equality

• erroneous belief

5:1.4The mor­tals of the realms of time and space may dif­fer greatly in in­nate abil­i­ties and in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ment, they may en­joy en­vi­ron­ments ex­cep­tion­ally fa­vor­able to so­cial ad­vance­ment and moral prog­ress, or they may suf­fer from the lack of al­most ev­ery hu­man aid to cul­ture and sup­posed ad­vance­ment in the arts of civ­i­liza­tion; but the pos­si­bil­i­ties for spir­i­tual prog­ress in the as­cen­sion ca­reer are equal to all; in­creas­ing lev­els of spir­i­tual in­sight and cos­mic mean­ings are at­tained quite in­de­pen­dently of all such so­ciomoral dif­fer­en­tials of the di­ver­si­fied ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ments on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

• of mind advocated by Lucifer

53:4.2Self-as­ser­tion was the bat­tle cry of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. One of his chief ar­gu­ments was that, if self-gov­ern­ment was good and right for the Mel­chiz­e­deks and other groups, it was equally good for all or­ders of in­tel­li­gence. He was bold and per­sis­tent in the ad­vo­cacy of the “equal­ity of mind” and “the broth­er­hood of in­tel­li­gence.” He main­tained that all gov­ern­ment should be lim­ited to the lo­cal plan­ets and their vol­un­tary con­fed­er­a­tion into the lo­cal sys­tems. All other super­vi­sion he dis­al­lowed. He prom­ised the Plan­e­tary Princes that they should rule the worlds as su­preme ex­ec­u­tives. He de­nounced the lo­ca­tion of leg­isla­tive ac­tiv­i­ties on the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters and the con­duct of ju­di­cial af­fairs on the uni­verse cap­i­tal. He con­tended that all these func­tions of gov­ern­ment should be con­cen­trated on the sys­tem cap­i­tals and pro­ceeded to set up his own leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly and or­ga­nized his own tri­bu­nals un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of Sa­tan. And he di­rected that the princes on the apos­tate worlds do the same.

• erroneous belief

69:3.85. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on di­verse phys­i­cal and men­tal en­dow­ments. Fur­ther di­vi­sions of la­bor were fa­vored by the in­her­ent dif­fer­ences in men; all hu­man be­ings are not born equal.

• erroneous belief

70:8.1The men­tal and phys­i­cal in­equal­ity of hu­man be­ings in­sures that so­cial classes will ap­pear. The only worlds with­out so­cial strata are the most prim­i­tive and the most ad­vanced. A dawn­ing civ­i­liza­tion has not yet be­gun the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of so­cial lev­els, while a world set­tled in light and life has largely ef­faced these di­vi­sions of man­kind, which are so char­ac­ter­is­tic of all in­ter­me­di­ate evo­lu­tion­ary stages.

• erroneous belief

70:9.15Few hu­man rights were rec­og­nized in the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages; then ev­ery man be­longed to some­one else, and rights were only priv­i­leges or fa­vors granted by state or church. And the re­volt from this er­ror was equally er­ro­neous in that it led to the be­lief that all men are born equal.

• inferiors have always contended for equal rights

70:9.16The weak and the in­fe­rior have al­ways con­tended for equal rights; they have al­ways in­sisted that the state com­pel the strong and su­pe­rior to sup­ply their wants and oth­er­wise make good those de­fi­cien­cies which all too of­ten are the nat­u­ral re­sult of their own in­dif­fer­ence and in­do­lence.

• in spirit all men are equal

92:7.4All these re­li­gions have arisen as a re­sult of man’s vari­able in­tel­lec­tual re­sponse to his iden­ti­cal spir­i­tual lead­ing. They can never hope to at­tain a uni­for­mity of creeds, dog­mas, and rit­u­als—these are in­tel­lec­tual; but they can, and some day will, re­al­ize a unity in true wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all, for this is spir­i­tual, and it is for­ever true, in the spirit all men are equal.

• of men and women

125:0.4In com­pany with his par­ents Je­sus passed through the tem­ple precincts on his way to join that group of new sons of the law who were about to be con­se­crated as cit­i­zens of Is­rael. He was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by the gen­eral de­meanor of the tem­ple throngs, but the first great shock of the day came when his mother took leave of them on her way to the women’s gallery. It had never oc­curred to Je­sus that his mother was not to ac­com­pany him to the con­se­cra­tion cer­e­monies, and he was thor­oughly in­dig­nant that she was made to suf­fer from such un­just dis­crim­i­na­tion. While he strongly re­sented this, aside from a few re­marks of protest to his fa­ther, he said noth­ing. But he thought, and thought deeply, as his ques­tions to the scribes and teach­ers a week later dis­closed.

• of men and women

125:5.42. Why should moth­ers in Is­rael be seg­re­gated from the male tem­ple wor­shipers?

• of men and women

127:1.5This year Si­mon started to school, and they were com­pelled to sell an­other house. James now took charge of the teach­ing of his three sis­ters, two of whom were old enough to be­gin se­ri­ous study. As soon as Ruth grew up, she was taken in hand by Miriam and Martha. Or­di­nar­ily the girls of Jew­ish fam­i­lies re­ceived lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but Je­sus main­tained (and his mother agreed) that girls should go to school the same as boys, and since the syn­a­gogue school would not re­ceive them, there was noth­ing to do but con­duct a home school es­pe­cially for them.

• never brings peace except in recognition of supersovereignty

134:4.9Free­will be­ings who re­gard them­selves as equals, un­less they mu­tu­ally ac­knowl­edge them­selves as sub­ject to some super­sov­er­eignty, some au­thor­ity over and above them­selves, sooner or later are tempted to try out their abil­ity to gain power and au­thor­ity over other per­sons and groups. The con­cept of equal­ity never brings peace ex­cept in the mu­tual rec­og­ni­tion of some over­con­trol­ling in­flu­ence of super­sov­er­eignty.

134:4.10The Ur­mia re­li­gion­ists lived to­gether in com­par­a­tive peace and tran­quil­lity be­cause they had fully sur­ren­dered all their no­tions of re­li­gious sov­er­eignty. Spir­i­tu­ally, they all be­lieved in a sov­er­eign God; so­cially, full and un­chal­lenge­able au­thor­ity rested in their pre­sid­ing head—Cym­boy­ton. They well knew what would hap­pen to any teacher who as­sumed to lord it over his fel­low teach­ers. There can be no last­ing re­li­gious peace on Uran­tia un­til all re­li­gious groups freely sur­ren­der all their no­tions of di­vine fa­vor, cho­sen peo­ple, and re­li­gious sov­er­eignty. Only when God the Fa­ther be­comes su­preme will men be­come re­li­gious broth­ers and live to­gether in re­li­gious peace on earth.

• of men and women

138:8.11The apos­tles were at first shocked by, but early be­came ac­cus­tomed to, Je­sus’ treat­ment of women; he made it very clear to them that women were to be ac­corded equal rights with men in the king­dom.

• of men and women

149:2.8The most as­ton­ish­ing and the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary fea­ture of Mi­chael’s mis­sion on earth was his at­ti­tude to­ward women. In a day and gen­er­a­tion when a man was not sup­posed to salute even his own wife in a pub­lic place, Je­sus dared to take women along as teach­ers of the gospel in con­nec­tion with his third tour of Gal­i­lee. And he had the con­sum­mate cour­age to do this in the face of the rab­binic teach­ing which de­clared that it was “bet­ter that the words of the law should be burned than de­liv­ered to women.”

149:2.9In one gen­er­a­tion Je­sus lifted women out of the dis­re­spect­ful obliv­ion and the slav­ish drudgery of the ages. And it is the one shame­ful thing about the re­li­gion that pre­sumed to take Je­sus’ name that it lacked the moral cour­age to fol­low this no­ble ex­am­ple in its sub­se­quent at­ti­tude to­ward women.

• of men and women

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

• of men and women

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

• of men and women

167:6.4Woman’s sta­tus in Pales­tine was much im­proved by Je­sus’ teach­ing; and so it would have been through­out the world if his fol­low­ers had not de­parted so far from that which he painstak­ingly taught them.

• of men and women

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”