Christianity Requires Gender Equality and Respect for Life.

Monnica Terwilliger is an Evangelical Protestant Christian. She belongs to the Foursquare denomination, which was started by a woman, Aimee Semple McPherson. Terwilliger describes McPherson as "a successful evangelist, healer, and pastor because of her strong spiritual anointing. According to a prominent church historian, Vinson Synan, 'She holds a prominent rank among all religious leaders in the twentieth century, regardless of their sex, and may well be the most important ordained woman minister in the history of Christianity."'

Terwilliger's article is identifiably Evangelical in the centrality it gives in ethical deliberation to the words of the Christian Bible and to the example and teaching of Jesus, considered the Son of God and the Savior of the human race.--Editor

In the Beginning...

Women and men were created equal.

The Bible records that in the beginning, God created woman and man-different, but equal. The two enjoyed a unique relationship with their creator, a type of intimacy we can only dream of today: God walked among them.

But in His wisdom God knew that to be truly free, Eve and Adam needed choices. So He put a tree with poisonous fruit in the center of the garden. "Eat from it," he warned, "and you will surely die." We know how the story goes-Eve, tricked by the serpent, ate the forbidden fruit. Adam rebelled against his creator by following her example.

So, God drove His two children out of Paradise, cursing every living creature and revoking immortality. Both had sinned and both were punished. Part of the curse was that the man would live by the sweat of his brow, working a stubborn earth for needed sustenance, while the woman would be ruled forever by the man. Both would die, returning to the dust from which they had been formed.