AS MANY people read it, the Easter narrative being celebrated today by hundreds of millions of Christians across the world makes a point about gender as one of its many sub-texts. In his darkest moment, Jesus seems to be abandoned by most of his cowardly male disciples who are disappointed that he has failed to triumph as an earthly king, and frightened for their own skins; but his female followers, though grief-stricken over his fate, remain loyal and determined to do their cultural duty by anointing his body with spices. The women are duly rewarded by getting the first news that their master has risen.
Here is one of the many paradoxical things about religion as a feature of human society. Its founders, administrators and gate-keepers have generally, with important exceptions, been men. But its most loyal practitioners, including and perhaps especially in times of adversity, have been women. During the atheist Soviet regime, it was devout women who kept the flame of faith alive and passed it onto their children. There were babushkas or grandmothers who kept religious icons in their houses and taught their children to pray. Among the Sufi Muslim communities in remote parts of the Caucasus, women ran prayer circles; and in the indigenous religions of Siberia, the task of healing often fell to female shamans.
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