were you calling my name?

one area of oppression effects half the people ever born and, rather than being the instrument of liberation it was designed to be, the church has all-too-often been the visible symbol of the oppression itself – the inequality between men and womyn.

imagine you are standing in a crowd talking with some friends at a party, when from across the room, you hear your name mentioned. instantly, your head turns and your attention is drawn. you are pulled in, interested, and aware that somehow (in a way you may not understand yet) this conversation relates to and involves you. in the church, i fear that there are many who never hear their name mentioned. most obvious among those are womyn.

when dan brown’s the davinci code was launched in 2003 (see my review of the book and movie here), it seemed to spread like a virus. soon everyone was reading it, talking about it, discussing it. it became a blockbusting film directed by ron howard. the vatican released statements denouncing it; opus dei, many serious theological journals and just about every church in the west has felt it necessary to make some kind of comment on it. what is to explain this cultural phenomenon?

it is almost universally agreed that dan brown’s grasp of history is negligible and that as a work of literature, this hardly ranks as one of the great novels of our time. yet it struck a chord in the west for at least two reasons. firstly, the church is viewed by those outside of it (and many within it) as corrupt, decadent, self-interested, power-hungry, deceitful and totally irrelevant. as barth said,

“the greatest witness against christianity is the pitiable figure of the every-day christian, whose complacency – he has no thought of seeking his salvation with fear and trembling – is a clear demonstration that the decisive assertions of christianity are of no importance. it is the church, which is the very thing against which jesus preached and taught his disciples to fight, embodying the triumph of that which is anti-christian no less than the modern state and modern nationalism.” (barth, karl (1960) (trans. knight, h. et al) church dogmatics, 3/4 the doctrine of creation. edinburgh: t&t clarke. pg 238)

thus when anyone comes along with a conspiracy theory, no matter how ludicrous or far-fetched, it finds a ready audience among the many disillusioned and sceptical, who see the church as a malevolent presence in the world.

the second reason for the phenomenon is that the church is viewed as being androcentric and misogynistic in the extreme and as soon as dan brown indicates that the church has covered up the message of god to womyn in some way there is something within all of us which cries out that we knew it could not have been as the church has portrayed it.

too often the church pays lip-service to parity between the sexes while denying any practical attempt at true equality. while it is certainly permissible and indeed laudable for a womyn to choose to serve tea, make cakes, give up their career to raise a family and occupy the less glamorous roles within the church, it is an outrage that they are often presented with only these options.

proof texts, such as 1 Timothy 2:11-12  are recited authoritatively by men who claim that scripture is absolute and authoritative. yet rarely, if ever, will these same men have a widows’ list exactly as the writer of 1 timothy prescribes only three short chapters later. while these same men may or may not enjoy black pudding they would surely not see eating it as a sign of being outside the kingdom of god, as the leaders at jerusalem clearly would have (acts 15:20), and it is unlikely that they enquire how the meat was slaughtered every time they eat to ensure it meets biblical requirements (ibid). so it seems some parts of scripture (notably the parts which culturally affect us, the powerful men) are obsolete and time-specific, while the others (which do not affect us and keep us in positions of power) are for all time and need no hermeneutic. of course jesus did not chose any women to be among the twelve, but neither did he chose any gentiles, does that mean that they too are unsuitable for leadership?

even more oppressive though, is how womyn are written out of the text even when they are there in the first place. in the niv translation of romans 14, for example, there are at least 33 gender-specific terms like “man”, “he”, “brother” and so on, in only twenty-three short verses. yet as the nrsv translation makes clear, the language is not gender specific at all. although i do not doubt the capacity of womyn to infer that they are included in scripture passages such as these, they rarely, if ever, hear their name called in them – their heads do not turn. thus, it seems to me, they are denied a visceral connection with the text and the word of god revealed through it.

julia is rarely mentioned in our sermons as “prominent among the apostles.” phoebe is demoted from a “deacon” or “minister” to a “servant” in the niv and from “benefactor” or “patron” to “a great help”.  we should, of course, bear in mind that paul regularly refers to himself as “a servant of christ jesus,” and we see that as a badge of honour, to be worn with some pride. it is important to note, however, that, because of the culture which has fermented within the church for centuries, we no longer even ‘hear’ the honour when the term is applied to a womyn. thus, in our time and culture, it seems important, even crucial, that we no longer refer to phoebe as a “servant” at all but as a minister or a deacon. perhaps, at some future point when a more true equality exists, we may be able to return to using her alternate appellation, recognising it as equal to that of the apostle paul himself.

all this is simply to do for our scriptures what jesus himself did for the scriptures of his day – to complicate them. hermeneutical skill is needed to show how the establishment readily protects itself from the sharp end of the sword of the spirit, while unhesitatingly stabbing at others with glib proof texts, which can be quickly shown to be arbitrarily chosen. it strains at the gnat while swallowing the camel! (cf matthew 23:24)

so, the clarion call is to stay with the difficult, the enigmatic, the confusing, the contradictory and the strange; to continue to push and pull and struggle and fight with the text; to punch and kick at it till it bleeds freedom, liberation and truth all over us, soaking us, baptising us, with we-know-not-what. as walter wink puts it,

we can no longer simply submit to scripture without asking whether new light is needed to interpret it. i for one do not abandon scripture, but neither do i acquiesce. i wrestle with it. i challenge it. i am broken and wounded by it, and in that defeat i sometimes encounter the living god. i will not concede the field, therefore, to a putative orthodoxy that dodges the hermeneutical task. (full text here)

it must never be forgotten that this baptism is always to enable us to stand with the oppressed, to preach the evangel to the poor. god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble and so we stand against strength, against the powerful, even against the agōn itself, in abject weakness, having ourselves surrendered all vestiges of strength.

Comments

[Tracee Sioux]

I know right. Have you ever read Who Said Women Can't Teach? I found it put to rest the whole question of women teaching and leading for me.

"i for one do not abandon scripture, but neither do i acquiesce. i wrestle with it. i challenge it. i am broken and wounded by it, and in that defeat i sometimes encounter the living god." - I've never heard my struggle with scripture discribed quite so aptly.

[tigtog]

This is a very eloquent and powerful post. This particular struggle is one I left behind as a child when I left the church, but I still feel the tatters of its fetters upon me.

I particularly think you have totally nailed a large part of the appeal of the Da Vinci code.

[shane magee]

thanks so much for these comments guys. it encourages me in what can sometimes feel like the task of sysyphus!

tracee: those words are walter wink's not mine. how i wish i'd said it! he writes with an eloquence i envy.

tigtog: my struggle always is not to throw the baby out with the bath water so-to-speak. i often (almost always) want to run from anything vaguely resembling 'church' as i've been so burned in the past and have seen so many others simply trampled uncaringly.

and yet i have been touched (or fettered as you put it) and there's something there i simply can't walk away from, but rather must race towards. (this is a recurrent theme for me - this for example http://tinyurl.com/ysp8ql) and so i am bound/fettered/called/ruined/made to still find something of the evangel within these beautiful texts which have been morphed and warped by the institution so it can maintain the status quo rather than letting them challenge it and bring the institution itself crumbling to its knees.

there is something essentially liberative in the message of jesus christ and it's that which must be communicated and embraced. but in this whole area we, the church, need much repentance, humility and redirecting.

ok i'm waffling now and sense has long ago been left as a forgotten construct. time to stop.

breathe deeply.

and.

i've stopped!!!

[Tracee Sioux]

Not to speak for you TigTog but I think it's relevant that many women became "unfettered" by simply leaving the church. Certainly the Church's stance on women - both official and unofficial - has put women off and rightfully so.

"I refuse to participate in this" is a valid and legitimate response to oppression of women in the church.

If the church is in trouble, and I think it's fair to say that it is, it's because women are the backbone of free volunteer work in the church (we're easy to guilt and overflow with compassion) - but if you "fetter us" with oppression - we are now free to stop participating.

As I have come back to "the church" - I have bounced between various denominations looking for one that doesn't minimize my femininity or fetter my daughter with oppression. I am SHOCKED that in the 20 years since I left the church nearly nothing has changed. In fact "wives submit" seems to have made a come-back in nondenominational churches with no authoritative supervision of a centralized body.

It seems mysogeny has a safe home in the church. And anyone (men and women) who speak out against it in church are treated just as unkindly as they ever were. Basically, we are told we're going to hell.

[shane magee]

i understand that feeling tracee. i feel it A LOT myself. but i haven't been gripped by "the church", i've been marked (like cain!) by the god himself. and so i find myself hovering still at the fringes of the institution because, for better or (usually) worse, it's here that something of the conversation of which i am part carries on. walking out on church is EASY! all too easy. walking out on the god is much harder. that is the baby i cling to when all i see is dirty bathwater needing jettisoned!

[Satsuma]

Excellent post on women and the Da Vinci Code; why it became so popular. But don't forget that it really is about men discussing the divine feminine. In the book, you have long passages where men lecture women about this, and meanwhile the female character, who really is related to Mary Magdalen, is completely unaware of her lineage. When men discuss feminism it becomes a best seller, when women have written about all of this for decades it's an uphill battle.

I don't know about you, but when you still hear male ministers talk about women submitting to their husbands, and you have no men jumping up in outrage at the speaker of this overt sexism, that really tells you something.

One of my favorite feminist philosophers, Mary Daly, actually walked out of Harvard Memorial Chapel. She was the first woman to give a sermon there, and then she and all the women in the audience walked out, and never returned. I think this was around 1970 or '71. This was one of the most powerful statements from a woman of great theological and philosophical intellect that I had ever come across.

She saw the male supremacy of the church and the evil it had done to women as beyond redemption. I don't think institutional christianity can get beyond its sexist sins, but we can talk outside the doors of the oppressive places, and come to our own conclusions outside patriarchal contexts.

The popularity of the Da Vinci Code is simply an indicator of how angry people are with the church. And then later the huge child rape scandals among catholic priests became headline news. It made the churches' moral authority pretty much null and void. The Da Vinci Code is not great literature by any means, but it gets at a larger truth, and that was what made it compelling as a cultural event. That and having a male author of course :-)

[shane magee]

i think that's a great point satsuma (gotta love that name!) womyn's issues are only seen as important when men raise them. sad but true. i'm a big fan of mary daly even though i don't fully embrace her theology. i think she' done much in her life to raise really important issues of the abuse of womyn at the hands of the institution. i love love love elisabeth schussler fiorenza (especially her ground-breaking, "in memory of her") and elaine storkey's "what's right with feminism?" is a good introductory primer for those of an evangelical bent.

o, and i really hope we both agree that dan brown is a terrible, TERRIBLE author (i use the word in it's loosest possible sense!) and "the davinci code" barely qualifies as writing let-alone literature? otherwise, i'll have to hunt you down and kill you in your sleep.

no, i'm serious.

really, i have my eye on you!

[Satsuma]

No man has ever managed to kill me in my sleep because I've always killed them first BEFORE I go to sleep! That was Mary Daly's use of the seven deadly sins of the fathers -- Reversal- as a rhetorical device.

Anyway, no fear, I always support great literature. It's very hard to say why Da Vinci Code became such a huge success, but then again I thought Harry Potter was unreadable as well. There I've said it -- Harry Potter is terrible literature too! Bad stuff sells it seems. We are in the age of escapism and fantasy now.

Conspiracy theories with a feminist bent are a market niche that even men stumble upon now and then. Opus Dei did have an unholy alliance with the Vatican etc. etc.

I really like the adventurous nature of this blog Mr. Magee. Still hard for me to believe that evangelical anything can liberate women from oppression, but hey, the next generation can give this one a shot!

I love all the feminist christian classics, but once you've read Mary Daly... well the other women take on the tinge of Aunt Jemima or white people in black face-- to make a somewhat strained analogy here.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, the evangelical guys are all in a tither about "The Golden Compass"-- only saw the movie. Loved the Ice Bears and wanted to actually be one! But they didn't make the magisterium evil enough for my taste, so maybe the books are better. The Catholic League etc. is always on the war path here over stupid things.

What we need to be aware of is that the world is again tempted by original sin, which is the temptation of male supremacy and male authored "authority." We don't want this, and women are in great danger of being shortchanged once again.

I'm not sure the church can ever recover from the evil it has done to women, and so we might as well begin anew. Maybe worship Ice Bears this time around :-) armor included with the batteries :-)

[shane magee]

really appreciate the encouragement satsuma. it's an uphill struggle to be sure. i'd be interested in your thoughts and comments on these additional posts. they're all along this theme and it's interesting that your comments on 'his dark materials' in particular, are very close to my own observations.

http://tinyurl.com/2flh6x
http://tinyurl.com/2dwctb
http://tinyurl.com/yth4xg
http://tinyurl.com/29pq6v
http://tinyurl.com/yth4xg

who knows, maybe the liberating truth of jesus christ can still be seen and heard if we look and listen closely enough???

[Satsuma]

Thanks for the links Mr. Magee. I'll go over each and every one of them soon.

There is so much I have to say on what constitutes the liberating truth of Jesus, and I must admit, it's all pretty much of a mess in the United States right now.

What I love the most is people's dedication to strong intellectual curiosity, and lack of fear for alternative points of view.

I am indifferent if not antagonistic to traditional anything, but I am interested in divine inspiration, and what makes belief worth it.

This blog is really an amazingly well crafted intellectual oasis in a very stupid religious world! I like its difference and complexity, and look forward to writing about all these issues. More later....

[Satsuma]

Well, all these linked posts are very thoughtful.

It's so interesting to see how people write about feminism today, because these ideas are very old.

I quite enjoy political correctness, so different spellings of words simply mean that P.C. -- which I define as "plain courtesy" indicates attempts by men to communicate with feminist women. It is a gesture of good will.

Womyn -- that spelling was originally the invention of radical lesbian separatists. I rather like this antiquated usage, kind of the way I enjoy the close ups in movies of record players.

I've never understood just why men get so upset when women demand not to be addressed as "girls" "honey" or some other demeaning word. I'd never use words demeaning to men, and expect them to show the same courtesy to women. The objection seems to come from the idea that men are no longer allowed to just say anything they want to in public anymore.
Men hate being told what to do by women. So you have to make laws to enforce the ban on degrading speech in the work place, for example.

Perhaps men believe they have a right to hate speech, I don't know. Very few women complain about political correctness. I don't think they see it as all that threatening.

The above articles on feminism and the church are very well argued. Too bad we have to keep writing the obvious all the time.

Christianity has stumbled into feminism. It's a field men have had to themselves for a very long time, and that's why it has become so weird to feminist women. We simply see through the sexism, and we see through the 'if the god is man the man is god" routine. Men do like to compare themselves to God. They believe they lord over women in the home like little mini-gods.
So this patriarchal god is very attractive to men who love to preach AT women.

As for me, I prefer a dialogue, not someone preaching at me. I've read Mary Daly ever since 1981 or so, and I've been to many of her lectures. Her ideas have never been refuted, and men settle for the cheap shots of attacking her personally. But really the heart of her philosphy is really that women should leave the church. It really is patriarchy, and when you have a male christ you have a male god.

Now I think Jesus' message is very good, but it is badly interpreted by mortal men. I see Jesus as female in the second coming, and this female entity of Jesus will come to judge the world. Men should really beware of this original sin of male supremacy, because I believe that they will be facing a female judge at the end.

It's the kind of reversal I do to make a thealogy that appeals to me. Mary Daly's world view is about the uncompromising liberation of women, and that they should recover the lost tradition of women's spiritual power. Men use reversal to degrade women, and women need to reverse the reversals.

A reversal like the female christ coming at the end of the world. Imagine how things would change if this idea became a part of church doctrine. Suppose male supremacy itself was called into account for its failure in the world -- the wars, the rape, the sexual exploitation of women, the movies made with women's bodies as objects to these sinful men.

If there was a real fear of the judgement of women, then the world would be a very different place.

I think this is why your use of "womyn" is a subtle way of celebrating political correctness -- P.C. Plain Courtesy-- it is a way of making people think.

Perhaps we had the son of man come to earth to save men -- literally real biological men. Supposed salvation really was for these creatures who start wars, rape women and make the earth such a violent and awful place. Suppose we took the Bible literally this way? Then what would happen?

Feminism I believe is about the spiritual awakening of women. It is about what happens when women decide to be free, and decide that they will write the thealogy. It is the world women create for their own philosophical advancement, and the institutional church is actually for the literal salvation of men. The emphasis on humility and obedience and submission makes more sense when you see the male ego let loose upon the world.

Humility is something men were preaching at each other. Plato and Aristotle were talking to men, not to women, for example. The phiosophy that we regard as "universal" is really a conversation at a men's club. It can be interesting, but most certainly it has little to do with women and their concerns.

[Satsuma]

I love numbers. Just looked at all the books listed to the left of these posts.
We have 17-18 books, and every single one of them was written by men. If you keep count, and look at the numbers, it reveals something interesting.

Most people don't count very often, and a lot of women are afraid of math. Perhaps these mathematical answers are just too horrifying for women to contemplate sometimes.

[shane magee]

i agree. numbers are important. i read this story a while back http://tinyurl.com/2g62nz which points out the same inequity. i've been actively trying to correct the bias. before you even posted this i spent a day at a second-hand bookshop looking specifically for some female authors with whom i thought i could identify. i'm reading some anne lamont at the moment and have been dabbling in mary midgeley and doris lessing. but still the inequality exists. thanks for drawing my attention to it again.

[Satsuma]

I think the issue is men writing from an evangelical perspective -- so unfeminist it is positively weird. It's an odd disconnect because the world is literally flooded with feminist christian everything these days, and each year more and more feminists teach in seminaries and religion departments in the U.S.

I think the evangelical world is very afraid of feminism, and you've hit on an interesting fear as well -- the fear of really talking about postmodernism.

Right wing evangelical radio in the U.S. is now actually talking about racism -- cautiously. But it ignores christian feminism and is completely afraid of dealing with the liberation of women. I think because the whole structure of the church would just come to an end if this happened.

It's why churches have become so conservative in the U.S. -- if you're conservative, it's easy to sit in any church, but if you're an awake and activist feminist, you can't stand to be in any church because of its dreadful hierarchy, and the limitation of only reading books (in the Bible) written by men. Why the male authored bible continues to be THE sole text in churches is beyond me. I simply can't really imagine men writing authentically about the experience of women and their fight to be 100% free people.

So therein lies the problem. I think it's why I am still so enchanted with classical music, because it has no words that make me mad, and so I can imagine its lovely quality with no hint of sexism. It is a pure art form.

So what do you think is the cause of the anti-feminism within evangelical everything? And how do we really know anything about what women really thought in the early church if we have nothing to read? Or maybe this explains the popularity of the gnostic texts and Dead Sea Scrolls. The Gospel of Mary, for example. We certainly can't depend on men to write about women; that is absurd because they know very little or almost nothing. Men dominate public spaces and speech to a degree that even they are unaware of.

Anyway, I think the women who started out as christian feminists are now post-christian.
Although Virginia Ramey Mollenkott is a powerful evangelical feminist, and has been one for decades. Even lesbians are ambivilent about relying on the Bible as a sacred anything, because it is too contaminated an object. Too much detox, and you get bored after awhile.

But at any rate, it's all a challenge. Not easy to remedy 2000 years of this kind of erasure of the sacred feminine or the female face of god. I don't like to say things are hopeless, but if you read all the books you've listed, I bet there is almost no mention of women in any of them. The discussion may appear to be gender neutral, but it is really men talking to men about men. I haven't read any of your listed books, but I'm willing to bet that I'm right about this.

Am I right?