1. Western women have struggled hard to escape, but not long ago women here were treated as chattels and temptresses, to be owned by men and kept out of men‘s way, to be chaperoned, hidden, powerless under compulsory rules of "modesty". Women‘s bodies have been the battle flag of religions, whether it‘s churching their uncleanness, the Pope forcing them to have babies, the Qur‘an allowing wife–beating, Hindu suttee, Chinese foot–binding and all the rest.

2. She expanded on this biblical message about Jesus: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God" (John 1: 12, 13). Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "Self–renunciation of all that constitutes a so–called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood–gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness.