Patriarchy probably started about 12,000 years ago. If you google the word, there’s a good chance that you will be more confused than before you started. More knowledgeable, but less certain. There’s the psychological dimension. And the sociological, the historical, the evolutionary, the political, and the list goes on. So when we say it started 12,000 years ago, that’s something of a choice, a decision, an admission of prejudice, but it seems to make sense. 

Agriculture, the planting of seed in a cultivated field, apparently began about 10,000 BCE. Prior to then, homo sapiens hunted and gathered food in small groups within which everyone pulled everyone’s weight for the survival of the whole, and women and men were equal in both task and reward, there being neither patriarchy nor matriarchy. New research indicates that women hunted as mightily as did the men, in addition to pregnancy and childbirth. Then came agriculture.

As any farmer or gardener knows painfully well, soil and weather will smile on some and not smile on others. Inevitably, some farmers will gain while others will lose, and therein, some argue, lies both the origin and the downfall of civilization. Good fields and bountiful storehouses of grain came to require defense from other marauding groups, and so the army was born. And that’s the key to the rise of patriarchy: because of their generally larger size, men made better soldiers 10,000 years ago, and the intricacies of first gaining and then keeping power put men in control. The loss of men on the battlefield meant that numbers had to be replaced, and so the role of women was to be mother and homemaker, birthing and training those who would become new warriors. Whether this analysis is accurate or not, or whether it is just one piece of the puzzle, it does have an inner explanatory logic about it. 

And then along comes Taylor Swift, neither the first nor the last to challenge that role. I personally have never listened to one of her songs, heard her speak, or watched her perform. But she is a self-made woman, successful beyond measure in the world of business, relying on her own self and her own talent. At 33, not married, not a mother, idol of millions of young female followers. Is it any wonder that the Republican Party has shown their true nature as the patriarchs they are, attacking this female role model who does not fit into their preconceived notion of what a woman should be?? They may pretend that they worry about her enlisting a cadre of informed and young Democratic voters, and one hopes that to be true. But the truth lies much deeper. She shatters their own self image as male lords of the universe, sapping what little meaning and purpose remains in their pathetic little lives. For that, she is perceived as dangerous, and so must be attacked. The conspiracy theories that they conjure up go beyond the pale of credulity.

There are no doubt millions of women and men, past and present, who, in their own way, battle the dehumanizing power of patriarchy every day. These Republicans making the news today wrap themselves in a Christian religious masquerade, but it’s a lie. Jesus was the incarnation of equality. He gathered a community of followers, men, and women, who treated everyone as equals. We so easily forget that Jesus had women as disciples, as well as men. And his attracting women to his movement meant that he offered women a role other than being a cog in the patriarchal system. They could be mothers and homemakers or not. That, and being a disciple of the new Way, were not mutually exclusive. Jesus enabled them to be what they wanted to be because they were free of imposed constraints. And the Republicans, despite their mouthing off about being good Christian followers of Jesus, well, they are not. Patriarchy has no place in the Way led by Jesus.

 

Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith,   The Void and the Vision and  The New Matrix: How the World We Live In Impacts Our Thinking About Self and God. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT.