For
those who are unfamiliar with the term, “complementarianism”
refers to the Fundamentalist/Evangelical worldview that claims that
women are ontologically and therefore functionally subordinate to
men. To support their position, they claim that Jesus
was subordinate in power and authority to God the Father, and
that marriage is analogous to their version of the Trinity. (Many
argue, along with me, that this constitutes a false teaching which
ultimately leads to the abuse of women.) Rather than viewing the
rules of gender conduct for Christians as an intramural debate or as
a peripheral doctrine, the evangelists for this theology create a
false dichotomy, claiming that those who reject their gender paradigm
and concepts of the Trinity are worshiping
a false God. In addition to prescribed gender roles and
limitations for women within the home, though many individuals
observe different versions of these roles, all believe that the Bible
clearly teaches that women cannot be ordained and may not preach.
Complementarianism
makes the claim that women are “equal but different.” Shirley
demonstrates in many ways that though the theology is billed and
promoted as compassionate and kind, it is anything but. Evangelists
for it may attempt sophistry to slap a nice sounding disclaimer on
the cover, but nearly everything that the doctrines communicate show
otherwise. In her honest and what I think of as a brass tacks style,
Shirley provides example after example of how the ideology falls
short of the heart and soul of Christianity. It makes an idol out of
men by arguing that they are basically intermediary priests for women
under their “covering.” I was thrilled to see that Shirley
included a reference to my
own experience of shock and horror at a Baptist seminary where
young students there argued with me that they would give an account
before God for (would atone for) the sins of their wives.
In
addition to preaching on the subjects of 1
Peter 3 and 1
Timothy 2, Shirley also includes a very moving discourses about
how the Advent and the Passion of Easter convey a message of freedom
and liberty to Christian women. She's also included some catchy
subtitles and chapters that I especially enjoyed:
- Playing Gotcha with the Scriptures
- What Pastors will not Tell their Wives
- The Bible is not a Marriage Manual
- Churches Play Games to Get What they Want
- [Should Women] Look for the Christ Child or a Husband?
- Tears of the Trinity (An analogy and prayer at the close of the book that I absolutely loved.)
Scapegoating,
Dehumanization, and Demonizing in Complementarianism
I often
talk about how women are denigrated through this theology, and I
refer to these processes as such. Shirley doesn't use these terms in
this way, but she points them out through her own style of down to
earth discussion. I wanted to point out these specific elements in
her book.
Scapegoating
refers to the Yom Kippur ritual in the Old Testament. Each family
took two goats and offered them as a covering for their sins for the
year, showing repentance and seeking forgiveness. One was taken to
the tabernacle, but another one was sent out into the wilderness,
essentially to pay the Devil for those sins, too. The head of
household would place his hands on the head of the goats, and he
would transfer those sins onto the goat. Hence, we have the term
“scapegoat.” Though Christians believe that Jesus atoned once
and for all for all sin for all time, Shirley points out over and
over how this theology continues to hold women accountable for
original sin. Complementarian men are still very sore about it. All
would be well if it were not for fallible, hapless, less than women.
She
tells of how women and people in the third world missions field are
lesser souls in this paradigm. A woman can preach or to foreigners
who are both male and female, but in the US, this is forbidden (an
occurrence within the General Baptist Convention of Texas). In this
example, both women and those who are on the mission field are deemed
to be anything but equal to men.
Blame
and guilt demand punishment and penance, and women must not only be
blamed, but they are dehumanized in this process – one that
facilitates abuse, another topic that Shirley addresses in the book.
One such example includes “Eve
Teasing,” a tradition in Pakistan that gives men liberty to do
whatever they want to women because they deserve it. They are to
blame because of the Fall of Man, contrary to what Scripture teaches.
Shirley talks about the equivalent Eve Teasing in the church. This
is written into the theology through a distortion of the meaning of
Genesis
3:16, a passage that Shirley argues as a woman's desire to be
intimate with her husband, despite the pain of childbirth that will
result. [Complementarianism states that this affirms and strengthens
their concept of Eve's subordination through ontology (essence) and
primogeniture (order of creation).
One of
the sequelae of dehumanization is what is often referred to as “kick
the dog” syndrome, and it results in the treatment of people as
mere objects (objectification). When a person is no longer equal to
you or is subordinate to you within a hierarchy, there is a tendency
to treat them differently in accordance to their worth. This lower
place on the chain of command of authority often makes it much easier
to abuse subordinates. Not only are there fewer consequences for
mistreatment of subordinates, there's an implication that the person
is not worthy of better or equal treatment. When this is combined
with scapegoating and demonization, punishment for perceived
wrongdoing becomes quite easy and may be seen to be a just
consequence.
Complementarianism
goes further than scapegoating, however, and demonizes women. I will
not include the full and extended quote here, but she cites John
MacArthur: “They (women) are delivered
from being thought of as permanently weak and deceivable and
subordinate.” This deliverance from the stigma of their
sin doesn't come through the Cross of Christ, but according to
MacArthur, it comes through having babies. Shirley asks, if women
are delivered from these conditions, why is this all that we hear
from him and the other evangelists of this view? She also explores
this demonization under a subheading entitled “Christians Tag Women
as Witches.”
Kassian's
Contradictions
I was
also struck by two different references to Mary Kassian at two
different places in the book. One was a quote from her presentation
at the 2012 True Woman conference. Kassian states that “[T]he
men in our culture are failing. . . [W]e have the capacity to be
influencers, to either breathe life into our men or to kill them.
And woe to us for quention the life out of our men.” It
reminded me of a very similar statement in the Visionary Daughters'
book, So Much More. It seems to me like a grasping of power,
something that complementarian women seek to seize because the are
required to feign so much powerlessness. But this statement is not
Biblical, from what I can tell. It is the Spirit Who breathes life
into us, and this sounds like human striving to me. That concept
troubles me. It seems far beyond just a deriving of shared,
vicarious satisfaction through the success of one's spouse.
Later in
the book, Shirley makes reference to her example of how women are
kept within the confines, the ones that Mary Kassian says are really
a gift of freedom to women. In a reply to a disgruntled reader of
her blog who claimed that she enjoyed feeling respected for
fulfilling her gender roles, [Shirley] states, “Honey,
as long as you stay in your pen, you will be respected. Get out, and
the dogs start barking.”
I heard this from her at the Seneca Falls II Convention in 2010, and
I chuckled to see its inclusion in the book.
Risk
It!
Compared
to Shirley, I am more like Switzerland when it comes to the subject
of women preachers. I personally don't care whether women seek
ordination or if they preach. I base this upon the exegesis of
Paul's writings to Timothy from the original Greek, taking into
consideration the grammar there. The same is true of Paul's
advanced, college level standard of language and my respect for just
how complicated translation can be from the dead language. I don't
believe that any of these Scriptures are prohibitory, but in some
sense, I respect that some Believers interpret them to convey that
women should not preach. That argument can be made, and because men
are mentioned specifically in the office of minister (women are not),
I consider it to be a bit more robust. That is a world away from
prohibition of women preaching or sharing the Gospel. Shirley
challenges the reader to take the risk in light of the billions of
people on the earth that have never heard the Gospel. Should we not
risk allowing women to preach and teach?
I was
very happy to see Shirley point out the example of my favorite hymn
writer, Fanny Crosby. I love her hymns, and I love the story of her
life and her testimony. I'm challenged by it. It is ironic,
however, that countless churches full of complementarians often sing
the hymns that Fanny wrote, but they don't consider her to be a
preacher. I used to sing a lot of solos in church, and I would never
sing something that I didn't feel in my bones. I felt dishonest if I
didn't strongly identify with the song, and I only sang music that
convicted me or was very honest for me to convey. I always
considered it a high level of preaching (perhaps the highest),
depending on the song. Yet, I cannot count the numbers of TV shows
of Baptist and Presbyterian church services that feature a female
solo singer before the sermon. Shirley points out this
inconsistency.
It is
also ironic to me that women, along with men, are called to study the
Word of God to write it on the table of their hearts, but women are
not supposed to understand what it means. And if men misuse the
Word, we're
supposed to look past it and keep our mouths shut. Submission to
our male covering trumps everything else.
And as
you will note throughout this post, I've pulled out many of Shirley's
challenges to the reader. Rarely does she write anything that does
not culminate in a plea for readers to advocate for fully realized
freedom for women or to challenge their churches to do so.
What
does all this have to do with the Nye/Ham debate?
Several
times, Shirley makes some statements that I would not have made, or I
would have phrased them differently. She sometimes makes statements
that struck me as too bold for me, such as “Nowhere in the Bible
are women said to be homemakers.” In context, I understand that
men are also called to build and make the home, and women are not
relegated to a calling of domestic work only. (As I once pointed out
many years ago, even Orthodox
Judaism allows women to work outside the home if the household is
well managed. Actually, many of the posts
in that blog series address the same issues in No
Equal Buts and may be of
interest to those who are interested in the book.) But I would not
say so strongly that the Bible does not teach this, but rather that
other people have different interpretations of what the Bible means.
It's an issue of semantics in context. But note that Shirley also
addresses this problem with what Andersen calls “gender biased
English translation theology.”
Curiously
enough, I read the book just after watching Ken
Ham's debate with Bill Nye regarding evolution and intelligent
design creationism. (I thought that Ken did a fine job, though I
believe that most people walk away from such things with the same
opinions that they had going in.) The true issue being debated was
really not one about facts of science, but sharing Ken's belief
system and many of his specific ideas, it is one of how to interpret
those facts. Just as the spectator watches such debates with
presuppositions about belief, each perspective requires faith. (My
accomplished scientist husband always
says that the evolutionist needs much more faith than does the
creationist.) Both men agree on the same evidence, but their
presuppositions about whether or not there is a creative God who
ordered what exists shapes their conclusions.
With
that so fresh in my mind, I appreciated on a deeper level just how
complementarianism becomes a total worldview that is uniquely and
profoundly different from what I'll call “non-complementarianism.” Like Ken and Bill agreed on the facts in nature, both "comps" and "non-comps" look to the same Biblical evidence to support their views, but those views are interpreted in very different ways. The advocates for the view have dominated the discussion by
demanding that a person be “egaliatarian” if they are not
“comps.” I reject this idea because I don't believe that their
paradigm is sound. But that said, the theology demands what I
believe is an entirely different interpretation of what it means to
be a Christian, affecting nearly every area of a Christians life –
particularly if she is a woman. I realized this on a new level,
particularly on the heels of Ham's statements. I believe that
zealous (secular) evolutionists and zealous complementarians have much in
common. They are often both intolerant of any alternate belief,
they can be condescending to or angry with those who do not share their beliefs, and
they are not just beliefs. They are worldviews unto themselves.
Bill Nye/Ken Ham addendum: Read more answers to Nye's specific questions to Ham HERE.
~~~~~
It
should be obvious that I enjoyed the book, and as Jocelyn Andersen
described it, “it is powerful” in it's honesty. I hope that you
will read and enjoy the book, released
directly to Kindle. (Kindle software can be downloaded for free
for reading on your PC, or you can read it in the Amazon cloud if you
don't have a digital reader). I challenge the reader here to “risk
it”!
Visit
Shirley at her blog, bWe
Baptist Women for Equality.
You
can also follow her at the
bWe website,
good
for following her book signings
and
for tracking reviews of both of her books.
