The ways people interpret the Bible cause unneeded suffering and avoidable stupidities. I’ve often said that if I believed everything I’ve heard from preachers, I’d be a raving lunatic. Just read the Bible for its plain sense, some people say. Yet a 21st-century view of a passage can be very different from what was intended from within 1st-century cultures and understanding of the world. Correctly interpreting the Bible takes some effort, and that is why I’ve always been suspicious of devotional approaches to reading the Bible because Christians get thinking that the Holy Spirit is leading them to do all kinds of crazy things. “No, the Bible is not saying that,” is sometimes the best response to them.

Another fallacy is the notion that one must interpret the Bible literally unless there is a reason not to. This is a major problem of fundamentalists and sometimes even evangelicals that is so important to them that they even use it to define who is in their ballpark and who isn’t. Sometimes there are several layers of meanings to passages, none of which may be literal. Why would one ever want to interpret poetry literally even if it’s possible? Saying that literal interpretations of the Bible should be primary, is simply an assertion, an opinion, only one of several ways to interpret.

Those who think that feminist hermeneutics started in the 1960’s only have to look at the several denominations like the Nazarenes who have held gender equality in high esteem for their full existence.

Guess who recently said this: “Male chauvinism has been the major problem through much of history. For most cultures through most of history the most serious deviation from biblical standards regarding men and women has not been feminism, but harsh and oppressive male chauvinism. It still exists today, not only in some families in the United States, but also in number of cultures throughout the world…. I believe that one of God’s purposes in this present controversy is to correct some wrongful traditions and some wrongful assumptions of male superiority that have existed within churches and families in the evangelical world.” Well, then. Perhaps a major change in the Christian Church is in order.

Don’t know who wrote it? Wayne Grudem in his recent book, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2004) p. 524. Most of you will have come across his name, but for those of you who haven’t, he is the number one, most aggressive theologian defending hierarchical/complementarian, anti-egalitarian positions on women in church and family issues.

What’s interesting is that a few pages later Grudem opines a big long list of destructive consequences if Christian egalitarianism succeeds — from increasing self-hatred, greater internal frustration (particularly in men!), even further breakdown of families to the total breakdown of the authority of Scripture. Talk about a disconnect. Could it be that patriarchal church structures and teachings had anything to do with the rampant male chauvinism? How could a little more balance between the sexes within family and church authority structures be anything but beneficial?

The new complementarians claim that their new soft patrarchialism will create the most Godly churches and families (and the least, I assume, male chauvinism). Well, if so, then let’s measure it. I call on social scientists to study male chauvinism within both evangelical camps, both the complementarians and the egalitarians, and let’s measure marital happiness, church attendance, Bible study and education, prayer, good deeds performed, patterns of communication, how decisions are made, patterns of church and family abuse, and whatever else can be proved to be convincingly appropriate to the survey at hand. It might also be advantageous to compare these results to control groups of different kinds, such as believers in non-Christian religions, Christian “liberals,” and nonbelievers of various stripes. George Barna has done some of this, and perhaps there are others as well, but no one as far as I know who has studied this convincingly. If any of you think so, please pass along the research citations.

Some heirarchicalists teach that male headship was instituted by God as a part of creation and must therefore be permanent for all times and places. Even if headship were mentioned in the creation story of Genesis, it does not follow that it must be permanent. In Genesis 2:2-3 God creates a seventh day Sabbath day of rest, and yet most Christian denominations celebrate a different day of the week and do not follow the Seventh Day Adventists’ claim that the seventh day sabbath was for all times and places, that it was creational and cannot be repealed.

There is, however, no mention of male headship over the female throughout the Genesis account. With the clear account of the hierarchy of human over animal, one would think that the heirarchy of male over female would be emphasized there if not at least mentioned, if it were true, but it is not. “Nowhere is it stated that man was intended to rule over woman within God’s creation design.” [Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1985), p. 25.]

Romans 5:19 says, “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Some theologians have argued that it was necessary for Jesus to be male so that he could pay the right sort of penalty to overcome Adam’s (the first man) first disobedience. The trouble is, the Greek word for “man” here is anthropos, which means “human,” rather than the Greek word aner, which wasn’t used and means “male.” Yes, God became male through Jesus, but the main idea is that he became human. If Jesus’ maleness was what was important, then men would be in some way “more saved” than women, which makes no sense.

The Danvers Statement states that “both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and and distinct in their manhood and womanhood.” Note that this heirarchical/complementarian basic statement of belief does not say that men and women were equally created in the image of God, but are only equal in the area of personhood. What’s missing is the woman’s authority, and without that, there is no equality — a full side-by-side authoritative equality which is more than evident in Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” What’s more authoritative than the very image of God?

Actually, “personhood” without the possibility of having any type of authority that other persons have is certainly a warped, shriveled, offensive sort of personhood. Then pile on top of that man-made rules that create the restrictions on elements of the physical body like skin color or the shape of genitals, and you’ll have quite the growing horror. But as if that weren’t enough, theologians come along and blame this shriveled personhood on God. A God who in Christ seeks freedom for all who believe and a full expression of the spiritual gifts He bestows, is hardly a God who could agree with such horrors. Such a shrunken view of personhood strikes at the very core nature of what it means to be a woman, and surely Christians everywhere should join those who object to it.

I can imagine that this question is not liked by many people, but it is a great question. It’s at the center of what this blog site is about. Could God really be at the center of slights that women suffer all over the world just because He, the ultimate authority, said so? It’s a wonderful thing that an organization like CBE encourages Biblical research into exactly what God says on the subject. The same sorts of balances that two opposite sexes bring to marriage can also bring the same to church life — or to theology and Biblical interpretation, for that matter. Thank God for female theologians.

Just as racists are not necessarily mean-spirited bigots, chauvinists can be cool, community-loved, decent residents rather than raving lunatics. The question is no more outrageous than asking pre-1978 Mormons whether God was a racist. No, God is not a chauvinist. It’s sin that has marred humanity, including sins against women — not only individualized sins but institutionalized ones as well, i.e., those that are church enforced.

See Ruth A Tucker’s Women in the Maze (IV Press, 1992), pp. 23-24, for more detail.

“Dear God,
Are boys better than girls?
I know you are one,
but try to be fair.”

From Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample, eds., Children’s Letters to God (New York: Pocket Books, 1966); quoted in Reader’s Digest, March 1967, p. 97; quoted in Ruth A. Tucker, Women in the Maze: Questions & Answers on Biblical Equality (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1992, pp. 7-8.

Thank you all you regular readers of my blog for your kind comments and encouragements. I’m sorry I’ve been not able to post much for the last few weeks, since I’ve been dealing with an increasingly difficult heart situation. Mid-November my heart murmur decided to take a turn for the worse and my mitral valve started regurging like crazy. I’ve been losing more and more oomph and finding it difficult to sleep, especially when the tachycardia (SVT) kicks in. But, I’m happy to report, that I’m going in for open heart surgery tomorrow, in about nine hours, to have the valve repaired. So once I recover, I hope to have more energy, and maybe get back to my reading and sharing of my egalitarian journey.

If you think of it, say a few prayers for me.

Maggie Gallagher is a freelance writer who writes on the family, and who has written for the Bush administration. In an interview in Christianity Today called
“Editor’s Bookshelf: Raising Up Fathers”, she says some interesting things about men. As CBE is looking into new ways of attracting males to itself, and being a male as well, I’m interested in exploring these issues, even if they’re exploring the issue from angles egalitarians generally avoid. She says:

“I do think that men see the world in more hierarchical terms than women typically do. They are typically concerned with whether they are one up or one down. The reality of family life is that men have to really give quite a lot to women and to children in order to make things work. They have to give up a lot of autonomy, give up a lot of the power to do whatever they want whenever they want. They have to give up lots of income and their mission in life.

“Both men and women are happier and more effective if men see this as a manly role. Most commonly, it’s a ceremonial title—it’s an indication that this man has agreed to take responsibility for this family. And I think men need to be honored and supported in that….

“Women need to appreciate that dialogue about the family has until recently been somewhat one sided, in that a lot of women miss what men give and what they give up in order to be good husbands in families. In a lot of ways some women have been encouraged to think of the female role as somehow uniquely degrading or sacrificial. We women have an automatic relationship to our children. Women make life. We know who our children are, and a lot of strategies, like marriage itself, including the idea of recognizing (we’re not making it up) the uniquely important role that fathers have for their children, but that it needs to be publicly and physically created and affirmed through outside means. Women need to see their own power in the family, and they need to use that power to affirm their husbands and their husbands’ relationship with the children.”

Why should men give up what they see as the perks of being “the head”? Comments?

My son-in-law sent me a Web link to the Assemblies of God Women in Ministry page. While pentacostals and charismatics also struggle with the truth of egalitarian approaches to church and family, there has for a very long time been a strong support of women within their churches and theology that many evangelical churches cannot claim. Here’s a summation of one of their official position papers on that same Web site:

“After examining the various translations and interpretations of biblical passages relating to the role of women in the first-century church, and desiring to apply biblical principles to contemporary church practice, we conclude that we cannot find convincing evidence that the ministry of women is restricted according to some sacred or immutable principle.

“We are aware that the ministry and leadership of women are not accepted by some individuals, both within and outside the Christian community. We condemn all prejudice and self-promotion, by men or women. The existence in the secular world of bigotry against women cannot be denied. But there is no place for such an attitude in the body of Christ. We acknowledge that attitudes of secular society, based on long-standing practice and tradition, have influenced the application of biblical principles to local circumstances. We desire wisely to respect yet help redeem cultures which are at variance with Kingdom principles. Like Paul, we affirm the Great Commission takes priority over every other consideration. We must reach men and women for Christ, no matter what their cultural or ethnic customs may be.”

Hooray for our charismatic brothers and sisters, particularly their women who are on the front lines battling these non-Biblical, but strongly cultural, imperatives that constantly beat them down and make them feel less than God intended them to be. Hang in there. God’s on your side.