Increasingly Evangelicals are trying to 'claim' feminism and
wed it to the anti-abortion movement. This is such a strange shift and yet is
part of a larger drift within the Evangelical movement.
This was probably more of a story back in January as there
was great deal of attention on the Roe v. Wade anniversary. There was the big
woman's march to protest Trump and there was some controversy generated over
whether or not real feminists can be pro-life and thus anti-abortion.
Personally as disgusted as I am with abortion I am also very
put off by Evangelical politicising when it comes to this issue. There's a lot
of dishonesty about history, about science and medicine and certainly about
motive. Abortion is an abomination but the Christian forces that have rallied
together to form a political bloc are on many levels a great and corrupting
danger to the integrity of the Church. It has compromised their morality and
most certainly their theology.
Apart from the joining with Rome as symbolised by the
Evangelicals and Catholics Together movement (ECT), there is now the confusion
over feminism.
It is not a little irksome that one of the most prominent
anti-abortion groups located with Evangelicalism goes by the name of the Susan
B. Anthony List.
This is one of the many sleight-of-hand historical tricks
played by Evangelicals. They're trying to 'claim' or appropriate early feminism
and steal the legacy away from figures like Margaret Sanger and the later
feminists.
What they're trying to suggest is that early feminism and the
suffragette movement were somehow Christian and these movements were hijacked
by 'liberals'.
This completely misunderstands and misrepresents the placing
of Suffragettes in their historical context, let alone the nature of the
Progressive movement.
But perhaps more importantly it whitewashes the many and
dangerous errors represented by figures like Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
While these women were ostensibly Christian, as indeed most Europeans
and Americans professed to be at that time, their ideas were patently
anti-Christian.
Yes, they were against abortion. All well and good but this
is meaningless when placed in a larger context. Many unbelievers and adherents
of other religions hold to basic moral positions but we certainly don't take on
their names or invoke their legacies. We don't want to start 'ministries' and
name them after Hindus, Buddhists or Mormons do we? But the Suffragettes get a
pass because there's a great desire to appropriate the narrative and claim them
and their work as part of the great Christian-American heritage.
The truth is these women represented heretical forms of
Christianity. They were unorthodox when it came to basic doctrines and their
views of marriage are abominable. They viewed it as slavery and in general did
not express Biblical understandings of marriage, gender or family.
We can be glad these women were opposed to abortion, if they
really were, but they were still wrong, in rebellion to God's order and were
heretics. It is most disturbing that these women are getting a whitewash in
Christian circles and in particular among Evangelicals.
How many parents and Christian teachers will destroy their
own credibility in promoting these women? Their daughters, in good feminist
fashion will be sent off to college to pursue careers and when they're in
attendance at university they will likely discover, from professors who will
happily tell them... who these women really were and what they stood for.
What a quandary. Either admit your parents and the
Evangelical leadership misled you, or embrace these feminists and abandon
Scripture.
Or I suppose you could do what many Evangelicals do... stop
your ears and keep repeating the lies over and over again, as loud as you can.
The previous generation of Evangelicals understood this. In
the 1970s and 1980s they had seen the ugly side of feminism and were not
attracted to it. Ironically (once again) it was figures like Phyllis Schlafly,
acting in a feminist fashion that represented the opposition to this. The seeds
for the shift and fall were already being planted.
Evangelicals used to understand that while feminists might
have a point when it comes to a few issues, the movement overall was an affront
to God and a rejection of His Authority. They also understood that while it was
laudable that Roman Catholics were against abortion and stood for traditional
families, no alliance could be made with them. They could not yoke themselves
to unbelievers.
Neo-Evangelicalism has so embraced the culture as to lose any
sense of antithesis. Feminism is not only accepted, it has become normative. It's
almost as if since you can't eradicate it from the culture, therefore we must
claim and appropriate it. And so now the battle is on, to try and Christianise
it and its narrative.
And thus were brought to the point of absurdity, a time in
which Christians are focused on a battle over the pro-life 'women's movement'.
Feminism rejects the teaching of Scripture and the created
order. It is therefore opposed to God and is thus a road of death and certainly
the death of the family. The Evangelical saviours of the family are trying to treat
a poisoned wound with more poison. It has created chaos as now the people
opposed to feminism... are in fact embracing it.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Following the Scriptures and thus Christ Himself will result
in ostracisation from the world, ridicule and ultimately persecution. This can
start with social persecution in the form of pressures. For example in our
present culture it is more or less considered a necessity that wives work.
Unless you're a member of the upper tier you will not have enough money to
live. A single income especially for middle class, lower-middle class and
certainly lower class people is almost unthinkable.
You will grow frustrated over your lack of liquidity. You
won't have money to keep up your house to proper middle class standards. You
won't have the extra cash for holidays, for all those little extras. You will
be frustrated as your kids just won't have the opportunities other kids have.
You won't have the money to pay for them to do all the other things the other
middle class kids are doing.
I can see why people cave. Unless you completely change the
way you think about life and what it's all about, you will feel like an
outsider, a loser, like you're bad parents. As a husband I can attest to the fact
that your wife will be looked down on. People will assume you are some sort of
a tyrant. The list goes on and on.
But so what? Isn't that what we're told to expect? Once a
pilgrim mindset is embraced, these things, these 'values' can be rejected. They
don't matter.
Instead such confusion has been brought into the Church that
now Evangelical women have (a la FOX news) confused sensuality with femininity.
Assertiveness has replaced shamefacedness. I daresay most modern Evangelical
women cannot even grasp the meaning of such concepts. They pay lip service to
what the New Testament teaches about women but they absolutely reject it when
it comes to word and deed.
I've mentioned previously one Penny Young Nance who heads
Concerned Women for America, the political group founded by Beverly LaHaye. I
heard Nance one day on a Christian radio programme and was really put off by
not just her message but her manner.
She was promoting her book, Feisty and Feminine: A Rallying Cry for Conservative Women. I went
home and looked it up. Since then I've seen it for sale in some bookstores.
Just take a look at the cover and contemplate it for a moment.
Somehow things have moved sideways. Assertiveness is now
feminine? In fact there's an old word that is perfectly applied to Young, one
no longer used in our culture. One if heard usually elicits a chuckle.
She's what women would have once called a 'hussy' and
shameless at that. She's impudent and immoral and is trying to use her skin to
get attention and make her point. She's precisely the kind of woman in the
workplace that breeds trouble for men. Perhaps you know the type? They're
half-flirting with you while giving orders. There's a little innuendo game
going on all the time. This is the danger of women in the workplace. They wield
tremendous power over men.
I don't say this to exonerate men, their inappropriate
thoughts and behaviour. Please don't misunderstand me. Many undoubtedly will.
The recent stink over Mike Pence and his refusal to dine with women who are not
his wife has generated great (if baffling) controversy. It's somewhat
astounding how far our culture has shifted in that many seem to be literally
unable to grasp the issue. I hate to defend Pence but on this point he's right.
Men have their problems and they are legion and yet the
concern here is the re-casting of feminism as something that can be placed both
within the conservative orbit (which is to re-write cultural history) and
within the Christian orbit, which is to re-cast theology.
Evangelicalism has laboured so diligently to influence the
culture that it has embraced it. This is always the danger. We have to live in
the world and be not of it, which is hard enough. But immersing yourself within
the culture and seeking to transform its institutions, the result is the
opposite. The Church itself is transformed and syncretises the culture. This
particular issue so clearly demonstrates this tendency and also displays the
dangerous end result. The values of the culture are not only embraced, they are incorporated into the theology of
the Church.
This is why Dominionism is not only a heresy, it is one of
the greatest magnitude.
We see this with Evangelical attitudes toward Classical
Liberalism and the Enlightenment within the context of the United States, its
founding, history and culture. The consequence is a confused, idolatrous and
absolutely heretical narrative and theology concerning the United States. The
American Church is by no means alone in this but the fact that the US wields
historically unprecedented power and has enforced its will through a continuous
stream of violence casts the American version of this theology in a
particularly egregious light.
Not only do we have Evangelical organisations that stand for
conservatism and anti-feminism... which in fact embrace liberal values and
feminism, we've seen an additional outworking in the structure of the family.
The Church has shifted on the issue of divorce. Also, the
Church which once stood for Biblical teaching regarding the Christian woman's
place in the home shifted and embraced the two-income model of the culture.
Evangelicals were not going to be relegated to insignificance and poverty.
Security and respectability, the hallmarks of the Middle Class have long been
wed to Evangelical and even Magisterial Reformational values.
The two-income paradigm was troubling enough and certainly
destructive when it came to the life of the family. But now we've gone further
and Evangelicalism has all but embraced the notion of the woman being the
primary bread winner.
The culture has embraced this thinking and on a practical
level women are increasingly more educated and more able to find employment
that pays better. I think this might be particularly true in Rust Belt areas
where many of the men were once employed in blue collar work cannot earn a
living wage.
What was once a mark of shame is no longer the case. Now on
national television men will openly proclaim that they are stay-at-home dads. A
generation ago this would have been humiliating and the man would have been an
object of ridicule and scorn.
Today they're being made leaders in the Church as this
inverted and unbiblical paradigm is being openly embraced by the Evangelical
community... without shame.
There's a larger economic story here, about men being forced
out of the workforce, the decline of manufacturing, the modern juvenile man
that won't grow up etc...
For anyone old enough, the social changes are just profound.
I say this as one who does not possess a memory of the 1960s feminist marches.
My earliest memories in this regard are the campaigns for the Equal Rights Amendment
and Helen Reddy's 'I Am Woman' being played on the radio.
My point is that watching the feminisation of men has been
shocking. Women have been made both more masculine and sexualised at the same
time. It has generated an incongruity of provocative women who utterly lack
feminine charm, even of the dubious and immoral variety. The sensation is one
of androgyny. They are akin to men bearing décolletage.
There are many other little things, things which don't
necessarily mean anything in and of themselves. It's interesting to observe how
many women now drive the car, in many cases it's because it's their car as opposed to a family car.
What's the big deal? It's not. But in the past man drove because it's a
position of authority and responsibility. It was born of the same values that
led men to walk on the curb side of the sidewalk. There's nothing sinful about
women driving. I'm not advocating the Saudi model, or even old fashioned
extra-Biblical chivalry. But I am suggesting that women driving with their
husbands riding as passengers represents a shift in values.
I notice in public it's women who order the food, who do most
of the vocal interaction with waiters, office people and the like. In other
words, they're taking the lead while their meek husbands lurk in the waiting
room chair or in the corner. I'm not for a moment suggesting that in every case
the woman should take the backseat in public interaction. There are cases, at
the doctor's office for instance when my wife is much more capable in
communicating what's happening with one of our children. I'm not saying it's
sinful for the wife to order the meal in a fast food restaurant. This is
frustrating because it can be so easily misunderstood or misconstrued as
misogynist. These are the subtle things that I don't think very many people
think about.
We occasionally will watch a Wheel of Fortune or something like
it on YouTube. I've mentioned this before I think. It's amazing that during 'couples'
episodes the women dominate. Largely they introduce the husband and take a
leadership role in how they as a couple and a family are presented to the
world.
The world is lost and will always reject Biblical values but
the Church has embraced these things openly and blindly. Their theology has
opened the door. The shift within Evangelicalism is easily seen. Many
congregations that I attended almost twenty years ago have undergone
significant change. Women are now leading worship, prayer and in some cases
teaching adult Sunday School and even preaching. Some will say this is merely a
practical measure, reflective of reality. Congregations are largely made up of
women. The few men present don't want to speak or lead. There's no doubt some
truth to that but it doesn't make it right or even acceptable.
Our culture is rapidly moving toward a decadent and sodomitical
androgyny. While this is obvious when it comes to the prevalence of the Trans- abomination, what is not so clear
is that the Church is well on the road to embracing this. Its opposition is
only holding it back, it's not a true intrinsic opposition.
There are many conservatives who realise this and are
sounding the alarm but all too often they are unwilling to relate these issues
to the larger questions which involve Biblical obedience and not merely in the
realms of gender and family. There are sociological and yes, even economical
issues at stake. They go together.
Once again it must be stated that individualist Capitalism
itself has played no small part in producing this cultural decadence. The sins
of Sodom are rooted (according to Ezekiel 16) not just in perversity but in
covetousness and self-worship. This is the gate that leads to deviance.
The Church has not understood this and is in great peril.
There are some who have reacted and yet in many cases their
reactions are wedded to equally strange organic agrarian narratives often
rooted in shoddy mis-reads of history, questionable science and certainly
dubious theological interpretation. These movements are sadly little more than
distractions that fall into bad and unfounded sorts of conspiracy theory. Wedded
to heretical political paradigms they tend to produce sinful forms of
resistance and even the threat of violence.
The Church is in crisis. I think most people realise that but
once again it is the leaders of Evangelicalism, the Christian Right and Confessionalism
that have failed. Wedded to institutions both academic and denominational they
have failed to stand on what the Scriptures teach. They are either blind to its
implications or are unwilling to follow through. The truth is if they were
successful it would probably lead to the collapse of their institution's
finances. More likely this would come about not due to some kind of
revivalistic fidelity of Christians changing their lives and lifestyles but
from mass exodus.
Until the Church quits idolatrously worshipping America and
until it rejects the heresy of Dominionism, which results in a love of power
and money, there will be no change. The very tools being prescribed by the
blind guides of Evangelical and Confessional Christianity are the very mechanisms
leading the Church into this sodomitical pit.
Some additional reading: