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An update, some announcements, an invitation, and a book giveaway
Update
It’s Spring Break for me. Which usually means some travel. Last week, I spoke at John Brown University during two days of International Women’s Day events. From there, we headed to Houston’s Lanier Library and Stone Chapel for The Visual Museum (“VizMu”) symposium, “See Her Story.” I spoke at both the JBU and the VizMu events on “Women in the Early Church: Art and Space.” And I taped three podcasts while on the road in addition to a few in the can that include return visits to Preston Sprinkle’s “Theology in the Raw” podcast (topic: Vindicating the Vixens) and the Beyond Ordinary Women podcast (topic: purity culture). Coming soon.
In late February, I spoke in chapel on the Washington DC campus of DTS, followed by teaching a two-hour writing workshop. I loved meeting students I’ve long known only virtually.
Some announcements
Early this month, Nobody’s Mother was named a finalist in the 2023 FOREWORD INDIES Book of the Year in the Women’s Studies category. But wait, aren’t “indie” books self-published? At one time, “indie” did pretty much refer only to self-published authors. But now “indie” means anyone not published by one of the Big Five—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Hachette. The FOREWORD “Women’s Studies” category focuses on books that deal with the experiences, issues, and advancement of women throughout history. This year more than 2,400 entries spanning 55 genres poured in for consideration. Selected by Foreword’s editorial team, the finalists now await judgment from teams of librarian and bookseller judges nationwide. Winners in each category will be announced in June.
Last month, Nobody’s Mother was named a finalist in the “Online Presentation” category of the Christian Authors Network’s CAN Excellence in Marketing Awards. These awards celebrate “excellence in Christian media and marketing by authors.” The award was designed “to recognize, educate, and encourage superior marketing and promotional skills of Christian authors.” I’m especially happy about what this means for my intern, Sarah Griffith, whom some have described as the book’s “zealous promoter.” Winners will be announced April 27.
You can find me on new episodes of these podcasts:
Know Why podcast: How Did Jesus Treat Women? (Part 1)
Know Why podcast: Did Jesus Prescribe Gender Roles? Know About Jesus: Interview With Dr. Sandra Glahn (Part 2)
On the Way with Max Botner Why Does Paul Say “She will be saved through childbearing”?
You can also watch/listen to me here: Artemis of the Ephesians, Northern Seminary’s New Testament World Colloquium with Dr. Nijay K. Gupta
The Alabaster Jar podcast hosted a mini-series featuring the Visual Museum and works on the site. I appear on or host the following episodes—but listen to more than these! We have some wonderful expert guests.
Why is this project important?
And you can read some new reviews:
Dr. Joy Dahl featured a review of Nobody’s Mother for The Denison Forum.
Marg Mowczko featured a review of the book on her fab site, as well.
What’s ahead for me? Speaking at the first commencement for the Opened Bible Academy in Ireland next weekend. Attending the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing with a bunch of my students. And attending board meetings and the national conference for EPA—the Christian media organization I serve as president. Then DTS graduation, my favorite day of the year. Then, before I teach a doctoral course in self-publishing, it’s off to Italy for about three weeks with my students. Speaking of Italy…
An invitation
Lynn Cohick and I are leading a winter trip to Italy that we’re opening up to the general public. (Someone asked if she can bring her husband. Yes, of course!) We’re calling the trip “Art, Faith, and Gelato.” Mark your calendar for December 27, 2024–January 12, 2025. We’d love to have you join us for some key sites (though not necessarily the Top 10 on Trip Advisor) in Rome, Torcello, Venice, Ravenna, Padua, Vicenza, Milan, Florence, Orvieto, Siena, Assisi, and Civita di Bagnoreggio. If you plan to sign up, don’t delay. Slots are filling fast.
Win a FREE reference book
Dr. Nancy S. Dawson has just released a beautiful book titled All the Genealogies of the Bible. In case you wondered, that’s 340 genealogies. I have a copy of this work, and I love it. It’s a thick, hard-bound reference book that presents content in a simple visual format. Dawson was aided by my friend and colleague Eugene H. Merrill (he wrote the “Sarah” chapter for Vindicating the Vixens), and Andreas J. Köstenberger. These two provided brief commentary on each entry. Ever wondered how Elizabeth was related to Jesus’s mother? Or how exactly Jesus and the John the Baptist were kin? You can see the family trees laid out in All the Genealogies of the Bible. How do you win? Just download any free resource from this site (which will capture your email), and I’ll enter your email for the drawing to be held on Easter.
Happy Spring!
Revisiting the Topic of Women in Public Ministry: My Recommended Resources (2022)
For more than two decades, I’ve taught a course on gender and its ramifications in the church and for women in public ministry. Since #MeToo and #ChurchToo combined with Christian leaders saying women have to endure abuse to be biblical and also that women shouldn’t teach in seminaries, I’ve seen a shift in attitudes. Add to that the one-two punches of Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez with Beth Allison Barr’s book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: People are revisiting what and why they believe on the topic.
Some have sat up and said, basically, “Evangelicals have barred the front door against radical feminism while leaving the back door wide open to misogyny.” Some have heard Beth Moore told to “Go Home!” and responded with, “Stop already. That misrepresents us.” I’m hearing pastors get up and say, “I was wrong” to slut-shame Bathsheba. I’ve been told by radio hosts, “If I had talked with you a year ago about this, I would have heard you uncharitably, but now. . . .” Something has changed.
Consequently, churches and parachurch organizations are asking for guidance about how to revisit the Bible’s words about topics like women’s silence and being “saved through childbearing.”
Churches are seeing how inconsistent it is to have formulated policy about women without consistently applying their commitment to “God made men and women different by design, so that means we need to partner with them in having dominion.”
Additionally, many are realizing that most debates are taking place within the complementarian camp. Indeed, within this camp, a lot of folks want to distance themselves from traditionalist views of women (e.g., “women are ontologically inferior to men”) and views of women’s public ministry that have women’s lives revolving only around those of men. There is a growing willingness to state outright that woman was made in God’s image; that violence in a marriage is what severs the marriage bond, not the departure of the person seeking safety; that if a sign of the Spirit in Acts 2 includes old and young women prophesying, it cannot somehow violate a grounded-in-creation mandate for a man to learn biblical truth from a woman. Here’s a chart I made with the help of my friend Catherine Arnsperger that shows a spectrum of beliefs within the inerrancy camp, and mostly within the complementarian camp.
I’ve done some consulting on the subject. But my first love is my students. So….
Are you and/or your team wanting to revisit questions about gender in the church? Here are my recommended resources:
While there is no one book I recommend, here are some sources that will help you explore the issue for yourself. I highly recommend doing so in community. Through the years I have noticed that those who do so alone tend to end up in a different place (and not always a good place) from those who do so in community. Books with an asterisk are required reading in the course I teach (some in entirety, some only chapters).
Recommended Books on Women in Public Ministry
HOT OFF THE PRESS: I wrote the foreword for 40 Questions about Women in Ministry (Kregel Academic) by Sue Edwards and Kelley Mathews.
*Winston, George and Dora. Recovering Biblical Ministry by Women. Longwood, Florida: Xulon Press, 2003. 551 pages. Textual considerations. I require the first half of this book, and it’s a game changer for my students in helping them see how to frame the study. George graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary and was president of Belgium Bible Institute years before his retirement. His late wife, Dora, was a missionary in Europe for years and also taught at the institute. Significantly, the Winstons are more global in their thinking about masculinity and femininity/manhood and womanhood than many of the popular sources.
*Bartlett, Andrew. Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), 2019. 464 pp. Many books approach the subject from a firmly partisan point of view, whether complementarian or egalitarian. Andrew Bartlett makes use of his experience as a judge and arbitrator in assessing the debate with impartiality rather than advocacy (like a barrister). In a thorough but accessible analysis, he engages with exemplars of each view and with all the key biblical texts. He partly agrees and partly disagrees with both sides, and he offers fresh insights into interpretation of the texts.
*Dzubinski, Leanne M. and Anneke H. Stasson. Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles throughout Christian History. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021. 238 pp. Many have been taught that women served only behind the scenes in the church for 1,950 years till US feminism came along and wrecked everything. Such a version of history ignores the long history of women in public ministry. Also, this article for many is full of historical surprises.
*Hübner, Jamin. A Case for Female Deacons. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015. 90 pp. Exactly what it says it is. Short, concise.
*McKnight, Scot. The Blue Parakeet, 2nd ed: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2018. 336 pages. McKnight helps readers consider the hermeneutics of culture. How do we know when something is cultural (e.g., slavery) and when it’s timeless? He applies hermeneutics of culture to the debate on women in vocational ministry.
*Piper, John, and Wayne Grudem, eds. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991 (re-published with only a new preface in 2006; contents in both editions are identical to the 1991 edition). Many church leaders read this book in seminary and have read nothing since. How these authors frame the debate will raise some eyebrows after reading Winstons.
*Pierce, Ronald W., Cynthia Long Westfall and Christa McKirland. Discovering Biblical Equality. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 3rd ed, 698 pp. Egalitarian scholars provide alternative interpretations than those presented in Piper/Grudem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This is a big, fat book that presents egalitarianism from the perspective of contributors who hold to inerrancy.
*Sayers, Dorothy L. Are Women Human? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005. From a speech given in 1938. 69 pp. Sayers’s observations about sexism predate the Women’s Movement.
*Witt, William G. Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020. 447 pp. Witt makes a biblical and theological case for the ordination of women to the ministerial office of Word and Sacrament. He argues that both sides of the debate about women’s ordination embrace new theological positions in response to cultural changes of the modern era. Witt touches on issues such as theological hermeneutics, relationships between men and women, Christology and discipleship, and the role of ordained clergy in leading the church in worship.
*Cohick, Lynn. Women in the World of the Earliest Christians. If you think the women with shaved heads referenced in 1 Cor. 11 were prostitutes, or that the Samaritan woman at the well was immoral, you’re overdue an update. Lynn Cohick knows her stuff.
*Chapter on “head” in Sumner, Sarah. Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership. Seriously, Sumner’s chapter on what “head” means in Ephesians 5 is outstanding. It’s a metaphor. Efforts to substitute the metaphor have given us either “authority” or “source” as literal equivalents. And in doing so, we’ve destroyed the metaphor and missed the point.
For 1 Timothy 2, I give my students my two academic articles on Artemis. I did my dissertation on that one. See links below to summary posts of the content. My forthcoming book, Nobody’s Mother with IVP Academic explores the goddess’s identity and the ramifications for Paul’s writings.
I require the *chapter on eschatology in Paul and Gender by Cynthia Westfall.She and I disagree about what is happening with head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11. But her chapter on women and the kingdom (eschatology) is worth the price of the book.
Meanwhile, for the past fifteen+ years, I’ve been writing on these issues right here on bible.org. I’m including below an index with links to all the relevant blog posts I could find. Some churches have preferred to use these because, well, shorter than that book list I just dropped above.
Godspeed!
My Blog Posts on Women in Public Ministry
Church History: What Do We Learn from Women in Public Ministry? (Hint: Women have been more present than most of us thought.)
Do males image God more than females?
Male and Female in God’s Design
Video: Sexuality and Faith: Male and Female in God’s Good Design
Foundations: What is biblical womanhood?
What Does It Mean that Woman is “Helper” (Ezer)?
Does Genesis Command a Man (not a Woman) to Leave Parents?
Women rule (have dominion)
Are women worth less than men?
What Does Genesis 6 Have to Do with Healthy Male/Female Relationships?
Is it unfeminine to be strong?
Nine steps to biblical manhood/womanhood
God as Male and Female: Metaphor and Simile
What’s a man card got to do with it?
Was Abigail right to go behind Nabal’s back?
Did Jesus Have Women Disciples? and Other Questions
Mary Magdalene: Mary from Magdala or Mary Tower?
Gender and Jesus: Scripture Over Stereotype
“Act like men”: What does Paul mean?
Seven views on the role of women w/in the inerrancy camp
Complementarians on women in ministry: diverse images
What’s the main difference between complementarian and egalitarian?
Interview w/ Eugene Peterson women in church
The Bible: Women Are More Present Than You Might Think
What the presence of women prophets in the Bible tells us
Can Women Speak for God in Mixed-Sex Groups?
“She was a pretty good prophet…for a woman”
Proverbs 31: The Most Hated Woman in the Bible
Can a woman be a seminary professor?
Women and Theological Education: Capitulating to Culture or Historically Rooted?
Women and submission in the workplace
Staying home with kids vs. marketplace work
1 Cor. 11 – Who were the women with shaved heads?
1 Corinthians 14: Are Women Really Supposed to be Silent in Church?
Does Paul really think women are gossips and busybodies?
Ephesians 5: Paul and His Subversive Passage on the Family
1 Peter 3: Weak and weaker vessels
Why Peter today would not want a wife to call her husband “lord”
Is Peter insulting women? Part 1
Is Peter insulting women? Part 2
“Not with braided hair or pearls”
What does “workers at home” really mean?
Are the Women in 1 Timothy Leaders, Needers, or Both?
1 Timothy 2: Who Was Artemis & Why Does It Matter, Part 1
1 Timothy 2: Who Was Artemis & Why Does it Matter Part 2
1 Timothy 2: Do Women Have to Be Quiet?
Bible Backgrounds: Read Some NT Books with the Artemis Cult in View
Paul, Artemis, Ephesus, and 1 Timothy
History: Reintroducing Five Women
Meet Some Female Martyrs of the Early Church
Lost in (Bible) Translation: Are Women Really Missing?
Why Don’t We See More Women in the Biblical Text?
The Bible: Women Are More Present than We Might Think
Four Books to Put on Your Reading List re. Gender and Ministry
Bible Backgrounds: When Is It Legit to Appeal to Them?
The Bent-Over Woman Jesus Healed
Acsah: A Lesser-Known Woman of the Bible
Vindicating Vixens: What about Michel, Wife of David?
The Most Woman-Friendly Book in the Hebrew Bible
Fight Toxic Masculinity (Vs. Thinking All Masculinity is Toxic)
Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry
Checking In
It occurred to me this week that I'd left you, my loyal readers, in the dark on some of the stuff I've written and said of late. So in case any of this interests you, here goes—a few links here:
Every year I teach third graders at The Covenant School in Dallas “How to Read an Icon." I did so again in February. So fun! If you see a guy holding keys, he's probably Peter. If you see a tall skinny cross held by a solemn-looking person, he or she is probably a martyr. If he's wearing green, good chance he's John the Baptist.
A friend created a PDF from one of my blog posts as a visual for my content on seven views on women in ministry leadership within the inerrancy camp (five of them within the Complementarian camp), a topic I presented for Reformed Theological Seminary via Zoom. The post was also referenced in Christianity Today. You can find the free PDF here.
I presented on “Artemis of the Ephesians at the time of the earliest Christians” for a class at Northern Seminary. Lynn Cohick, Northern's provost and my friend, asked me to lead their DMin students on a trip to Italy similar to the one I do for DTS, only this one focused specifically on women in the visual record of the church (oh, and I got a grant to do some photography on the subject!). Slated for early January 2023.
I presented a lecture titled “Cultural backgrounds in interpreting verses about women in public ministry” for Missio Nexus missionaries last month. I did a related blog post on that for bible.org, where I post twice a month on the Engage site.
I invite you to listen in as I talk with Christine Prater on the Holy Shift Podcast: "What's Up with the Upside Down Kingdom?" We talk in a follow-up episode about “The Sermon on the Mount.”
You can also listen as I talk with Jodie Niznik about “The Betrayal of Jesus” on her So Much More podcast. That ran during Holy Week. "Kiss the Son" (Psa 2) in worship or kiss him in betrayal. What a contrast!
I taped an episode on "Feminism and Womanism" for DTS's The Table Podcast. I'll let you now when I have an air date.
Christianity Today's book editor asked me to review Aimee Byrd's latest book, and I really wanted to love it. But I had some concerns about her hermeneutics. You can read my thoughts here: “When Song of Songs Uses a Word, It Doesn’t Always Mean What We Think It Means.”
Do you use the YouVersion Bible app plans for Bible reading? If so, check out the work of two of my students, who published plans they wrote doing independent studies I supervised. One is "Known By Love: A Six-Day Devotional in 1, 2, and 3 John"; the other is an intersection of Negro Spirituals and Lamentations with music included (she rented a studio!) titled "Learning to Lament with the Spirituals: A Six-Day Devotional."
I wrote a blog post about some things that trouble me regarding how we talk about adoption. That was for The Holy Shift: Adoption
And I wrote another for them about comforting those who mourn: Quiet Presence
The Write Now Editing site ran a short post I wrote titled “Read to be a better writer” Why do you read?
April 10-12, I took/met up with some students from across the USA—from Manhattan to LA—and we attended the national conference of the Evangelical Press Association (I'm prez-elect) in Colorado. We also met up with former writing students from Dallas, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, and Colorado Springs. My former intern Seana Scott won an award for her excellent writing with Peer Magazine; and my student Radha Vyas won EPA's $2,000 Jerry Jenkins scholarship, presented by Mr. Jenkins himself. YAY! So fun to see them thriving and expanding their influence.
My Latte with Luke Bible study is late in launching. But for good reason: AMG is doing (much needed) all new covers for my Coffee Cup Bible Study series. So look for the Luke study in June.
Speaking of that series, if you have read Mocha on the Mount and never posted an Amazon review, I need only two more to make fifty, which would move it up in the search engines. Consider helping me out?
Now that I've entered grades and have graduation behind me, I'm gearing up to take twelve people to Italy with DTS in June, teaching Medieval Art and Spirituality. Please pray that the Spirit would do a great work. I have students coming from all over—from Doha, Qatar, from the Smoky Mountains, from working at Google in LA....I love the diversity of our distance students!
Debora Annino and I have a tentative date for the next writer's workshop in San Miguel de Allende Mexico. We're looking at February 8–12. Maybe you should join us? One of our 2022 attendees just landed her first book contract. YAY!
Thanks for reading. I'd love your prayer support.
The Magdalene: Mary from Magdala or Mary Tower?
Who was Mary Magdalene? Because early New Testament manuscripts were more difficult to search than today’s books, Mary M. has at times been confused or combined with other Marys. “Mary” is a form of Miriam, the name of Moses’s sister, whom the Bible describes as a prophet and leader.
Some have conflated Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman who anointed Jesus (Luke 7). Thus, Mary M. has been described in prose and depicted in art as a reformed prostitute.
Others have suggested she had a romantic relationship with Jesus—or even married him!
But the Scriptures suggest none of these things about her past. The actual details (given in Luke’s Gospel) are that Jesus cast out seven demons from Mary Magdalene, and she was among the healed women who traveled with Jesus and supported him from their own means (Luke 8:2–3). She went on to be an eyewitness to the sufferings of Jesus, the first witness to see the risen Christ, and the first evangelist—announcing the Lord’s resurrection to the apostles with “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18). The latter is why Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian, described Mary Magdalene as “the apostle to the apostles.” The word apostle means “sent one,” and she was sent to relay the best news ever to the “sent ones”—the twelve.
Some say this Mary was from a Galilean fishing village called Migdal, meaning “tower,” thus “Mary from Midgal.” But she could also be “Mary nicknamed ‘Tower.’”
In the New Testament, people often appear with two names: sometimes they have a Hebrew and a Latin name; sometimes they have a Latin and Greek one. There’s John “also called Mark” (Acts 12:12); Dorcas, also Tabitha (9:36); Nathanael, who is probably Bartholomew; Silas, who is also Silvanus; and perhaps Junia is the Latin name for the Jewish Joanna.
Then there were the nicknames. Jesus named James and John the “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). Our Lord also emphasized the “Peter” in Simon “Peter” (Matt. 16:18), calling him “this rock”—since that’s what “Peter” means. Thomas was “also called Didymus,” or “twin” (John 11:16). The “Iscariot” in “Judas Iscariot” probably means “man of Kerioth” (a place in Palestine), distinguishing this Judas from other men by the same name. And the “Barsabbas” in “Judas Barsabbas” means “Son of the Sabbath” (Acts 15:22). The custom of having more than one name combined with our Lord’s habit of nicknaming people in his inner circle have led some to suppose that “Mary Tower” is a description not of geography but of Mary Magdalene’s personality.
Here we have a word on the subject from the Church Father Jerome (AD 340s–420s): “The unbelieving reader may perhaps laugh at me for dwelling so long on the praises of mere women; yet if he will but remember how holy women followed our Lord and Savior and ministered to Him of their substance, and how the three Marys stood before the cross and especially how Mary Magdalene—called 'The Tower' from the earnestness and glow of her faith— was privileged to see the rising Christ first of all before the very apostles, he will convict himself of pride sooner than me of folly” (Letter 127, To Principia).
We don’t know for sure. But here’s what we do know: through the life of Mary Magdalene, we see that Christ has the power to release someone—man or woman—from spiritual bondage. Interestingly, we also learn something about the validity of the New Testament. Anyone trying to fabricate a convincing history surely would have made men the key witnesses at a time when a woman’s testimony counted as little to nothing in a court of law. Yet other than the husband of the Virgin Mary or John the apostle, women were the primary witnesses of Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection. God chose women as witnesses when their word in the legal culture carried as much weight as a dust bunny.
Yet, the best part about Mary is what we learn of Jesus through her. The great British author, Dorothy L. Sayers, summed it up beautifully in a timeless observation piece she penned more than eighty years ago:
“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there has never been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as ‘The women, God help us!’ or ‘The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature.”
Mary Magdalene speaks across the years, testifying that Jesus the Christ changes lives, setting prisoners free from all kinds of bondage. And after he has taken us from bondage to flourishing, he urges us to go and tell.
For more about Mary M, check out Karla Zazueta’s chapter on her in Vindicating the Vixens. Also, see the work being done on her by Duke scholar Libbie Schrader. The image is of Donatello’s rendering of Mary Magdalene in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
Women of the Bible: "Remember Lot's Wife"
Jesus’s “Exhibit A” to illustrate “Whoever tries to keep one’s life will lose it, but whoever loses one’s life will preserve it” (Luke 17:30–32) is Lot’s wife. We find the tragic end of this woman, married to Abraham’s nephew, in Genesis 19.
As the story goes, two angels arrive at evening in Sodom, where Lot is sitting at the city gate—doubtless because he holds judicial office there. In Proverbs 31 we see a similar reference, as the “husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land” (Prov 31:23). This detail about Lot suggests he is deeply embedded in Sodom and fully aware of what goes on there.
When Lot sees the two figures approaching, he gets up to greet them, bows his face to the ground, and urges them to lodge with him. Hospitality was a core value in the ancient Near East.
The visitors decline, saying they’ll stay in the town square. But Lot insists. So they enter his house. And Lot cooks them a feast. But before they can rest, the unthinkable happens. Old and young men from Sodom surround Lot’s house demanding access to these visitors. “Where are the men who came to you tonight?” they ask. “Bring them out to us so we can ‘know’ them!” “Know” here is a Semitic idiom for sex. So, the men of all ages in Sodom want to have forced sex with Lot’s visitors.
Imagine Lot’s horror! Gang rape? Attack guests? But Lot shows he’s no Boy Scout, either. He steps outside his house beyond the angels’ earshot, calls the men of Sodom “brothers,” and offers an alternative: “I have two daughters who have never ‘known’ a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do to them whatever you please” (v. 8). Great dad, huh?
But Lot’s proposal fails. The men of Sodom don’t want women. They want men. So they attack Lot, insulting him by calling him a “foreigner” and threatening to hurt him even more than they planned to hurt his guests (v. 9). And they press in on Lot so much that they almost break down his door.
Fortunately for him, the ones inside quickly rescue Lot by pulling him in, shutting the door, and striking the attackers with blindness. At this, the visitors urge Lot to grab his family and get them to safety, because God has sent them to do what the city elders have apparently failed to do—bring justice. The angels say “The outcry against this place is so great before the Lord” that they have come to destroy it (v. 13).
But Lot sees a complication. His daughters are betrothed, so he delays long enough to go urge his future sons-in-law to escape with the family. But they accuse Lot of mocking them.
At dawn, the angels tell Lot to hurry up and get his family out, or they’ll be destroyed along with the cities in the area. But Lot hesitates. So his visitors grab the hands of Lot and his family, “because the Lord had compassion on them” (v. 16). And the angels lead the group outside the city.
Once outside Sodom’s gates, the angels urge, “Runfor your lives! Don’t lookbehind you or stop anywhere in the valley! Escape to the mountains or you will be destroyed!”
But Lot digs in his heels and negotiates to go to a nearby town rather than all the way to the mountains. So God agrees to spare this one town for Lot.
Finally, when the sun has risen, the Lord rains down sulfur and firefrom the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 24). In fact, God overthrows the entire region except the town where Lot and his family have taken refuge.
God has shown mercy on mercy to this family. And they have one job—run without looking back! But what does Lot’s wife do? She flagrantly disobeys by looking back. And what’s more, she does so with longing.
That’s why she is destroyed along with that which she desires. She dies with her old life rather than experience the rescue and new life mercifully offered.
Jesus said that “in the days of Lot, people were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building” but suddenly one day when they least expected it, they were destroyed (v. 29). Jesus added, “It will be the same on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, anyone who is on the roof, with his goods in the house, must not come down to take them away, and likewise the person in the field must not turn back (vv. 30–32). No delaying to talk to the future sons-in-law. Because he will appear suddenly: “There will be two people in one bed; one will be taken and the other left.” And “There will be two women grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” Jesus exhorted his listeners, “Remember Lot’s wife!”
God had spared Noah’s family. Similarly, God plucked Lot’s family out of destruction. But Lot’s wife chose, with longing, to look back rather than forward. She preferred a community that accepted gang rape over a chance to start over with her family. And Jesus told his followers to remember her—to let her serve as a warning. She tried to keep her life, but she lost it. She longed for what destroyed, and ultimately it destroyed her.
What are your longings? Do they bring life or death? Do they contribute to your ultimate flourishing or to your ruin? Will you keep looking back? Or will you fall on the mercy of God?
Photo by Christian Garcia on Unsplash
Why Don't We See More Women in the Biblical Text?
Recently, someone asked me why we don’t find more women in the Bible. Last time, I pointed to translation concerns that hide the presence of women. Today, I want us to consider that sometimes we miss the women who are actually named and featured.
Here’s a sampling from some of the earliest stories:
* * *
Go back in time with me to the thirteenth century BC in Egypt. The king has issued an order to kill all boys born into bondage, because members of the slave class—your own people, descendants of Israel—have proliferated, and the ruling class fears an uprising. Born under the ban, you lie in a pitch-lined basket that your mother, Jochebed, crafted before floating you in the Nile. Soon, the king’s daughter finds you and raises you as her own. So, you get an education in the royal court of Egypt—some of the best academic training in the world. As you grow, you learn the geography of Egypt and of the Sinai, and eventually you record the oral history of your people.
As you write, you include the heroic midwives Shiphrah and Puah—making sure everyone remembers their names—who refused to drown Hebrew boys like you (Exo. 1:15–21).
Writing the books of the Law, you include stories about your older sister, Miriam, who helped save your life and who, decades later, partnered with you and your brother, Aaron, to lead Israel (Cp. Micah 6:4).
And you write of Sarah and Keturah. And of Hagar, who named God. Of Rebecca. And of Rachel the shepherd. And Leah. Of Bilhah and Zilpah. And of Dinah. And how Tamar, a Canaanite, was more righteous than her father-in-law, Judah, through whom Jacob said the Promised One would come (Gen. 49:10). Judah had conspired to sell his stepbrother, Joseph, into slavery. And Judah later had evil sons. But loyal love from an outsider, his daughter-in-law Tamar, had a radical effect on him. Before his encounter with her, he would sell a brother; afterward, he offered his life in exchange for one (see Genesis 38.)
You record how God calls parents to consecrate both first-born sons and first-born daughters (Ex. 13:1).
You write down one of the stories that you witnessed firsthand, which involved five sisters, the daughters of Zelophehad: Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. Their father had five daughters, but no male heirs. These females raised a question about women’s rights, even obligations, to inherit property in the absence of a male heir. You yourself told them you would ask God directly about their case. And the Lord had strong words: “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and give their father’s inheritance to them.”
You and the people you write about inhabit a patriarchal culture. The words from God are inspired, of course, but the culture isn’t. And because those who will read and teach your words in centuries to come will live in worlds also steeped in patriarchy, they will focus more on the men. As they preach or teach or write commentaries, they (men and women alike) will skip Tamar’s contribution to Judah’s character arc; or gloss over the courage of Shiphrah and Puah; or miss the significance of the chieftain Timna (Gen. 36:12, 22, 40). Or as they wrap up their look at the Book of Job, they might not even notice how, as an evidence of God’s blessing, that Job will grant his daughters—Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-Happuch—an inheritance among their unnamed brothers (Job 42:14–15). Or note how the story of Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah receives mention in five places in Scripture (Num. 26:33; 27:1–11; 36:1–12; Josh. 17:3–6; 1 Chron 7:15—only Moses and Miriam are mentioned in more OT books).
***
The Bible does indeed shine a spotlight on more men than women. But even many of the women we do find in its pages get minimized if not altogether left on the cutting-room floor as people preach, teach, and write about Scripture. We need these women. Why don’t we see more women in the biblical text? Why, indeed! Maybe you can have a part in telling the full story?
To be continued…
The Bible: Women Are More Present Than We Might Think
Recently, I heard from a woman who said that since about the age of 12 years, she has attended church weekly, sometimes multiple times a week. Yet in all those years, she heard little teaching that features, highlights, or affirms women. She said, “From a very early point in my journey I would consider whether words like ‘he,’ ‘men’ or ‘disciple’ were intended for everyone or just males. In many instances during my studies, I would replace those words with ‘she’ or ‘women’ in my notes, because it made it feel more personal and applicable to me as a woman. Still, I have pretty much always felt like an outsider or like there was something wrong with me…. I have often felt like the church was the most repressive institution for me as a woman, and I do not think that could possibly be Jesus’s intent, given the way he interacted with women.”
Indeed, exclusion of females is not reflective of Jesus. Paul gets a bad rap, too. But he held a much higher view of women than we often hear. Is it any wonder that women are leaving churches in unprecedented numbers?
In the weeks ahead, I plan to address some of this woman’s concerns. And today I’ll begin with this assertion: Bible translations sometimes hide the presence of women. But we’re there.
Case in point: a familiar verse I heard quoted this week—words the apostle Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy: “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). When I heard the word “men” in that saying, I knew the underlying Greek said anthropoi. That is, people. As in, “Teach people who will teach other people.” But I wondered if others in the room heard it that way? Did the males in the room do the mental gymnastics to include their sisters, daughters, wives, nieces, female co-workers? Did the females hear themselves represented? Or did they assume the apostle’s exhortation applied only to somebody else? Increasingly, when people hear the word “men,” they don’t think “humans”; they envision only “males.” Some good data on language use backs up this assertion. In fact, saying “men” when we mean “people” now qualifies as Christianese.
Anthropoi can mean humans or males. So, we ask: were the many witnesses to whom Paul spoke males only? No, Paul publicly taught women and men. Did he expect women also to pass on what they heard? He did (see Titus 2:3). So why render the word as the exclusive “men,” and thereby exclude females?
The translation I’m citing here was published not in 1611, but in 2001, by a team of more than 100 all-male evangelical scholars and pastors. Some think Bible translations have become more female-inclusive since the dawn of radical feminism in the US; but since World War II, some translators have actually given us less inclusive translations. If we believe it is not good for a man to be alone (Gen. 2:18)—indeed, if we believe Genesis teaches the complementary relationship of men and women—we know we need each other. Including in translation work. One would think that would be a no-brainer, especially in an area in which God seems to have given one sex unique gifting.
Last week, I heard another example—the famous quote from Jesus: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). Now, again, we know Jesus expected the twelve to seek both male and female disciples. But sure enough, translators have rendered anthropoi as “men.” In fact, they included this tiny footnote: “The Greek word anthropoi refers here to both men and women.” So, these translators acknowledge the author has both men and women in view, but they still render the language in a way that excludes females. Why would they do that?
I’ve already written about other examples of translation gender bias here (a man who walks in the counsel of the wicked vs. a person who…) and here (a man should provide for his own family vs. someone providing for that person’s own family). As is evidenced by the correspondence I referred to above , many people have not even been told that the very word “disciple” in the New Testament refers to male and female followers of Jesus. But Dorcas is explicitly called a disciple (Acts 9:36).
Bottom line: Women are more represented in the scriptures than many translations indicate. Far more.
And I haven’t even mentioned passages that actually outright address women in ministry. Romans 16 is filled with them. Theologian Marg Mowczko observes, “Most English Bibles, including the ESV [which is the source of my examples above], are reliable and trustworthy in how they translate verses and passages that pertain to the doctrine of salvation. The same cannot be said about how they translate verses that pertain to women in ministry. Some Bible readers aren’t even aware that many women are mentioned in the New Testament as being ministers and church leaders. This is because English translations have typically obscured or downplayed the passages that mention these women. The English Standard Version (ESV) and the New Living Translation (NLT), in particular, are notorious for downplaying the ministries and roles of New Testament women in their translations.”
Andrew Bartlett, author of Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts (IVP, 2019), wrote a piece for CT in the past year in which he highlighted some of the most egregious renderings of New Testament verses relating to women.
The best source for clarity on the topic of women’s inclusion is the Greek New Testament. But the ability to learn Koine Greek—or Hebrew, languages in which the Bible’s human authors wrote—is a privilege most people don’t have. So, we need to use and recommend the best translations we can find. Check the front pages of your Bible(s) and see who served on the translation committee(s). Look for male and female teamwork and geographic and denominational diversity. For English, I like the NET, the CEB, and the 2011 version of the NIV. I especially like the NET in the YouVersion app, which makes it easy to check out translation notes that are accessible to most English readers.
Yesterday, I received a text from a female Bible teacher with whom I’d been discussing this topic. She wrote, “I’m going to look up every verse that says ‘man’ in Logos [Bible software] to see if I’m included. Mind blow. I just looked up James 5:16. ‘The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.’ So, my prayers are powerful and effective too!”
Yes. Yes. Yes! They are.
Next time: Why don't we see more women in the Bible?
Shepherd Like a Girl
Does your nativity set have any female shepherds? Mine doesn’t. And it’s amazing how much I have picked up unconsciously from art….
I didn’t realize that—without anything being said outright—I had internalized the idea that “shepherd” was a “guy” job. So, if I saw a Christmas pageant with girls dressed in bathrobes holding crooks, I told myself the real nativity story lacked girl roles so the directors were taking creative license. But now I know those girls in bathrobes more closely represented reality than did my misinformed imaginations.
My understanding about shepherds shifted radically when I traveled with my husband and daughter to Kenya’s Rift Valley. My husband is a U.S.-based missionary serving national leaders there. And while we were in Kenya, his ministry partner, Joseph, a Maasai warrior, introduced us to some of his friends.
The Maasai are pastoral people—shepherds. Like Joseph, they live in individual huts inside bomas—enclosures made of brambles encircling huts made by women out of mud, sticks, grass, and cow dung. Inside the perimeter of the boma, another area, also made of brambles, serves as a livestock pen.
The girls usually shepherd goats and sheep, sometimes with their moms or a grandparent, while boys shepherd the larger livestock. If a family has no girls—or not enough of them—the youngest son or sons also get assigned to sheep/goat duty. The pecking order is usually men, animals, women, children. For these pastoral peoples, livestock serve as their pantries, 401(k) plans, Meals on Wheels, bank accounts…. Often the shepherd-girls lack education, because someone has to guard the assets, and the boys’ educations have typically taken priority.
This setup or a similar one has been true for many shepherding tribes and peoples across time and geography. Consider that David, son of Jesse, who had multiple brothers—at least three in the army—was the youngest boy and the shepherd among Jesse’s eight sons.
The Maasai, like some of the Bedouins my husband and I met in Jordan this summer, live—or abide—in the field. And that is exactly how Luke describes what the shepherds in Jesus’s birth narrative are doing—they are abiding, or living in the field. Not just “hanging out.” And they are watching their flock. Singular. So, the shepherds to whom the angel choir appeared were probably not a bunch of unrelated guys from different families watching multiple flocks on an open hillside. More likely, they were from one extended family unit with male, female, old, and young present.
The highlight of my time with the Maasai in 2008 was watching the “Jesus” film with them. We threw a bedsheet over the top of a hut, hooked up a generator and voila! The best part was hearing them gasp for joy when the angels appeared to shepherds saying, in Naa—their own language— “Fear not! For I bring you good news of great joy for all the people!”
A week later, we moved on to meet members of the Pokot tribe. And along the dirt road far from town we saw female shepherds out by themselves herding sheep.
These experiences made me pose some questions about the biblical text to people who live much closer to its reality. And here’s what I learned:
Vocational shepherds are not outcasts. They smell a lot like a typical cowboy. Animal pens stink, but humans who keep the animals don’t walk around with dung clinging to themselves if they can help it.
Nevertheless, shepherds don’t inhabit halls of power. My shepherd friends were overjoyed that in the film instead of appearing to leaders in palaces or temples, the angels came to those on the lower rungs of social power. These shepherds heard in the angels’ proclamation an emphasis on “all the people”—from the highest to the lowest.
Girls were likely to have been present when the announcement was made about the good news being for all. The shepherds, plural, to whom the angels appeared were not individuals out by themselves alone in the dark.
As is true today, sheep in Jesus’s time were probably not wandering around on the hillside at night, but gathered into the sheepfold (see John 10). Shepherds guarded one entrance. And I corresponded yesterday with a Maasai brother who told me that in his world, after the animals go into their pen for the night, the whole extended family gathers around the fire for stories. That means we should probably envision an extended family warming themselves around a fire near a pen.
So, what are some spiritual ramifications?
Women shepherd people. In a book on the ultra-conservative end of the gender debate, the authors imply that women cannot be spiritual shepherds because “shepherd” is a male job. Yet “Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherd” (Gen. 29:9). If we want to read biblical texts about shepherding as the original readers would have understood them, we will envision both males and females in view. The metaphor of a shepherd is that of one entrusted with the care of souls.
We must read the Bible in community with Christians whose lives are closer to the world of the text than those of us with central heating and bank accounts with passwords. That means taking the posture of a learner in the presence of those who can see what many of us cannot.
Representation matters. When I mentioned on Twitter the possibility that females were present at the pronouncement of “good news for all the people,” some responded with tears and joy. For the first time they saw themselves in the story. In a quick search for Christmas Bible art, I found Mary to be the only female in any of the multiple scenes. The biggest demographic leaving the church is young females. Why might that be?
God loves the lowly; and so must we. Although shepherds are not the lowest of the low (as they are sometimes described), they themselves still acknowledge that neither are they the rich or powerful of this world. The heavenly choice to make the announcement to those outside of the usual power structures reveals something about the heart of God and inclusiveness of the good news. Do we want to be like him?
Thanks to my time in the Rift Valley and in Jordan, I’m on the hunt for a manger scene that includes a female shepherd or two. (And some old people.) Since females were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to herald the good news that Jesus is alive, it makes perfect sense that they also would have been among the first at the manger. And what does Luke tell us these shepherds did? After seeing the swaddled child, they spread the word.
Like them, let us do the same—Go, tell it on the mountain! Jesus Christ is born!
P.S. Some think the sheep being watched in the Bible story were those specially destined for sacrifice. The source of this information was a rabbinic Jewish scholar who converted to Christianity. But his idea has been further vetted. And comments in the link of this post address the details. Based on this research, I’m no longer inclined to think so. Nevertheless, the child who was born, the Good Shepherd, was indeed the lamb who was slain.
Photo “Rebecka” by Dikla Laor at DiklaLaor.Photography. Used with permission.
Women and Theological Education:
Capitulating to Culture or Historically Rooted?
Not long ago, I overhead a female ministry leader noting with some enthusiasm that we are seeing the first generation in Christendom in which women have received theological higher education. But her statement, while well intentioned, was completely untrue.
Some of our lack of knowledge about women’s history, particularly in the Protestant tradition, stems from post-Reformation amnesia about women in monastic spaces. About all we know—maybe—is that about 500 years ago a German nun, Katerina, married a former monk, Martin Luther, and religious living spaces were emptied of their occupants, partly in response to the Protestant Reformation.
Here’s what we need to know, though: A similar phenomenon happened about that same time in Switzerland. And then in the 1530’s, the emptying-monasteries phenomenon hit England. In his article for History on “The Dissolution of the Monasteries,” G. W. Bernard reminds readers that in the late 1530s, England alone had about 900 religious houses—of which more than 140 were occupied by two thousand nuns. And one of the functions served by these communities was scholarship and education—in addition to hospitality, medical care, the arts, and music (390). But then, in addition to the reformers, along came King Henry VIII, who, with the help of Thomas Cromwell, consolidated and then dissolved England’s monasteries, sold the real estate, and soon had an uprising on his hands.
But the conflict is not my point. And Europe was not the only continent to have Christian nuns… But don’t miss the detail here about women. Many were in full-time vocational ministry. And they were educated and educating. Where do you think we got that stereotype of nuns rapping on the knuckles of schoolchildren? Nuns have a long history of teaching.
In his presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society in November of 2016, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace talked about “Medieval Manuscripts and Modern Evangelicals: Lessons from the Past, Guidance for the Future.” And he argued, among other things, that we can learn much from medieval manuscripts—including a reminder that the church owes women a huge debt for work done on textual preservation.
Consider Hilda of Whitby (AD 614–680). In their book Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church Maas and O’Donnell write, “Along with the copying of manuscripts and teaching, women became scholars of theology and learned their Latin, sometimes to a high degree of erudition. Hilda…is a case in point; a nun from the age of thirty-three, she became abbess of Whitby at forty-three and educated future monks and clerics of the English Church. [Women helping to train men for vocational ministry is nothing new.] She was also, according to Bede, a counselor to the royalty and nobility of England” (401). Additionally, Bede in his AD 731 work titled Ecclesiastical History of the English People noted that Hilda was actually the founding abbess of the monastery at Whitby—a double monastery—which was the venue for the Synod of Whitby. Indeed, she was abbess of several monasteries.
Before her, there were women like Marcella (325–410). She corresponded with Jerome, who wrote this about her at her death: “As in those days my name was held in some renown as that of a student of the Scriptures, she never came to see me without asking me some questions about them, nor would she rest content at once, but on the contrary would dispute them; this, however, was not for the sake of argument, but to learn by questioning the answers to such objections might, as she saw, be raised. How much virtue and intellect, how much holiness and purity I found in her I am afraid to say, both lest I may exceed the bounds of men’s belief …. This only will I say, that whatever I had gathered together by long study, and by constant meditation made part of my nature, she tasted, she learned and made her own.”
Marcella mentored Paula, who, while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, settled in Bethlehem and established a monastery for men and a convent for women.
There are thousands of women's stories like these. Thousands. Descriptions filled with words like study. Education. Learning. Transmission. Manuscripts. Questions and answers. Intellect.
For hundreds and hundreds of years, a woman wishing to follow Jesus had two options (sometimes decided for her, depending on the money for a dowry or her family’s need—or greed): the monastic life, which involved education; or married life, which involved no education. Both were considered holy callings, though the former was often elevated as more spiritual (until we flipped that script and elevated family life. Eventually, we will hopefully see them both as equally holy callings).
When the Protestant Reformers read their Koine Greek New Testaments, they noted that the human biblical authors referred to all believers as “saints.” So they nixed the whole saints-as-elevated-Christians thing, including the feast days that went with remembering the biographies of the male and female cloud of witnesses. We don’t acknowledge these saints or saints’ days (though we do eat chocolate on St. Valentine’s Day, try to avoid being pinched on St. Patrick’s Day, and sing with jollity about the Feast of Stephen). Consequently, we lost the daily biographies. But in the past, people learned the stories of men and women of faith every day.
All this does not even include more recent theological education. Many Black colleges and seminaries had male and female professors and students from their beginnings. Moody Bible Institute at one time proudly trained women for pastoral ministry and featured them as such in their alumni publication (see Janette Hassey, No Time for Silence, Appendix 12). Christabel Pankhurst shared the stage with D. L. Moody at Bible Conferences. Henrietta Mears mentored Bill Bright (Cru founder) and Jim Rayburn (Young Life founder) and a relatively unknown guy named Billy Graham via a Bible class she taught in California. And John Walvoord (second president of Dallas Theological Seminary) had a Bible teacher at Wheaton named Edith Torrey, whom the school hired in 1917.
Ours is not the first generation of theologically educated women. So while some may suggest that women learning and teaching theology is evidence that radical feminism has infiltrated the church, women's presence in learning and teaching spaces actually has a long, long history—a celebrated one!—starting with a woman in an ancient Near Eastern town called Bethany sitting at the feet of the first rabbi ever to formally teach a woman…and that awesome rabbi's name was Jesus.
Rape Culture #1: Introduction
A new series by Joy Pedrow Skarka
[Trigger warning] Day three of my freshman year of college, I had said, “No,” countless times. I went to his apartment (totally sober), not realizing the possibilities of what could happen. As the night progressed, I started to understand his plan.
“No, no, I don’t want to have sex.”
“Are you sure?” he persisted.
“I haven’t had sex before. I should go.”
“No, don’t go, stay with me. I promise we won’t have sex.” He put his hands around my hips and pulled me close to him.
It happened late at night, and I had just moved into my new dorm days earlier, so I had no idea how to get back home. “Okay, I’ll stay the night. But we should go to bed.”
We laid there on the tiny twin dorm bed. I drifted off to sleep.
Groggy, I woke up to find him on top of me. Having had less than three hours of sleep, I lost my mental abilities. Again, he told me he wanted to sleep with me. I said no, but he said, “But I already did it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We already had sex.”
How did I not feel it? Was I too sleepy to remember? Did he do it at night while I was asleep? He had raped me in my sleep. In a haze, I thought I was dreaming. My body could not move. My tired brain rationalized and thought, “Well, if it already happened, I should try and make my first time good.” As a virgin, I believed my first time should not be rape. In the moment, I convinced myself it wasn’t rape, not like the movies at least. I wasn’t tied down with a rope or choked with his hands. Then he raped me again.
Following the encounter, I stood in the mirror looking at my naked body. My alert mind began to understand what had happened. My hands traced my figure, trying to figure out if I was real. He walked over and started to rub my back. Together we stared at my body in the mirror. “You are beautiful,” he said.
This is my rape story.
I hate telling the details of this story because people ask questions like, “Why did you sleep over? You should have left!” “Why did you go to his apartment?” “How could you have let this happen?” “What were you wearing?” “Were you drinking?” “You continued to have sex, so how is that rape?” These questions are unhelpful. In fact, for years these questions blanketed my mind and body with shame. I believed the rape was all my fault. I hated myself. And such questions perpetuate rape culture—giving validity to the falsehood that rape is the rape-survivor’s fault.
Imagine if the people with whom I shared my story had reacted in a different way. Imagine if they empathized and said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you! How are you feeling? What can I do to help you begin healing?” Yet these are not the common reactions to rape stories.
Every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. Women and girls experience sexual violence at higher rates than men and boys. Eighty-two percent of all juvenile victims are female, and ninety percent of adult rape victims are female. Sexual assault affects everyone around us, yet most of the perpetrators walk away. Out of 1,000 rapes, 995 perpetrators will not go to jail. Because of this fact and many other reasons which this series will cover, many people do not report crimes to the police. Only 230 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are even reported to authorities. That means about three out of four go unreported.*
Rape is a crime, and rape culture is the world in which we live. The term rape culture describes a context of making excuses for or minimizing the behavior of a predator (e.g., he was drunk or young, so he should be forgiven), as well as emphasizing the victim’s behavior as inviting assault (e.g., she was wearing skimpy clothes and “asking for it”). Scholars use the term “rape culture” to describe the normalization and frequency of sexual assault, violence, and victimization. Rape culture is a system of oppression; it protects abusers and silences victims. Coined by second-wave feminists—some of whom were Christians—in the 1970s, rape culture describes the relationship between rape, popular culture, sexual violence, and the media.
To better understand rape culture, let’s define some key terms:
Rape: a form of sexual assault (not all sexual assault is rape). Legally, rape is sexual penetration without consent. The FBI defines rape as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
Culture: a development or improvement of the mind by education or training; the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. It is important to notice two words in this definition: “education” and “training.” These two words, applied negatively, perpetuate rape culture. To prove my point, think about whom the media portrays as rapists. Think back to the common questions people asked me after my rape. How is it that nearly every person asks these same questions? The questions are learned responses, results from cultural influences.
Currently, victims are left silent, alone, confused, and blamed, while most predators’ lives remain pretty much unchanged. Rape culture is not a “woman” issue, it is a “human” issue. And nothing will change until men join together with women to fight against its injustices.
Anyone can rape and anyone can be raped. But statistically, most rapists are male, and most victims are female. Consequently, this series will focus on the primary rape scenario, which is male against female; but it is important to remember that men can be raped, and women can be rapists. Failure to acknowledge this reality also continues the influence of rape culture.
Sexual assault: sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim. Some forms of sexual assault include: attempted rape, fondling (i.e., unwanted sexual touching), forcing a victim to perform sexual acts such as oral sex, penetrating the perpetrator’s body, or penetration of the victim’s body, also known as rape. Sexual assault is not a mistake, but is, rather, a crime.
Sexual abuse: anything that constitutes sexual assault, from touching a victim in a sexual manner to forcing a victim to touch the perpetrator in a sexual way to making a victim look at sexual body parts or watch sexual activity. Sexual abuse is usually used to describe behavior toward children in families or relationships, and is usually long-term or reoccurring abuse.
Sexual harassment: unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or a learning environment, that explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.
Force: not always physical pressure; perpetrators may use emotional coercion, psychological force, or manipulation to coerce a victim into non-consensual sexual activities. Examples of force would include emotional abuse, threatening to hurt loved ones, threatening to fire a victim from a job, or physical abuse. All rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse situations involve force.
With these definitions in mind, I have some questions for men:
When was the last time you felt afraid when walking alone out in public, especially after dark?
Do you carry a weapon with you to keep yourself safe?
Has someone ever told you that you shouldn’t wear a particular article of clothing when you go out? Have you ever had to rethink an outfit because it would garner too much attentionHas someone of the opposite sex ever followed you, cat-called you, or made you uncomfortable or worried about your well-being?
Why do I ask? Most women fear walking to their cars at night. Every time I walk to my car in the dark, my heart races, and I constantly look left to right. I hold my keys between each finger, as I was taught to do, and I walk briskly. Women must look in the mirror most mornings and ask themselves, “Is this too revealing?” Women have to deal with men cat-calling them across the street or whistling at them from behind.
All of these phenomena are a result of rape culture. By the end of this series, I hope that you will be able to see examples of rape culture in your daily life, understand that these cultural narratives dominate media, and take steps to help change these dynamics.
*Statistics from RAINN—the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.
Biblical Womanhood: Part 2
Several weeks ago, I wrote about biblical womanhood. Afterward a theologian posed some good questions for clarification. So I’m using that conversation as a Q/A here to help further explain what it means to be a woman as God designed her. His statements are bold; my explanations follow:
You say of woman that, “She is an image-bearer,” but then argue that because “she” is an image-bearer the female bears that image completely in and of herself. The underlying assumption is that an individual human being, whether male or female, carries the whole divine image.
Woman is indeed an image bearer, completely in and of herself. But that does not mean she expresses the full range of image-bearing. Our humanity is a good parallel example. Are women human? Fully and completely in and of themselves? Absolutely. But do they bear the full range of humanity? No. We need man and woman together to demonstrate the full range of humanity. Nevertheless, women are fully human without the presence of men. In the same way, women fully bear the image of God. They don’t need the presence of men in order to bear that image. Yet the full range of image-bearing requires men and women together.
The two image-bearers complete the divine image together only in their mutuality, by animating their natures in a complementary way, which is most fully actualized in and through procreation (Gen. 1:26–27). This interpretation is borne out in the blessing and mandate of verse 28, “God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…” It is literally by their extensive reach into the created world through procreation that this first couple subdues and has dominion over it.
I agree about the first couple.
Yet later, when Noah emerged from his voyage with the animals, God does repeat the original imperative to be “fruitful and multiply” (9:1). In both the Garden and after the Flood, God give people instructions to fill the earth. It is worth noting, however, that both pronouncements come at critical junctures when those hearing God’s words are earth’s only human inhabitants. Back in the Garden, ish and issah had been charged with increasing from two to many. Following the flood, Noah, his wife, and six family members, face a similar task. If either our first parents or Noah and his family had failed to procreate, the entire human race could have vanished.
Yet after the Flood, the commands to “multiply and rule” are never repeated. And while some consider “be fruitful and multiply” a timeless command to reproduce biologically, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul—to name a few—were unmarried. And as mentioned, the New Testament writers never repeat the mandate to biologically multiply. In fact, the New Testament “seems to turn from a Jewish perspective of marriage to valuing celibacy for the kingdom of God.” All talk of multiplying at the time of the earliest Christians turns to focus on multiplying disciples—reproducing spiritually to fill the earth with worshipers.
It would be simplistic, though, to conclude that the Old Testament emphasizes physical reproduction, while the New Testament emphasizes spiritual reproduction. While biological families do receive emphasis in the Old Testament, the Hebrew portion of the Bible still provides hints that human flourishing goes beyond having children. Isaiah mentions that leaving an eternal legacy will be even better than children for believing eunuchs (56:4–5). So while the Old Testament speaks primarily about biological reproduction and family units, readers still find in its pages subtle references to a different kind of reproduction. Nevertheless, such references are infrequent before Jesus appears.
With the coming of Christ, however, the emphasis overtly shifts from physical to spiritual reproduction. “Family” is introduced as a metaphor for the spiritual community. Calling non-relatives “brother” and “sister” develops as a new habit, as Jesus says that those who do his will are his mother and sister and brothers. Additionally, single people are more often included among those depicted as righteous in New Testament times. John the Baptist never marries. Nor does Jesus. Anna is a godly woman who never has children (Luke 2:36). And Jesus teaches about a subset of the unmarried saying, “For there are some . . . who became eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12). Later, the Lord paints a picture of the future in which there will be no marriage nor being given in marriage (Matt. 22:30). This suggests celibacy foreshadows the eternal state in which there is no need to multiply (because there is no death?).
If Paul was married—and many scholars believe he was widowed—he never mentions it. And his married co-workers, Aquila and Priscilla don’t appear to have had children. In the elder John’s writings, he uses family relationships—spiritual children, youth, and fathers—as metaphors for spiritual maturity (1 John 2). And as mentioned, in Ephesians 5, Paul reveals that an essential purpose in God’s joining of bride and groom is to provide an earthly picture of the heavenly union of Christ and the church. Whether married or single, then, fruitfulness in God’s people is bringing him glory on the earth—working to fill the earth with worshipers.
This is the task and calling of male and female alike.
The True Beauty of Women
Whatever is true…think on these things.The Thai branch of a Japanese lingerie company, Wacoal, doesn’t feature scantily clad models in their ads. Instead, they tell true stories with life-affirming messages that everyone can watch and appreciate. The ads emphasize women’s true beauty. And the men in the stories are the kind of guys who appreciate goodness, and are not necessarily sexually involved with the women whom they admire and whose stories they tell. Check out the “My Beautiful Woman” ad campaign.
Hillary's Not the Only Woman to Make History
Want a summer read that’s part adventure story, part biography, part introduction to biblical manuscripts, part historical drama, and part faith journey? If yes, check out Janet Soskice’s The Sisters of Sinai.
The main characters are identical twins Agnes and Margaret Smith of Scotland. Their travels lead, among other places, to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. There Agnes discovered one of the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels ever found.The sisters’ staunch Presbyterian father, widowed shortly after their births in 1843, raised his girls as one might raise boys in the Victorian era—educated, physically active, and engaged in the life of the mind. And he kept a promise that whenever his daughters learned a language, he would take them to where that language was spoken. Because the twins loved to travel, early on they mastered French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Their deep interest in the Bible and its languages eventually led them to add Hebrew, ancient and modern Greek, Arabic, and old Syriac to their resumes. It was knowledge of the latter, known only to a few people on earth, that opened the doors to Agnes’s big discovery.Both sisters were widowed early after inheriting massive sums from distant relatives. One twin had been married to a man who traveled widely; the other, to the librarian and manuscript custodian at Cambridge. Reading of the sisters’ unlikely educations combined with their father’s promise, the means to travel, and the contacts their husbands brought into their lives will leave readers marveling at the providence of God. A pilgrimage to the sites of Abraham and Moses took the women to the land of the pyramids, and a hunch about forgotten manuscripts led straight to a dark cupboard in St. Catherine’s Monastery. Agnes’s discovery had enormous ramifications at a time when people were questioning the now-established early dating of New Testament manuscripts.The Sisters of Sinai reads like an adventure book. The author herself has heady credentials: she’s Professor in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College. Writing with the storytelling skill of a novelist combined with the research savvy of a scholar, Soskice recounts the twins’ challenges: traveling on camel and floating the Nile in a time of cholera when women were thought to need male escorts; interpersonal conflicts with jealous scholars who despised the sisters for lacking university degrees; and the misogyny that kept closing doors to the women and minimizing their contributions. But Solskice also provides an introduction to the world of biblical manuscripts that engages rather than makes eyes glaze over. And she draws on diaries to include the sisters’ internal pilgrimages of faith with their good, good God.Take this one to the beach; sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.THE SISTERS OF SINAI: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, by Janet SoskiceIllustrated. 316 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. Published in 2010.
Our Plans
I voted yesterday—something women are still barred from doing in some countries. I might have felt underwhelmed by my options, but still, I got to vote. And I know it'll mean I get called soon for jury duty. But that's something else women sometimes still get barred from doing. So, bring it.This week my hubby and I head to a country in the Middle East where women still can't vote. Our plan: to spend two nights there with friends. Then on to Africa for a couple weeks of ministry. That includes a few nights in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where my brother-in-law and his wife have been living since January, having recently relocated there to help disciple a wonderful and growing team of nationals. Never been to Ethiopia. Looking forward to it. Except...they said to bring mosquito repellant?From Addis Ababa, we head to Kenya via Nairobi to Mt. Elgon (not Mt. Elton, which my spell-corrector wants me to say), where we went last summer. The house-church movement there has multiplied to at least the eighth generation. Exciting times! And Gary's ministry partners there want to meet his wife. It's a sign of trust that he would bring me, they say. So thanks to some generous donors, the nationals' wish is coming to fruition. (Others have donated money for stuff like Bibles, grain, shoes—so encouraging. If that's you, thank you!)Back through Nairobi, we catch a flight to Lodwar, which looks desolate as the moon. There we plan to meet up with a semi-nomadic tribe in which many have recently embraced the gospel. In their world, here's the pecking order: men, animals, women, children.These folks have little from which to scrape out a living. So the mission of our four-person team is to train the leaders in doing children's ministry. We want them to know that every human of any age or sex is made in the image of God and of infinite value. And contrary to the thinking of some Ivy-League professors such as ethicist Peter Singer, people rank higher than animals. Below the angels, for sure—for a little while at least. But definitely higher than animals. The women there have never even heard that such a thing as voting exists. And the kids have never been to school. Yet.Friends are staying in our home with our daughter. She should have a blast with their baby. And Gary and I look forward to having some time together. Would you please pray for our family and for the people we will encounter?Last week, my friend Allison and her hubby were celebrating their 25th anniversary in New Zealand, biking through "Lord of the Rings" territory. They had a romantic dinner. Told each other what they loved about each other. And the next morning, Karl had died of a heart attack. He was fit. No warning signs. Gone. The last conversation they had was about how much love they shared. Thanks be to God. How many people can say that? But of course, my heart breaks for Allison, who was hoping for at least twenty-five more years with the love of her life. So I'm reminded that, as I tell you all these plans we have made, I should add this: If the Lord wills it, we will go . . .Life is short. Make it count. And tell people you love them!
Author Q&A with Elizabeth Oates
Elizabeth Oates served as my intern more than ten years ago. Time flies! Today she's a multi-published author with a new book out. She took some time recently to answer some questions.
SG: Elizabeth, I can’t believe we have known each other for fifteen years now. You came to seminary in 2001, and graduated in ‘05. Tell me what you have been doing since then.
EO: My husband and I moved from Dallas to Waco, where we’ve had three biological kids, ages 10, 8, and 6. We also have a sweet foster daughter who is 16 months old, and we are on track to adopt her sometime this spring. In between raising babies and running carpool, I’ve been writing, blogging, and speaking. I wrote my first book, Dealing with Divorce: Finding Direction When Your Parents Split Up, in 2009. And I just released my second book, If You Could See as Jesus Sees: Inspiration For a Life of Hope, Joy, and Purpose.
SG: It sounds like you juggle a lot between your family and your writing, which can intimidate some people. Do you find that others compare themselves to you? If so, how do you deal with that?
EO: Actually, I talk a lot about comparison, and feeling inadequate, incompetent, and discontent in my new book. The irony is that people can look at my life and think I have it all together, yet I look at others' lives and fall into the same trap.When people say to me, “I don’t know who you do it,” I tell them “You only see what I do. You don’t see what I don’t do.” And the list of what I don’t do is long: I don’t sew, I don’t garden, I don’t do oils, I don’t cook anything with more than four ingredients, I don’t do a book club. I have simplified my life to a few things, and I go deep there.If we can focus on the few things God has called us to and do those well instead of comparing ourselves to what others are doing, I think we’ll find God will bless our efforts in whatever capacity we serve.
SG: What is your hope for this new book?
EO: My audience is women. And my ultimate hope is that women will stop seeing themselves as the world sees them, or even through their own skewed lens, and they will see themselves as Jesus sees them.
You can order If You Could See as Jesus Seesonline. But you also might win it here. Subscribe to this blog, or leave a comment below, and I'll draw the name of a winner on Jan. 29. Guys, maybe your local library would appreciate a copy. Or a special female in your life?
A Question Mark Over My Head?
Last year in San Diego at the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), I agreed to be interviewed about my experience as a female who belongs to a society that has only 6% women in its membership. That number even includes student members. And who knows what percentage of the female members actually attend the annual meeting. All I can say is that when I go, I felt quite conscious of my femaleness, let me tell you. (Kudos to our friends at IFL who invest in their female employees by sending them.)I asked that my remarks be connected with a pseudonym—and as a journalist I almost never make someone keep my comments off the record. Does that tell you anything?A year later, the results are in, and the report evoked a lot of conversation in Atlanta. The opinions have been quite mixed, with some insisting that anecdotal evidence/stories don't count in research. (For people who say such silly things about narrative being an illegitimate source of info, I recommend epistemological therapy with Dr. Esther Meek.)I attended ETS the week before Thanksgiving—presented two papers, moderated a marriage panel, and also went to the American Academy of Religion national meeting, because my nominee for the Arts and Religion Award—Marilynne Robinson—was selected and honored. In between all that, I had many conversations over meals and coffees and in the hallways about the research and the responses to it. Some women I know have attended once and never want to return. (The same is true of one of my dearest male Latino friends. The absence of a minority presence is deeply troubling.)Here's a link to the final report, "A Question Mark Over My Head?" which resulted from more than thirty-five interviews with a broad spectrum of people. It's not short, but it's thorough.I'm glad to report that some of my male colleagues have been appropriately distressed by the findings and have been vocal in their responses. I'd love to know what you think.
Does Paul Really Think Women are Gossips and Busybodies?
My post for this week at bible.org:In his first letter to Timothy, Paul told his protégé, “As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith (1 Tim. 1:3, NASB, emphasis mine).English-speaking evangelicals are three to four times more likely than the population at large to use male wording when the original author had “people” in mind. And 1 Timothy 1:3 is an example of an instance in which it hurts us to do so. While we know the word “men” can really mean “people,” we still tend to read the word “men” in 1 Timothy 1:3 as “males.” And that leaves us thinking that males were the ones doing all the teaching, including falsehood, in Ephesus.Yet the word rendered “men” in 1 Timothy 1:3 is indeed the neuter pronoun tisin. Tisin carries no suggestion of male or female (as the NET Bible’s rendering, “people,” correctly suggests). So Timothy was to teach certain people not to teach strange doctrines.We know that some of the younger widows were teaching false doctrine, because two chapters later, Paul writes the following description of them: “And besides that, going around from house to house they learn to be lazy, and they are not only lazy, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things they should not” (1 Tim. 5:13).When we read that women were “going from house to house,” we usually envision girlfriends hanging out at each others’ abodes and telling tales. But the phrase “house to house” is similar to how Luke describes the church meeting “from house to house” in Acts 2:46 and 5:42. And if we understand “house” here as a church gathering, that affects how we later read that some Ephesian heretics were worming their way “into homes” (2 Tim 3:6). Consider the possibility that young widows were teaching heresy from church gathering to church gathering.Now, the consensus of contemporary translators has been to describe these women as the stereotypically charged “gossips and busybodies,” suggesting that the content of their speech is people’s personal business that is none of their own. But interestingly, the same phrase rendered “gossips and busybodies” could instead be rendered as “those who practice magic.”[1]And there are two good reasons to go with this latter option. First, Paul’s follow-up epistle to Timothy actually mentions two magicians by name. Paul wrote, “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are people of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected” (2 Tim. 3:8). The scriptures never mention Jannes and Jambres elsewhere. But we do find these two men in extra-biblical works. And in such contexts the men are among the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses.The second reason for going with “those who practice magic” is that it fits the context better. We know one of the major false teachings in Ephesus at the time related to magic. Indeed, Ephesus was Magic Central in the Roman Empire at the time of the earliest Christians.In the Book of Acts, written presumably by Luke after he spent time in Ephesus, we find a story about magicians in Ephesus who converted to Christianity, and in that context the same word (the one translated in 1 Timothy as “busybodies”) appears (Acts 19:19). The former magicians, upon trusting in Christ, brought out the expensive books of their trade and created a conflagration—the original Bonfire of the Vanities, if you will.According to Clinton E. Arnold in Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians, magicians in Ephesus charged exorbitant prices for love potions. People would also pay large sums to create curses using a combination of what was known as the “Ephesian letters”—probably a set of individual letters that people would throw like dice and to create combinations for magical spells.[2]Magic was actually looked down on in Rome—so much so that in 16 B.C. Rome had expelled all magicians from the city. Years later Vespasian (ruled AD 69–79) outlawed astrology, too. Yet because of his friendship with a famous Ephesian astrologer named Balbillus, Vespasian let Ephesus continue holding “sacred” games in Balbillus’s honor. Apparently the one place where Rome went easy on magic was Ephesus.Putting all this together we see that Paul is likely warning Timothy about young widows who are going from church to church teaching about magic—something they should not speak about.Because we’ve come to the text with the preconceived notion that women don’t teach, and certainly not in house churches, we’ve reasoned that Paul can’t be talking about women when he refers to false teachers. And because we tend to think of gossip as a particularly female vice, our stereotype affects both our translation and our interpretation options. We think that men taught false doctrine at church, while women were busybodies in living rooms.But both men and women were guilty of teaching false doctrine. And both men and women were guilty of believing it. The same is true today. Paul says as much in 2 Corinthians 11:3 when he tells the entire church that he is concerned that, as Eve was deceived, so they all might also be.The text of 1 Timothy suggests that women were doing more than privately slandering. They were probably going from “house to house” teaching spiritual content that was false. And Paul left Timothy in Ephesus to instruct some people, including them, that they must stop (1 Tim. 1:3).Some think the Bible teaches that women are more likely to gossip than men. They think women are more likely to stick their noses in others’ business than men. And they base such thinking on Paul. Paul gets a reputation for being no friend of women when, in fact, he truly was. It is our own stereotypes, not Paul’s, that have led us to misunderstand him.Does Paul think women are more prone than men to gossip? Nothing in the text suggests such an idea. Indeed, gossip is not a female weakness; it is a human one. Sticking our noses into others’ business is not a female weakness; it is a human one. And teaching false doctrine is not a male weakness; it is a human one. Let us be careful to avoid projecting gender stereotypes onto the Scriptures. Otherwise, we may fail to hear warnings intended for us all.[1] See Lloyd K. Pietersen, “Women as gossips and busybodies? Another look at 1 Timothy 5:13,” Lexington Theological Quarterly 42 no 1, Spr 2007: 19–35, for a full treatment of this option.[2]Arnold, C. E. Ephesians: Power and Magic. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1992.
Five Ways to Kill Your Women's Ministry
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It was my week to blog at bible.org. So I posted on how to wreck your women's ministry:
- Engage in gender stereotyping. Teach women that they are emotional and men are unemotional. Never mind that the ideal man wept (John 11:35, Luke 19:41) and cried loudly with tears (Heb. 5:7); that Paul warned the Ephesian elders night and day with tears (Acts 20:31); that the same elders wept loudly when Paul said goodbye (20:37); and that Paul remembered Timothy’s tears (2 Tim 1:4). Crying is for females. Also teach your women that God wired them only to receive love, not respect. That way those who fall outside this “norm” will know there is something wrong with them. And while you’re at it, segregate by age. Younger women don’t like to hang with older women, and vice versa
- Assume women cannot handle rigorous Bible study. Women get lower test scores in math than men, don’t they? (Never mind that the difference is minimal and that women are often socialized to avoid the sciences.) If women can’t handle math, surely they also cannot handle Bible study that requires them to use their brains. So dumb it down and make it fluffy. Maybe some women can handle listening to NPR and PBS science shows, but such women are the exception. Insights from the languages and words like “theological” are for guys.
- Stick to a rigid curriculum. Never mind that studies say adults learn best in community with give-and-take interaction. Because women need easy-peasy Bible study (see point two), you need to always bring in an outsider—a talking head who delivers content via video. Surely no one in your own congregation has the potential to teach. Also, never look at issues such as human trafficking and what women can do about it, because that might get you labeled as a liberal who embraces a social gospel. And there is no label worse than “liberal.”
- Offer events only in the daytime. So what if 58.6 percent of women are labor-force participants. If you offer studies that accommodate working females, your women might think that employment matters, and we all know that a woman’s place is in the home. You need to focus all your efforts on stay-at-home moms, because being single is a sign that someone is not fully delighting in God (women who delight in God get the desires of their hearts, and we all know that God’s first-best is for every woman to be married with children). Never address how the Bible might apply in a work context and certainly never teach women how to lead anything. Having dominion is for radical feminists.
- Never, ever use humor. Your meetings are for serious souls exploring serious topics. So no showing clips from Youtube videos. In fact, avoid social media at all costs—it’s from the devil. Watch this, and you'll see what I mean.
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The Invention of Wings
I just finished listening to Sue Monk Kidd's novel, The Invention of Wings. When I chose it as my "Audible" selection for January, I had no idea about its subject matter. I knew only that I love just about anything Kidd writes. She can spin a fine yarn (Secret Life of Bees, for example) and is unafraid to explore topics relating to women, religion, and justice.
In the case of The Invention of Wings, Kidd made a foray into historical fiction, and—joy!—she chose as her protagonist a historical woman I had "met" in my gender studies at UTD: Sarah Grimke. Grimke was a belle living on a Charleston plantation in the 18th century. But she ended up doing some radical stuff for a woman of any era, but especially for her own. She never married. She became a Quaker. She spoke publicly to men and women. She was a shameless opponent of slavery. And she advocated for equality that included both slaves and women. (Abolitionists did not always believe in equality; sometimes they were just against cruelty.)
The reader (listener) sees life from alternating points of view—that of Sarah and of the slave on her family's planation that she tried unsuccessfully to set free in her youth. Kidd does a brilliant job of showing how Sarah is sometimes blind to her own privilege, a perspective that is especially relevant since Ferguson.
An unexpected but welcome bonus happened at the end of the novel when the narrator's voice changed, and sure enough, Kidd herself made an appearance. The author explained how she chose her subject and talked about what facts she altered in her story and why. Part of what inspired her was Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party exhibit in Brooklyn, which I only recently learned about (my bad!) while visiting the National Museum for Women in the Arts to see its fabulous exhibit about the Virgin Mary. (I have added Chicago's exhibit to my bucket list, especially after learning that it includes Christine de Pizan.)
I give The Invention of Wings five stars out of five. Great story telling. A wonderful subject. And a book with the potential to make the world a better place.
Child Brides and the Christian
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| This five-year-old child bride was spirited off to her wedding in the night by her uncle. |
Share the gospel and biblical resources online. Many people without flush toilets own cell phones and access web content with them. The best way to change attitudes is through changed hearts. The Council on Foreign Relations reports that Internet and cellular phone technology through which people access online content means that “modern and international influences are felt” (p. 18). Speak on behalf of victims. Such speaking includes challenging rape-culture thinking and paying attention to how we talk about those who have been violated. In many communities, sexual violence becomes a reason to shame the victim. Challenge such thinking! Work to shift the dishonor from the victim to the criminal. Affirm those who have endured sexual abuse and violence when they speak out about their trauma. Sponsor girls. Help girls stay in school. Their education is strongly connected with a family’s ability to pull itself out of poverty, and often parents will not let girls attend school unless someone sponsors them. Each additional year of age at marriage boosts the likelihood of literacy by 5 percentage points. And helping girls stay in school increases their literacy, which is correlated with many improvements in safety, health, and community stability.Train pastoral leaders. Teach all who speak and who perform weddings to embrace a biblical view of gender equality that eschews viewing girls as commodities. And encourage spiritual leaders to obey local laws about age at marriage. The report cited above—produced by an independent, nonpartisan think tank—suggests that trainers work with religious leaders across the world, “educating men and boys about why delaying marriage is beneficial to all” as “these two groups are influential in deciding the future of girls and women in many communities” (p. 16). In your conversations with nationals, raise questions about girls’ education, emphasizing how much you value making female education a priority. Express admiration, respect, and honor for those who demonstrate a high view of women and who teach that God views females as fellow heirs. Consider giving a public award that acknowledges those who have done so.If you are involved in relief work, factor the unique needs of girls into post-disaster planning. The periods immediately following such disasters are times of especially high vulnerability for females. Studies show that women and girls bear a disproportionate brunt of the long-terms effects of upheavals. In Uganda, for example, food crises due to climate change have forced girls into “famine marriages” (p. 37). Tsunamis, typhoons, civil war, and regional conflicts also drive up the child-bride and violence-to-women rates. Such crises disrupt education, too. So include in your efforts providing security and education for children in refugee camps. And support outreaches that work to educate child brides long-term, such as Arab Woman Today Ministires.Consider joining an education team going to a location where leaders are asking for teachers. A priest I met in Jordan asked for English-speaking volunteers to come for two weeks and help the students in his school improve their language skills. Your knowledge can help.
[1] Gayle T. Lemmon and Lynn S. ElHarake, “Child Brides, Global Consequences: How to End Child Marriage,” Council on Foreign Relations: New York, 2014, vii.