Sexism as Principality and Power

Ephesians 6:12 in the KJV reads: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Both the NIV and TNIV read: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Tony Campolo in his recent Speaking my Mind (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2004), pp. 34-35, connects these principalities and powers with social structures that are in our world that are external to individuals and that have the power to “control the feelings, acts, and thinking of individuals” and coerce us to think and act in prescribed ways. They include “the folkways and mores as well as the various institutions of a society” that assign “people their designated roles within the social order, along with the behavioral patterns that go with those roles. Racism is such a principality and power that we have struggled against. So is sexism.