n.t. wright on the full participation of women in ministry

ht: next wave

FORA.tv – Lise Eliot: Pink Brain, Blue Brain

**if the video doesn’t load here then go here to fora.tv**

Lise Eliot talks about Pink Brain, Blue Brain. Based on research in the field of neuroplasticity, Eliot zeroes in on the precise differences between boys and girls’ brains and explains the harmful nature of gender stereotypes.

She offers parents and teachers concrete ways they can help all children reach their fullest potential.

ht: pc

Encounters with Sexism

crossposted from onehandclapping

Every now and then I get that slap in the face reminder that sexism is alive and thriving in our world.  Sometimes it can be easy to think otherwise.  I attend a church that affirms my value as a woman, I have intelligent friends, I participate in emerging church forums, and I live in a progressive town.  So in my day to day life I can pretend that most of the world actually thinks I’m human.   And many of the people I know are uncomfortable taking a stand for women mostly because they don’t see any apparent problems.  Then come the wake up calls.

I started the week at a women’s book discussion at my church where we are reading through Sue Monk Kidd’s Dance of the Dissident Daughter.  I love that story of one woman’s awakening, and it served as a significant part of my journey in affirming my worth as a woman. Our discussion this week focused on how language is still often used to demean women.  When the worst insults in our culture are to call someone a girl, when women are still pressured to have sons, and apologize for birthing daughters, when in business meetings women are ignored, or forced to be and dress like men in order to compete – sexism is alive and well.  The constant blows at who we are surround us, and we all lamented that when we point out this stuff we are dismissed as angry bitches.  That whole discussion was reflective and theoretical, but then I went out this week and saw it all in play.

A couple weeks ago I signed a letter to the Presidential Selection Committee for my alma mater Wheaton College encouraging them to consider female and minority candidates for the next President of Wheaton.  Dr. Duane Litfin is retiring after 17 years of leading the college with an ultra-conservative hand.  He was selected to steer the college away from a perceived “liberal” turn in the 1980s.  So he brought his dispensational, cessationist, anti-ecumenical and anti-egalitarian views to the college.  My former pastor, a friend of his, told me as I headed off to college that Litfin’s greatest fear for the college was the growing amount of women entering the biblical studies field.  And while I was there, great efforts were taken to promote “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” and silence the students for biblical equality groups.  But now as he is leaving, there is a chance for the college to break those chains and take a stand for women.  Yet even proposing that option has met with disdain. Responses to the mere suggestion of considering a woman or minority include “You have got to be kidding me. Only in academia and government are such bogus voices funded and stroked. I feel specifically called to buy something with a pink ribbon emblem and then go wretch.” and “This is silliness. And it’s a classic example of what happens when people ignore the Pendulum of Truth” and “I do not think, however, that they should be set on finding a female or minority president. It is very likely that in doing that, they may end up with someone that will lead the school in a very dangerous direction.” Along with numerous assertions that the college should hire the most-qualified candidate, implying that a woman or a minority would not fit that bill.  Sexism is alive and well.

Then here in Austin a couple of weeks ago, the DJ’s of my favorite morning radio show were suspended for using offensive language.  The British radio host had used a phrase that sounded like a racial slur, and they laughed about the awkwardness of what her phrase sounded like.  They were suspended without pay for a couple of weeks and forced to take cultural sensitivity classes.  Since returning they have been very careful not to really say anything about other races, even stopping themselves in the middle of stories.  But the use of women as insults has continued in full force.  They constantly compare people to girls to show how weak and pathetic they are.  They use references to women’s anatomy to insult people – especially the ever-popular term “douchebag.”  Lesson learned – we have to be sensitive to other races but women are scum to be used however we like.

Similar lesson from this whole recent controvery about the Deadly Viper book.  In the promo for the book about men’s intigrity published by Zondervan, the authors made use of Asian cultural references in really inappropriate and insensitive ways.  It was obviously offensive, and a number of us in the Christian community pointed out that offense and asked for an apology.  I fully affirm that an apology was needed to my Asian brothers and sisters, and the Christian community in general.  At the same time, I was disturbed that many of the people calling for an apology were saying stuff like “I think the content of the book is great, I just have problems with the culturally insensitive packaging.”  I think they were saying that to be nice and build bridges, but in all truth the curriculum is full of sexist stereotypes that use women as insults.  The authors even have a video on their website promoting their Mancave series that is simply a series of gender stereotypes where manly=good and girly=bad.  I applaud the efforts to stand up to insensitive racial stereotypes in the church, but wish people hadn’t affirmed gender stereotypes in the process.  And I really wonder if that same group of people would put forth the effort to take a stand for treating women in the church with respect just like they asked for Asians in the church to be treated with respect.  I want to believe they would, but far too often I see sexism protected by the shield of “theology” in ways that racism can never be in our modern world.

Sexism is alive and well.  This week has just been a reminder of how far we have to go until women are respected as fully human and not demeaned for the sake of entertainment.

the books of the bible: a gender accurate and narrative format bible

the books of the bible is a refreshing new bible that is not only written without chapter and verse numbers throughout the text (there is a text range at the bottom of the page) but it is also currently in the gender accurate tniv (today’s new international version). here is some info:

The Books of The Bible project encourages better Bible reading, particularly by emphasizing the reading of whole books. The result is an inviting and clean visual presentation of the Bible that can be understood and enjoyed more easily. The Books of The Bible differs from the format of most current Bibles in significant ways:

Chapter and verse numbers are removed from the text(A chapter and verse range is given at the bottom of each page)

Each book’s natural literary breaks are shown instead

There are no notes, cross references, or section headings in the text

Text is presented in one column rather than two or more

Books that have historically been divided into parts are restored

Books are presented in an order that gives readers more help in understanding

here are some sample page comparisons:

you can find out more at their website and even download sample books.

if you’re wondering what gender accurate means the following should help clarify:

The TNIV is not gender neutral; it is in fact “gender accurate.” Gender neutrality suggests the removal of specific male or female attributes. The TNIV does not remove these attributes or “neuter” any passages of Scripture. The TNIV uses generic language only where the meaning of the text was intended to include both men and women. These changes reflect a more precise rendering of Greek and Hebrew words.

Half of all major Bible translations use some gender-accurate language, especially translations like the NLT (Tyndale) and the NCV (Nelson). But even translations like the the NKJV and the Holman Christian Standard Bible use gender-accurate language.

The TNIV does not refer to God by using such terminology as “she” or “our Father-Mother”. It is the commitment and firm belief of the CBT that masculine terminology remains masculine when the original texts use the masculine form.

The TNIV uses gender-accurate language only where the meaning of the original text was intended to include both men and women.

more info on this topic here

this ridiculously inexpensive ($6.99) but beautifully designed bible can be purchased directly from the international bible society. it says “while supplies last” so i don’t know if it will be reprinted. i heard julie clawson mention elsewhere that the tniv may not be around for long.

update:  here is a christianity today article on this very issue. the tniv is indeed being phased out for a new niv.

ht: frank viola

Top 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Ordained

(one of our commenters posted this and it’s too funny not to share with all of you. thanks chris. :)

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.

4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, change the oil in the church vans, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

Halden on Driscomania

I sometimes suspect that Halden Doerge, one of my favorite theo-bloggers, only blogs about Mark Driscoll because those posts generate such massive comment rolls and visitor traffic.  But this post hits some really good points about the evangelical press’s reactions to Driscoll, and I figured it was worth cross-posting here.  One of the best bits from why do evangelicals care more about cussing than the treatment of women? is thus:

Most everyone is talking about the fact that the problem with Driscoll is the inappropriateness of his language. Its just not okay for you to be talking explicitly about sex and cussing from the pulpit. That’s the downbeat of the current backlash, and that’s the central issue that has framed the current debate among evangelicals that run in these circles. To his credit, MacArthur (who I generally despise, at least theologically if not personally) has put is finger on the more troubling issue here. Namely that Driscoll’s sexual explicitness is all deployed in the interest of coercing women to fulfill whatever sexual whims their husbands might have. As MacArthur rightly points out, Driscoll’s regular sermons on what the Song of Song has to say about sex always ends up pointing out “obligatory acts wives must do if this is what satisfies their husbands, regardless of the wife’s own desire or conscience.” This is the real problem, people.

Lest anyone think Driscoll is being misrepresented here, listen to just a couple quotes from one of these sex sermons: “Ladies, let me assure you of this: if you think you’re being dirty, he’s pretty happy. Jesus Christ commands you to do this.” This is misogyny sexual domination at its worst. From the pulpit we have an evangelical pastor ordering the women in his church to perform any sex act a husband might desire because, after all, Jesus commands this. In the Song of Songs. I guess. 

I’ve intentionally avoided direct contact with Driscoll’s growing web-presence and other mediated messages because he seems like too much of a polarizer for any such contact to do much good.  I know that on a Christian feminism blog, this is far too easy a target, but it seemed worthwhile.

There’s Trajectories, then There’s Trajectories

Tony Jones Interview with Bart Ehrman

Let me get three things out of the way so that I don’t have to clutter the post up with them later:

1. Bart Ehrman is a petulant man-child who gets the press he does because he plays the evil henchman to Ditchkins so nicely.
2. Tony Jones should have taken him to task a number of times for his bad historical methodology, not to mention his inconsistent hermeneutics.
3. Homebrewed Christianity is a fun little podcast and well worth the listen.  And besides that, if you look at their links page, I’m a Deacon!

Alright.  That’s out of my system.  I had meant to link to this episode a while ago because Ehrman, true to form, has taken hold of what he calls “the trajectory theory,” reified it, and dismissed anyone who deviates from what he dreamed up in his university office, and I figured, since I wrote a post about what I called the vector approach to ethics a while back, I should say a thing or two about what Ehrman says and how my hermeneutic differs.

When Ehrman lays out “the trajectory theory,” his working assumption seems to be that it starts in the earliest-composed books and ends with the latest-composed books (and assumes that Bart Ehrman’s dating of things is right), claiming that “women’s roles” get better uniformly as one progresses.  As Tony Jones chuckles along without so much as a “let’s reconsider,” he moves on to the next point.

I’ve not read much Rob Bell (to whom Jones makes reference at this point), but when I talk about ethics as vector, I’m thinking of taking each Biblical text as speaking out of and to a particular moment in history, taking stock of which direction the text moves ethically and how radically that move is (hence vector).  In other words, I don’t look to Titus as some kind of “next step” after 2 Corinthians any more than I expect Isaiah to proceed from Exodus in any simplistic progressive manner.  Instead I look at the assumptions and expectations (the building blocks of culture) that surround men and women in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, then I look at 1 Timothy.

When one reads 1 Timothy and other texts-accused-of-misogyny in that light (as John Howard Yoder did in The Politics of Jesus), one discovers not anything one should call feminism positively but certainly a negation of the systems and structures that make patriarchy intelligible.  In other words, whereas I would not call Paul a feminist writer, I would say that, in the context of the Roman provinces and their culture, he makes space for what I could call feminism.

That making-space, I think, is what makes possible a Christian feminism that does not derive from a positive liberalism but attempts to live together in new ways where Christ breaks open the old wineskins.  Paul did not articulate an intelligibly feminist theology for the same reasons that he did not articulate a post-Hegelian phenomenology, but he does make intelligible moves away from the ontologically strong divisions on national, traditional, and gender lines.  That 20th-century reactionaries used Paul’s texts in order to enforce an order that’s not much to Bart Ehrman’s liking seems a rather shoddy reason for anyone with any historical sense to label the letters of Paul the way he does.

But I already said that in item one already.

At any rate, I’d recommend this podcast to anyone who listens to podcasts, and this episode I commend as an exercise in catching what Tony Jones (who should know better) seems to have missed because he was starstruck by a modern atheist celebrity.

labels, the f-word, and splitting hairs

awhile back makeesha had an excellent post on her blog about feminism and the chaos of labels. something she said has stuck with me all this time. she said:

One thing to keep in mind is that labels are self identifiers, they’re really not intended for us to place on others – they’re for others to place on themselves. In other words, they’re not supposed to be used as a way to judge others or put others in a box based on OUR understanding of that label.

i am reminded of her admonition when i identify myself as a “christian feminist”. christian feminism, as i see it, is a far cry from feminism. all one has to do is look at the wiki on feminism and see the numerous types of feminism there are to know that we are only one specific type of feminism rooted in christian thought. where we agree with the other types of feminism i rejoice and where we disagree i hope to extend grace.

the problem i’ve run into is that the f-word–feminism–is highly controversial. many years ago when i was in college one of my friends asked if i would help her with something. i’m not sure if it was a class assignment or what but i agreed. what we did was go around and informally ask people we knew in our dorm what they thought of the word “feminism”. the results were overwhelmingly negative and i remember internally thinking that i’d never claim to be a “feminist” as i didn’t want that negative baggage attached to me. well, now it’s 20+ years later and in some ways things haven’t changed much, especially in some church circles.

what i’ve found is when people are engaging in all-or-nothing thinking and  i say i am a “christian feminist” all they hear is “feminist” and i subsequently get pigeonholed into a box in which i most definitely do not fit that is at odds with their belief system and values. maybe i should be more courageous and be willing to say i’m a feminist, but i see christian feminism as being quite different from the secular liberal feminism that many disdain. further, i find it quite disturbing when i see christians unable or unwilling, whichever the case may be, to think in more nuanced terms.

sadly, i’ve seen too many christians swing from one extreme of christianity to another not realizing those are not the only options. usually this is a swing from christian fundamentalism to liberal christianity or vice versa. a psychiatric nurse told me that in psychology there is even a term for this sort of thinking. it is called splitting because the person is unable to view life in a more balanced or moderate fashion but splits everything up into black and white categories, good vs. bad, all or nothing. this is not to say that sometimes things aren’t good vs. bad but i believe it may not be as often as some would have us believe.

as this world we live in is changing many of us have left behind those limiting categories of either/or and moved on to seeing things in a more complex fashion. some associate this with postmodernism with it’s bothand thinking. i know some people think it’s not possible to be a “christian feminist” as “christian” is usually associated with conservatism and “feminism” with liberalism. thankfully, we are moving into an era where the reductionist thinking of modernity, which has a tendency to isolate and marginalize one as the Other, is being replaced by a more generous, complex, and inclusive way of thinking in postmodernity.

Jesus Creed Piece on Junia and Props to our Project

A Woman in the Footnotes

I’ll admit that I’ve traded most of the little text-critical ability I developed in seminary for a rewarding life teaching college English (which might explain why my best-received post was related to Shakespeare), but I do know that Jesus Creed is a high-exposure blog, and it can’t hurt, eh?  The argument itself seems sound enough for a lapsed Greek student like myself.

Also, I should have posted this sooner than this, but life has been hectic of late.  Anyway, our blog got mentioned in my friend and colleague Victoria Reynolds’s paper on conservative “fourth wave” feminism and evangelicalism at Toccoa Falls College’s “Evangelicalism: Then and Now” conference on Friday, February 27.  I have to think that’s partly because her friend Nate is a contributing writer, but I’d like to think that perhaps some of those young evangelicals might visit some day on her account.

And V?  Don’t you think you’d be a great contributing writer here?  Please?  Please?

when i grow up i want to be an old woman

i just love this commercial that features the michelle shocked song “when i grow up”. it’s so nice to see older women being shown in a positive, fun, and humorous light. as i heard a very attractive woman in church say once, ” i don’t try to hide my wrinkles…i’ve earned them!” if a woman living in los angeles among all the starlets can say that then i think we all can. :)