The CBE Scroll

Comment by PS

March 13, 2007 @ 7:18 am

Hmmmm, I hadn’t thought of it that way. But, 20 years or so ago, I thought our church’s main magazine was too light on the issues of the heart and spirituality. Maybe it was because men were running things.

The current women’s magazine of our church seems to be very balanced between intellect and heart. My husband likes it very much! He hates fluff.

Comment by carlaviii

March 13, 2007 @ 9:25 am

When I left for college, one of the main reasons I drifted away from church was the lack of intellectualism — though that was in the youth group/Sunday School and it was also in a very evangelical church. I figured that their focus on the newly converted was what made discussion of the bigger, tougher topics of faith hard to find.

Now, many years later, I’m not so sure. A lot of what the church doles out, on the whole, seems geared toward the lowest common denominator. Erring on the side of caution?

Comment by LJR

March 13, 2007 @ 9:54 am

I think that it is probably more of a gender issue in evangelical churches, but it is also a negative attitude toward certain types of higher education in Fundamentalist churches. (Yes, there is a difference.) Granted, maybe I think this way because my previous pastor is one of the SBC high-ups and encouraged his daughters to go for advanced degrees; but I never experienced suspicion toward higher education more than in Fundamental churches.

Women’s programs bore me, to be brutally honest. They do nothing for a single (for six more weeks anyway in my case) and/or a childless woman. The topics are limited to the ones that keep the men in charge happy but do little or nothing to encourage real spiritual growth and maturity in women.

I like diving deep into serious topics, getting into the nuances of the original Greek words, and all that other stuff that just doesn’t show up in women’s ministries. My whole attitude is that God gave us brains to use, so let’s use them to the best of our abilities. Anything less would be an insult to the One Who created us.

Give me a mixed class on Genesis or Old Testament history over any typical “women’s study”. If I want fluff, I’ll buy a pillow. At least a pillow can be useful to anyone. “Women’s Bible Studies”, eh, not so much.

Comment by Mindy

March 13, 2007 @ 12:09 pm

In my experience, both issues are at play in this situation, but I would rank the overall decline of education as the biggest culprit.

I’ve been in churches that take a “no creed but the Bible” approach–a false distinction, since everyone reads Scripture through the lens of their own education (be it 8th grade or PhD) and belief system. These churches tend to perpetuate general ignorance among all their members, male and female. Sometimes that ignorance emphasizes “spirit” to the exclusion of doctrinal understanding, but sometimes it works the other way and hammers into the congregation a certain set of doctrinal beliefs with no room for true spiritual growth. In either case, these churches, in my experience, tend to be the ones that insist that a woman’s role is limited to childbearing only; therefore, what little biblical training they do offer is directed to men, leaving women even further hindered in their quest to know and worship God.

But even in more educated churches, fluff seems to reign. I was recently part of a congregation where many members have masters and doctoral degrees. They had a decent women’s Bible study, but the highlighted activities were the teas and fashion shows. And their “men’s fellowship” was limited to Promise Keepers and fishing trips. Though Adult Sunday school classes offering detailed studies of specific books of the Bible were available, the most popular classes were “The Purpose-Driven Life” and “angels and demons.”

So there is something about what is being emphasized (or not emphasized) from our pulpits that makes even well-educated Christians, male and female, set aside their intellects when they walk through the doors on Sunday morning.

By the way, I studied preaching and literature in college under Rosalie deRosset–she is a gifted, genuine woman who practices what she preaches. The first time I read Harry Blamires’ _The Christian Mind_ was for one of her assignments–I highly recommend it to anyone concerned about this topic.

Comment by kim

March 14, 2007 @ 11:48 am

As a relatively new mother, I’ve especially struggled to find anything resembling an intellectual approach to parenting in Christian circles. Much of the information I’ve found gives warm, fuzzy encouragement to moms but doesn’t dig any deeper spiritually than the idea that God loves and supports us and we’re doing “the most important job in the world.” I’ve never been interested in women’s study Bibles or other curricula or books geared to women’s needs because they seem so lightweight, but have always found non-gender-specific alternatives that are intellectually serious enough for my taste. I would love to find an intellectual treatment of parenting and how to thoughtfully raise Christian children, but because these resources would be largely geared toward women, I doubt I’d find many serious explorations out there.

Comment by sally

March 15, 2007 @ 4:06 am

Good discussion. Where I live (Australia) we’re pretty big on the intellect stuff - women as well as men. Women are encouraged to get to Bible college, do the degree (and the higher degress), but only ever work amongst women once they get out - uni students or women’s fellowships. We have a whole barrage of split-sex conferences, days out, teaching sessions etc.

This is not related to this discussion but something I’d like the Scroll to address one day is the issue of careers. Women seem to end up for the most part being in the careers of children and young people who have developmental issues, and/or elderly parents. Myself, I have a child with developmental problems. He is such a difficult one that I have had to withdraw from my active participation in ministry except for attending church. The way I see it, he’ll be my major responsibility for a long time yet. I don’t really know what I want to say, just that it’s hard and I feel like my talents are being hidden under a rock for a while as I deal with him. Any brilliant thoughts?

Comment by Lori

March 15, 2007 @ 11:37 am

LJR said in #3:

I think that it is probably more of a gender issue in evangelical churches, but it is also a negative attitude toward certain types of higher education in Fundamentalist churches.

I grew up in fundamentalist circles, and there is a definite disdain for higher education. Young people might go off and get a basic college degree, but anything beyond that and you run the chance of becoming too “liberal” and therefore suspect. My father pastored a series of churches in the Texas countryside. I remember once going to visit my grandmother in the big city and attending her large, wealthy church. They had a visiting preacher that Sunday, and a church member introduced him by rattling off his fancy university titles (I believe he was a professor at a seminary). Even as a child, I remember instinctively thinking there was something wrong with him. Real pastors were men of the people like my Dad who didn’t need high falutin’ titles. The huge irony in all this is that my Dad went back and got his master’s degree, and dreams of getting his PhD.

On a side note, I might add that as an adult one of the things that attracts me to the egalitarian movement is that the people with the high falutin’ titles all believe in it! When I compare the depth of scholarship done by those who support the freedom of women to those who don’t, there really is no comparison.

Women’s programs bore me, to be brutally honest. They do nothing for a single (for six more weeks anyway in my case) and/or a childless woman. The topics are limited to the ones that keep the men in charge happy but do little or nothing to encourage real spiritual growth and maturity in women.

As usual, you beat me to it! Having grown up in the church, I have encountered tons of women’s ministries, women’s bible studies, and women’s Sunday school classes. They all bored me to tears, because they invariably focused on how to relate to your husband better, or how to raise your kids better. As a single woman, I didn’t care about either. Even now that I’m married, I still don’t participate in segregated activities at church. My husband and I have a wonderful marriage, so I don’t need to know how to communicate with him better or how to have better sex. And since as of now we’re still childless, that doesn’t particularly interest me, either. I might add that it’s not just within the church: this attitude prevails among evangelical Christianity, period. I subscribe to an e-mail newsletter put out by a major Christian woman’s magazine, and every issue the lead article is usually something about the husband or kids.

I like diving deep into serious topics, getting into the nuances of the original Greek words, and all that other stuff that just doesn’t show up in women’s ministries. My whole attitude is that God gave us brains to use, so let’s use them to the best of our abilities. Anything less would be an insult to the One Who created us.

Give me a mixed class on Genesis or Old Testament history over any typical “women’s study”….

Amen! I’m the same way. The best classes I ever took at church were mixed gender apologetics classes that tackled the hard questions. Right now in my personal devotions I’m reading The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary, a huge scholarly book that digs into the Bible to see how it applies to women. I also like doing exegesis and finding out what biblical words mean in Hebrew or Greek. Sometimes an entire verse can have a different meaning when you find out what the words really mean. That’s especially true for those infamous verses that supposedly restrict women.

Comment by sally

March 18, 2007 @ 3:15 am

“They all bored me to tears, because they invariably focused on how to relate to your husband better, or how to raise your kids better.”

It would be boring for someone without kids or husband. The trouble is I find myself - as a mother of little children - completely SWAMPED by the whole motherhood thing. It is all-consuming, overwhelming and brain-deadening. I always feared becoming one of those mothers who only talks about toilet training (my husband says I now only talk about food and allergies and nutrition - equally boring) but I can understand how it happens.

Motherhood is completely overwhelming and I didn’t understand until I got into it just how physical and emotional it is and how much it changed me as a person.

So somehow, we have to keep the idea that it’s not just all about husband and kids for all women, but it is ALL about husband and kids for some women for a certain period of time.

Or else we have to get the husbands more into childcare of littlies (too bad mine has just started his first pastor-ship and is also SWAMPED by his job) so their wives can have a break and get some braincells back.

Comment by Francine

March 21, 2007 @ 1:05 pm

It’s a little of both gender and higher education. When I was teaching a sunday school class on women in the Bible, one of the ladies even asked the pastor if it was okay for me to teach a sunday school class. The church I go to does not let a woman teach mixed classes. The pastor told her it was okay since it wasn’t mixed and it was only about women in the Bible. Although the women did seem to enjoy the class I think it scared them a bit. I didn’t teach the traditional way about the women. There was no mention on how to react to their husbands or how to raise the kids, but rather how to go above the norm to be true women of God. It took me over a month to teach the Proverbs 31 woman. I broke the verses down, explaining what the words in Hebrew meant, the customs of that day was and how she broke the customs. By the time I got to the women prophets they were beginning to understand there was more to the women than who their husbands were and how to be mothers. We studied the nazarite vows and the chapter on women making vow. This was an eye opener for the women in the class. I repeatedly heard the phrase “I didn’t know that”. The problem with the class was that it was too short because they wanted to go back to the traditional teaching and to be taught by a man. Or maybe it was because it was too scholarly and non-traditional for a woman to teach it . So, sad. They missed a lot of great women.

Comment by Liz

March 22, 2007 @ 12:34 am

One of my biggest frustrations as a woman who thoroughly enjoys teaching the bible, is that many woman are mostly interested in either husband or children issues or emotional topics. I’m assuming this is often because they have been programmed to think about these topics for centuries and/or because they don’t see the point of doing any serious studies because there’s nowhere to go with it since they are banned from public ministry to mixed groups.
For over 30 years I conducted a “daytime bible study”, refusing to call it a ‘women’s study group’ even though it was often referred to as such. Very occasionally a man would venture in including my husband but the only other man who came somewhat regularly had a mental health problem which in some people’s minds meant he wasn’t quite up to par anyway! There is such classism within church life on all levels and it breaks my heart to see women who don’t see any point in learning from the word of God. I hope that over time I have encouraged many women to be excited about the scriptures and all that God has done and wants to do with and in our lives.

On a personal note - I have seldom attended women’s meetings (only if I’m invited to speak or someone else particularly asks me along) as I have always felt myself to be a Christian first, female second. Most of this segregation only happened once I was married, but since I married at 21, I didn’t have to experience the indignity of being single and treated as second class. I guess when you’re married, it happens all the time but I have never got used to it or accepted being treated in this way. Thankfully my husband is a great champion for women and is passionate about spreading the word on equality.

Comment by Marissa

March 22, 2007 @ 8:58 am

This seems to be a widespread problem. Can anyone recommend curriculum that has been helpful?

Comment by Liz

March 26, 2007 @ 9:54 am

For Marissa (comment 11) I’m assuming you mean curricula which is good bible study material. The Life Guide Bible Studies by IVP have a huge variety of topics and books of the bible written by various authors (women and men) Inductive studies with extra info. and answers to questions.

For study on the issue of biblical equality there is a study guide to accompany Gilbert Bilezekian’s book “Beyond Sex Roles” and another good one is “Male & Female in Christ” by Carrie A. Miles and Lawrence R. Iannaccone. Both of these are available from the CBE bookshop online (cbeinternational.org) Another good study is “Gender & Giftedness” prepared for the Commission on Women’s Concerns of the World Evangelical Fellowship by Marilyn B. (Lynn)Smith and is a very thorough study of the topic from several angles. Good for churches or individuals wanting to thoroughly research what the Bible really says. This book is also available from CBE or the Evangelical Alliance of Australia.

In answer to the request for good material for parenting. The On Becoming series (Babywise, Childwise etc.) are available from Amazon.com and while coming from a hierarchical background, it isn’t presented in this secular series and the parenting guidelines are good common sense for both parents.

There is a page or two on ‘gender appropriate toys’ which you would want to ignore but that’s all I have found to be un-helpful and the good overcomes the not-so-good bits.

Comment by Wayne Leman

March 26, 2007 @ 4:29 pm

Is this an issue of gender or an issue of the church’s response to higher education?

Are programs for men more likely to contain intellectual discussion and academic subjects?

I’m not sure that church programs for men are more likely to be more intellectual than programs for women. I think that the church, the conservative church, anyway, lost much of its intellectual moorings during the end of the 19th century. And we’ve never fully recovered since. In many circles it’s almost an oxymoron to have the words “intellectual” and “conservative” or “evangelical” (not to mention “fundamentalist”) in the same sentence.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to the rule, but conservatives are, in general, I think afraid of using their minds when it comes to church and the Bible. And that is such a pity.

Of course, it has been assumed, based on conservative interpretations of the Bible (at least since the middle of the 20th century or so), that women’s “proper” place is in the home and not pursuing academic careers. So there is that mountain to overcome as well. And that is another pity. I think that the best students in my Greek classes in Bible school were the 4 or 5 females who were allowed to take the courses. But what would they be allowed to do with that training?

My speciality is Bible translation. Fortunately, there have been hundreds of intelligent, perseverant, and intellectual women who have done wonderful Bible translation around the world. They have often helped translate the Bible where no men were available to go. And the doors were open for them to do that work overseas. But the doors have generally been closed for women to do Bible translation work in their home countries. There have been very, very few women who have been on English Bible translation committees. Again, such a pity! Such a loss for the church, for women, as well as for men who could benefit from what women can contribute intellectually.

Comment by sally

March 28, 2007 @ 6:47 am

In relation to comment #12: No aspersions on those who like Babywise, but it’s a pretty controversial program - do a google on the author and you’ll see what I mean - and it can be very divisive.

Personally I think the ‘Boundaries boys’ Cloud and Townsend do better stuff on childrearing - ‘Boundaries for Kids’ and ‘Boundaries in marriage’ and ‘Raising Great Kids’ are all fantastic books - and I’ve never noticed any hierarchical stuff in their writing. (Am I wrong?)

Comment by Liz

March 29, 2007 @ 2:04 am

Just a note re ‘Boundaries with kids’ and the GFA material. We have found it to be very similar and after teaching the GFA material for many years we have come to the conclusion that it’s people who apply the info. incorrectly who give the material a bad name. The teachers on the videos of both the ‘biblical’ and ’secular’ versions do not recommend any of the excesses which are contained in statements by their critics. And the criticisms of the authors should not be just accepted outright without personally checking the stories or asking the people themselves.
Those of us who stand for biblical equality know what it is like to be falsely accused so we should make extra sure before we pass on any ‘bad press’
I did do the google and was astounded at some of the claims. The GFI websites give an entirely other opinion of course.

Comment by jen

April 13, 2007 @ 7:49 pm

At risk of sounding like a simpleton, I suggest that Christian women tend to focus on their husbands and children as an expression of their Christianity, ignoring the study of the Bible as a self protective coping mechanism. The Bible is used as a weapon against women daily. I find it remarkable that so many women follow the Christian faith- they are very forgiving of the Churches who abuse them.

Comment by Can Dance

April 14, 2007 @ 9:58 am

I also think there is a lot of fluff. though I can sympathize with the idea that too much Christian literature is directed at mothers with children, but as Sally said, its pretty hard when you are up to your eyeballs with small children to think of much else.
As for Babywise, etc. I personally have great reservations his view of children and his parenting ideas. Because I have embraced a non patriarchal/gracefilled ideal in my own life, I have also embraced a grace based parenting philosophy as well. Which means I approach my children considering them to be people with feelings to be considered, which I think BW and GKGW completely disregards.
anyway I could say more, but suffice to say, I think my approach to parenting fits in very well with my views on male/female relationships and a non hierarchical view point.

Comment by Rachelle

May 1, 2007 @ 7:42 pm

I think the issue of Bible studies aimed at mothers has been covered well, but here is a different angle: What about material aimed at teenaged girls? Anything marketed to them at the Christian bookstores has to do with dating, modesty, not dating, modesty, friendships, and modesty…

Last year I counseled at a weekend youth retreat, and they held gender-segregated Q&A sessions where the teens could write questions and put them in a box to be drawn and read and the counselors would attempt to answer them. Contrary to what I expected from a room of all junior high girls, NONE of the questions were about relationships… they were all real questions about the nature and existence of God, the historicity of the Bible, theological dilemmas… The same things that educated adults still look into.

So yeah I think girls and women are sold short, but I think it is also all across the board. It seems that the most intelligent thing to come out of most evangelical churches are things like seminars on intelligent design, worldview, apologetics, etc. that still only give people pre-designed comebacks rather than teaching them to contend for themselves. I think the lack of pursuing serious thought in the Evangelical Church is why so many people leave and why, in a lot of circles, atheism and theological liberalism are taken to be synonymous with intellectualism.

Comment by Liz

May 22, 2007 @ 10:10 pm

It’s been a while now and maybe this won’t get read, but in response to the last post with which I agree, I also think that lack of serious study and questioning is a main reason why hierarchy still persists in the church. Very few man and even less women study the Bible, being content with ‘daily devotionals’ and the like. Most women’s studies do not go into the depth of analysis which would look at the hard questions which is a shame.