Liz, yeah, there is less of that vulnerability in modern cultures, but even physiology allows for some (and will culture ever really not involve more social vulnerability for the women prior to Jesus’ return?). I personally have difficulty reading a parallel to the relationships Godhead as not transcultural. I do allow for the possibility but am very cautious about it. Just my 2! I’m a devoted egalitarian, but I don’t have any problem with recognizing nuances of relating that I think are inherent to the metaphor… and I can sort of see it as a justification for the Father giving away the daughter. I probably would choose to forgo that if it was just me I was considering, but I think it might hurt my father a lot if I changed it up. So that will be a hard call when the day comes.

I’ve had the opportunity to observe quite a few weddings. However, there are a couple of things that really bug me about the “traditional” marriage ceremony. For example, it really bugs me when the newly married couple is introduced as “Mr. and Mrs Benjamin Smith” I think they should be introduced using the first names for example “Sarah and David Carter” Along the same lines, another thing that really bugs me is when the minister says “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Okay, so the groom is now a man. But the bride is just a wife?

Most of my friends are married. I have one married Christian friend who told me that her husband did something really special for her on their wedding day. She didn’t know about it beforehand. During the ceremony, the groom washed the feet of his new bride. I thought that was a really beautiful gesture and showed such humility on the part of the groom. Listening to my friend talk about her husband washing her feet, I could see that it still meant a lot to her, even thought it happened over a decade ago.

It’s a pity the discussion usually centres around the one word rather than the whole tenor of Ephesians which is one of mutuality, concern for one another and full of teaching about our position as believers in Christ.

As was pointed out, in the society at the time of writing, women were more vulnerable and men had the power and position, hence the need for protection and consideration, and in many places in the world that still holds today. In most ‘developed’ countries though, much work has been done to ensure the equal status of women in society and legally that is in place, even though it is taking a longer time for the traditional ideas to die out.

Hope this makes sense!

Btw, I relate to whomever responded to Kamilla by saying that they had to go through a similar process in leaving the patriarchy that was comfortable to them to embrace the truth God showed them of egalitarianism. That is similar to my walk.

I have to confess that I wasn’t up to speed with reading the most recent Scroll comments and had to read a whole lot in succession which put me in the picture with the ongoing discussion between you and Dave. As I read it Dave was simply responding to your suggestion that egalitarian beliefs were relatively recent. He used the reference to the Reformation primarily to point up that the Holy Spirit was not remiss in informing the Church of Truth but that the Church needed a Reformation to bring it back on track with forgotten Truth, principally the whole matter of Justification by Faith. This fresh revelation no doubt provided fertile soil for the examination of other issues that may have become overshadowed by centuries of church tradition. Patriarchal Church tradition no less!

To my mind it is not a big leap to suggest that women (some of whom have been mentioned in both of your comments) felt empowered to more freely express themselves, giving rise to fresh egalitarian concepts or beliefs. The whole point is that this is not recent, and as others have well said on this post, the NT itself is replete with examples of women engaged in Christian ministry.

The plain facts are that the early church was obviously more egalitarian in its less formal setting. Women were potentially emancipated and empowered as equals in both the church and the home. Paul’s pastoral instructions were designed to steer the infant churches through this very unfamiliar territory through wise counsel and Godly suggestions that, of necessity, considered and worked alongside of the accepted cultural expectations. (The same rule applied in the case of slavery.) Unfortunately, as the church became more structured and organized it also became entrenched in the more familiar patterns of patriarchy and hierarchy of the day. Egalitarianism needed to be rediscovered.

My own view is that it was never lost. God continued to gift women and from time to time these women emerged, whether they recognized it or not, as spokespeople for the true church, the ’spiritual’ as opposed to the ‘nominal’, or established church. Many of these women are recorded in the annals of church history but sadly, many are not, because, to put it simply, they were not men!

What I didn’t understand back then, but am beginning to understand now, is that a wedding ceremony is both the joining of two individuals, and also a show of communal support for the new couple. For a marriage to be fully egalitarian requires not only the consent of the bride and groom, but also the support of the community at large.

I’ll illustrate what I mean through my own story. My wife and I dated for about 5 years before becoming engaged. By this time we were both committed egalitarians. I knew that she did not want to be “given away”. I also did not wish to ask for her parents’ permission to marry her, but I did wish to honor their position as future parents-in-law (somehow).

A few days before proposing to my future wife, I took her parents out to a very expensive steak restaurant (future mom-in-law likes steak). I let them order. Before the steaks arrived, I informed them that I would be proposing to their daughter within the week. Not a question; a statement. Luckily they were happy with my intentions.

Fast forward to the wedding planning phase (she said “yes” btw). We made small tweaks to the ceremony, like changing “man and wife” to “husband and wife.” I didn’t need anyone to declare me to be a man and we both wanted this declaration to be affirming of our new identities relative to each other.

But this is where our community started to exert its complimentarian influence. While I made most of the pre-day-of arrangements I left walking order and ceremony specifics to our day-of coordinator (a church friend). She strenuously objected when my wife told her that she did not want to be “given away”. My future mother-in-law accused my wife of being ashamed of her own father. Why else would a bride walk down the aisle alone? No one understood.

Our compromise was that each father would walk his own child in. She and her father came from the back of the meadow. My father and I came from the canoe dock. It was a good call because the canoe dock at our lake-front wedding didn’t have cleats to tie the canoe up to and getting out of an unsecured, unbeached canoe in formal wear is…precarious.

As a side note we were also able to include portions of our respective cultures in the ceremony through prayer (Mandarin Chinese, and Ilocano). I also wore a barong tagalog (traditional Philippine formal shirt, made of pineapple silk), as did my groomsmen.

I personally don’t prefer seeing a couple walk in together. It gives me the impression that I already missed half the ceremony. But I wouldn’t hold it against anyone if they chose to do it that way.

I think Americans in particular (I’m including myself in that category), tend to have an acutely individual outlook on the world. I thought my wedding was going to be about what my wife and I wanted. But the community my wife and I married in wasn’t egalitarian, and so that community had their say in what they would and would not do, even in our wedding.

I take this as an admonition about how important it is to develop a fully egalitarian community or at least a community that is respectful of egalitarian choices. No matter how much we desire to exercise control over our environments, our surroundings and those who surround us will continue to influence the trajectory of our lives.

The lesson to me is not to rest on simply being content that I am an egalitarian, but to continue to strive for a community where egalitarian choices are honored and respected, so that the compromises we made in our wedding will not be required of others.

“You made no complaints about that request at the time but now that I have pressed you on the matter of substantiating your claims you want to say *I* am the one shifting the argument?”

The reason I made no complaint about the request at the time was because you had not asked me for a quote. You came close to asking for a quote when you said, “I am simply asking you for one quote – just one – that substantiates your claim that this “truth” of Egalitarianism came with the Reformation.” Note, this was not a request for a quote, but a claim by you to be asking for a quote…which you had not. You had asked where Luther and Calvin had made a comment, but I said that that was not who I was alluding to.

You then later said, “I am simply asking you for one quote – just one”. This was a false statement because at this stage you still had not asked for a quote. This is the first time you asked for a quote.

Kamilla, I have backed up my claim. You can disagree if you like, but I must say it seems that you would be happy to throw out any argument that does not agree with your own beliefs. You said you wanted to address my points without qualification, you have not backed up your own statements when asked to, you twist the argument to suit yourself and you fail to back up your own claims.

If you would like to put this to one side and start again with the points you were going to address, I am always happy to interact! :-)