Divine Women

In Divine Women, I uncover the remarkable

and neglected stories of women and religion.

I head to India where I join hundreds of thousands of Hindus

in the worship of one of their most formidable goddesses - Durga.

Back in Europe, I explore the contentious issue of

whether women should be priests.

I travel down beneath the streets of Rome to find intriguing

evidence of women leading worship.

In Milan, I look at the life of Saint Augustine

and the doctrine of original sin.

And I discover the powerful women who were instrumental in the crucial early days of Islam.

Hinduism is one of the world's

one of the most ancient religions and the Goddess Durga sits right at it's heart.

This is Kamakhya Temple, high in the hills of Assam,

one of the most sacred goddess temples in India.

For nine days every year,

hundreds of thousands of Hindus come to worship Durga

and to celebrate a great festival in her honour, the Durga Puja.

Hi, nice to meet you. Do you love the Goddess here?

-Yes.

-Yeah. Why do you love her?

Because she gives us protection and she also loves us very much.

She gives us many things, like lives,

and then things to eat, things to wear.

-So, she really looks after you?

-Yes.

The festival celebrates the birth of the goddess Durga

and her epic battle with the evil demon king.

This famous story was first recorded in the 5th or 6th centuries AD,

in one of the most important religious texts in Hinduism,

called the Devi Mahatmyam

According to the sacred text,

the demon king takes the form of a buffalo

and terrorises the heavens and Earth.

Neither man nor god can defeat him,

so the gods combine their celestial power to create Durga -

the Shining One.

She appears riding a lion and carrying a fearsome weapon in each of her many arms.

After a titanic series of battles, Durga slays the buffalo demon,

liberating humanity and the gods.

Each year, all over India, Hindus celebrate Durga's victory.

I've come to Kolkata in Bengal,

where her festival - the Durga Puja,

has taken over the city.

Like most Bengalis, Tanushree Ghosh is celebrating Durga's festival.

She's invited me to join her as she gets ready for its finale.

-So it's a really big day for everyone round here?

-Yeah.

Over here it's a very big day because it happens once a year,

we wait for these four days.

And also today is a very woman-centric day

because today women do the pujas, it's for them.

So, this is where you do your make-up?

-We do. This is Lata.

-Hi, namaste.

-Hi, namaste.

-Please have a seat.

-Thank you.

And this is where all the make-up happens for the four days

that we get ready for the Puja, all the saris, everything.

So, this is where we get dressed and all the heavy make-up.

This is the only time when we put on very heavy make-up

and heavy jewellery, not before this.

It's important for Tanusharee to follow traditional customs,

but this is also an opportunity to keep up with the latest fashions.

Tanushree is taking me to her community's pandal,

a temporary shrine built especially for the festival.

When you think of the Goddess, what's in your mind?

Do you think she actually exists as a creature with eight or ten arms?

She does exist.

For us, she's a living being who's always around us, blessing us,

protecting us, taking care of us.

So, for us, we've seen her drawn like this throughout...

Yet, actually, we don't believe she has ten arms, but it shows that,

you know, she's multi-tasking, a woman who's multi-tasking.

So, really she's a kind of role model goddess?

She controls the world,

so she's a role model for men and for women because,

in a different way, she shows women how to control and she also shows men

that even if women can be quiet, but still, you know,

don't meddle with her too much, don't mess with her,

then she can take up ten weapons in ten hands and kill you,

and can be the monster.

-Are we a bit late?

-Yeah, we are late.

-OK.

Every year, thousands of different neighbourhoods all over Kolkata

come together to create their own special Durga shrine.

-Are you married?

-I am married, yeah.

-So, then we put it in our hair.

Clay and water from the sacred Ganges are used to make the image of Durga.

Described by many as the Mother of India, for nine days,

she is celebrated, worshipped and treated with the greatest respect.

She's not a goddess to be messed with, is she?

She's the power god. Everybody finds solace and power, everything.

And everybody come and pray, give us the power to sustain another year.

At the end of the festival, Durga will return home.

She'll be taken to the sacred Ganges,

which flows from the Himalayas, the seat of the gods.

But first, she must be prepared.

So, the idea is that I've given the Goddess food for her journey,

I've looked after her, that's why I'm smoothing her cheeks,

and because she's married I'm giving her the red mark on her forehead.

But, all the time, I have to remember just how powerful she is and do it right.

The paint is the colour of blood and reflects not only Durga's

life-giving qualities, but also the brutal terror she can bring.

Do one.

-BANG!

-Oh!

LOUD BANGS

-Hi, are you enjoying yourselves today?

-Very much.

I hear that some girls come here and you meet up with young boys,

-is that true, at this festival?

-ALL: Yeah!

The festivities carry on throughout the rest of the day and well into the night.

Now we're on the way to the Ganges,

where the idol's going to be immersed in the river.

So, how many of these idols will go down? How many pandals?

-Around 100,000.

-Will you be sorry to see her go?

Yes, it's very emotional,

because you're going to wait another year for her to come back, so it's like your mother going away.

-Like your mother leaving for a year?

-Absolutely.

-Bolo Durga mai-ki.

-Jai.

What are they saying?

"Bolo Durga mai-ki" is to the glory of Mother Durga.

And "aashchhe bochhor abar hobe" is we will celebrate again next year.

OK.

We're actually on the banks of the Ganges now

and it's heading down to the sacred water.

Durga's journey home is about to begin.

This is the moment Hindus think she's starting to return to heaven,

to her husband Shiva.

Across the globe, the Goddess has pretty much been consigned to history.

But, just like those great ancient goddesses of antiquity,

here, she's celebrated and worshipped

with a wild and heartfelt passion.

And also, just like them

and, I suspect, like the women who've worshipped her for centuries,

she's thought to be both protective and threatening.

Someone who demands respect and inspires devotion.

There are some Christians who believe women are not made to

be priests and yet in the early days of Christianity,

it appears they played vital roles.

There's long been an underlying assumption that to be a true

representative of the Christian god, you really need to be a man.

In the Church of England and across the world,

the issue of whether women should be bishops has caused turmoil,

and most Catholics believe that women shouldn't even be priests.

Amongst them is Catholic writer and broadcaster Joanna Bogle.

God became incarnate as a man. That's not an accident.

Christ was born and grew up in a world

where every religion had priestesses.

He knew what he was doing. He's Almighty God.

This was the plan from the beginning, that men would be priests.

Priests are there to serve the Church,

but it's not a question of allowing women to be priests.

It's in the nature of woman that she has another task to do.

So God loves you, He just doesn't want you to give the sacred Eucharist?

I could if I needed to distribute Holy Communion, but no.

A priest in the person of Christ, who was male,

will preside saying, "This is my body".

And I think that's very profound.

So you think for the future of the Church,

it's entirely appropriate that there are no female priests,

there are no female bishops?

It's not that we MAY not, we CANNOT have them.

That's a bit like saying, "What a pity men can't give birth."

There are not going to be, there cannot be women priests.

It's not in the nature of womanhood. That's the deal.

That's the deal.

I have to admit that I find Joanna's position hard to accept.

But she reflects the views of no lesser an authority

than the Pope himself.

In 2010, the Vatican declared that to ordain a woman was a serious crime.

Now that seems to me to be very shocking,

but, also as a historian, it's just rather odd,

because if you investigate the foundations of Christianity,

they tell a very different story.

Questo e il mio corpo offerto in sacrificio per voi.

Father Scott Brodeur is a Catholic priest and respected theologian

at the prestigious Gregorian University in Rome.

He prepares men for the priesthood.

He believes that key evidence

about the role women should play in the Church

can be found in the Bible itself,

in a letter St Paul wrote to the citizens of Rome.

And what he has to say may come as a surprise to some.

St Paul in... May I read this verse?

..in the Letter To The Romans, Chapter 16, Verse 1,

St Paul is writing, of course, and he says,

"I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchrea."

And Paul, by sending her to Rome, is saying,

"Look at this extraordinary woman and I'm sending you one of our best

"and because I trust her,

"she's going to interpret this letter for you.

"So if you have any questions, ask Phoebe."

It is significant that, because that's pretty much

the most important job that you can give someone -

to ask Phoebe to take the teachings of Christ,

the message of Jesus, to Rome, to the centre of the Roman world.

Absolutely. Paul is so aware of the importance of this letter.

So she has a crucial role.

So do you think he's consciously making a point by choosing a woman?

Absolutely. The entire Letter To The Romans is about

that there is now this common equality among us,

that we all share the same value and worth.

It's interesting though, isn't it?

It's not the commonly held opinion. When you talk to people, they say,

"Oh, you know, Christianity just caused terrible problems for women."

Precisely. Or that St Paul was very much anti-women or so forth,

but nothing could be further from the truth.

You spent your life studying the teachings of Jesus.

Do you think he would have wanted to have seen a church develop

where women played a key role?

The early disciples of Jesus were both men and women, that there

was a very special and important group of women who closely

followed him, all through his public ministry.

An important role of service to him and I do think that's

important for the Church in every age, including ours.

Women were essential in the early Church.

Hidden beneath the streets of Rome lies an intricate labyrinth of tunnels,

known as the Catacombs of St Priscilla.

They date to between the second and fourth centuries AD,

when to be a Christian in Rome was to be a criminal.

Down here lies a neglected piece of early Christian history.

This is where Christians were brought to be buried

and where they came when they were being persecuted.

The catacombs were carved out of the bare rock.

You can still see all the pickaxe marks on the ceilings and the walls.

It's almost as if you're being transported back

to the very moment of Christianity's inception.

This was only discovered a few years ago,

and it dates from the second century AD,

which makes it the oldest surviving image anywhere in the world

of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

And that's what's so fantastic about coming down here,

because you're absolutely up, face to face,

with the very earliest days of Christianity.

But what I find especially fascinating about these tunnels

is what they tell us about the role of women.

In one corner, we find an image detailing what appears to be

women presiding over a religious ritual,

what today we might recognise as the Eucharist or Holy Communion.

In another alcove

is an image which some people would consider incendiary.

There are two things that strike you about this particular painting.

The obvious one is that the scene is dominated by a figure of a woman.

But then just have a look at this little group of three in the corner.

There's a bishop,

and he's got his hand on the shoulder of a woman.

Now, she's wearing a piece of white cloth called an alb

and that was a vestment that could only be worn by ordained priests.

All over this subterranean world there are images

of not just men leading worship, but women.

Being here, it appears to me

that the early Christians had an inclusive, egalitarian take

on who should lead their faith.

A view at odds with that of many Christians today.

I'm on my way to a city in Northern Italy to find out why

women were pushed to the margins of the Christian faith.

Our evidence reveals that Christianity began by championing women,

but not everyone was happy with this situation.

Many eminent theologians were deeply uncomfortable

with women taking such a prominent position.

How dare women presume they could play a leading role

when their very essence was an affront to God?

One Christian, Clement of Alexandria,

wrote in the 3rd Century AD,

"The very consciousness of their own nature

"must evoke feelings of shame."

And another said that women were not created in God's image,

but instead they destroyed God's image.

But there would be one man

whose glittering intellect and powers of persuasion

would make this hotchpotch of women-hating bile stick.

I've come to the place where, for him, it all started.

Beneath Milan's cathedral lie the ruins of a 4th-century baptistry.

It's where people once came to be baptised into the Christian faith.

What happened here was perhaps

one of the most critical developments in Christian history.

Here, in 387 AD, a man called Augustine became a Christian.

And he'd go on to be one of the most brilliant

Christian theologians of all time,

but his attitudes would cause trouble for women

for the next 1,700 years.

We know an awful lot about Augustine's life,

thanks to his detailed autobiography, his Confessions.

Augustine tells us that in his younger days,

he was obsessed with sex and that, as a teenager,

he spent every waking hour hungry with desire.

"To love and to be loved was sweet to me,

"particularly when I enjoyed the body of the one I desired.

"And so I polluted the spring of friendship

"with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its lustre

"with the slime of lust."

But after becoming a Christian,

Augustine embraced a life of celibacy.

His preoccupation with sex, however, was far from over.

He'd go on to develop a theory

which would shape how humanity viewed itself.

It was a theory so powerful,

we're still living with its consequences today.

Augustine developed the concept of original sin.

He believed that the crimes committed by Adam and Eve

in the Garden of Eden, when they ate the forbidden fruit,

would be perpetuated down the generations,

thanks to the act of sex.

In other words, when any of us are born,

we're already creatures infused with sin to the very core of our being.

Women, in particular, come out of this very badly.

Carved into the wall of Milan's cathedral

is the moment when Augustine believed

it all went wrong for humanity.

It was Eve who'd encouraged Adam to sin.

Eve becomes an archetype for all women, weak and easily fooled,

but also a temptress who leads men astray.

Rather than eroticism and sexual desire

being considered a gift of the gods as they were in the classical world,

now these things were thought of as unremittingly dark and sinful -

a betrayal of God himself.

@In Islam today we find few female leaders of the faith.

But at the beginning, the story was very different.

Two women in particular played a crucial role.

Islamic sources tell us that Khadija bint Khuwaylid was the daughter

of a merchant who built the family business into a commercial empire.

Her caravans travelled thousands of miles

to the great cities in the Middle East.

From all accounts, Khadija was a powerful

and independent-minded woman.

Once she was widowed, she vowed she would never marry again.

She was clearly accustomed to making her own way in the world.

In fact, it was her business acumen that would set her on a path

that would eventually change the history of the world.

I'm meeting Professor Leila Ahmed from Harvard University,

to find out about Khadija's relationship with a young man

she hired to help her with her business.

His name was Muhammad.

She was a powerful woman, a merchant, with a lot of money

and she hired Muhammad because he had a reputation for honesty

and she admired him.

She was very impressed and actually proposed marriage to him.

He was a 25-year-old. She was 40.

That does seem to be key though,

the fact that she is choosing this young man.

You know, she spots him,

she thinks he's got potential and then she decides to make him hers.

That's right.

From all accounts, their early years were a partnership,

both emotionally and in business.

But gradually Muhammad withdrew,

growing more interested in spirituality, and often leaving his home

to seek solitude in the hills above Mecca -

the city destined to become the centre of the Islamic faith.

Muhammad had begun his transformation from man to prophet.

We know that when he first began to experience Quranic revelations

he even doubted himself

but it was Khadija who affirmed the reality of his prophethood.

So we know that she was critical to Muhammad.

She became his first convert. She was the first Muslim.

Fascinating it was a woman who was the first convert to Islam.

That's right.

The fact that she was a major figure in society meant the tribe

respected him, even if they didn't like his message.

Her support was extraordinarily important to him.

For the next ten years, Khadija used her family connections

and all her wealth to support her husband

and fund the fledgling faith,

a religion built on the controversial principle of one god

in a society that believed in many.

Now Muhammad decided it was time for action.

In defiance of the tribal elders, he was going to publicly preach his new faith.

"There is one god, Allah," he said.

"To worship all others is blasphemy."

Khadija did everything possible to help her husband and Islam

but, in 619, she fell ill with fever and died.

Muhammad was heartbroken.

For 25 years, Khadija had been his best friend and his closest ally.

Muslims still remember the year of her death as the Year of Sorrow.

As was the tradition, he took other wives,

but we're told his favourite was called Aisha.

Controversies surround Aisha,

not least rumours of her tender age when she married.

I'm meeting academic Myriam Francois-Cerrah to find out

why this young woman became so central to Islam.

She understood the religion. She understood the context.

She's scholarly, she's smart. She's eloquent.

She wants to be part of the public sphere and very much is.

This was not a shy and cowering woman.

She really took to the front and if she had something to say,

she said it.

Muhammad's new faith made him many enemies and he was forced out of Mecca.

After several years in exile, he returned to defeat his opponents and took control of the city.

But a few months later, he was dead.

And the person instrumental in maintaining his legacy

was his wife, Aisha.

In its early years,

Islam depended on word of mouth to record its core beliefs.

Called "Hadith", which literally means "sayings",

these accounts of the words and deeds of Muhammad

were eventually written down to help believers to understand the Quran.

We're told Aisha's intimate knowledge of the Prophet

made her central to this development.

She was known for having memorised thousands of Hadith,

or the sayings of the Prophet,

peace be upon him, throughout her lifetime.

Scores of men learnt from her.

There's a saying that you can get half of your religion

just from Aisha.

Today, the position of women in Islam is one of the most hotly debated topics

from Baghdad to Bradford.

Many see Muslim women as oppressed.

If you think of these great role models, Khadija and Aisha,

what do you think they would think of Islam

as it's developed in the 21st century?

I'm not entirely sure that they would recognise

the practices that we have today.

I'm certainly not sure that Aisha would take very well to being told

to move to the back of the room and not speak up.

You know, she was very much used to teaching men, educating men.

If she had something to say, she would say it.

And the idea that Khadija, again a very powerful figure,

would somehow be curtailed in her voice, in her rights,

I'm not sure that this would be anything

that they would be willing to accept or recognise.

It's easy to see how Aisha

and Khadija can be role models for Muslim women.

These powerful figures were key to the early days of Islam

and they challenged many people's perceptions

of women's role in the faith.

Shocking really that, outside Islam,

so few of us have even heard their names.

I've discovered compelling proof that the female of the species

and religion have always been inseparable.

Forget or ignore them and we impoverish history and ourselves.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd