I'm not so certain of that, Slag. It could as easily be argued that without Paul's church-of-the-times diplomacy, the status of women would have climbed faster in the Christian world than it has. The quote from Galations, though direct, in my experience has always been applied to strictly spiritual spheres (You'll get your reward in heaven, dearie), while the rest has been applied to the worldly reality.

As an aside, referring to hermeneutics and other means of dissecting the texts that make up the present Bible: most ordinary church-attending Christians never so much as hear of such studies. The preacher or the priest interprets the text as he (or she, in the case of a few denominations) sees fit; delving into such esoterica would likely get him fired. In fact, I've seen it happen. When I was a teenager, we had a young and progressive minister, for about a year. He was hounded out of the church by the elders, a group of well-meaning but narrowminded old men, who hardly believed him to be a Christian, let alone a fit minister.

The Bible as we know it (meaning the average congregant) is inscrutable; people grasp at the simplist and easiest understood aspects of the text, and out of that Old Testament morass of warrior god and wild-eyed prophets, and the New Testament combination of ultimate bloody sacrifice and resurrection mystery, they take whatever appeals to them individually and is acceptable within their segment of society.

I am not anti-Christian, though it might seem so. My family are staunch, kind, gentle, well-meaning old-fashioned Christians, and I love them, even when my 82 year old mother makes un-nerving statements about homosexuals or asserts the reality of the Flood while watching prehistoric science shows. But there are Christians like Promise Keepers and various Evangelicals out there with an agenda that I feel threatens many freedoms and fosters hatred, while the 'good' Christians remain largely silent.