Frankly, I don't really have any vested interest in women holding leadership positions in church. Quite frankly, I don't care about most church issues at all, and no longer consider myself to be qualified to testify to most of them, having been out of touch with church for over five years now.
One issue I do care about is far bigger than a church issue, but a faction of it does originate there: gender inequality. It has taken me most of five years to deprogram myself from the unhealthy beliefs I learned there, and the unhealthy way I viewed myself because of them. Rebuilding my sense of self and recovering from depression, redefining my marriage and my parenting style, and re-evaluating the various secular vs christian arguments that used to be clearly decided in my mind...it all has been an amazing and liberating process.
Here, it's important that I clarify that my experiences are from conservative, charismatic evangelicalism, and that is the perspective from which I speak. If you wish to tell me that your experience in your denomination doesn't line up with mine, I certainly consider that to be a possibility.
That said, I think the problems I outline are far more rampant than any of us, even women, realize or care to admit; because admitting it is an excruciating process. Looking at the men who have professed to love us: fathers, brothers, husbands, and seeing them as pawns in a ploy to separate women from their identity, to oppress them from being fully human or fully free...well, that is a kind of betrayal that we don't easily want to explore. So it's easier for women to explain it away, to justify it with God's Word, and to accept this as "the way things should be" than to stand up against it. In some ways, women are at fault, if only for choosing to accept the ridiculous justifications than to fight against them. But in all fairness, when a woman's father or husband inflicts oppressive beliefs upon her, she has little choice than to accept them and make the best of it, for her only alternative is to run. What choice is that?
The reality is in many evangelical circles, women are seriously oppressed. I'll be the first to say that the kinds of oppression found there are not usually to be equated with the more severe oppressions women experience in other cultures, but it is damaging and dangerous nonetheless. Sometimes, it leads to behaviors that we should be actively working to dismantle. Read this, and visit some of the links (especially the one at the word "example" -- I dare you not to cry), so you can see what I'm talking about. Forgive me for not wanting to link to it directly. This is "God approved" domestic violence, advocating that as a method of "discipline, the husband has the authority to "spank" his wife with his hand, a strap or a hairbrush, and the wife consents to it. Unless this is some thinly-veiled justification for S&M, it completely breaks my heart. This particular subject, when I landed on it by accident, made me weep for my sisters, but it is very clear they don't want to hear any arguments against the practice.The thing that devastates me most deeply is the arguments the wives have in favor of this arrangement. How brainwashed they are!
The general problem is the belief that God designed men to be rulers of women. With this belief, women are first subject to their father, and later to their husband. It is explained to be for the womens' own protection, and because it is God-mandated, there is no other way things should be. These beliefs are carried out to various degrees, depending on the situation and context. However, any belief that tells a woman that she is in any way "less than" a man - less qualified to lead, to make decisions, or to be independent - is evil.
Somewhere along the line it was decided that because women have the reproductive organs that bring life to children, women are best suited to domestic chores. Also, because women have cyclical and unpredictable hormonal changes, they are unsuited to positions of leadership, either religious or secular. And because women are physically "weaker", they require protection, and that protection demands submission...for their own good and because God says so. Because women have breasts and men are clearly unable to control their sexual urges, women must not preach, and must dress modestly so not to tempt their brothers. And so on and so forth. Granted, if you have never been exposed to such teaching, you might not understand at all -- the reasoning or the repercussions.
Who made these decisions? Men, of course. Some arbitrary thousands of years ago, a certain war was waged against women, by men. Your guess is as good as mine as to the reasoning, but anthropologists and historical theologians have some ideas. At the dawn of humanity, women were not subjugated but were entirely equal in their communities. However, as the human ego (as in Freud's concept of ego, or "sense of self") evolved from the "only existing as part of a group" to being "autonomous"...and agriculture began, and the need to "own" land grew, and wars began... women became a liability, possibly because they weren't as physically strong as men, and, more likely, because they are "weakened" in their ability to fight by pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding. Because pregnancy is a physical handicap and prior to modern contraceptive methods, women were pregnant a lot.
It's important to note that most religious beliefs and practices today have been molded and shaped by history, not mandated by God. If you want to argue about God's word being law, I would argue that you must first read the bible in it's original languages and in it's original culture and context before deciding what is God's law and what is not. My eyes have been opened to the complexity and inaccuracy of most Christian religious beliefs -- not only practices (rituals, rules, and structures), but theology, as well.
So, then, we have a very scarred system at work here. We have a system that still perpetuates the myth that the difference between the genders is more than just "difference", but that one gender is "better", "stronger", "smarter" than the other. This belief causes all kinds of grief for women today. However, because it is still considered taboo to argue with "God's Word" (or whatever is the operative but altogether human interpretation of God's Word), most of that grief is held very deeply under the surface and leads to depression, anger and mental illness. And she suffers in silence.
More later.
18 comments: