securing for women the right to vote, an objective realized in the United States
with ratification in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. The
movement re-emerged after the Second World War to demand equal pay for
equal work. This in turn led to a demand for equal access to work, and many
occupations more or less closed to women earlier were now open. Women
became factory workers, truck drivers, construction workers, corporate
executives, lawyers, physicians, and more, and it was no longer unusual for
wives to work outside the home.
Following the cultural revolution and the new sexual license it introduced,
the women’s movement also began to challenge traditional norms regarding
sex and marriage, and to adopt other objectives: among them easier divorce,
legalized abortion, and the shattering of the “glass ceiling,” as they termed it,
an imaginary barrier preventing them from what they believed to be deserved
promotions and access to positions of power.
In agreement with all their contemporary cultural revolutionaries, many
women began to insist that mentally and emotionally they were no different
from men, or if they were, that they were in fact superior to men. And as
such, it became the norm to expect that no occupation should be closed to
them. This included Christian ministry, and as a consequence some mainline
Protestant churches now accept women into the ranks of their clergy.
Hence the pressure to admit women into New Church ministry. And in
fact, the Swedenborgian Church of America (Convention) has for some time
ordained women, which has only increased the pressure on other branches of
the church to follow suit.
Are Men and Women Really No Different?
We have rehearsed the cultural background to this question – the idea that the
two sexes are fundamentally no different – in order to show that it is based,
not on any empirical or doctrinal study or on any high-minded philosophical
consideration, but rather reflects an invention designed for political and
personal ends – an invention that flies in the face of common experience and
observable fact. It is the legacy of the flower children and their radical allies.
Consider observable fact. Boys and girls the world over like to play with
different kinds of toys. Boys typically prefer cars and trucks, while girls prefer
dolls. Believing this to be due to cultural factors, some parents in the 1970s
gave boys’ toys to their daughters and girls’ toys to their sons. But the sons
soon turned their girls’ toys into action figures or