I’m a Woman – Part 2

from here

So I read. I read and I read and I read.

Through reading I found that the Bible’s teaching about men and women was far less clear-cut than I’d previously been taught. While yes, there were some who highlighted the verses that suggested women and men had specific, God-ordained roles which should not be flouted, there were other, equally-sincere Christians who focussed instead on the verses which commanded mutual submission and equality in all relationships. 

I learned how helpful it was to understand the cultural context in which particular Biblical books were written in order to better comprehend what the author was addressing and how his fundamental aims might apply (or not) to our very different cultural context. I also learned that mentioning “cultural context” when speaking to some people made them flip out (“That’s reading into the Bible what’s not in the text! We’re not allowed to do that!”), and that these were often the very same people who had no problem deciding for themselves, for example, at what age the Biblical authors probably thought a boy became a man, because – despite God’s significant problem with women teaching men – the texts lacked such an instruction. It became obvious to me that a) people were quite happy to change the rules about how to approach the Bible depending on whatever best suited their argument in the moment, and b) with the authors and scribes and translators all coming to the text with their own backgrounds and biases, there was no such thing as a “plain reading” of any of it (I’ll dive deeper into this in the next post).

From then on, I had zero patience for the idea that women were put on earth purely to support the efforts and dreams of children and menfolk. I started challenging my ministers, all of whom had trained at the same conservative college where they’d been taught that the rigid-gender-role theory – officially known as ‘complementarian’ theology – was the only one worth considering. (And yes, I was frustratingly aware that my being a woman overshadowed whatever logic or research I wanted to share with these men; there was no point whatsoever in me trying to convince them of anything given the fact that – in their minds – God had granted them permission to ignore my views on the Bible completely. I tried, though. I really tried.)

While many of these men were dismissive, my favourite of the bunch, who I’ll call Harold, was always open to engaging with me in these discussions, offering his perspective and seeming to listen to mine. After disagreeing with him during Bible study one night, he sent me an 11-page argument he’d written to help him figure out his thoughts on women’s roles in the church and at home, which included gems like this:

...for the sake of upholding the divine order, the married woman, who may be a gifted teacher, will put aside her gift in certain contexts, so that she does not challenge the leadership of her husband and defy God’s divine order.

Harold

Taking utterly seriously his comment about being keen to hear my thoughts on it, I responded with a 12-page rebuttal to his paper, which drew to a close with thoughts like this:

If the Bible’s so clear on this issue, why is it that no one can agree on exactly what a woman should or shouldn’t be doing in church? It’s looked different in each of the four Anglican churches I’ve been part of in Sydney, ranging from women excluded from leading even the service in one church to women occasionally preaching in another. So where does one go to answer these questions, and why, when it involves half of God’s children, does the Bible not spell this out? The complementarian argument must build its case on the foundation of just two passages, both of which even Biblical scholars agree are difficult to fully understand; this means that questions that arise from this position usually have to be answered by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood rather than God’s word. Though complementarians may start with the Bible, they have to end with man-made rules.

Annelise

Harold had never heard of “egalitarianism” before, he told me after reading. He was surprised by the fact that what I’d said had made some sense. We had another conversation, later, Harold and I, during which I said that God was genderless, and he said, “Wow, I’d never considered ‘father’ a gendered term,” and I said, “That’s because you’re a father! God looks just the same as you!” and then burst into frustrated tears. Harold was sympathetic, and I thought that through such conversations he was starting to get it. Alas, I was wrong: not long after that teary encounter, a third male pastor was appointed to our church, and when I asked Harold why the women’s pastor wasn’t paid but the three male ones were, he simply stated, “Men aren’t willing to work for free.” Then, not long after that, Harold decided to restructure the church’s leadership by implementing a team of elders, who, he patiently explained to me, had to be both married and men because the Bible was very clear about both prerequisites.

One thing that never made sense to me in these churches was this: the ministers there believed and taught that gender was binary, that men and women were designed very differently, and that together we made up the image of God. You’d think, then, that it’d be quite important to these men to make sure their congregations learned from women, too, to hear what God or the Bible were like when seen through the uterus-y lenses of us females. If two people have very different experiences of something, you’d want to hear both sides to get the full picture, right? And if the full picture is supposed to teach you about what God’s really like, gathering all of the necessary information should be a big deal to such Christians, right?!

This was never the case, though; we’d only ever hear from men in church, and no one could explain why it was that women’s experiences weren’t worth listening to. Men sat in church week after week after week, listening to men preaching sermons sprinkled with anecdotes about watching sport, and supporting their friends who struggled with porn use, and disappointing their long-suffering wives (“I didn’t know you couldn’t boil potatoes in a kettle! Poor Elaine had such a mess to clean up! Good thing we have our amazing wives, amirite, gents!”). And women, too, sat in church week after week after week, listening to men sharing their anecdotes about watching sport, supporting their friends who struggled with porn use, and disappointing their long-suffering wives (“Poor Elaine indeed”).

I learned a lot from and about these men during such sermons, in both what was said and what was not. I also knew that none of those men were willing to learn from me, to hear my hot take on that week’s particular passage, to listen to me share my hobbies and my struggles. These men could always use the excuse that they weren’t allowed to (“God said so!”), but none of them seemed particularly bummed about this. It broke my heart. I spent more and more of my time in church-related environments feeling like my insides were wilting.

///

I’d snagged myself a husband by this point (go me!), meaning I now regularly sat in the congregation listening to him preaching, noticing that he’d rejected the helpful notes I’d offered about the ancient Near Eastern culture in which the text was authored (which made so much sense of its probable aims and message), and had instead decided to toe the Sydney Anglican line. I bawled after one of his sermons, which I’d found vapid and poorly thought-through. It felt deeply unfair that Alan was allowed to stand up and give average talks when friends of ours – gifted speakers and teachers – were banned from that same stage purely because of their gender. I had no urge to be up there myself (attention makes me want to vomit); I wasn’t after the spotlight, just a sign – ANY SIGN! – that my voice and my views, and those of my sisters, mattered. 

I especially wanted to matter to God. According to the church, I didn’t.

///

To be fair to those churches, we women did get a chance to hear other women preaching: there were women-only conferences scheduled each year, where we’d have the opportunity to choose electives covering topics like ‘singleness’ or ‘forgiveness’ or ‘gossip,’ or these options (copied and pasted from the 2009 event): 

God's princesses • (50 min) • God is our Father, and God is a King, so we are all princesses just like Esther! It's often said, but is it actually true? What is our relationship to God, from the Bible's perspective? 

Radical hospitality • (55 min) • From naked chefs to Donna Hay, we get plenty of advice on entertaining. But what is Christian hospitality? How can we make our homes and lives more welcoming? 

The lost art of submission • (47 min) • The 'S' word gets a lot of bad press and is too easily misunderstood. According to 1 Peter, who should we submit to and why?  

Just regular subjects all Christian women would totally be interested in! Topics men covered in men-only groups (I’ve been informed) included porn, courage, dealing with work, treating a woman like she’s your sister until you’re married to her, being good, leadery husbands, and porn. (Apparently someone had decided women weren’t that interested in sex, judging by the fact that no one ever spoke to us about it.)

While looking up websites to remind myself of the electives available at conferences I’d attended (SO FUN), I discovered that there’s a new women’s conference called OneLove. The men’s equivalent is called Basecamp. Interestingly, if you watch the videos on both websites, you’ll see the Basecamp promo is a sausage fest: men as far as the eye can see! In the OneLove video, however, playing at the top of its page, it seems the band is male, as are TWO OF THE SPEAKERS. The ONE CHANCE women get to preach to other women, and look!!! They book men instead!!!!!! I’m adding exclamation marks here in an attempt to distract myself from my overwhelming desire to shriek!!!!!!!!!!!!

On The Life After podcast, Jamie Lee Finch points out how surreptitiously gender stereotypes are perpetuated in the Christian world, offering book covers like these as but one example:

These stereotypes are less sneaky in the names of the conferences I mentioned above, and in the themes chosen for gendered conferences: Christian women’s conference themes include “Surprised by Weakness” and “In His Hands.” Men’s conference themes include “Renew your strength,” “Give me Strength” and “Life on the Road.” The message is reinforced over and over and over (and over and over) again: women are (or should be) sweet princesses who dream of romance and rescue and need protecting. Men, on the other hand, are wild and strong adventurers who, therefore, can’t necessarily be blamed for trying to have sex with their female staff during one-on-one meetings about the children’s program at church, especially if said employee is baring any skin. Women are passive, men are active. It’s blatant sexism, presented as Biblical truth, and it’s incredibly disturbing and harmful. This is what’s taught – both implicitly and explicitly – in most of the Anglican churches around Sydney (as well as many Baptist, Pentecostal and Presbyterian churches).

Returning briefly to the conferences I spotted, it appears that at one upcoming men-only convention, a talk called “Man and Marriage” will be based on this passage:

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewellery or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. 

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

          1 Peter 3:1-7

Six of these seven verses are about wives rather than husbands; I wonder, will the sermon content be similarly ratioed? How much of what’s said at the conference, or in this talk specifically about relationships, will be dedicated to domestic violence? In a hall packed with hundreds of men, a concerning proportion are statistically likely to be perpetrators, and yet none of the men I’ve asked about it remember hearing a sermon on the topic before the investigation by Julia Baird and Hayley Gleeson revealed it was a problem in the Anglican church. 

Do I believe this issue would have been raised much earlier if women were allowed to preach in such churches? Yep, I do. 

Do I think there’d be less of an issue for many Christian men with abuse at home if women were treated as equals in the church, rather than paid a stack of lip service while simultaneously having their views suppressed? I really, truly do. 

///

Hazel had only just joined our family when Harold unveiled his grand eldership plan at church. I’d taken some time off Sunday services after she was born, using newborn-baby-related exhaustion as my excuse, and then, when I returned, I spent services crying in the cry-room (it was intended for babies’ upsets rather than parents’, but I found it worked just as effectively for the latter). Once I’d noticed the sexism, I couldn’t unnotice it; it was everywhere, and it both exhausted and depressed me. Men delivered their sermons each week, many featuring cringe-y and stereotyped illustrations. Women spent their weeks at church volunteering their time to provide morning tea and help in the crèche. Women were treated as if their brains were better suited to babies than Bibles, while men were treated as if they couldn’t quite figure out how to prepare food, keep children alive, or relate to women as fellow humans rather than sex objects (so... should be appointed to paid leadership roles instead). Women-only events at church often involved drinking tea and crafting, while men-only events at church often involved sport and/or the consumption of some form of meat. 

I was convinced we could all do better, but no one in a position of authority within my church agreed with me. Even Alan – who had some say in how the church was run – wasn’t so sure complementarianism was necessarily wrong: “If husbands are making kind and good decisions for their wives, how’s it a bad thing?” he’d wonder aloud. I didn’t learn the term “benevolent sexism” until later; if I could, I’d travel back in time just to yell it at him and then storm out, slamming a door. It was infuriating to live with someone who had the power to make a difference within the system but who lacked both the personality and zeal to want to start the fire and burn the mother-flipping patriarchy to the ground. (He’s still irritatingly chill. We balance each other well.)
 

Looking at my teeny, smooshy baby and imagining the various pathways her life may one day take as she followed her passions and gifts, I realised with painful certainty that – as far as I could control it – I wanted the church’s teaching on gender and sexuality to play no role whatsoever in shaping either who she’d become or her expectations of the men in her life.

We left the church within weeks of her birth.

No Man’s Woman by Sinéad O’Connor

I’m a Woman – Part 1

from here

I can’t say exactly when it first dawned on me that the church (specifically, the Anglican church in Sydney) was extremely interested in my body. Not in my interests or gifts or passions, just my body parts: these offered all the information they needed to figure out who I was and what I should aim for in life. For example, my body told them that my opinions weren’t as valuable as they would be if I were male: I was not allowed to teach men in church, or to lead them in any way on my own (“lead” was understood differently by different groups, and could mean anything from from singing at the front of the congregation and lifting your hand to indicate that everyone should join in, to being the minister of a church). Men would only listen to sermons by men, whereas women and children could learn from anyone. It was unclear at what age a boy turned into a man and therefore switched from “Teachable” to “Unteachable.” I thought about this as I nursed my baby boy; at what age would his maleness trump my theological degree?

There was no agreement on exactly why God had decided that men should teach and lead, while women should be quiet and submit. Some suggested it was because Eve represented all women, and in deciding to eat the apple way back in Eden after chatting with Satan, she proved that women were easier to lead astray than men. Of course, the various misdemeanours of actual living male pastors need not be taken as a universal warning (“Those guys can still teach! It’s women who remind us of fictional characters that are the real problem!”). Whatever the reason, we were repeatedly assured that these gender roles weren’t about power; men and women were equal, they were just different. This was said rather a lot, presumably in the hopes that people would say, “OH ALL RIGHT THEN” and stop challenging the statement. (I recently explained to a minister that the fact he’d said he “allowed” women to preach at his church was a fairly obvious sign of his power over these women, no matter how hard he might be trying to deny it. No cookies for you, sir.)

These roles apparently weren’t about how much God loved women, either. God loved everyone, He just didn’t want women (or LGBTQI+ people, or unmarried people) becoming ministers in churches! That wasn’t because He didn’t love us, it was just because only (straight, cis) men could be trusted to understand His word exactly how He meant it to be understood when He wrote it all those years ago! It was very simple. “God’s ways are higher than our ways,” ministers would say with a shrug, likely relieved to be able to lay the blame on the Bible’s “clear teaching” rather than having to answer for their own sexism. Also: “Adam was created before Eve, which is obviously God’s way of communicating that men should lead women, and no, the creation order argument doesn’t apply to the animals who were made before Adam, don’t ask me why, please leave my office now.” 

Feminine rejection of godly masculine leadership is the mark of the curse.

John Piper

I was taught in such churches that my body was not only the sign to men that I wasn’t to be taken completely seriously, it was also a danger. I’d learned this lesson much earlier in life, having been molested by a man as a child, and the church’s reinforcement of this lie that my body was problematic was psychologically harmful in a way I didn’t acknowledge until too many years later. The “Billy Graham rule” – made slightly-better-known by Mike Pence in 2017 – referred to the practice of male leaders avoiding one-on-one time with any woman other than their wives, so that they could be neither tempted by such a woman (all men are attracted to all women, apparently) or accused of being tempted by her (women, after all, are notorious for their false allegations of sexual misconduct). (It’s also possible that this rule has nothing to do with women and is actually about the fact such men seem to believe they’re a one-on-one meeting away from becoming a sex offender, so enforce the rule to protect women.) (It’s also possible these men truly believe they’re deeply alluring to all [!] women and so such meetings would not lead to rape, but consensual sex in the middle of busy cafés.) (I’m really just spit-balling here; if you have light to shed on this, I’d love to hear from you.) (This is a lie. Please don’t contact me.)

Before camps and mission trips, the women would be pulled aside and reminded not to show too much skin at the pool/beach, because men (again: all men!) could not help but think sexy-thoughts upon the sight of a woman (any woman!) in a bikini, and all sexy-thoughts were bad outside of marriage. Not wanting our “brothers in Christ” to “stumble,” we swam and chatted wearing t-shirts over our swimmers, some of us enjoying (sometimes in a sexy-thought way, let’s be honest) the sight of the guys playing sport on the beach with their chests and shoulders and abs and backs and *vigorously fans face* smatterings of hair proudly on display. 

from here

My female body was no good for summertime, one-on-one conversations with men, or explaining theological concepts to men, but it was good for making babies and then raising said babies, and so I was placed on The Woman Track, which involved doing whatever I could to become a wife and a mother ASAP. The Man Track looked far more interesting to me: nothing seemed to impinge upon men’s aspirations! As well as being husbands (because everyone’s goal was to be married, duh) and fathers (because if you were married then of course you would have children, duh), men were free to pursue their vocation/s! Whichever they liked! They could become ministers if they wanted to, not because they were especially gifted at connecting with people or preaching, but simply because their man-ness made them very useful to God (I realise I’ve made this point before, but I’m repeating it here because I still find it flabbergasting: hopes, dreams, strengths and/or weaknesses played far less of a part in the role-assigning process than the presence or lack of a pecker. It’s profoundly odd.)

Being very useful to God meant that men could opt out of unpleasant tasks at home like cleaning the toilet or refocusing fractious toddlers, because their job was to provide for their families, not to work in the house! Lol! (When God wrote the Bible, He meant that men were only supposed to provide financially and spiritually, not emotionally or, like, by “providing” an extra set of hands to help. Obviously.) Such men could argue (though they never needed to) that working long hours/6-day weeks was really the best way they could possibly serve God with their time: “Sorry, love, it’s for the Big Guy. You’re doing a great job with the house and kids, though! Dinner was amazing, I’m so lucky to have you! Oh, I bought you these books about how motherhood is your highest calling, which offer nice reminders that the hard stuff is actually when God’s most present, so your suffering is bringing Him glory! Good on you, darl. I’ll be home late after Bible study, so I might see you tomorrow morning, unless I leave for work early to get some stuff done. Say hi to the kids for me! Mwah!” 

As far as I know, most Anglican ministers are still required to work 6-day weeks, with additional weeknight commitments such as Bible study or meetings. Family is not expected to be the top priority for men as it is for women. I remember exactly where I was standing when I was told (by a shocked narrator) the story of a woman who dared to call her husband after youth group some Friday nights to ask him to hurry home to help with the kids. The nerve! What kind of a wife would require her partner to actually be her partner?! I ASK YOU.

Men are not called by God to be “working at home” as women are in Titus 2:5. The ground is not cursed for women in Genesis 3:17, but for men, whose responsibility it was to work outside of the home–and to protect women, which was the first “man fail” of all time. 

The curse bore down upon Eve’s primary activity, childbearing, showing that her intended sphere of labor and dominion-taking was the home (Genesis 3:16). This is true of the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 as well, who though something of a whirling dervish of godly femininity was not, like her husband, by the city gates with the elders (Proverbs 31:23), but working tirelessly to bless her family and manage her home for God’s glory.

Owen Strachan

I can’t remember when it first dawned on me that the church thought my body was the most important thing about me, but I do remember shedding many tears over the thought that God would love me more if I were male. I’d felt so special to God the night I’d converted to Christianity, overwhelmed by the thought that He wanted me – of (literally) all people! – to follow Him. Back then I was a “baby Christian,” as my grandmother called me, desperate to absorb everything and grow to match the knowledge of my fellow Bible study pals, but I found the teaching on gender roles deeply unfair and illogical, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it so that I’d be able to believe and say the appropriate things and fit in. I hated this about me.

During the early years in my first church, I cycled – sometimes daily – through feelings of rage and despair, and then attempts at acceptance. I spent a lot of time both asking God for satisfying answers to my questions about gender (I’d heard enough of “We just don’t know why God chose us specifically, P.S. feminism is of the Devil and this conversation is definitely over now”), and gaslighting myself (“This is only a problem for you because you’re a sinful woman. Godly women submit, even when it’s hard! Especially when it’s hard!”). I wondered how it didn’t seem to bother many of the other women in the church, repeatedly concluding that I must be the one who had it wrong and needed to change. It certainly never seemed to bother the men.

I remember going out for dinner with friends after sermons on head-coverings or women’s roles in marriage, and ranting and crying over pizza. I remember declining communion during one church service – for the first time ever – to protest the fact that a bunch of only-men were approached and then voted into the group whose job it was to find our next minister, and that no one had noticed the group was exclusively male, or, when it was pointed out, considered it a particularly big deal that there’d be not even one woman to offer her perspective on a potential future minister’s suitability for our congregation (half of whom were women). (My similarly-upset friends and I were later told that one of the men “thought like a woman” so pretty much counted as one.) I sobbed that night, and an older woman came and sat with me and told me that when she questioned God’s love for her, she thought about her female friends and realised God must like her a lot to bring them into her life. I found this sweet, and tried to do the same.

I didn’t want this topic to bother me so much; I was desperate to please both God and my church leaders (not to mention any potential husbands out there! Helloooo, eligible fellas! Please bear with me while I try to hold you in the esteem I’m supposed to whilst significantly lowering my expectations for my own future!). I wanted to feel totes okay with what I was being taught rather than constantly wrestling with it. Looking back, I can see how through such pains my feminism was born; though I’d been introduced to it earlier, my time in Sydney Anglicanism demonstrated gender inequality in a way I couldn’t ignore, starting a fire in me that continues to burn despite having left the church years ago now. (THANKS, YOU GUYS!)

Next up on listener favorites is a poem by Jamie Lee Finch called “Sex”. This was featured in full on our episode “The Ethics of F***ing (Part 1)”.
Posted by The Liturgists on Tuesday, 10 July 2018

Jamie Lee Finch reading part of her poem Sex (1:12). 
Listen to the rest of it on her website.

After Moses was born, I spent my days and nights breastfeeding and reading, reading and breastfeeding. As well as books on parenting, I realised I could finally explore the questions about gender I’d been asking for years by that point, given I had access to the library of the Bible college where I’d studied the previous semester (and where Alan was still a student), as well as oodles of time to fill. I started this blog, both to document my thoughts throughout this process, and to keep a couple of close friends (who had the inclination but not the time to research the topic) updated on what I was learning. I used a pseudonym, knowing my views would make others angry and potentially affect Alan, who wanted to work for the church eventually.

That was 2010. I see now that it was the beginning of the end for my faith.