Complaints & Concerns II

7. The Anti-Birth-Control Movement – The past two decades have seen the rise of a faction of evangelical Christians that vehemently condemns the use of hormonal contraceptives (pills, patches, shots, etc.) in addition to the longstanding faction of Christians that condemns IUDs (copper and hormonal). The reasoning goes that life begins at conception and these methods of birth control are thought (but not proven) to work at least in part by preventing the blastocyst / human embryo from attaching to the uterine wall. It should be noted that these people generally do not have a problem with barrier methods and spermicides.
I am all for making this information available so that Christian couples can make informed decisions, but I am very disappointed with those people who have condemned Christian couples for using these birth control methods or agitated for lawmakers to ban said methods. It strikes me as abysmally unwise to take such a hard stance on a subject which the Bible is silent on, especially when there is so much confirmed human life that we can be saving and reaching out to. Besides, infighting amongst Christians on the subject of birth control is exactly what the pro-choice movement would like to see. It makes us look extremist and unreasonable and hurts our cause there.
For the record, my own beliefs on this matter currently lean toward “life begins at blood.” I think “The Marriage Bed” site does a great job of providing Christian couples with information on birth control methods without condemning their choice in the matter.
8. Insensitivity on Abortion – I’m pro-life myself, but some days I am awfully embarrassed by my peers. Pregnancy can be a life-changing revelation for a woman and it usually comes with 9+ months of pain, inconvenience and discomfort. Chirping about how pregnancy is no big deal and women with unwanted pregnancies should just suck it up only makes us sound like insensitive cads who don’t understand the genuine pain and turmoil a woman goes through that might lead her to select an abortion. And sorry men, but it’s especially bad when you’re the ones doing this given that you’ll never have to put up with it yourselves. I get that men take their own lumps where pregnancy and childbirth are concerned, but actually having to shoulder the physical aspect of it isn’t one of them.
If you’re about to tell me that saving the baby’s life is a greater obligation than preserving a woman from pain, inconvenience and discomfort, save it; I don’t disagree. I simply think that showing that we care about the woman as a person is the best way of obtaining what’s best for everyone—unborn baby included. We should always approach this subject with the utmost caution and compassion.
Also, if we’re ever going to make elective abortions illegal, we’re going to have to be willing to bankroll health care for every woman out there who has an unwanted pregnancy. If we aren’t willing to deal with that, we shouldn’t be trying to make abortion illegal.
Bible Translations
9. Biased Translations That Obscure the Biblical Witness on Women’s Roles – I blogged about this in-depth here. When passages concerning gender are in dispute, I don’t at all mind when someone favors one reading in the main text while footnoting the alternative. However, I do mind when someone translates a text in strict observance of their agenda and refuses to footnote the alternative. The ESV is the most notorious offender here; it translates Romans 16:7 to say that Junia was “well known to the apostles” rather than the traditional “outstanding among the apostles.” In spite of a whopping three footnotes on the text, the translators refused to combine the traditional rendering of the passage with the overwhelming evidence that has come to light in recent years illuminating the true gender of Junia.
I also mind when perfectly acceptable translations of controversial passages are demonized as egalitarian innovations. This happened with the TNIV rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12 as: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man.” Wayne Grudem called this “a highly suspect and novel translation that gives the egalitarian side everything they have wanted for years in a Bible translation.” Okay—except that was exactly how John Calvin rendered the passage in 1560 (!). So John Calvin was an egalitarian who gave us a highly suspect and novel translation of this passage back in that raging era of feminism known as the 16th century? I realize that complementarians have better arguments to make, but blunders like this are a real turn-off to their position.
(And since I have a lot of LDS readers, you’ll note that the KJV translation forbids a woman “to usurp authority.” Damn those egalitarian 17th century KJV translators and their feminist innovations on the text, right?)
A related complaint is the entire “Statement of Concern About the TNIV.” When they can’t control the translations, certain complementarians have instead opted for censorship by launching “concern” campaigns against gender-inclusive translations to discourage people from using them. For more on that, I recommend the article I’ve had linked in my sidebar by Craig Blomberg (who is himself a complementarian): “The TNIV: The Untold Story of a Good Translation.”
Giving Women a Voice
These last three points are all related concerns, and are probably at least partially the result of my earlier concerns with complementarianism.
My belief on this matter is simple. Women bear the image of God just as men do. God pours out his Spirit on us just as he does men. When women’s spiritual insights are blotted out, so is part of the image of God.
It also needs to be understood that these aren’t complaints about men. I like men, and I like hearing from men. I’m a fan of men. I just feel like there’s room for all of us to have a voice in the body of Christ.
10. Lack of Spiritual Insight From Women – It seems like every time I attend an evangelical small group meeting or devotional, the historic or modern-day speakers being cited for their spiritual insights are men. Most of the authors that pastors cite in their sermons are men. I get that there is far, far more material from men than from women, and that it typically gets worse the farther back in history you go, but that’s a poor reason to not try and give women’s voices more time in our day and age. Change needs to begin with us.
11. Lack of Women as Theologians and/or Pastor-Theologians – When you think of the people who represent the face of the current evangelical movement, whom do you think of? I think of N. T. Wright, John Piper, Billy Graham, D. A. Carson, Rick Warren, Gordon D. Fee, T. D. Jakes, and (quite unfortunately) Mark Driscoll. It takes a while before I reach a woman on my list. Elisabeth Elliot is pretty famous, but I hear her cited more for her support of complementarian gender roles than anything else.
There certainly are female evangelical leaders, scholars, pastors and theologians whom I love—Aida Besançon Spencer, Linda Belleville, Ruth Tucker, Catherine Kroeger, and Mimi Haddad—but I’m not sure a lot of evangelicals know of them outside of egalitarian circles. Margaret Feinberg is a speaker and writer whose work I adore. Pastor Melissa Scott is the closest thing I can think of for a well-known female preacher, and while I’m always happy to see women as pastors, Scott doesn’t really do much by way of theological exploration or sound exegesis.
I keep on hearing how, in evangelical Christianity, everyone is a theologian. I guess my response is . . . prove it. Let’s hear from some women as theologians.
For the record, I don’t think this is a concern that only egalitarians are equipped to address. Here is an article about the need to build up female theologians in the Presbyterian Church in America, a denomination that does not ordain women: Women Theologians: A Spiritual Goldmine for the Church by Carolyn Custis James. This part really tugged at my heart:
With the educational and professional advancement of women today, many women come to our churches and wonder why the secular workplace values what they bring to the table, but the church shows so little interest. One young professional remarked, “At work, my male colleagues value and seek out my expertise and involvement. I’d like to think I could make a serious contribution in the church too. But my gifts go virtually unnoticed here.” An attorney with years of experience practicing law and a deep commitment to the church was bewildered that no one ever accepted her offer to assist with expensive legal issues her church was facing. Instead, she was drafted to decorate tables for the church dinner.
Sigh.
12. Lack of Women at the Pulpit – When I was looking for a new home church last year, one of the things that was very important to me was that I would get to hear from women on Sunday mornings from time to time. I was even willing to attend a soft complementarian church just so long as it occasionally had women as guest speakers. It’s all part of my need to hear spiritual insight from the entire body of Christ and not just part of it. Unfortunately, it was probably the hardest wish on my list to fulfill.
Anyways, that about wraps up my list of discontent with the status of women in evangelical Christianity and things we could do to improve on that. Thanks for hearing me out.

Comments

Complaints & Concerns II — 19 Comments

  1. The biggest thing that annoys me about the pro-life movement is that it is primarily white, affluent, middle-class women who think abortion is always chosen on a whim by selfish, irresponsible girls with no discipline. The thing they fail to understand is that many women who have abortions do not have the same level of control over their sexual activity that the typical anti-abortion activist does.
    “Chastity” and “virtue” are concepts completely bound up with free will. There are numerous factors that decrease a woman’s ability to avoid getting pregnant. If someone is young, poor, urban, and a woman of color, she simply doesn’t have the same resources, gender equality, family support, or economic options that an educated, affluent white woman in the suburbs does. Gender inequality in low socioeconomic status groups is a major contributor to unwanted pregnancies, which reinforces a downward spiral of poverty and lack of education. First world morality shouldn’t be applied to third world conditions. Unless I can see that someone with an anti-abortion perspective understands this, I’m going to ignore them as just another preachy church lady who only looks at the world from her perspective.
    This post “gets it,” although I would like to ask about the list of “pain, inconvenience and discomfort” as the only reasons a woman would have an abortion. If you just mean the physical aspects of pregnancy, that’s not why women do it. That would be a pretty shallow reason to get an abortion. If by “pain, inconvenience and discomfort” you mean inability to complete high school, loneliness after being abandoned by the father of the baby, lack of economic opportunity, inability to provide for a child, greater health risks from giving birth too early in life, and a litany of other reasons women don’t want to go through with it, then we’re talking along the more nuanced lines of a very complicated issue.
    I particularly like this bit: “Also, if we’re ever going to make elective abortions illegal, we’re going to have to be willing to bankroll health care for every woman out there who has an unwanted pregnancy. If we aren’t willing to deal with that, we shouldn’t be trying to make abortion illegal.”
    Thank you. Please repeat that often to pro-lifers until they really think about it. If you’re going to deprive young, poor, uneducated women of the right to abortion (and I will freely disclose that I hope this never, ever happens), then you’d better be prepared to pay for the pregnancy, the birth, day care for the child while the mother finishes school, and some starting out money when she turns 18. Otherwise you’re just sentencing mother and child to a much worse life.
  2. I disagree completely with #10. If past circumstances mean there are not many women’s voices to cite, that may be lamentable, but it is what it is. Going back and trying to dig up some women to quote means choosing voices because of whose voices they are, not because they are saying anything worth listening to. If you are trying to get at the subject, then focus on the subject.
    The way to change this is 100% prospective, and comes to your point in #11. If you want women to have a bigger voice, then more women need to talk. It might not change your bible study group today, but it will work radical change on bible study groups that your children and grandchildren go to.
    I had an argument on facebook about guitar players: someone said that a list of the greatest guitarists that didn’t include women was inherently suspect. But that’s bullsh!t. Awesome is not greaded on a curve. If you want more women on the list of greatest guitar players, then more women need to learn to play the guitar. The end.
  4. Molly, I’m glad that you liked my comments on abortion. They weren’t meant to be limited to concern for the physical burden of pregnancy. I agree that all of the reasons you listed are more likely to be among a woman’s top reasons for seeking an abortion than fear of physical pain. And personally, I am in favor of funding pregnancies (although I haven’t thought of the practical ramifications of this very much). I think life is worth paying for to preserve.
    Kullervo, your objection to my #10 is completely sound if one is working from the paradigm that the spiritual insights expounded by men and women are more or less of the same nature. It’s a way of putting all people (male and female) in competition for the best spiritual insights and simply turning to the best, which (as far as history is concerned) happen to be mostly male. And we can blame that on whatever we want (women weren’t theologically trained in the past, etc.), and the correct solution is to get women trained (#11 & #12) so that their insights can compete with those of men.
    But that isn’t my position. I did a lot of thinking this past year on the issue of gender differences (as I’m sure some of my comments on various blogs showed). I remember reading a comment somewhere from a feminist that said “men are just women with different plumbing.” But this is actually a harmful idea to egalitarianism, because if men are just women with different bodies and vice versa, we don’t really lose anything by having all-male leadership. Men can represent women’s thoughts and insights on their own.
    I was surprised to read up on the history of egalitarianism and learn that the concept of complementarity between the genders did not come from those who now call themselves complementarians; they hijacked it from the egalitarians. Egalitarianism holds that there are complementary differences between the sexes, but they maintain that the only way to bring this complementarity to fruition is by having women as well as men in all levels of church life, including leadership. A good real-life application of this principle was this study published last year showing that banks which had both men and women among their top CEOs did better than banks with all-male leadership. Translate that concept into spiritual terms and you have what egalitarians shoot for.
    Bottom line being, I am interested in bringing women’s voices out because of who they are, since there is no complementarity without it. However, I also think they have worthwhile things to say. I said there was a lower quantity of women’s voices and material from women throughout history; I didn’t say there was a lower quality. I don’t want female theologians to compete with male theologians, I want them to complement them.
    TYD, N. T. Wright is a self-described open evangelical, isn’t he? In fact, minus the Church of England membership, I think I’m pretty close to being an open evangelical.
  5. Jack,
    If so, I’d like to read that article. I really have no clue what Wright’s self-profession is.
    The reason I asked is because Wright has some views that would seem to place a wedge between him and most conservative Evangelicals in America. For instance, I don’t often hear Evangelicals saying that Jesus didn’t know he was God while he was on earth, or that Luther and Calvin didn’t understand Paul. He entertains the possibilities of Paul not having written all the letters attributed to him in the New Testament and he generally doesn’t use the Pastorals as evidence for Pauline theology (at least not in any of the works I have read); nor does he use the Gospel of John for understanding the historical Jesus. He seems to question the doctrine of inerrancy which seems to be a cornerstone for many Evangelicals.
    So that’s why I asked. I guess I just wonder how many conservative Evangelicals have actually read his scholarly works. Now, I am not saying he isn’t an Evangelical (especially if that is how he labels himself), but if so he seems to be more of the type of such as Larry Hurtado, who can recognize that the creedal understanding of the Trinity isn’t taught in the New Testament and that it took time for it to develop in the early centuries of the Christian movement.
    Best,
    TYD
  6. TYD, I guess I think of him as an evangelical because he’s been regularly mentioned and cited in my discussions with other evangelicals so often, and I do occasionally hear him cited in sermons. And I mean, I can remember him being cited and discussed back when I was 16 and first began exploring my religion. He’s always been on my radar.
    Granted, that evangelicals like quoting him doesn’t make him an evangelical; I don’t think C. S. Lewis was an evangelical, and we love quoting him. Still, I guess he’s always been one in my mind, if an unconventional one.
    I can’t locate right now where he’s called himself an open evangelical, but I regularly see him labeled that whenever the subject comes up. For example:
    Because of that splash in American headlines, many Americans regard Wright as a conservative evangelical. However, in the UK, he’s known as a leading light among “Open Evangelicals,” Christians who celebrate church traditions but also engage in a progressive way with the larger world. This is crucial in understanding how some of Wright’s books wind up raising points similar to those made by American emergent-church writers like Brian McLaren.
    Both the Wikipedia pages for Open Evangelicalism and N. T. Wright list him as an open evangelical.
    I am someone with more inclusive views on what constitutes evangelicalism though. I don’t want to kick out the open theists, either, like a lot of people do. I guess that’s just me.
  7. Granted, that evangelicals like quoting him doesn’t make him an evangelical; I don’t think C. S. Lewis was an evangelical, and we love quoting him.
    I wonder if that means he’s not a Mormon. :)
  8. “I think life is worth paying for to preserve.” Another great sentiment. And there’s lots of ways we can “pay” for better lives for all of us. One conclusion that I wish pro-choice and pro-life factions could agree on more often: we’d all like to see fewer abortions. My pro-choice stance is that making abortion illegal only addresses symptoms, not causes. I want to see us get to a place where abortion is a moot point because there isn’t an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. Economic empowerment, gender equality, and education are the three things that prevent a woman from ever finding herself in a situation where she would consider having an abortion. If we can work on that, pro-life and pro-choice factions don’t have to fight any more.
  9. I don’t think C. S. Lewis was an evangelical, and we love quoting him.
    I think it would be a safe bet that just about everyone of religious conviction loves to quote Lewis, because his words were just so very quoteable. And poignant. And generally accurate.
    Relating to the discussion of referencing/citing female theologians, I think it is important to find the nuggets of truth taught by all people, regardless of gender, race, or even religious persuasion. (My bishop on Sunday spoke over the pulpit of the wonderful faith and conviction of the members of the Amish community near us. Didn’t matter that they were not LDS. It was pretty neat.)
    However, I imagine it is harder to find those things taught by female theologians because there are far fewer than their male counterparts. Just that the quantity of the one makes it harder to find the quality of the other. So who has the burden of responsibility for searching these out, and for encouraging more women to engage in theological discussions?
  10. JM said:
    When you think of the people who represent the face of the current evangelical movement, whom do you think of?
    In terms of women, Joyce Meyer came immediately to my mind, for better or for worse.
    I think the problem of language translation can be a tricky one. Even with two modern, related languages, there are many times where no exact translation is possible; you often to give up something in the process. And in matters of gender, English has no neuter third-person singular pronoun, and no matter how you decide to make up for that, something will be lost in the translation. And then there are all the cultural differences behind words and sentences structures, and on and on.
    I think the best that can be done is to translate the best one can, then footnote as needed. It’s really too bad that the whole business (and it often is a business) of Bible translation has become so politicized.
  11. I still would like to see the statistics of how many abortions are due to rape, and how many are elective to cover up “Oops! The condom broke!” type of moments. I do think we need to put more rapists in Jail, though.
    Damn those egalitarian 17th century KJV translators and their feminist innovations on the text, right?
    Ha ha! :lol:
    Instead, she was drafted to decorate tables for the church dinner.
    Sounds like they have a version of an LDS Ward Activities Committee there. ;)
    There’s been people who can’t carry a tune in a bucket who’ve been put on various LDS Ward/Stake Music Committees, as well. So, this seems to happen in other churches as well.
  12. Molly, you sound like my kind of pro-choicer.
    Personally, I don’t believe Roe v. Wade is going anywhere anytime soon, so there’s little functional difference between myself and a pro-choicer who thinks abortions are regrettable and wants to reduce the practice even while keeping it legal. I agree that the best course of action for pro-lifers right now is to work on treating the reasons why women get abortions and working to save lives through that and pregnancy prevention. That’s a goal that a lot of pro-choicers would agree with, I think.
  13. Personally, I don’t believe Roe v. Wade is going anywhere anytime soon
    Agreed. I know many are hoping to “force” the Supreme Court to rehear abortion again, and gamble they will throw it out, but I don’t think that is likely.
    …the best course of action for pro-lifers right now is to work on treating the reasons why women get abortions
    Amen to that!
  14. Agreed. I know many are hoping to “force” the Supreme Court to rehear abortion again, and gamble they will throw it out, but I don’t think that is likely.
    A lot of people don’t necessarily realize the cases and precedent that Roe is tangled up with. In order to overturn Roe, the court would have to do a lot of rooting around and pulling a lot of stuff up that they simply will not do (no court is going to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, for example, but you would pretty much have to to be able to overturn Roe v. Wade).
  15. This is the big secret that nobody seems to realize anymore: if you really want to enact meaningful policy change, you have to actually convince a lot of people that you are right. If a large majority of Americans believed that abortions should not be federally protected, then the states could simply overturn Roe with a Constitutional amendment. No fuss, no muss, not even any need to overturn Griswold.
    But Constitutinal amendments need broad popular support to pass.
    Everyone is so caught up in political maneuvering, advertising campaigns, and marketing as a means to public policy change, none of which actually changes anybody’s minds. Change peoples’ minds, and changing the law is incredibly easy. But you don’t change minds with scare tactics, catchy slogans, and polarizing rhetoric.
  16. Constitutional amendments need broad popular support *and* no strident enemies to pass.
    Any court which could write Bush v. Gore could come up with a convolution that would repeal Roe v. Wade without molesting the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut It might do some harm to decisions reached after RvW but not to something that was decided nine or ten years earlier.
    Examine (for another example) the vote totals from the California Proposition 8 vote. Even with all the rhetoric on the “supporting” side the “yes” vote total, compared with Prop 22 from earlier years, didn’t really change. (My source is the L.A. times data compilation.) However, the “no” side about doubled their turnout. That’s actually evidence that you do change minds with scare tactics, catchy slogans, and polarizing rhetoric, which was in use in spades on both sides of both those campaigns. “No on 8″ changed as many minds as were already made up, at least as far as to get them to come to the polls. (“Yes on 8″ appeared to innervate a voting base was all.)
    Other fine examples from history include the news publication of the Boston Massacre event, propaganda campaigns out of Palestine (whose rank and file people don’t deserve the treatment they’re getting, but even so) and most of the stuff shoveled at us from the Glenn Beck program. Or the Bill Maher shows. (is he even funny? I can’t tell anymore.)
  17. Making people vote one way or another is not actually changing peoples’ minds. That’s political gamesmanship, and I do not believe it actually leads to lasting policy change. It makes people angry, it fires up activists, and it does everything but actually settle the issue.
  18. The anti-birth control idea is just stupid. At least, the idea of trying to enforce with the blunt instrument of law is. It comes from people who have some firm no-nos (abortion), but don’t like how uncomfortably ambiguous the boundaries get around the margins. Since they don’t like the ambiguity, they’ve decided to just move their firm boundaries to unreasonable places.
    Like I’ve always said – the Christian Right often seems to be more worried about theoretical people than real people.
  19. I never said they were smart anti-birth-control advocates. And I think it’s stupid even if they leave the law out of it and just stick to guilting other Christians. Every time I ask them to please explain how identical twins and chimeras fit in with their “life begins at conception” theory, I get a bunch of deer-in-headlights answers. They really haven’t thought this through.
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