Paolo Cugini
Introduction:
A subtle alliance exists throughout contemporary history, leaving behind social
ruins and broken rights. It is the ideological bond between traditional
political systems, which brandish the identity triad of God, Homeland, and
Family, and Christian traditionalist movements, both Catholic and radical
evangelical. This neoconservative axis elevates the literal interpretation of
the Bible to a geopolitical and dogmatic bulwark. When these two worlds
converge, the patriarchal order reinstates itself as a sovereign and
unstoppable structure, erasing historic achievements in gender equality. In
this article, I intend to analyze the theological-political mechanisms of this
restoration, contrasting ideological literalism with the critical tools of
contemporary feminist theology.
1. The myth of original subordination: the rib and
guilt in biblical literalism
The theological core on which the political and patriarchal reaction is
based rests on two pillars of biblical literalism, drawn from a
decontextualized and intentionally flat reading of the first chapters of the Book
of Genesis .
The first is the chronological and biological argument: the male human
being created first, and the woman fashioned later from one of his ribs ( Genesis
2:21-22 ). The second, even more coercive and guilt-inducing, is the
imputation of original sin: the woman described as the first sinner and
temptress of man ( Genesis 3:6 ). As feminist theologian Mary Daly notes
in her seminal text Beyond God the Father , this narrative structure is
not neutral, but operates as a formidable device of psychological and social
submission: «If God is male, then the male is God. The divine order thus
legitimizes the patriarchal social order, making the submission of women a
cosmic and moral imperative» (Daly, 1974, p. 19).
When the sacred text is removed from historical exegesis and reduced to
a literal code devoid of cultural stratification, women's inferiority ceases to
be a sociological legacy and becomes "divine will." If women are
proclaimed the origin of sin and, at the same time, ontologically derived from
the male body, the political order merely translates this supposed cosmic
hierarchy into laws. Deprived of their own ontological autonomy in
fundamentalist narratives, women have no choice but to obey, confined to a role
of perpetual emotional and reproductive guardianship.
2. The pseudo-Pauline turning point: the imposition of
ecclesial and political silence
The literalism device is not limited to the archetype of Genesis
origins, but finds a ruthless pragmatic codification in the New Testament,
particularly through the ideological use of pseudo-Pauline texts. The pivotal
passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 ( "A woman should learn in silence
with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach, nor to have dominion
over a man, but to be in silence" ) is regularly wielded by
traditionalist movements to justify the exclusion of women not only from
ecclesiastical ministries, but from the space of public speaking and political
leadership.
Contemporary feminist hermeneutics has largely deconstructed this usage,
demonstrating how the Letter to Timothy, considered by historical critics as a
late Deutero-Pauline text, reflects the gradual assimilation of the early
Christian community to the patriarchal domestic codes of the Roman Empire ( pater
familias ), in clear reaction against the original egalitarianism of the
Jesus movement. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza highlights how fundamentalism uses
these texts for an authoritarian "normalization":
The injunction to silence does not reflect the core of the evangelical
message, which, on the contrary, recognized women's roles of apostolate and
prophecy, but represents a historically situated attempt to contain the female
emancipation that threatened the surrounding political and domestic order.
Elevating this historical contingency to a perennial dogma means engaging in
hermeneutic violence aimed at social control (Fiorenza, 1985, p. 57).
Reading literally the subsequent reference in 1 Timothy 2:14 ( "and
Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into
transgression" ), the reactionary theological-political axis welds the
New Testament to the condemnation of Genesis. Silence and submission
imposed through dogma thus become, in the public discourse of modern identity
movements, the correct social position of women, whose only path to redemption
is reduced, as the biblical text itself literally prescribes, to the sole biological
function of generating children ( 1 Timothy 2:15 ).
3. Exegetical Deconstruction: The Response of
Contemporary Feminist Theology
Contemporary feminist theology has amply demonstrated that literalism is
not faithful exegesis, but rather an ideological operation of textual selection
and censorship. Through the historical-critical method and the hermeneutics of
suspicion, theologians like Phyllis Trible have undermined the patriarchal use
of Scripture.
The literalist approach deliberately ignores the existence of two
different creation accounts in Genesis . The oldest account, that of the
priestly tradition ( Genesis 1:27 ), clearly affirms the contemporaneity
and original equality of the sexes: "God created man in his own image;
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them ."
Furthermore, Phyllis Trible, in her famous study God and the Rhetoric of
Sexuality , offers a radical rereading of the second chapter of Genesis
(the narrative of the "rib"), demonstrating how the literal
patriarchal translation betrays the philology of the Hebrew text. The Hebrew
term 'Adham does not originally indicate the male man, but rather the
indistinct earthly creature, drawn from the earth ( 'adamah ). Only with
the separation of the rib/side are the man ( 'ish ) and the woman ( 'ishshah
) born simultaneously:
The creation of woman is not an act of secondary subordination, but the
culmination of creation that allows the birth of reciprocity. In the original
text, the "rib" ( tsela ) indicates the flank, the side: woman
is created to stand beside man, not beneath him. Patriarchal literalism
commits a philological deception to justify political submission (Trible, 1978,
p. 94).
Finally, the blaming of Eve in Genesis 3 is overturned by feminist
theology. The act of eating the fruit is not described in the Hebrew text as an
innate perversion of women, but as a path towards knowledge and moral
self-awareness. The literalist interpretation, which puts in God's mouth the
thesis that woman is the primary source of sin, serves only to legitimize the
historical punishment of the female gender through the institution of husbandly
domination ( Genesis 3:16 ), mistaking a theological description of the
effects of the fall for a perennial normative command.
4. Geopolitical convergence and the ruins of law in
international current affairs
The exploitation of distorted biblical passages finds its greatest
sociological effectiveness when it abandons its strictly theological context
and becomes embedded in the agendas of nationalist, authoritarian, and
conservative parties. The defense of traditional values becomes the ideal
meeting ground between religious literalism and the preservation of state
political power.
In the dynamics of right-wing populism and global fundamentalist
movements, this theological-political fusion is not a theoretical abstraction,
but translates into a specific normative offensive aimed at dismantling
reproductive and civil rights. Current international events offer dramatic
confirmation of this process.
The rhetoric of protecting the family and religious identity is being
used globally as a regulatory tool to block legal equality. As highlighted by
reports from international organizations such as Equality Now, a worrying
legislative asymmetry exists: while laws aimed at protecting the traditional
family or combating sexual minorities are being passed under emergency
procedures in several African parliaments (such as the Family Values Bills in
Ghana and Kenya), family law reforms aimed at ensuring women's equal rights in
marriage, divorce, and child custody remain paralyzed or suffer significant
setbacks. This same trend is evident in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA)
countries, where personal status codes, rooted in traditionalist
interpretations of religious law, continue to bind women's economic and legal
autonomy to male guardianship, effectively excluding them from full
citizenship.
In this dangerous convergence, the rhetoric of "man first, then
woman" justifies the patriarchal reaction against emancipation. If the
state proclaims itself the guardian of a natural and divine order founded on a
rigid and literal reading of Scripture, any call for equality is branded not as
a legitimate civil claim, but as a direct attack on the social order, the
security of the nation, and the sovereignty of God himself.
5. The erasure of the female subject
When the theology of submission translates into legislative practice and
mass consensus, women's substantive equality dissolves. This is not an abstract
academic dispute, but a material historical process that materializes in the
limitation of civil liberties and fundamental rights. Philosopher Adriana
Cavarero, reflecting on the persistent structures of patriarchal power in her
essay " Despite Plato ," highlights how the male symbolic
order has historically expropriated women's bodies, reproduction, and speech,
confining them in a conceptual prison: "Patriarchal logic assigns women
the place of imperfect origin, of flesh that deviates from the straight path of
male reason. When politics adopts this metaphysical and religious scheme, it
erases women as autonomous political subjects, reducing them once again to a
mere biological function or a constant moral and existential threat" (Cavarero,
1990, p. 45).
The alliance between literalist dogmatism and traditional political
systems reactualizes this identical repressive mechanism: the literal
interpretation blames and subordinates women on a metaphysical level, and
reactionary politics institutionalizes and legalizes that blame on a social
level.
Conclusions
The symbiotic bond between biblical literalism and traditional identity
politics constitutes one of the most effective mechanisms for preserving the
contemporary patriarchal order. Through the ideological and ahistorical use of
the texts of Genesis and the Pauline corpus , Christian
traditionalist movements and conservative political systems construct a sacred
superstructure that justifies discrimination.
However, as highlighted by the deconstruction carried out by feminist
theology, this framework is not based on true fidelity to the sacred text, but
on its hermeneutical distortion. Uncovering the historicity of Scripture and
restoring centrality to narratives of reciprocity and liberation is not only a
theological task, but an act of political resistance essential to preventing
women's equality from being sacrificed on the altar of identity dogma.
Bibliography
Cavarero,
Adriana. Despite Plato: Female Figures in Ancient Philosophy . Rome:
Editori Riuniti, 1990.
Daly, Mary. Beyond God the
Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation . Milan: Editori Riuniti,
1974.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction
of Christian Origins . Turin: Claudiana.
Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality . Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1978, p. 94.
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