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On April 25th I attended the event in the Sellinger VIP lounge to attend Christopher Jack Hill’s discussion of women in the ministry sponsored by the Women’s Center. Hill is a graduate student from Johns Hopkins university, a woman’s activist, a minister, and journalist, who has written a book and strictly focused on the women in the ministry and the history of religion.
Hill opened his lecture late and managed to continue regardless of the elderly woman in the audience who continually distracted him and complained about not being able to hear. He started out with how women today are struggling with their identity in industrialized society, and how it is causing friction between men and women in the workplace. Hill believes that society needs to adjust to create a fair family structure where daughters are valued just as equally as sons. He also made other references to pop culture and currents events when he discussed the song title “A Woman’s Worth” by Alicia Keys, as well as how women’s history has evolved from suffrage and the right to vote to where Hillary Clinton has become a forerunner of president of the United States.
Hill feels that as a social activist he needs to further the progression of women in the ministry, as they have furthered themselves to equal rights as men. He then turned to the religious aspect of his lecture, where he began discussing women in references from the Bible. He starts out by discussion the misconception of Eve from Adam and Eve and the story of creation. He furthers his argument by discussion how the book of Genesis is not actually about creation and how creation is more accurately found in the book of Job. Hill believes that Genesis serves the purpose of confirming specifically what men and women’s purpose is and how they are distinct from animals. He continues by addressing the idea of how Eve is the downfall of Adam, but in all actuality Eve had intention not of those to deceive Adam. Eve could have eaten the forbidden fruit herself, but she shared it with her husband.
The purpose of women may be in the professional world, says Hill, it may not be. It depends on a woman’s value of her own self-worth, no one can determine that for her. He states that intentionalism does not minimize consequence, and that even though Eve did not have the intention of harming Adam, there is still the same consequence, but she should not be unforgiven. The purpose of men and women is to help eachother towards God’s ultimate goal.
Hill concluded with the idea of the power and influence that women have. HE stated that behind every successful man is a successful women, and how women were the first to see Jesus after he resurrected, and the last ones with him at the bottom of his cross when he died. He continued his closing with the personal aspect from his life of how his mother was a great influence in his life and a lasting authority figure that he has never had a greater fear over. He finished by leading the women at the lecture to repeat with him empowering statements of equality and recognition of their worth.
What I took most from this lecture is the realization of how much tolerance has evolved that now women are viewed as equals to men, and how at one point it was not like that. I related it to the Jesuit education idea of both “men and women working for the greater good.” Not people or mankind, men AND women as equals. Also, of how the Jesuit Education discusses equal treatment and stresses the golden rule, where women are not to be viewed as inferiors, but as partners aiding men in the pursuit of God’s ultimate goal.