It is interesting to examine Christianity at the time it started to form, that time is roughly from anywhere from 3 a.d. to 200 a.d. and it is particularly interesting to examine Christianity of today to that of the past. In the present culture which I live in we see very strange behavior from Christians. There is still a male dominated congregation which has no foundation besides tradition. Largely this can be seen in how people first governed themselves. When a political unit consisted only of a family, it seems that the father was the leader and decision maker. There is more to this. The father's role was more than a governing role but also a religious role. He was the mediator of the dead ancestors and the living relatives.

This father figure is still seen in Christianity and I will use the Catholic sect for examples since it is the one I was brought up on and the one I know the best. Obviously what is left over from the years of change is the priest, but a priest isn't what he used to be. In religions predating Christianity the priest was, like it was said before, a father of a family. His job was to perform sacraments like feeding the ancestors, marriage, and proper burial of the dead. All of these were not taken lightly. If the body of a family member was buried improperly, the ghost of the individual would haunt the family until it was buried properly. The priest was also involved with rituals to honor the dead relatives. This involved chants that must be recited exactly every time. Even when the language of the chants changed so that the people reciting them did not understand the language they spoke, they still had to be said in the way they have been before. The