The Unladylike Writer
Burnside Sells Out, Social Justice — By Pam Hogeweide on February 3, 2012 at 8:00 am
“I cannot relate to this at all,” said the young woman with brown eyes full of curiosity. “I’ve never been told I couldn’t do something just because I was female. My family and the church I grew up in affirmed women to be everything God has called us to be. I never experienced what you’re talking about.”
The rest of us looked at her with a mixture of envy as well as a hint of sorrow. Why couldn’t her story be our story, too?
It’s the book I wish I hadn’t had to write, a banner of pages of words upon words that ought not to have been strung together. But there they are, bound together in a softcover book with my name on it.
Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church is my first book. And I wish I hadn’t written it. I wish it was never born and yet it is the child I will raise with passion like a mama bear with her young in the wild.
Unladylike is my attempt to confront the inequality of women in the world of church. I wrote it as a manifesto of protest,
my voice speaking truth to power for churches to end Christianized sexism. Oppressing half the citizens of the kingdom
of God does not serve our Creator nor reflect his character of justice. I wish and imagine for a church where women do not experience banishment from pulpits and elder boards and where brothers and sisters collaborate together in the spirit of liberty. If the church treated women like Jesus treated women, my book would not be needed.
Right now there are congregations from coast to coast where women remain relegated in subservient roles. The men preach and teach and rule in a spirit of patriarchy, while their sisters serve the coffee and polish the stain glass windows. Nothing wrong with serving, but in Unladylike I explain how women of faith remain caged up in domesticated roles out of being conditioned to remain so. We do not come forward from the back of the church because we’ve been convinced that we’re not meant to, that there is a divine order of gender and we must mind our place.
In Unladylike I call bullsh*t on this. But I wish with all my heart and imagination that a book like mine was utterly
unnecessary. I dream of the day when the heralding for equality in the church will no longer be needed. But that day is no today.
I comfort myself that there have been other injustices that have since evolved into outrageousness. Like the era of American slavery.
In the 19th century American church, good Christian men and women fiercely debated whether the Bible supported or condemned the practice of slavery. Abolitionists both emerged from the church and were also maligned for being agitators and
resisting the word of God. Doesn’t Paul the Apostle provide moral guidelines for slaves and masters, they challenged? “Separate, but equal,” was the party line in how slave-owning Christians defended the practice of one human being owning another.
I discovered in my research for Unladylike that one denomination is recorded of 25,000 of its members owning 200,000 slaves. And that’s just one faith tribe. Many Christians in that era participated in the slave trade.
In a speech given in London to a packed out chapel, ex-slave Frederick Douglas gave a fiery indictment to Americans who practiced both slavery and Christianity:
The church and the slave prison stand next to each other, the groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotion of his religious master…We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for churches. (from A Documentary History of Religion in American to the
Civil War)
I imagine that our brother Frederick wished for the day when such a speech would not be necessary. And that day did come.
A speech like his is not needed in the 21st century American church. The same denominations that once used biblical maneuvers to defend slavery are now fighting global human trafficking. There was a shift in the perspective of our brothers and sisters. But it took the relentless, persistent prophetic wailings of abolitionist voices to push back this tide of injustice within the hallowed
halls of the church.
“My pastor says women can’t be elders or pastors because we’re too emotional. We’re vulnerable to deception like Eve was,” said a Christian woman to me recently. “The Bible doesn’t give any guidance for women to be elders either, but only men. That’s why my church doesn’t allow women to have spiritual authority over men.” Her report is not an anomaly, but is so commonplace that it is accepted as normal. Women and men throughout the contemporary church blithely accept the subservient status of half its members and even defend and perpetuate it with biblical defenses. It ought not be like this. The way that churches treat women does not match how Jesus treated women.
A pastor recently chided some women who were breaking rank with the complementarian view of women and leadership. He reverted to the shaming tactic of characterizing these women as wounded people who did not have the benefit of healthy male leadership. In his blindness to his own sexism, he perpetuates Christianized discrimination and heaps more shame and shackle on his sisters in the faith. Because of these kinds of prevailing attitudes, books like mine must push back.
Last year I met a woman who graduated at the top of her seminary class. She told me that she had been the only female student….and that she was the only graduate without a pastorate. One of her professors took her to lunch and kindly suggested she find a new denomination to follow her pastoral calling. All because she is a woman. God himself is not allowed to call a woman to preach if her faith tribe declares it out of order.
It is for these stories and these women (and men) that I felt to write Unladylike.
It is my prophetic wail, my outcry over the unequal status of women in the body of Christ. It is the speech I wish I never had to make, the book I wish I did not have to write. And I hope for the day when Unladylike will be deemed an unnecessary piece of
writing.
But that day has not yet come.
Pam Hogeweide is a frequent contributor to Burnside Writers Collective. She is a blogger and writer from Portland, Oregon where she lives with her husband and two teenagers. Her first book, Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church, is available at Amazon.com
33 Comments
I understand why she is saying what she does, but I don’t see that she has backed it up with scripture adequately. The writer diminishes the role of women, in my opinion, by characterizing what women do as lower and less noble–less prestigious. It is the same type of discrimination seen often among people who denigrate the raising of children, caring for the home, etc. to a lower status as well. I think that those activities are exceedingly important. What could be more important than raising humans of good character, loving them as modeled by God, and helping them to grow into people who will continue to model that love, for both God and others? I agree that there is probably work to be done in the church to fully honor the gifts given by God to each person, regardless of gender, but that does not make it appropriate to rank roles like this, in my opinion.
STL,
Sorry, but I don’t see her diminishing those women who choose to so any of those things. In fact quite the opposite. I hear her saying that church needs to stop putting people into roles based on gender. If someone wants to stay at home and raise children, awesome! But because they want to and are able to, not because that is their role. Just like those women who feel called to pastor should be able to use their God-given gifts. What has given a lower status to women is a church that claims to be filled by the Spirit and claims to follow Jesus, yet tells half of its members that, even though they are created in the Imago Dei and Spirit-filled, can’t use the gifts that they have been given. That is BS through and through.
As well STL, are you male or female? Because if you are a male, you are speaking from a position of power. For example, it is easy for me, as a man, to say that women should be perfectly happy in a role like stay at home mom, because I am not in their position. I have a voice in a way they don’t. What is sad is most of those in a postion of power (including myself at one time) do not see that they are in that position. I don’t have to fight for much. I have never had to convince those in my Seminary of Church that I can be a pastor. Therefore, I don’t get to make statements about women and what they should or shouldn’t do. I get to listen to intelligent and gifted women like Pam, and learn how to break down the power structures in many of our churches that favor men.
Because as Pam says, this is an issue of justice.
Many blessings.
Luke
You need to read Pams book. I have, and the evidence you seek is all there in black and white.
I don’t see what you’re seeing, STL. I’ll be the first one to defend the nobleness of traditionally-female roles: I’m a stay-at-home mom by choice, and I think my job is as important and meaningful as any. But I don’t see this author diminishing this kind of role anywhere in this article. She’s pointing out that women don’t have much for roles in the church at all, aside from “serving the coffee and polishing the stain glass windows.” I think she’s right, and I think we can all agree those jobs aren’t particularly challenging or meaningful.
Hello all! I’m 26 and was raised in a fairly conservative, patriarchal church. Like the author is saying, I saw women only in the roles of secretary, hostess, or children’s ministry. I had no idea that I could lead, or even teach, if that were my calling.
Since then, I’ve met amazing women of faith who boldly go where they are called, including Christian seminary. One of my friends is the only woman in her class, and she meets the challenges well.
All this to say that yes, in certain parts of the church, things are rapidly changing for the better, and women are affirmed and encouraged to be all that they can be. At the same time, more traditional roles (staying at home, hostesing, serving behind the scenes) are also encouraged if that is in line with someone’s gifts. I myself have chosen to serve behind the scenes, because that is where I can be myself and do what I am best at doing. And I don’t feel at all diminished because of that.
The really sad thing–and the reason that this book had to be written–is that I literally grew up being taught (and believing) that man was created in the image of God, and that women was created in the image of man. It still breaks my heart that any little girl could be taught such a thing. It wasn’t until college that I realized any differently.
Thank you to Pam for speaking out, and to all the other supportive commenters on here!
Part of his reasoning only works in english… In Hebrew or my own language (dutch) and most other languages the statement “the Father and the Son create man and woman in His image and give them the name man, the name of the male.” would be impossible to make, and have no meaning… (I’m not gonna retype all that I just wrote about that in my blog, it’s here: http://wp.me/pqPD4-aP )
It’s time to just let God’s will be done, and His Kingdom come, He has called women and given them gifts, and blocking those wonderful women to do that they’re called and created to do is not only dumb, it’s sterilising the bride of Christ!
keep on doing what you do, the Body of Christ needs you, and all of it’s female half as much as it needs its male half (and even men are called for much more roles than ‘to lead’… Expecting all men to ‘lead’ would not only be overload, but be counterproductive and just autistic…)
shalom
Bram-from-Belgium
Hear hear! Well spoken! Thank you for thoughtful and true words!
The last book of the Bible ends with the the Holy Spirit and the bride saying the same word, “Come”. Think about it—they are speaking the same word at the same time, in the same place. How could we not see how far away from that scene we are if women are not speaking with the same authority as men in the here and now?
How is polishing stained glass windows not a challenge? I will be the first to tell you that as a broken vessel I struggle with finding the glamour in polishing stained glass windows; and yet, it has to be done, doesn’t it? And what’s not to say that there isn’t a spiritual lesson to be learned about being the reflection of Christ in that glass that your polishing?
What happened to one body equal parts? Where does say it that Christ felt like he needed to vie for position? Whenever I hear church “leadership” tell their people they need to be servants, or the “window polishers” sigh and wish they could be in leadership I’m reminded of a very poignant section in Philippians where Paul and Timothy remind the church of the role that their own true Leader took upon himself:
“5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!”
I also bristle at the idea of the church’s “mistreatment” of women is equal to 19th century Christian’s owning slaves. The very idea that the violation of the “rights” I hold is equal to the injustices endured by slaves is asinine and entirely a Western idea. Furthermore, what rights do I have? When I surrender to Christ, don’t I surrender my rights??? Or do I get to pick and choose which rights I hold on to?
Truly, leadership is a weighted responsibility and not one to be taken lightly. Is this more out of a, “anything you can do, I can do too” mentality or a true calling?
We are all called as brothers and sisters to serve one another and it saddens me that Christ Followers still fight for control in the Church today. One of the many faults I have with humans who lead Christ’s church. But who am I to judge? I haven’t been to church in years and don’t feel any particular desire to attend. This is just my perspective from the outside looking in.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now. I think I’m done.
Hannah:
I love that passage in Philippians – it is one of my favorites!
However, I do not think Pam cries out for women to grasp for authority, she simply cries out that it is not extended equally towards women.
And she does not compare the mistreatment of slaves to this lack of power sharing. She compares the use of scripture to justify both behaviors.
As Pam says, “there is nothing wrong with serving,” but nobody is satisfied with being told to “mind your place.”
The sad story is that those who hold the positions of power want to continue to hold them. I is a matter of social justice.
Hannah, all of us have to do mundane tasks, men and women, and all of us who love the Lord allow him to work his lessons through these tasks. But my main gifting, calling, drive, passion is as a student and teacher of the word. THAT I was not allowed to do. As I prayed earnestly, in great pain to God He confused me by repeating His call for me to do this work; and every time I attempted amongst Church I was shut down. this went on for some years.
I did leave church and discovered I could be all that God wanted me to be outside of institution, if on a small scale. Numbers aren’t important to me, but being who God called me to be, is. I felt fulfilled immediately in my call and ministry, and I have good fruit.
Women such as me with calls to teach, pastor, evangelise/disciple (and not unhappy to clean loos for the Lord), should be free to be who God made them to be.
Great discussion. Thanks all for taking time to read.
I felt nervous for a long while about comparing the injustice of slavery to the injustice of Chritianized sexism until I began to talk about it and read up about it. I discovered that I am far from being unique in this comparison and that there are many people–men included–who are far more informed than I am who make the same comparison. An excellent example of this is the book, How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership. Great collection of articles from theologians and church leaders. Worth a look at for sure.
As for laying down one’s rights, yes, of course we all see the principle of humility and meekness in the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament. But we do not see the abandonment of justice for the sake of piety. This kind of logic would have to be applied to all kinds of atrocities if it were applied in such a sweeping manner.
Women of faith experience diminished personhood every time their voice and influence and gifting is blocked simply because of their gender. It is wrong. It is not the kingdom of God which is a kingdom of justice and goodness. I believe women and men are meant to be along side one another in unified partnership in all realms of life.
So if a woman (or a man) challenges inequality, are they less pious than the Christian who endures unjust treatment and status?
Somebody needs to let Dr Martin Luther King in on that.
I am so sick of hearing women defend the misogyny of their church leaders because they themselves *personally* don’t aspire to anything greater. I am in my forties, and will never become the pastor I dreamed of becoming in the past. But just because I not longer wish this for myself, doesn’t mean I have given up pursuing for it for my sisters, my daughters and my granddaughters. Have Christian women really personalised their faith to the extent they no longer understand what it means to belong to a faith movement? Our suffragette sisters would turn in their graves.
Jo,
As a younger women, I thank you for fighting for us! Just remember too, that we need YOUR voice to help us become all we were meant to be. I hope that you too can still do what you are called to do, even though it will be different now than it might have been.
Laura,
I totally hear you, and really I should attempt to read Pam’s book. Some of the best and most passionate pastors I have known were women. And some of the worst Pastor’s I have known were men. Oh how I have known. Thank you for your heart and for finding a way to answer God’s call in your life and for not pursuing the numbers – I love that! My fondest memories of my old community are when it was much smaller.
I do struggle with the idea of women leading men, and admit that I am traditional in my views. But I also have had the benefit and have fond memories of the times where I worshiped under healthy men who truly were pastors and had the heart for the people God gave them to care for. I have also seen people given the title “Pastor” who couldn’t be any more pastoral than my dog and the only reason they were given that title (it seemed to me) was because of their experience in the capacity in which they were hired.
If anything, my experiences (past and present) with the Church leave me longing even more so for my true Home.
@Pam – thanks for your response. I love side by side leadership.
I’ve had my first beer of the evening and dinner is waiting to be cooked (I know, pretty traditional ;c) ).
Also, I want you all to know that I come at this perspective from being very fortunate. I have a husband who is does not define his masculinity by whether or not I stay at home or go to work. He grew up even more conservatively than I did and wanted something less traditional in how he approached marriage. So, please forgive me if I sound like I’m defending the church, I am not. I think and hope for big changes to come in the church that will allow women to run full and free to minister to the body in the ways they are gifted.
@Jo Hilder – you no longer desire it for yourself? Why? Have you given up? Did your calling change? I’m not trying to be argumentative, just wondering what the scoop is in your statement.
~peace
oh sh*t – the dinner thing was suppose to go at the bottom – see? First beer…tsk*
Hi Hannah, I was a worship leader in tge church for over twenty years, but even a Bible qualification ( the hoop they told me I needed to jump through) it has been made perfectly clear to me that I am not “pastor” material. So I stopped beating my head against the wall and went to work in cancer supportive care, advocacy, program facilitation and mental health instead. I believe that the fact my ministry was not complimentary in nature I.e.; my husband was not interested in being a leader like me, was a main reason I was never seen as anything other than a useful, committed volunteer. They were happy for me to swing my blonde hair around and make the stage look pretty, but as free older, I did not feel I was fulfilling my calling by remaining in the music ministry. I have grown tired trying to get a place at the table, I’ve decided to join a new “dinner party” altogether. I am doing what God equipped me to do – advocate for the marginalized, care for the addicted and the sick, encourage the downtrodden and challenge the Pharisees – I’m just not waiting for that ordination any more. I think we are commissioned to be the church to our communities. I won’t be able to merely complain “those people in church wouldn’t let me do it.” when the Lord asks me what I did with my talents.
Hope this explains a little more.
I am a woman, and I still believe that there is a ranking here. The idea that making the coffee or polishing the windows is inferior, less worthy of a task, sounds to me like we are creating a hierarchy of positions. I love the comparison above to Christ, who made himself as nothing. Likewise, Christ says the first shall be last and the last, first. To me, it seems that Christ is asking us to be content in our gifts and to fulfill them in peace, finding our own fulfillment in him, not in position. Paul says he does not see it as proper for women to teach men. This is, obviously, such a troubling passage for many people. Honestly, I’m not sure if this means women shouldn’t be pastors or elders, as my church’s leadership supports. However, I do believe that their stance was taken with the intention of following scripture, and I think that is true for many, if not all, church pastors and elders–at least in healthy, functional churches.
Comparing this situation to slavery, in my opinion, shows a major disrespect for those people victimized by slavery. Women have had a struggle to gain respect, whereas slaves have had a struggle to live, and to live free. Women have not been completely free, bound oftentimes by the customs of their societies, but they have not been so severely restricted as have slaves in the U.S. and elsewhere. Bound in chains, ripped away from their families, whipped and otherwise beaten–these have not been common experiences for caucasian women in western society.
My intention is not to be sexist or contentious. I simply don’t see it the same way. I’m not indoctrinated into the sexism of the church either. For many years, I would have agreed with the author of this article. Also, I did not grow up in the church. However, I am a thinking person, a teacher, I hold a graduate degree in English, I am a woman made in God’s image with God’s spirit inside me, and I do not support this way of thinking. I believe God asks us to lay ourselves down, to take up the cross, to humble ourselves in his sight, to serve however we can in our situation, to seek truth and justice, and most of all to love him and others. Nowhere do I see that he tells us to seek position.
STL … there’s a hierarchy not because women are not willing to do those tasks, but because men are not willing to do them. Men have defined those tasks as less than by being unwilling to do them and being uncaring about the outcome and the time/energy/care that goes into completing them. When men are willing to change diapers instead of stand up front. When they are more willing to clean bathrooms instead of telling other people to do it, then the hierarchy will be destroyed. Until then, it remains and make no mistake, women are not the people who are defining it.
STL:
Luke 10 .29-42 (not to proof text but…)
Mary sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was busy with all the things that had to be done. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, my sister has left me to do the work by myself. Don’t you care? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered. “You are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better. And it will not be taken away from her.”
Jesus seems to be okay with saying that one thing is better than another.
I’m a woman. I’m a pastor. I love to cook and bake. I like making things and sewing. I’ve been a nanny. I love spending time with kids. I borrow other people’s kids for outings. I almost exclusively wear cute dresses – to the point that my boyfriend makes fun of me for it. I thoroughly enjoy those things that you think are being denigrated by uplifting the many other roles and callings women can have.
But – all of those things I enjoy are not denigrated by me being all of who God has called me to be. They are not denigrated by me getting a theology degree; they would be denigrated by me not getting one. They are not made less by me preaching; they would be made less if i did not. They are not belittled when I plant a church; they would be made meaningless if I did not plant a church.
These beautiful things about what it (often) means to be a woman stop being beautiful, (typically) feminine things when they become prisons to cage God’s Spirit.
What Pam is talking about is becoming fully who we are made to be. When both men and women are fully who we are made to be then those domestic things that you’re concerned about preserving the beauty of, become deeply theological and deeply beautiful. They flow in and out of the totality of what it means to be created in the image of a God who cares for souls, teaches, leads, creates, tends, mends, sews and weaves things together in the womb of the world.
What I think Pam…and Jesus…are responding to is when, by virtue of being a woman, you are only encouraged or even allowed to engage those socially prescribed “womanly” things – and not allowed or even encouraged to be theologians as well as homemakers…turning home-tending into a barrier and a denigrator of our calling to also be soul-tenders.
Rebecca,
I think that’s an interesting point about Mary and Martha, but it’s not about positioning, about hierarchies. I think, the text means to say we should be focusing on God first, not other things. That is absolutely compatible with my points above. God first, not other things, including position. It’s the ranking of importance that I object to, not any activity. Like I said, I do not even know if I agree with the idea of women not being pastors or elders–I don’t feel that this issue has been proven scriptural to my satisfaction. However, I’m responding the pushing up of one role and the pushing down of another, calling them better or worse, in a sense. I am not even really talking about homemaking, just the idea of making one thing, the higher thing allegedly, to be the more desirable or noble. I completely agree with you that one should follow the call they believe they hear from God–no question. I have seriously thought of pursuing theology as well. It seems to me that there are many ways a woman can use and fulfill that calling other than being a pastor, but at the same time, I am not actually saying she shouldn’t be. My point is, as I said, about ranking. It reminds me very much of typical feminist arguments that denigrate what they see as inferior, and by so doing, insult and show discrimination toward their own sex.
I’m sure I do not have anywhere near an airtight argument, but I do see that this issue of admiring the worldly high things and disdaining the worldly low things is at play here, in my opinion.
STL, Paul was a dick. Also, Paul wasn’t Jesus. Paul said a lot of really f’d up stuff, wasn’t Jesus, and has been used as the justification by a lot of modern ‘Christians’ for some equally f’d up behavior. All which fly in the face of the teachings of Jesus. Let’s get over Paul already.
I think Paul was misunderstood…there is a great book that confronts those hard Pauline passages about women and provides tremendous insight that vindicates Paul’s misogynistic reputation : What Paul Really Meant about Women by John Bristow. And I just heard of another good book about Paul by Jon Zens but I don’t recall the title….
@Hannah, hope your dinner was good!!
It sounds like you have seen the holy Spirit call whom the Holy Spirit will. Gifting, not gender, is the point. Side by side mutual collaboration is, I believe, a kingdom value rather than a strictly male-centric leadership template. I think we agree with each other more than disagree!
I’ll jump back in the discussion tomorrow. I appreciate all of you taking time to read this article and to especially comment with your viewpoint!
Pam –
Dinner was excellent.
The bummer of seeing the beauty is that inevitably there is also the beast which is the brokenness of man. And – the bigger bummer is that it seems more and more within Christian communities the emphasis is being placed on the leadership and the sermon rather than what Church was traditionally known as. A community of people who cared for one another and gave of themselves for each other. TRUE servants. If I could find a community whose only goal was to bring people into worship on a Sunday morning, I might have my curiosity piqued.
@Jo – I’m really sorry that that was your experience and love that you are still following your hearts calling, to bind up the broken and wounded.
~Peace to you my sisters.
H
I spent some time looking at the book in Amazon’s preview feature, and I think I would rather read it rather than comment much more here, except what I am commenting on now. The experience the author shares at the beginning of the book, the section shown in preview, is certainly interesting and common to many women, I think. From what I can see, she seems to come from an earnest position of seeking to understand truth. My one concern, again, only from the preview, is just that there may be an over-focus on criticizing the church and its stances on position or rank, or taking for granted the outlandishly blessed lives we generally experience in the west, women included. Yes, I believe there are errors in the western church, and there are wrongs that have been done. However, I don’t see that we have much to complain about when we think about the experiences of our sisters and brothers, if we want to use those names, in countries such as China or the Middle East, or among slaves in the western world in previous centuries, and even today in various places worldwide. There is really so much more that we could be doing and understanding rather than complaining about our very very very blessed lives in the west.
I do not accept that Paul was messed up on the grounds that some of his writing is difficult to accept in our contemporary way of seeing things. In my opinion, we are to align ourselves with God and his word rather than pick and choose which parts of it we find acceptable, rejecting the rest. I’ve done that in the past, but I no longer support that way of seeing God or scripture since I see him and it as true and good, and worthy of trust.
Again, I think I need to read the book, so what I say above and earlier, are based more upon what I understood in the article, not on the book itself. If I have missed the point, or offended, I apologize. I can be overly-argumentative, so I’m sorry if that annoyed anyone. My point was just to talk about the ideas, not to cause frustration.
@STL, if a woman is blocked or banned from exercising her voice or influence, whether within the church or the homefront, simple because she is a woman, is this not a fair comparison to slaves being slaves simply because of the color of their skin? I am not comparing inequality to tragic enslavement. I am comparing the defense of diminished personhood by biblical authority. Christians defended slavery with the Bible. Women today are relegated as the second sex and the Bible is used to hold the line.
Abolitionists in the 19th century were derided by clergy for their extremism and twisting of scripture. It will blow your mind when you read on the history of it. I barely scratched at it and was floored.
I just heard about this book that really tackles how the church was divided over slavery….here’s a link if you are interested in knowing more.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Civil_War_as_a_theological_crisis.html?id=uMHv6vUW5y4C
@Rebecca, thanks for helping to explain the intent of my article. You got it!
What Pam is talking about is becoming fully who we are made to be.
@Luke, thanks brother for reading and helping me show that it is an issue of justice. Once I saw it like that, everything changed for me. That’s why I wrote the book.
@Jo, thanks for the shout out Jo, my sister from down under!!
@Kathleen, yes, that’s it. Whatever a woman’s gifting or bent, let her be free to pursue her gifting and self-determination. Most are not called to pastor nor be elders, theologians, etc…. which is a big reason why I wrote Unladylike. I wrote it for women like me who have been affected by patriarchal attitudes in the church, and yet are not overtly discriminated against since we are not called to teach/preach. Homemakers, seminarians, pastors or carpool moms, liberty is the point. Not position!
@Bram, always love it when you pop up with your Belgian self! Loved your last line:
Expecting all men to ‘lead’ would not only be overload, but be counterproductive and just autistic…)
Thanks for weighing in!
@Fran, my thought exactly!
@John, thanks for saying in such a concise way what took me an entire book to spill out! Well put!
@Laura, so glad you know your freedom in Christ to be who God has made you to be. That is the point. Loved how you put it:
Women such as me with calls to teach, pastor, evangelise/disciple (and not unhappy to clean loos for the Lord), should be free to be who God made them to be.
@Pam–
Thanks for the link–I’ll check that out.
I also wanted to share a really positive and beautiful story:
For awhile I attended a church that had been planted by a female pastor (Shannon.) She is an incredible women of faith who is obedient and sensitive to God’s leading through the Holy Spirit. She heard the call to plant the church, and had a supportive team, and so together they planted the church. They fought for us in prayer and in action, and together built a very beautiful (but hard won) community.
One of the most beautiful and touching things I’ve ever experienced was the day that all of the men in the church decided to pay tribute to Shannon. They bought her a gift, and flowers, just to say thanks, and all gathered around her in a hug, to honor her and pray for her.
To me, it was a beautiful symbol of honoring the gifts of this individual pastor, but also of the men of the church standing with and supporting women in leadership. I was VERY very touched by this image, and it will continue to give me hope.
Mutual respect and honor is so important! Thank you men of South Hills Church!
LOVE that! Thanks so much Amanda for sharing this story. When a human being is honored and their gifting affirmed, it is indeed beautiful and honorable to not only that person, but also to the Creator. Love, love, love it!
Nothing wrong with serving, but in Unladylike I explain how women of faith remain caged up in domesticated roles out of being conditioned to remain so. We do not come forward from the back of the church because we’ve been convinced that we’re not meant to, that there is a divine order of gender and we must mind our place.
I have been saying this over and over. I actually began blogging recently and I am on the message team at our church (Novitas Church). I never used to think I was gifted to write about such things or speak from the front because I was “convinced I wasn’t meant to”. That is no longer the case.
I am so glad I have stumbled upon you and your writing. I CANNOT wait to read your book even though I too wish it had never been written.
Thanks Michelle for chiming in. It is so widespread. I did not realize how conditioned I was to being compliant and quiet until I began to read up on other persepctives of what the Bible teaches about women and equality. Completely changed my view. A wonderful book I came late into reading is Sue Monk Kidd’s Dance of the Dissident Daughter. Highly recommend it if you haven’t already read it!