THE MAKING OF BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD
The Feminist Killjoy Book Club had its fourth meeting recently and thank you to everyone who came.
Our book was THE MAKING OF BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD by Beth Allison Barr, an historian and academic professor at the University of North Carolina and a pastor’s wife in Waco, Texas.
The book challenges the concept understood by Conservative Evangelicals and referred to as ‘Biblical womanhood’ - that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers. Barr’s analysis is rooted in her study of women’s roles in the church throughout history and the shapeshifting of patriarchy over the centuries; and in her personal experience of being a pastor’s wife in the Conservative Evangelical world of the Southern Baptist church.
Members enjoyed the book but found it depressing that women have been and continue to be suppressed by men in so many ways and so women often fail to be fully their God-given selves.
The book starts powerfully by describing how Barr’s husband was fired from his Conservative Evangelical church, after he challenged the leadership over the issue of women in ministry. Barr then realised that she had become complicit in a system that used the name of Jesus to oppress and harm women. She says, ‘As Christians we are called to be different from the world. Yet, in our treatment of women, we often look just like everyone else… I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these [those of the Southern Baptist church.]’ She goes on, ‘Silent Christians like me have allowed both misogyny and abuse to run rampant in the church. We have allowed teachings to remain intact that oppress women and stand contrary to everything Jesus did and taught.’
Barr talks about so-called ‘Christian patriarchy’ and how, at the end of the day, it is just plain old patriarchy but tries to disguise itself by saying it treats women and men equally and yet assigns unequal roles by sex. She says, ‘Patriarchy walks with structural racism and systemic oppression, and it has done so consistently throughout history.’
Barr tackles patriarchal interpretations of some of Paul’s texts in the Bible and shows how Paul clearly believed in female leadership in the church, as evidenced by the many women he appointed as church leaders. She also talks about much-forgotten female spiritual leaders in medieval times, like Margery of Kempe, who respected the authority of Christ, not necessarily their husbands, when they believed that such authority came into conflict.
She says, ‘Before the 11th and 12th centuries, ordination was less clearly established and less critical for leadership. Evidence suggests that at least some women were ordained in the early mediaeval church, like Brigit of Kildare, but this practice disappeared in the Western church after the reforms of the central Middle Ages.’ She wonders whether evangelicals have rewritten Christian history ‘to protect and enhance the authority of men.’
She talks about the Reformation placing ‘married women firmly under the headship of their husbands.’ In mediaeval times, both men and women saw themselves as under the spiritual authority of the priest, which put them on a more equal footing. In the Reformation ‘the waning power of the Catholic priest was balanced by the waxing power of the Protestant husband.’
Furthermore, Barr says that women get written out of the English Bible. She talks about attempts in the 1990s to write translations that were more gender-inclusive and the uproar that this caused among evangelical circles. She says, ‘Gender-inclusive language was no longer just an argument over proper translation: it was the slippery slope of feminism destroying biblical truth… Yet, as a mediaeval historian, I know that Christians translated scripture in gender-inclusive ways long before the feminist movement.’ For example, she says that ‘a 15th century sermon from the Bodleian Library archives in Oxford adds the phrase [to John 6.44] “nor woman”– that is to say “no man nor woman comes to me, but my Father that sent me, draw him.’
Barr concludes that, ‘The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly.’ She says, ‘The institutional framework that required Black men, women, and children to be treated as chattel, as possessions rather than as human beings, was understood as being consistent with the spirit, genius and precepts of the Christian faith. Patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism and it always has… Patriarchy and racism are interlocking structures of oppression. Isn’t it time we get rid of both?’
I think you know the answer to that question!
Let’s keep battling on.
Join us for the next Feminist Killjoy Book Club meeting at which we will discuss HALF THE SKY by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn at 7.30pm on Wednesday 16 September online here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85115438840