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Fear and Loathing and Feminism

Fear and Loathing and Feminism

Last updated on: December 6, 2016 at 8:41 am by Anne Kennedy

Fear and Loathing and Feminism 2016-12-06T08:41:50-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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Yesterday during our much interrupted podcast I was groping around for words to express what I think is at the heart of the trouble in any discussion of women in ministry–whether you are talking about women going to seminary, or women in their local contexts or women in ordained capacities. Of course, several hours later, my mind found is way back to what I wanted to say. And, of course, once I found it I discovered it not to be very interesting or wonderful. It is the same old ordinary thing that one ends up knowing if one reads the Bible at all.

First of all, I want to rejoice over this excellent poke-you-in-the-eye piece by Christina Hoff Sommers. She’s not talking about Christians at all, but I think her perspective is useful. Women in the US have incredible freedom to do and be whatever they want. If they want an education they can have it one way or another. If they want to have a career, they can work with ambition and drive without any social stigma or shame. If they want to have children and stay home, increasingly that choice is celebrated. The ongoing narrative that women have it really bad isn’t very useful in this particular culture. Go over the ocean and in many places it’s an entirely different story, but right here and now, there are whole heaps of freedoms to be grateful for.

But as with any great freedom that a person enjoys, there are legion ways to corrupt it. And that corruption can be seen in the subtle body language, the hang dog look of a man who is doing what his wife has told him to do. There aren’t too many obvious cases walking around the grocery store, sitting in the airport, and muscling the kids into church of the strong male type who just tells the little woman how it is and that’s it. Where that exists (and it absolutely does exist) it is increasingly hidden because it’s not a shared cultural value. It’s not good that it’s hidden, but I think we should rejoice that it’s not an accepted way of life. No, more usually you see the patient endurance of a man who doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble to have a real and true argument with his wife. And sometimes, flickering in the poor fluorescent lighting, there is fear.

The social and cultural stigma, the unacceptableness of telling a woman anything is not worth the trouble for most men. And so they retreat, like Adam, and leave their wives to sort of everything on their own. That’s when it’s really bad. Or they pick their battles, which is better. Or they swallow the fear and try their best to engage. Which is best. And usually their wives, who don’t really want all the power afforded to them, are more than happy to try to moderate and listen and struggle along.

So that’s how I see the lay of the land. So now let’s follow a young couple into the church, dragging their children into the nursery and trying to stay awake for the sermon. And here we have two options. We can turn right or left, and there is fear in both directions.

If you turn to the culturally despised right, there’s a great fear that the woman will bring all her bad cultural lessons with her into the kitchen and Sunday school rooms and cupboards of the church. Out there in the bad world, we know that women can have it all, but that’s not true in here, where the Bible is very clear about some things. And so–and this is the nexus of all the fear and loathing–she Must be Shown her Place. She must not be allowed to get above herself. And so swathes of the preaching is pointed in that direction.

If you turn left, the fear is on the other side. The men are just not going to take the risk of telling a woman anything. It’s not worth it. So the women preach the sermon and make the coffee and mend the roof because everyone is too afraid to say anything about it.

I would argue that the fear is a bad idea. “Perfect love,” I read this morning, “casts out fear.” Moreover, love is the center of our faith–God’s love for us, that is, which is too boring to talk about any more. But still, there it is. Love one another, because Jesus.

And love, I think, ought to drive past the fear on both sides. On the right, the freedoms in the world should not threaten the relationships between men and women in the church. Women don’t need to be put in their place. If the text says something like, “wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord,” surely that text could be preached in all it’s culturally offensive glory and then husbands (and maybe even pastors) could trust the Holy Spirit to do something. Notice who Paul is talking to in that command? It’s not the men.

Women can have the Holy Spirit too. That’s in some other part of the Bible. Submitting to something is a willing, loving action. It’s not something you exact from someone. You can preach the text when it comes up and then move on to the next set of verses. You can order your church polity so that the biblical hierarchy is in place but, and this is the kicker, everyone should be treated as human within that structure. The women shouldn’t be marginalized and infantilized, sent off to the safety of the women’s ministry, left to read The Shack and The Secret. They should exercise their gifts and have available all the resources of biblical and theological study. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Moreover, if they come with tales of abuse and subjection, that should be taken very seriously. It shouldn’t be a threat to All the Men to find a bad one in their bunch. I was sickened over the weekend to read about the gas-lighting and wretchedness of Tullian. And there he is, still in ministry.

And on the left? Don’t ignore and undermine the biblical text. Don’t belittle those who take it seriously. If you don’t face down it’s offense you can’t understand the depth and the breadth and the magesty of God’s love for us made plain not only in the pages of the text but in complexity and struggle of a godly, heterosexual, child rich marriage.

There is visible, I think (and this is probably a post for another day) an elegant, gracious symmetry about the gospel lived out between men and women. The strength and dignity of a well educated, theologically attuned woman is a real force to be reckoned with. And it’s nice to see the gentleness and respect with which many men do reckon. They themselves, the men that is, are stronger, better, more interesting when they swallow their fear and try to match the depth of devotion many many Christian women have.

Christina Hoff Sommers quoted Henry Kissinger. “No one will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” And that is the nub. Though in the world men and women must probably be at war, must not understand each other, must make the other person into a foe, in the church we are joined together most strangely by the Spirit himself. We must struggle along together, doing what the world cannot understand.

And now I must go and see what St. Nicholas left me. Or did he only come for the children? Just like a man.

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