Asbury’s Gendered Culture: Heterosexual Marriage and Modest Femininity
None of our seminaries want the analyses and evaluations and public writing up of sociologists, particularly when the sociologist examines gender discourse and its embodiment in routine practices. No sociologist considers everything, nor are any infallible. I remember when James Davison Hunter examined Christian colleges in his book, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, one of which was Trinity College. At the time many did not like Hunter’s results. Most today would admit he got most if it right. What he saw is what is the norm today.
I suspect the same will be proven for Lisa Weaver Swartz’s book about Southern and Asbury called Stained Glass Ceilings: How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power. Surely some at both schools might be saying “But, what about..” or “That’s not the whole story because…” – but in 10 years or more most will say her study of gender discourse and gendered differences was indeed insightful. And redemptive.
Her study of Asbury includes an analysis of the mixture “public genderblindness and privatized gender difference.” The liberation of the first category is constrained by the sometimes traditionalism of the second. There remain at Asbury, she finds, “subtle forms of inequity” and she observes that the culture of the institution was shaped by men and it’s man-centeredness still needs attention.
The Difference Story – that men and women are different – can at times echo evangelicalism’s traditional patriarchal structures.
Privatizing Womanhood
Churchwomen and Wives
When difference is known and embodied in the private realm the public sector will be impacted. Asbury’s well-known Women’s Communion services embody one vision, but it is not the vision of all the women on campus, in particular single women. The events are not genderblind so much as (hetero)gender-affirming, though services vary in theme. The Women’s Communion affirms and embodies, at least at times, the Difference Story of Asbury.
Weaver Swartz observes two kinds of women at Asbury: churchwomen, who are headed for ministry, and wives, whose husbands are headed for ministry. The latter celebrate motherhood.
Femininity in Balance
I know very few women in ministry or heading for ministry who have not experienced tensions over their femininity, and Weaver Swartz examines “femininity in balance.” Not too feminine, not too masculine, because these women will need to function successfully in what amounts to a man’s world (church leadership). Single women, especially, some of whom want to be married and mothers. For all churchwomen there is culture pressure for “muting feminine expression.”
Too, they are on guard about sexualization. In many similar culture the mixture of heterosexual marriage and modest femininity obtain. Many women choose this tension because of the rewards of a culture that honors women in ministry.
Women preachers are scrutinized over their clothing every time they are on the platform. World without end.
Second Shifts
Factor in, too, what some call a woman’s “second shift.” That is, be a student or work in order to provide for the family while the husband goes to seminary, plus running the household and caring for the children when she gets home. Yes, Asbury’s men are culturally committed to helping in the home. This is clear in Weaver Swartz’s study. At the same time, the “second shift” pattern echoes complementarianism.
The institution, too, has a kind of second shift: wives and women tend to find their employment in nurturing, mothering, relational work roles on campus.
In the public space there is genderblindness; in private spaces there is womanhood. Women as a collective are not so much a part of the public spaces.
Genderblind tensions
Genderblindness creates tensions, not least naming “systemic inequalities or cumulative cultural biases.” Churchwomen have to learn to resist and push their way through the normalizing of “men’s perspectives, leadership styles, and bodily mannerisms.” In other words, genderblindness is too much of a masculinist worldview and can silence the standpoint of women. What haunts collective formation is “the specter of Christian unity.”
Thus, “the most successful churchwomen adapt. They learn to display just the right amount of femininity in public, navigate the demands of the second shift, and resist developing structural critiques or feminist consciousness.”
Next week: Centering Men at Asbury
As for Churchwomen and Wives, the two categories of women Weaver-Swartz observed at Asbury, this has been my experience in church leadership.
As a church planter, I’ve been encouraged to join church planting networks, presumably for mentorship, encouragement, and support. No one seems to know what to do with me in these spaces. I’ve been asked if my husband was present (I answered with the truth: He’s home shuttling our kids to their activities and making them dinner). I’ve been invited to the women’s meetings for church planters which was made up of the wives of church planters—almost exclusively. While there should be meeting space for church planting spouses, as a church planter, I have more in common with other church planting pastors. I’ve had to sit through seminars doing the exhausting work of translating the teaching into something that might work for my context and my embodied experience.
In short, what was supposed to be a place of mentoring, support, and encouragement has been a space where I am regularly reminded that I’m still a surprise and an anomaly. Hospitality looks like preparing with every guest in mind. I have felt like an uninvited guest in these spaces.
If we want women in church leadership—and I think we do—we need to adjust these leadership spaces to reflect our expectation of the actual presence of women. Rather than respond with surprise and a clear lack of preparation and accommodation, prepare for the ones you’ve invited. Make them welcome.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that we miss the core central issue. I must see and value the things Randy uniquely brings to our working relationship, and he must equally see and value the unique things I bring to that relationship. Anything less than truly valuing what the other sex brings even as I bring things that person needs will lead us into endless conversations about "roles" and "gender," etc. Men and women bring different things to ministry, and both are needed and MUST be equally valued. The role for men is more difficult because they've been handed the reins of ministry for decades and think they can do all that needs to be done. Not so. So a starting point may need to be an acceptance of the intrinsic necessity of the opposite sex before God's work can fully go forward. But we easily too quickly settle for less than God intended for the working relationship.