So it finally made it! Yes, after four postponements and 22 months of hype, the 25^th James Bond film “No Time To Die” – Daniel Craig’s last – was finally released last week. And it notched up what may the highest opening weekend UK takings of any movie, making at least £21m between Friday and Sunday. But – and you can call me a spoilsport if you like – I’m not going to see it. Yes, I’m sure the sets and the special effects are amazing, and the story as far-fetched as usual. But I don’t like the violence; and, despite the actress Lea Seydoux’s claim that this film is “very different” to all the others, with “powerful” women who aren’t “just waiting to be saved”, I’m still (possibly wrongly) wary of the male-female relationships portrayed within it.

For James Bond has form, going back to 1953 when Ian Fleming created him: he has been called “an archetypal model of masculinity” and a man who “is nothing without his sexism”. He has even been described as “basically a rapist” – not by me, by the way, but by the director of the latest film, no less! That accusation certainly seems to be born out by a compilation of lurid clips from his earlier films which was made in 2018. One writer has said, “the idea that a character for whom misogyny is a defining feature can ever be progressive and feminist is farcical”; she also says, “Misogyny is baked into the formula of the franchise”.

Well, we all know that that word “misogyny”, prejudice against women, has been very much in the news this week, following the sentencing of Wayne Couzens who so appallingly deceived and murdered Sarah Everard. Alongside the outcry about the culture and procedures of our police, there have been strong calls to make misogyny a hate crime. This would put the harassment of women into the same category as someone who is attacked, abused or trolled because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or disability. The Prime Minister has not supported these calls, saying that there is already “abundant” legislation to tackle violence against women. He said that “widening the scope” of what the police were being asked to do would merely increase the problem.

At the end of the day, these matters won’t be solved by legislation, although that can help. My wife and I have spent a lot of time talking and we agree that what’s needed for women to feel safe on the streets (and elsewhere) is not for them to be more aware of the potential dangers nor even better policing. No; what’s needed is a radical change in the thinking and behaviour of men who still treat women in disrespectful and abusive ways, seeing them as easy prey for their taunts and abuse.

This is clearly a serious subject and one that’s been very much in the news. But why – apart from following Karl Barth’s famous dictum that a preacher should prepare their sermon with the Bible open in one hand and the newspaper in the other – have I decided to bring it into church this morning? Well, I’ll tell you: it’s because there are people who say that churches, the Bible and our Christian faith itself are inherently misogynistic or biased against women, who may believe that centuries of Christian thinking and teaching have unconsciously aided and abetted the views, anger and violence that we are seeing today. That is a very serious change, so does it hold water?

Some folk would say that it does. For instance, they would say that God is almost always portrayed in male terms, especially in the Old Testament: he is called the “Father” and he often acts in very male ways of authority and power. Then in the New Testament we meet Jesus, who is God’s Son and comes among us as a man. These critics might also look at the Genesis story about the creation of humans, focussing on the way it says that man was created first, that woman was created to alleviate his loneliness, and that she was formed from one of his ribs. All these points, it is said, show that women were regarded as inferior right from the very start of the Jewish and Christian tradition.

And so we go on: most, but not all, of the great Bible leaders were men –albeit with some notable exceptions such as Deborah, Esther and, in a negative sense, Queen Jezebel who clearly had the whip hand over her husband Ahab. In the New Testament we find that all twelve disciples in Jesus’ inner circle are men; yes, women were present but mostly in less prominent roles. And the same seems to be true in the early Church, where all the great leaders such as Peter, Stephen, Philip, James, Paul and Timothy are once again men – I’ll come back to that a bit later on.

Obviously the Bible’s story takes place in an ancient near Eastern context which, as I said last week, was patriarchal – in other words, it was a society in which everyone was defined by the relationship to the male head of the household. Women had few rights in this set-up – for instance, as we see in the story of Jacob, men either chose their wives (with sometimes, I suspect, little say-so from them) or even had wives selected for them. And, before we say, “How could they do that?”, let’s remember that this was precisely the way that noble and royal families behaved right across Europe until a century ago: women were married off for strategic and political reasons and to continue the family line rather than for love. The question we have to ask is whether the Bible, and in particular the Old Testament, actively promotes this kind of society, simply accepts that “this is just how things are”, or challenges it. I have to say that I don’t see much of a challenge there myself.

Of course that kind of society still existed in Jesus’ day: all the Jewish and Roman leaders were men (although Pontius Pilate’s wife sounds as if she was a bit of a “power behind the throne”!). But women did play a major role in both Jesus’ life and the early Church; for instance Jesus seems to have treated his friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus on equal terms, while of course it was women who were privileged to be the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. We know that there were women, including Jesus’ own mother, present on the Day of Pentecost. And, as the Church expanded, some women clearly played important roles, such as Lydia the business-woman who was the founder and hostess of the church in Philippi; and Priscilla who, jointly and equally with her husband Aquila, accompanied Paul on some of missionary journeys.

Sadly things didn’t last (and there are some Bible texts I haven’t yet mentioned and must come back to). For it seems that the Church, in which Paul had said there should be no distinction because of race, status or gender, slowly became sucked into the mainstream of Greek and Roman culture. As it did so it picked up some very different ideas, such as Aristotle’s belief that only men are properly rational and truly bear God’s image within them: a view which immediately places women into an inferior position. There was also a growing emphasis on the weak-minded Eve having given in to the serpent’s tempting back in the Garden of Eden, thus making her guilty of bringing sin into the world.

By the Middle Ages there was a definite view among church scholars that women were in some way “defective” as human beings. Indeed being “feminine” was defined – wrongly – as being “devoid of faith” although, of course, that did not apply to the Virgin Mary. One author, writing at about the time of the Battle of Hastings, declared that women were “seducers of clergy, lures of the devil, scum of heaven, poison of souls, and prostitutes” – hardly a ringing endorsement of femininity. Even worse comments were made in the centuries that followed: with apparent Biblical support from Ecclesiastes, women were seen as people with “slippery tongues” and preoccupied with “evil”; as “more carnal” and creatures of desire, consorting with devils. I think the men who wrote those awful words must have been terrified of the fairer sex!

I could bore you with history by taking you on through the Reformation and beyond. All I need to say is that things didn’t really change much: although Martin Luther didn’t agree that women were without reason and did allow them to study the Bible for themselves, he wouldn’t permit them to preach as that would give them authority over men; the other great Reformer John Calvin believed that God had ordered creation in a way which placed women beneath men. Bible texts such as “Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and sinned” and “the man is the head of the woman” were increasingly used to enshrine women’s inferiority. And although female theologians began to offer fresh interpretations of Scripture from the 1890s onward, many churches became more and more entrenched in their views of male and female, with men as the household heads and bread-winners, and women as the child-bearers and home-makers. This so-called “complementarian” view, which condemns women to a life of unfulfilling home-based drudgery, is still common is some Evangelical circles even today. After all, it’s what the Bible teaches – isn’t it?

Well – and this is where we come to the Bible passage I skipped over – it would seem so. For in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul states that “Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife”; also, in Ephesians 5, he commands wives to “be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the Church”.  There’s a second group of readings, this time including 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul writes: “women should be silent in the churches; they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate”; this is echoed in his first letter to Timothy: “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent”.

At first glance these verses seem pretty blunt and give little scope for discussion. However it’s been said that the ladies in the Corinth church had so exasperated Paul by their constant chattering that he had to shut them up; it’s been hinted that the women who had put themselves forward in Timothy’s church were teaching heresy and had to be stopped; it’s been suggested that the wives in Ephesus had no choice but to adopt Paul’s household hierarchy if they were to ultimately find freedom in the structured society of the day. Alongside these explanations, which you may or may not find convincing, some scholars simply claim that some of these difficult verses were later additions to the text – which to me seems too easy a way out of the problems they pose!

But we do have to place them alongside other verses which seem to paint a different picture. There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians 7 (one I’ve never heard read in church) which clearly says that a man and a woman must both consent before they have sexual intercourse. That’s very different to him being encouraged to “have his wicked way” as it implies equality and respect for the woman. Then in Romans 16 we find Paul greeting his colleagues who have “worked hard” or even “risked their necks” in missionary work – what’s interesting to note is that nearly half the names there are female. It’s inconceivable that the women could have done this in silent subjugation; indeed some of them, such as Phoebe the deacon, clearly worked alone and were regarded as authority figures.

I’ve quoted a number of verses already; but there’s one more (which I touched on earlier) that must surely be the key to all our thinking, not just about women but about every frightened, looked-down-upon and demoralised group within society. It’s a verse which suggests that Paul wasn’t a misogynist and might even have been a revolutionary in his teaching and practice. I’m not entirely convinced about that; but here it is: Galatians 3:28 which says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. If we took this verse seriously, it would transform our churches, our communities and our world.

We’ve covered a lot of ground this morning; yet I’ve merely scratched the surface of a difficult subject. I can see how the Bible has often been seen as an oppressive book, treading women down. And the Church must hang its head in shame over the way it has often treated women; even when they haven’t been abused they have so often been seen merely as pew-fillers, tea-makers, brass-polishers, floor-cleaners, flower-arrangers and Sunday-school teachers (all necessary tasks, of course!) instead of leaders, evangelists, preachers, thinkers and theologians who can bring fresh insights into the way we work together and think about God.

I wanted to end my message today with a rousing conclusion. But the more I thought about that, the more I realised it would be inappropriate. For there is only one thing we can see: to confess our part, however small and unintentional, in the awful situation that so many women find themselves today; and then to pray that God can help us all, from Government to Police, from glass ceilings at work to fear on the streets, from pub banter to Twitter trolling, to do things better – for the sake of God who, at the dawn of creation, made us all. equally, in his image.