ABSTRACT
The misogynistic attitudes of most male Christian leaders have been well documented by Rosemary Ruether and Elizabeth Clark. Women could support male leaders financially, and they could lead outstanding lives and so influence by example, but they could not be public leaders or officiate in the public liturgy. Somehow, for the early Christian male leaders to talk of a loving, caring God, they had to use feminine language about that God; that God has to be feminine. Kari Borresen shows how this language of woman as mother in fact perpetuates the stereotypes of a male-dominated society, as exemplified in the preceding quotation from Augustine where the male role is to rule, the female to nourish. If women had been leaders in the Christian communities, it probably would have been harder for a rapprochement between Christians and the ruling class to have taken place, for a women-led movement would have appeared radical and subversive.
