The CBE Scroll

“Soft patriarchy is described in several recent books. For example Christian America, by University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith, finds that American evangelicals speak complementarian rhetoric and live egalitarian lives.” I read this recently in an Australian article on the web. I have felt this often, as well. I watch my complementarian friends and they often live just like egalitarians. It seems that their lifestyle is ahead of their doctrine. Unfortunately, this is not true all of the time.

The very witty Dorothy Sayers calls on women to be looked on as individual humans in her Are Women Human? (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971). Here’s some of what she says.

“A woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.” [24]

“What is unreasonable and irritating is to assume that all one’s tastes and preferences have to be conditioned by the class to which one belongs. That has been the very common error into which men have frequently fallen about women.” [25]

“It is perfectly idiotic to take away women’s traditional occupations and then complain because she looks for new ones. Every woman is a human being – one cannot repeat that too often – and a human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.” [33]

“The most we can ask is that if a Dame Ethel Smyth or a Mary Somerville turns up, she shall be allowed to do her work without having aspersions cast either on her sex or her ability. What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: ‘You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls’; if the answer is, ‘But I don’t,’ there is not more to be said.” [39]

“A difference of age is as fundamental as a difference of sex; and so is a difference of nationality. All categories, if they are insisted upon beyond the immediate purpose which they serve, breed class antagonism and disruption in the state, and that is why they are dangerous.” [46]

I finally got around to reading Thomas Cahill’s The Gifts of the Jews, which had been on my get-to list for a while now. It is a very creative interpretation of Hebrew history and how, in the words of the subtitle, “changed the way everyone thinks and feels.” One of Cahill’s observations has to do with the nature of interpersonal relationships in the pagan, pre-Abrahamic world and how the growing Hebrew understanding of God changed everything.

Before Abraham—and even during the patriarchal period—people were generally treated like pawns. We see this in Genesis when, for example, Abraham passed his wife off as his sister to save his own neck—not once but twice—and enrich himself in the process. We see it when Lot offered his virgin daughters to the men of Sodom, and when Abraham stood ready to offer his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

In this age, wives, slaves, and others were not valued so much for their intrinsic worth as persons or as partners in a relationship, but for how you could use them to get ahead.

Cahill makes the astute observation that, before Abraham, this was also precisely why the gods were valued. There was no thought in ancient Sumeria of anyone desiring a “personal relationship” with Enlil or Ninhursag. You just performed the proper rituals in hopes of getting what you wanted out of your gods.

All of this began to change—slowly—with the Hebrew patriarchs. For example, when Sarah died, Abraham was willing to pay an exorbitant price for clear title to a place to bury her. He would have paid any price, Cahill writes, “and thus does he show belatedly, pathetically, his reverence for the matriarch” (pp. 87-88).

As the vision of a relationship with God emerges, so it seems does a vision for relationships with other humans. As the Hebrews grew from impersonal manipulation of the gods to a face-to-face relationship, a similar transformation occurred in the interpersonal sphere. Not only did they learn that they could not manipulate God, they learned that they were not to manipulate each other.

Later in Genesis, we read a story that bears this out. Jacob, anxious about being reunited with his estranged brother Esau, wrestles with God (Gen 32:24-32). In the morning, he names the place Peniel, “for I have seen God —panim el-panim — face to face.” One chapter later, the momentous reunion takes place and Jacob, transformed by his divine encounter, says to Esau, “for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Gen 33:10). Here is how Cahill describes what has happened:

We need not go into the finer details of how all of this gets played out in Jewish history with the Mosaic regulations to extend basic human rights even to slaves and foreigners or the prophets’ constant demands for justice. It was, to be sure, a rocky road and one from which Israel frequently diverted, but it ended, among other places, with…the Song of Solomon! Whatever the Song of Solomon is, it is an ode to romantic love between a man and a woman that has all the hallmarks of a mutual (and mutually satisfying) relationship of deep passion:

Cahill again:

I sat in a discussion thirty years ago at Gordon-Conwell Seminary listening to Dr. Andrew Lincoln and Dr. Gordon Fee discuss the place of women in ministry. The discussion between egalitarianism and complementarianism had only really begun back then. The two terms were really not even used because “complementarianism” was not even a word commonly used in the English language. Even today, 99 percent of Christians in the church around the world probably know neither the term “complementarian” nor “egalitarian.” The real question has been “Is it legitimate for a woman to lead in the church of God?” At the time, Lincoln was less egalitarian than he has become. Fee, then as now, was egalitarian to the core. I find Lincoln’s drift both commendable and instructive. That drift for certain contemporary complementarians would probably be impossible since some of them have labelled women leading in the church of God as “morally rebellious.” That is a very difficult position to back down from, once one has publicly stated his case in such strong language. Lincoln drifted because he continued to stay in the text of the New Testament and allow his opinions to be tested and changed. When one has labelled another as “morally rebellious,” dialog comes to an end and change becomes impossible because no one wants to be “morally rebellious.”

The issue of gender equality is far more important and much bigger than many Americans realize. Because of the degrading views that so many cultures have towards women, women continue to suffer in record numbers. Millions of girls and women are less educated, are sold into the sexual slave trade, are victims of mutilating clitorectomies, and are systematically destroyed as infants because of their insignificance. “Two thirds of the world’s illiterate people are women.” See Daughters of Hope by Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett, IVPress, 2003, p. 13. Daughters of Hope is available for purchase at CBE’s bookstore, www.equalitydepot.com.

While the issues of equal recognition of spiritual gifts, ordination of women, and the correct interpretation of Paul are important, seen in the context of multiple cultures, these aspects of biblical justice towards women take on even greater urgency. Contact CBE and find out how you can help.