The CBE Scroll

An article in this week’s U.S. News & World Report reports that Pope Benedict XVI is about to ‘relax restrictions on celebrating the 16th century Tridentin Mass, citing “a new and renewed” interest in the ancient Latin liturgy, especially among younger Catholics.’ Read the full article here.

Who besides Mel Gibson is interested in the Catholic Church making such changes? Apparently there are individuals in a movement springing from seminaries who say that such changes will help membership attendance (now at forty percent, down from seventy-four percent in 1958) if practiced traditions are richer and doctrines stricter.

Not only are these restorers of tradition calling for the reinstatement of the Latin mass but also for ‘greater devotion to the Virgin Mary, more frequent praying of the rosary and priests turning away from the congregation as they once did. Perhaps most controversially, they also advocate a diminished role for women, who since Vatican II have been allowed to participate in the mass as lay altar servers and readers.’

Sisters, here we go again.

She wore plain clothing, a white dress, a white bonnet, and a rather drab shawl, but her Christian life was vibrant, colorful, and focused on the work of the gospel. When, in the early 1800s, Elizabeth Fry dedicated her life to the pursuit of a Quaker life, her family was not pleased. Only her brother, Joseph Gurney, really stuck by her side through it all. In her supposed radical devotion, Fry struggled intensely between her desire for the comfortable and prestigious life she was used to and her desire to promote only the glory of Christ. This accounts for her seemingly constant state of depression evident in her journal and sometimes weight loss.

Fry is best known for her prison reform, call for fair treatment of the insane, and opposition to the death penalty. Her famous work began with her visit to Newgate Prison. Two friends of hers, Stephen Grellet and William Forster, had just visited Newgate, and discovered its appalling conditions. Many were imprisoned without trial, and many executed for the weakest of reasons – England at the time had about 200 offenses that called for execution. Guards often treated the women’s ward like their own personal brothel. Women prisoners gave birth and raised children within in their cells and many existed in relative nakedness and poverty. Though it was the nineteenth century, it was still common for crowds to gather and cheer at the executions of these prisoners. The governor himself would sell tickets to the front row and even enjoy his breakfast over a good hanging.

When Grellet and Forster left Newgate, Grellet went immediately to Fry, feeling she – above anyone else – could effect true change in the prison. Fry and her close friend and relative, Anna Buxton, went to Newgate to check it out for themselves. When they arrived, they found women crammed into the cells, fighting over food, nursing infants with their own emaciated bodies, sometimes trading food for alcohol and carrying on wildly. One striking memory for Fry would be two women taking the clothes off of a dead infant to put them on a live newborn. Fry was shocked that prisoners were treated worse than animals. There was no doubt in her mind that Christ was offended by the conditions at Newgate.

She and Anna gathered clothing and food and passed them out to the inmates. But, Fry recognized that the women needed more than bread and shawls; they needed education, a useful occupation, and above all the gospel. She found herself preaching to them on a daily basis, and they hung on her every word.

In fact, it was her new celebrity status in the prison that caused Fry to question her work. She found herself enjoying the attention too much. She wondered how much of her work was for her own benefit – to give herself props – and how much of it was for the cause of Christ. Afraid of sinning against her devout Quaker principle of humility, Fry withdrew from her work in London for a time and moved back to her country house.

From there, her husband Joseph Fry handled his business and her nine children received an education, the boys from the tutors and the girls from the governess. Joseph, an egalitarian by the standards of the day, was very supportive of her work and demanded little from his wife in the way of domestic duties. This freed Fry to employ her leadership gifts in the community, and she started a school for poor girls in her home. But, tragedy precipitated deep depression. Fry suffered the death of a brother and her favorite daughter, Betsy. The family business lost money. Eventually, they were forced to move back to London, where Fry again visited Newgate and renewed her commitment to the women inmates. She finally saw her role there as that of a minister of the gospel and took lasting joy in this work.

Through strategy, winsomeness, and social position, she convinced the authorities to let her start a school in the prison for children of the inmates and young convicts. The inmates themselves offered to give up one of their already crowded cells to provide the school space the authorities insisted upon. Soon the children and the women were learning to read. They reinstituted regular worship services. She helped them start a sewing business and arranged for product sales outside the prison.

Fry’s work at Newgate turned into a lifelong pursuit – even in her own relative poverty late in life – of changing the way English people understood their responsibility toward other human beings. Due to her work, laws were enacted for the improvement of the conditions of prisons and hospitals and the treatment of the insane, even bringing changes to the death penalty.

Bringing human equity to the hearts and minds of others requires putting our hands to the plow. Egalitarianism, as a call for human equality, requires the dedication of our time and our pocket books. We must, as God has blessed us, use our gifts to advance the cause of the gospel. There are many Elizabeth Frys in the world (maybe you) who need our support. Find one and help her create change.

Other cultures have a lot to teach us all, but what we often learn is that “they” are “us.” In Ireland, Trocáire, the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church, runs an annual Lenten ad campaign, which asks for more than just alms: it asks for contributions for movements that seek justice. To get the word out, they use public TV information spots, poster campaigns and public information brochures. Previous campaigns sought to bring attention to apartheid in South Africa, the liberation of child soldiers, and the plight of slave laborers around the world, all of which were supported by the Irish government (the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland [BCI]) and the church.

But this year’s campaign was just too much, and the BCI decreed that it must be removed from its commercial airwaves because it was too “political.” Hmm.

The campaign advertisement this year, according to the National Catholic Reporter, “features an unending grid of diapered babies, black and white, all infants, all charming and bright-eyed and lively. Finally the voice-over says, ‘ These children will have less education, live in more poverty, contract more disease, suffer more violence, face more disadvantage than if they had malaria or HIV. They will never even be given a chance. Why? Because they’re female.’ ”

Gender equality is too political. Apartheid, child soldiers and slave laborers are not. Why? Could it be just too close to home?

A few weeks back I was teaching a class on Anabaptist history. I gave my usual spiel about the nature of history and the problems with reductionism. Anabaptist concerns were both theological and economical (among other things); cases of injustice, after all, traverse all aspects of life. Abuses by the church and its oppression of ideas were paralleled by abuses by the state and its oppression of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (in this case, something as simple as the right to fish). To take the Anabaptist cause and bring it down to one simple idea (e.g., baptism), is to ignore the complexity of the situation and the people involved.

Despite my caveats, there were still a few students who didn’t yet catch on. “But what was the reason they separated from the Reformed?” asked a student. “Was it baptism? Was it political or was it religious in nature?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, it was all of those things.” He scratched his head for a second and then I explained. People are people, no matter what generation they live in. Life is always complicated.

For example, I may think I’m ordering a Big Mac tonight because I’m hungry for a Big Mac, but any number of factors can go into that decision. I may order a Big Mac because I saw a commercial for McDonalds and in that commercial may have been the line: “You deserve a break today.” As I thought about that line, I thought, “Yeah, I do. At work they keep changing my job around or I have to deal with that clueless boss, or I save and save and never treat myself. I may have nothing in my refrigerator and I may not have enough time to run to the grocery store for the week. I may be hearing the commercial on the radio in my car and suddenly see a McDonalds. Any number of reasons can go into my decision and I may never boil it down to one single notion that moved me to buy a Big Mac.

As complicated as understanding the past is, the present is no easier. Why do people believe certain things? If I were to talk to the most ardent of the hierarchalists, I might hear that I’m an evangelical egalitarian simply because I’m rebellious or I might be accused of rejecting the authority of Scripture or I might have been “feminized” (whatever that actually means). As a matter of fact, I’ve heard these very accusations time and time again. In some cases, it is believed that evangelical egalitarianism is simply a disguise for the conspiracy of liberalism among evangelicals.

I don’t like those broad labels and accusations which have no basis in reality, at least, for me. Perhaps I’m an egalitarian because I’ve seen it in God’s Word after years of struggling with the idea and after years of seeing abuses in the church and in our seminaries. At any rate, if the hierarchalist is willing to get to know me a little better as a person before making up one’s mind about me, I am willing to get to know him or her as well.

I’ve met all types of hierarchalists. I’ve seen some so strongly patriarchal, that the more I learned about them, the more I discovered just how deeply rooted their misogyny went. I’ve seen the woman haters who abuse their wives. I’ve also seen the mild complementarian, the one who loves his family and believes that women should have the freedom in the church to do whatever a non-ordained male can do. The only apparent reason that it appears that this person holds off on accepting the ordination of women is simply out of the belief that the Bible commands it, and not out of any overt notion of male superiority. As a matter of fact, one such man I know pushed his church hard on this issue in order to bring justice to the women in the congregation, nearly causing a split in the process.

There are diversities of opinions out there and not all of them are equal. Some hold to the same position, to different degrees, for very different reasons. It is true that we can sometimes only deal with the arguments in general; for example, what is the meaning of 1 Corinthians 11. But I have to remember constantly that while some complementarians might hold to a very rigid interpretation of the text, including the imposition of head coverings, others do not. Many see head coverings as a cultural marker of the text, and perhaps I can approach the discussion with them knowing that I may have less to overcome.

This is not to say that I won’t find frustration or that I won’t find the stereotype. Rather, it means that I should offer as much patience with the other person as I would want myself. After all, the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12 is at heart the message of egalitarianism. Treating all others respectfully and equally is what every human being made in the image of God should expect. When going face to face in the gender wars, loving the other person is never something with which we are allowed to part.

My final acceptance of egalitarianism came after a full-fledged exposure to CBE through their conference in St. Davids , PA. There I met egalitarians who did not fit the stereotype. I found no men haters shouting from the rooftops. Instead, I found men and women who love God and who care about justice and human equity. I found men and women working together for the gospel. There I learned that I may better understand the reasons why people make their choices, if only I’m willing to love them and meet them face to face.

I’ve been reading the recent issue of Priscilla Papers (Summer 2006). I have been struck by both Catherine Clark Kroeger and Philip B. Bayne’s use of history in their respective articles on 1 Corinthians 11. In Kroeger’s article she is looking at what kephalē, “head,” means in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” (NASB). She uses a plethora of secular, Jewish, and early Christian historical sources to show that the conventional meaning of kephalē means “source” or “beginning,” not a hierarchal understanding of a boss or somone who has authority over other people. Bayne does the same thing in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Using sources contemporary with Paul, he shows what Paul meant by “head” as well as the culture and custom of the day regarding how men and women should wear their hair, which has nothing to do with head coverings. He also looks at what the early Church Fathers had to say about this passage and how they interpreted it. The striking thing is the consistency of the translation of “head” in all the sources: secular, Jewish, and Christian—nowhere is kephalē translated to be an authority over another. It always means source or beginning.

One of the things that has aggravated me about Evangelicalism for the last 15 years is its ignorance regarding Christian history, and it’s arrogance in thinking it doesn’t need it. I am very happy to see Robert Webber and others working to bring Evangelicals back into the stream of our shared history instead of just looking at it as “Catholic history” we don’t need (I grew up Southern Baptist in rural Oklahoma, and this was how early Church history was referred to). I think both of these articles show how important it is for us to know how contemporary sources and the early Church used words, and how the early Church interpreted Pauline and other passages. This history shows that the complementarians are wrong in their translation of kephalē, and corrects how we also interpret head coverings and how Paul wanted men and woman to relate to each other. When we consider all of Christian history and tradition, then we have the resources we need to more correctly understand what the biblical writers were saying instead of imposing our own intepretations and world views on the text.