Olga Tocarczuk’s novel, The Empusium,”a health resort horror story,” is set in the early twentieth century, in Poland, at a “guesthouse for gentlemen” suffering from tuberculosis. On the surface, the novel possesses qualities of a thriller: mysterious deaths, tension, and a sinister vibe. There’s also a hallucinogenic liquor made with mushrooms that the men enjoy in the evenings. The real horror of the story, though, is the deep misogyny that is so casually bandied about as the men engage in all manner of conversation throughout the novel. In the midst of chatter about politics, money, social status, religion, etc, the deeply embedded assumption regarding the inferiority of females is slowly, consistently, revealed. The misogyny is always there, undergirded by theories and theologies, modern and ancient. A horror story indeed.

The horror of misogyny is now becoming more and more re-embedded in our own society, as we witness the erosion of the hard-won battles of women, to dispel the notion that males are the pinnacle of the created order and that women their subordinates. Misogyny is everywhere, especially throughout the federal government. Let’s just consider a few recent examples: the praise loaded onto the US men’s Olympic hockey team while the women, also gold medal winners, were left to praise themselves; the efforts of Pete Hegseth to remove women from combat roles in the military; Pete Hegseth’s removal of women from high-ranking military positions; new attention given to Christian nationalist and Reformed pastor Doug Wilson (including a recent invitation to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon), who thinks that women (especially married women) should not have the right to vote; and, of course, the myriad disrespectful and derogatory comments made by the current President toward women who do not bow down and tell him how great he is.

In all of this, Christianity plays an animating, reinforcing, and sometimes, a defining role— as it has been doing for a very long time. But, is Christianity— its scriptures, stories, theologies and history— a complete and unwavering playbook for the maintenance of women in a secondary role in society?

Christian leaders, over the centuries, have certainly done their best to twist scripture and story into a system that supports the notion that maleness captures God’s finest effort in the creation of human beings, casting femaleness in a lesser role, as dependent “helper.” Yet, there are all sorts of problems with the insistence that maleness is the epitome of God’s creation and that females ought to fall in line and recognize their inferiority. Since many Christian leaders like to go back to the very beginning to assert and frame God’s supposed order of things on earth, let’s consider a few issues from the beginning, from Genesis:

• In the first (of two) creation stories in Genesis 1, the humans, male and female, are created at the same time, not one after the other: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27, NRSV)
• In the second creation story, the creation of the “help meet” for Adam (in Genesis 2) is, in Hebrew, the creation of a partner of equal status.
• When considering the creation stories as a whole, there is a sense that God’s creation isn’t completely thought out ahead of time, that God perfects the creation in the creating process. In this way, the female is actually God’s crowning creation achievement.

Christian leaders and thinkers have, of course, moved beyond the Creation stories and have found many ways of asserting male dominance. There’s the issue that Jesus chose only males as his twelve disciples, although there’s little attention to the fact that Jesus chose only Jews to serve in this role. While Peter holds a place of significance as the “rock” upon which the Church will be built, Peter’s “confession” claiming that Jesus is Messiah is held up as a critical moment of clarity and purpose. Yet, in the Gospel According to John, the confession of Jesus as Messiah doesn’t belong to Peter. It belongs to Martha. And, then there’s the grievous horror in diminishing Mary of Magdala’s role. The risen Christ trusted her to share the good news of resurrection. Mary’s role is shared by all four canonical Gospels. Presumably, the risen Christ could have chosen anyone with whom to first share the amazing news. He could have appeared to that trusty Peter, who was locked away, fearing that he might be next in line for Roman crucifixion. Instead, the risen Christ trusted Mary of Magdala, one of his closest friends, a female.

That males in positions of power manage to warp and contort their own sense of themselves into a belief that they are at the top of the heap, that their gifts and skills are above all, that their form and attributes are the height of the created order is a horror. Males and females are different, but what gives males the right to claim dominance? For Christians who supposedly worship Christ and consider the Bible, and especially the New Testament, to be their guide in organizing themselves and understanding the relationship between males and females, we must name the treachery involved in misreading and misinterpreting the Holy Bible.

The long, slow, excruciating slog to begin to see some significant changes in the perceptions of and attitudes toward females in the holy book took shape in the latter half of the twentieth century. Ever so slowly, some Christian communities, denominations, and scholars began to wrestle with the history of the faith, the treatment of females, along with translation, interpretation and contextual issues. Progress was made— to live more faithfully in relationship with our holy scriptures and with our triune God. Critics often refer to “political correctness” in response to these changes, when much of what occurred was significantly appropriate. There were errors in translations and interpretations of texts that needed to be fixed.

Now, the awful slide back is in place, a slide that strives to cast females as “less than,” as subordinate. It may feel like it’s a return to a more “wholesome” time when gender roles were more neatly defined and the divide between the masculine and the feminine was clearer. But, the more neatly defined and the clearer were not nearly as aligned with Biblical teachings as its proponents would like to think. To ignore this dynamic and allow the normalizing of the misogyny is misguided and detrimental to all. It’s also unfaithful.