Let's Remember the Biblical Women at Easter
by April D. DeConick
Published in Huffington Post 2013
Post-service, Holy Saturday 2014
It is almost Easter, when 70 percent of Americans commemorate the death of Jesus and celebrate his resurrection. Most of the traditional Easter stories and pageants celebrated in churches remember the male disciples and their supporting roles, from the all-male Last Supper to Judas' betrayal to Peter's denial to the thieves' redemption. But women played a role in Jesus' life and the events surrounding his death and resurrection too. So why aren't we including them in our Easter celebrations?
For years, as a biblical scholar, I have been devoted to trying to understand marginalized, forbidden and forgotten people like the women in the biblical story whose stories have been sidelined. Women's stories have taken second place to the interests and needs of male biblical writers and male leaders in Christian churches over the centuries.
The stories of the biblical women recorded in the ancient sources take the back seat to the stories of the men because the texts were written by male leaders in emerging churches who had their own interests to front and authority to assert and maintain. The women's stories have to be reconstructed and reimagined carefully from what the ancient sources tell us and from what they don't.
Read more on Huffington Post HERE.