disrespect for the women who came before

I’m writing a lot on here…I guess I had more to say lately than I though hehe…

Please don’t let me monopolize but I’ve really enjoyed the discussion so I thought I’d keep the momentum going.

So I was talking with the mom of one of my daughter’s friends at a recent play date and we got to discussing politics and religion. She’s Episcopalian, a liberal and about 15 years older than me. She said something I thought was very well put and something I had not thought of. She grew up “watching women’s liberation unfold on TV” and she talked about how disturbed she is at the rise of the young, conservative, mostly evangelical women who proudly shout about male headship and female submission…from a college campus where they’re receiving a masters degree.

She said it’s an insult to the women who fought for the rights of women in this country, for the right of those very same women to attend that very same campus and get that coveted masters degree so they could actually have a chance at getting hired. Young women who know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of what it means to be in an oppressed system are now encouraging even younger women and girls to place themselves “under submission” of men, to do things like the pastor suggests in my other post – allow their boyfriend to firm up the boundaries in their relationship. She was passionate about her frustration and I don’t blame her. It’s a perspective I hadn’t thought of being young myself and enjoying the benefits of a revolution I did not have to fight in.

Have any of you experienced this new conservatism? Specifically with very young women? Is it because they were raised by radical feminists and suffered because of it? Is it because they have to have SOME WAY to rebel? Do you see it as something we should be concerned about or is it the typical swinging of the pendulum?

She also said she is waiting to see a new generation of hippies rise up. Hehe… I had to laugh because we always say that had our 5.5 year old been born in that generation, she likely would have been a pacifist hippie flower child. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not naive enough to think that “women’s lib” did no wrong (that’s a discussion for another day) but the fear of “going back” is very real for women like my friend who also has 2 daughters the age of my girls.

modesty as evangelism?

I’m curious to know what you all feel about this. I was going to blog about it on my blog but thought I’d get some good conversation here.

Anna is on the daily scribe – an aggregate of Christian writers that I am also a member of. She’s a wonderful young woman with a big heart so this isn’t knocking her at all and she’s not shy about her conservative, male headship ideals and I’m not shy about how much I disagree with her hehe… So I want to focus on this IDEA rather than on HER. She just happened to be the one to blog about it but I know it’s not a unique idea.

single Christian women don’t want sex?

Some guys at my CLB (church left behind – conservative, charismatic, word of faith, evangelical) started a website called comanionship.com – now, before I go any further, I’m curious to know what first comes to your mind when you hear that name.

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ok moving on hehe

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I usually don’t read there because it’s the same old tune – men are the head, there are godly gender roles and this is what they are, men like video games and fixing heating and air conditioning systems, men shouldn’t act like women…blah blah blah… but I get curious sometimes esp. since I know most of these men from my 3 years in “leadership” at that church.

The pastor posted a piece recently about men as the head and what that means in a dating relationship – basically he was saying that it’s the man’s responsibility to put the breaks on, that he needs to set the boundaries (which is disturbing to me but let’s assume he means that in a healthy Christian dating relationship and that the boundaries are respectful and healthy).

The whole premise of the piece concerns me but it’s this one sentence I wanted to talk about (and I *do* mean talk about – I really would like your input).

100% of the time I am convinced that a girl really does not really want sex. Fearfully she uses sex to keep you from leaving the relationship

ok, now first of all I’m not sure it’s too smart to say 100% of the time for anything esp. when talking about people. I’m not sure you can say that anything is 100% of anything when talking about people. But really?! 100% of the time the girl doesn’t really want sex?! Really?!

Was I just a horny girl or do some of you other women think that’s an ill-informed statement? And does anyone else find this view and approach to sexuality in singleness a bit disconcerting?

finney the feminist

over at The Rebel God blog you can read a post about how revivalist charles finney was admitting women and blacks to oberlin college back in the 1800s. he also allowed women to speak publicly in his revival meetings. here’s the link: finney the feminist. it is odd to me that in the recent past (the 1800s) and in biblical times women had more freedom in minstry than we currently do in many evangelical settings.

please excuse our technical problems

for some reason the comments section aren’t always showing up on the frontpage nor who the posts are written by. we’re working on getting the bugs out. if you click on the post title they do show up there and you can post comments there. linda :) 

Vector as an Ethical Category: A Brief Reflection

First, an introduction. I’m Nathan Gilmour, and linda (I can’t remember her capitalizing it, so I tend not to either) invited me to write for this project, so here I am. I’m also a contributing writer at iwonderasiwander, Out of the Ooze, and Conservative Reformed Mafia as well as writing my own blog, Hardly the Last Word, so I crank out my share of words on the web (often for conflicting constituencies) in any given month. I’m also married to Mary, father to Micah, member and teacher at Athens Christian Church, and English teacher at the University of Georgia, where I hope to take and to pass my comprehensive exams for the Ph.D this May.

In physics a vector has magnitude and direction, and those two variables are at stake when we Christians interpret the ethical teachings of Paul and other New Testament texts. When I interpret the NT’s texts about women I think neither in terms of authority versus novelty nor progress versus tradition first but in terms of magnitude and direction.

To use an easy example, 1 Peter offers three parallel ethical injunctions for dealing with power relationships.  In one (1 Peter 2:13-17) the text calls for Christians, despite our freedom in Christ, to “accept the authority of every human institution, whether the emperor as supreme or of governors” (NRSV).  If we consider the direction of the injunction, it is towards accommodation with the imperial order, and the magnitude is slight.  Then a second admonition comes, this time to slaves (1 Peter 2:18-21), calling for “all deference” (NRSV) to kind and mean masters alike.  To the exhortation the text adds theological reasoning: as Christ’s submission to Caesar and Pilate’s whips saved creation, so your submission to your master’s whip can be part of your being saved by Jesus.

In both of these injunctions, the direction is away from strident assertion of the (real) freedom that God has granted through Christ, and the resulting submission seems to set cultural norms as the target.  Just to give a couple hypothetical examples, the text neither calls for a return to Persian-style god-kings nor for a return to Assyrian slave laws, which were much harsher than Roman ones.  Instead 1 Peter, apparently keeping in mind the aim of presenting the Gospel as something reasonable (1 Peter 3:15), calls not for immediate negation of those orders but peaceable life within them.

Likewise, writing to women inside a Greco-Roman system of marriage that grants rights of imperium (in other words, of life and death) to the paterfamilias (the eldest male in a household), calls for women to submit to their husbands (1 Peter 3:1-7).  Noting in verse seven that legally and culturally women are the weaker vessel, 1 Peter also calls  (almost as a sidenote, perhaps because such a call is unnecessary in a community governed not by imperium but by caritas) for men to treat women better than their heathen counterparts do.

Now this reading of the text does not appeal to any authority outside the text, but its conclusions will perhaps seem alien to some readers.  Rather than taking late-20th century western cultures as the starting point, I have taken late 1st-century  Greco-Roman custom as the base.  And instead of seeing Peter’s aim as resistance to late-20th century philosophies, I see the third call for submission as parallel to the first two, all three coming as concessions to a system that is unjust but still not God-forsaken.

Still working within the text, given that 1 Peter calls not for a return to worse systems but living with the one given, I think that a responsible and pious reader could say that 1 Peter would not call for a return to pre-feminist gender relations, if in fact one lived in a post-feminist world, but to a peaceable life within the system at hand.  Just as Christians should not be in the business of advocating returns to Roman-style imperialism or Roman-style slavery, Christians should not be in the business of returning to Roman-style paterfamilias family life.

None of this is to say that Christians cannot or should not disagree about what cultural structures are less unjust than others, but it is to say that such discussions are not about biblical authority but about biblical vector.

sorry, you’re female!!

As an introduction to a day in the life of a reluctant feminist, here’s a real email correspondence between myself and a pastoral search committee chairman. Note that HE contacted me first.2/22Adriene,I received your employment information from the Fuller Employment search engine. I am chairman of the search committee for a Young Adults Pastor for (XChurch.) I have attached a Job Posting and Job Description. Would you let me know if this is something of interest to you?Thank You,‘Fred’

2/24

Fred -

Yes – I would be very interested in exploring the possibility of a pastoral ministry at (XYchurch). You can contact me by phone at xxx-xxxx, by email at this address, and/or we can have a face-to-face conversation at your convenience.W0uld you please let me know the next step in your search process, and whether you need anything from me to help your team have a better sense of who I am and how I might fit? I am assuming you got my resume from the Fuller site – I also have references and some updates on what I’ve been doing in the past year or so.Thanks for the inquiry. I will pray God’s blessing for (XYchurch), and for you personally as you seek the right person for this position.Grace and Peace,Adriene B

‘Fred’ called and left me a voicemail to set up a time for interview

I called him back on his cell phone and left a message.

I got this email in reply:

2/242/24Adriene,Thanks for responding to my inquiry. I have to apologize….I didn’t realize you were female. I know it sounds crazy, but this position is a pastoral position and this church’s bylaws only allow male pastors. I’m so sorry for troubling you.I appreciate your prayers for us. This is my first time chairing this type of committee and I’m relatively new to this church, so I have lots to learn. But we really need God to lead us to the person with the skills who can fit into the culture here and lead our young adults in a fruitful ministry. Thanks again for responding. Have a great weekend. I pray that God will lead you to just the right spot!!!FredMy response:2/25Fred -Apology accepted. I am most definitely a female pastor, no apologies for that. (I thought it was pretty obvious – with a dozen years or so of women’s ministry experience on my resume.) It’s not the first time I’ve had to deal with this issue, and I’m not upset at all.I am disappointed that (XYchurch) has that restriction in the bylaws. After a great deal of prayerful searching the scriptures, I no longer believe it’s right to prohibit women from being pastors, but I am not surprised that is (XYchurch’s) position. I was more surprised to get an inquiry from (XYchurch) in the first place. I was speculating you wanted to test the waters or push the envelope a little by considering a woman for the Young Adult Pastor. I am willing to be a test case, to go through the interviewing process – without any expectation that the majority of the leaders are actually ready for that. It takes time and grace to move a church towards such a change, and it may not be the time for that at (XYchurch). Yet. But I will pray blessings for (XYchurch) nonetheless.And for you, Fred. My husband was a pastoral search committee chairman several years ago, and it was an interesting and growing experience for him. (And for me too, I suppose – I wasn’t in on the process, but our discussions about what a pastor could and should be was one of the means God used to clarify my calling to pastoral ministry.) Enjoy the search!Grace and Peace,Adriene