve always wondered about that.
Love these posts. Thanks for sharing the articles and the books too, look forward to reading more on this. ❤️
Vas, grateful you are here. The books are trail markers, but it is the shared path that keeps the learning alive. Glad to be walking some of it alongside you. ❤️
Thank you for all of this. It is important. Important to be informed. Important to understand what goes on “underneath” our experiences of encounter, worship, and belief. I came up in a deeply intellectual faith but with no willingness to dig in for what was underneath. Also absent was any comfort with encounter. Grateful to have moved on from all of that. Grateful for honest conversation.
Donna, moving from intellect without encounter to conversation with depth is its own resurrection.
The empire taught us to polish beliefs like relics and never ask what they were built on. But once you start digging underneath, you find both the rot and the roots. That’s where honest encounter lives.
Gratitude is a fierce teacher. It keeps us from mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
Both are needed, I think; a monk fictional character had described faith and reason as "the shoes on your feet! You can travel further with both than you can with just one" while he was trying to reassure an anxious, much younger monk, who was having yet another crisis of faith...yet he saw much potential in him. (Babylon 5, Season 4 finale) :)
If nothing else, reason helps us question things. :)
I love this post, VMB! It further demonstrates that the subjugation of women isn’t a recent strike back of incels against feminists: it’s ALWAYS been here. All that testosterone demanding that women shut up and submit.
The church patriarchy mirrors the society-at-large’s attempt to silence women.
Why can’t more people realize that this is NOT at all what Jesus intended, as evidenced by the Gospel of Mary Magdalene?
Christianity is MESSED UP!
Sharon, you got it. The patriarchy didn’t suddenly appear with online trolls and fragile egos, it’s been baked into the cake since empire got its greasy hands on the movement.
Jesus wasn’t grooming a boys’ club. He trusted women with the first resurrection announcement, lifted Mary Magdalene as a true apostle, and spoke to power with a different cadence entirely. What followed was Rome and its bishops clutching at control, rewriting the script, and burying the Gospel of Mary to keep the feminine voice out of the pulpit.
Christianity as empire is messed up. But the subversive current is still alive, whispering through texts like Mary’s gospel. And every time we say it out loud, we drag that truth back into daylight where it belongs.
Yep. We were taught all of this in seminary -- and they told us this was success!! This was how the church came to be The Church, the one, holy, apostolic, Top-of-the-Heap God Club. We learned about the 'heresies,' i.e., all the ways people got the gospel wrong, and the orthodoxies -- all the right ways to think about God.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would pass those exams any more...! ;-)
I went to Lutheran private school (K-7). Around the age of 10 I was pondering in my room, "who where these people that Paul said had the wrong gospel?....What if they really had the right gospel! -- <gasp> Satan put that thought in my mind!!!!"
That scared me so badly at the time I was afraid to question for another 20 years!
Ha!
As a history major, I'm interested in citations for your posts.
June, I included a “Sources and Further Reading” section at the end of the post. It lists both primary texts and modern scholarship for anyone who wants to follow up. Those references should give you a clear path to dive deeper.
Thank you. :)
The Council of Nicea principally met to debate Jesus divinity and the Arian controversy and little to do with women, but it is an astute observation there were no women amongst the bishops. , and had there been, then the ferocity of the debate and persecution would never have been so hostile IMO. My beef with the Council of Nicea is that I think they landed on the wrong spot, and that Arius was closer to the truth than Athanasius and the Trinity doctrine which the official 'church' embraced is itself heresy. Jesus is not God. He is the Son of God, and subordinate to the Father. In my reading of the Bible, this is the overwhelming conclusion with the exception of a few dubious verses.
This aside, the silencing and subordination of women is very evident in Paul's epistles written circa 50-60 AD where he wouldn't allow a woman to usurp authority over a man and wouldn't even allow them to speak in church meetings. Just a continuation of that patriarchal heritage that you have rightly been challenging.
Robin, I agree with you. The Council of Nicaea was about the Arian controversy, not women, and you are right that there were no women among the bishops. The subtlety is that this was not an accident. Only male bishops were invited. By then the church had shifted from house gatherings where women led and taught into the empire’s model of male-only clerical power.
And the texts used to justify silencing women—like 1 Timothy—were not even Paul. They were later forgeries stamped with his name to give patriarchy divine weight. The genuine Paul worked with Junia, Phoebe, and Priscilla, women who shaped the movement long before Constantine crowned bishops as his new senate.
So yes, had women been present at Nicaea, the ferocity of the debate might have looked very different. But they were written out by design. That is the scandal beneath the creeds.
AH! I'd always heard fairly horrible things about Paul, how divisive he was (he'd been persecuting the early Christians as Saul, then turned to persecuting anyone who wasn't as Paul), how a lot of the hate "baked in" to Christianity came from him...but I've also heard others reading from the /entirety/ of the books he'd actually written and gotten to the point he was actually trying to make. Seems the folks who /wanted/ hate mixed in with their...Prince of Peace? never got past just skimming their curdled, nasty cream off the top. :-/