Some of you grew up with an ideal for the Christian woman. Please describe for us the features of that ideal Christian woman. What was she like? Name the first three words that come to mind. Katie Gaddini, in her new book, The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women are Leaving the Church
After moving from being a missionary in Asia for 20 years and becoming a pastor at a multi-site evangelical attractional model church in California, I began to be surprised about what the new, US white evangelical millennial ideal Christian woman was expected to be. The phrases used here such as “ quiet, gentle little wifey” and “more in the shadows” and “wholesome yet hot, strong yet submissive… sexy, in a modest, Christian sort of way” and “calm” and “modest, selfless, humble” and “blond, thin” and “white” and “not ambitious or career-oriented” and “political” (right wing, anti abortion, abstinence) and also engaged on social media all certainly fit. Image management and the female avoidance of the shame of not being seen as perfect (as Brene Brown prolifically describes in her research about US culture at large) were all palpable in this scenario. To be seen as nuanced in one’s opinion on abortion, to be seen as ambitious in one’s career or to not be small/thin was to be seen as flawed, dangerous or automatically discredited. Thanks for writing about this. We need more of this kind of conversation in the US church.
Scot, are you asking what I was taught she was like or what I thought she would ideally be like? Those two questions have very different answers. For me she is independent and active and adventuresome (I'm not taking time here to describe in more specific terms what I mean). To the contrary, growing up in a conservative church and attending a conservative college, I was given no reason to develop skills beyond good homemaking and the habit of saying, "Yes, Sir!" to almost everything. There really was no room for personal development beyond personal appearance and domestic skills. GROAN. But as an adult woman I've spent more than 30 years helping godly women gain freedom from those strictures. (And over time 46 women have graduated from my D.Min. program for women at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary - women who found their voice (!) - with a few more still in the pipeline.)
(I've just started reading Gaddini's book too -- read her RELEVANT article first, and then found the book. Glad you're looking at it too. I think there's a lot to learn in there.)
I hate evangelical “roles”. It is a fake role to try to give some men the power, control, and authority they abuse scripture to get. (I skipped your first question And went to later ones). Nowhere in my Biblical studies does Jesus say to put a fake role above Him, but I am not a Biblical scholar. This is hypocritical, false teaching, and wrong viewpoint of who He is.
When I was in middle school, all of the girls were in a discipleship group with the pastor’s wife and the boys were in a group with the youth pastor.
The girls had Bible studies about humility and submission. I remember we did an in-depth study of Philippians and we had to memorize the Christ-hymn in Phil. 2. We studied Proverbs 31.
Meanwhile, the boys met in the gym, played basketball, and learned about the heroes of the Bible (which were all men). These were not nuanced views of Bible characters. They were used as moralistic stereotypes of leaders and heroes.
I didn’t realize it then, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. We were being cultured in specific gendered roles. Girls were to be humble and submissive. Boys were raised to be leaders and heroes.
I tried so hard for years to be what I was supposed to be, but I had a curious mind and I loved the Bible and theology from a very early age. I couldn’t figure out why my curiosity and questions were so threatening—I loved Jesus and I was eager to learn. I was too much. The same skills that earned me honors at school made me suspect in church.
I became a Christ follower as a teenager and quickly learned that Christian women were to have gentle and quiet spirit and be submissive. I never fit that model and tried for too long. I remember at the small, conservative Bible college I attended that the women were required to take Hermeneutics our senior year with the understanding that we weren't allowed to preach (except in the class of course). My friends and I found it more than odd. Fortunately, I had a Greek prof who encouraged me and was very supportive of women in church leadership back in the late 70s. It's still been a challenging journey.
The things I was taught growing up in church about what women should be like was not so much an explicit curriculum - it was more about implicit expectations, in view of the role models we had (the wives of the men who were leaders in our church). They were supporters, homemakers, they lead choir and taught children in Sunday school, but they were NOT leaders. However, they were VERY EXPILICIT when it came to teaching us about sexual purity - that it is the woman's responsibility to protect it - for herself and for all men she came into contact with. In college, when I was a small group Bible study leader, one of our training sessions was given by the wives of the pastors - it was largely about appropriate attire and behavior, and all the things we need to take into consideration so that we "don't cause our brothers to stumble." Purity culture for sure robbed me of a healthy view of sexuality and what relationships between men and women should look like in the church.
The first three things that came to mind for me were: service-oriented, extroverted hospitality, and faithful/involved (especially in church activities and daily quiet times).
Her look: trendy but modest, big necklaces, always smiling, hair and makeup always done.
I grew up in a huge SBC megachurch in Dallas. I didn’t get a lot of messages that women should be quiet and submissive although women were not in the top leadership. Rather, the ideal woman was extroverted and rather bold in her faith. There was not a lot of room for quietness or introversion. There was also not room for subtlety or nuance in theological matters.
I probably should not comment but here goes. To be a respected woman in the church is to be Christlike using the wisdom that comes from living “In Christ” through knowledge of scripture. It seems the world has so invaded the church that we are measuring ourselves by worldly standards. I am a 78 year old Christian of the Wesleyan persuasion having spent my life in the Methodist Church and yes some of those years in leadership. The ideal Christian woman looks like Jesus…..serving with wisdom and strength from above wherever God chooses. I have never experienced exclusion or callous comments because of my gender but I grieve for those who have. Perhaps I am blessed by living in the Bible Belt and being of my generation when ladies were treated with dignity, even when they have opinions!
Strong, supportive, faithful. Those words would describe my mother, as well as many other women in the farming community I grew up in, doing what needed to be done to keep things together in a harsh, difficult life. While no longer on the farm, the world remains a hard place for most, and those qualities remain valuable.
I was away from the computer and didn't see this until today.
I had the advantage of growing up Catholic. Even in the '50s and '60s, women were not pigeonholed into looking or acting a certain way. Women could aspire to do any honest job in society, and to do any work of mercy/service/ministry in the Church. Even though ordained priestly ministry was not an option, the priesthood was the ONLY exception. Women could do anything Our Lord led them to do. In marriage, both husband and wife were seen as "the head" of the family; deference to the husband was enjoined but was anything but heavy-handed.
Interestingly, I gave up that freedom when I became an Evangelical, because of my respect for Scripture; I was one of the few Catholics I knew who had - and read - a Bible. (I asked for a Bible for my 6th birthday, and got it - the old Douay-Rheims version - difficult for a child to read, but I did my best to navigate, enjoying the stories and parables.) I wanted to follow "what the Bible said", and therefore I took on the hermeneutic of '70s - '80s Evangelicalism, and that particular view of women and what they could do; the people I trusted in ministry had studied The Bible way more than I had, and I figured they knew what they were talking about. I am ashamed to say I even bought a copy of <I>The Total Woman</i> (read it once, put it in a box, threw it away some years later) from good motivation - I wanted to be the Christian God wanted me to be - also partially driven by my perfectionism.
As I became aware of what was behind the perfectionism and began to experience healing, and with further study of Scripture and the influence of better teachers, I moved away from the tight expectations of the more fundamentalist kind of Evangelicalism and into a hermeneutic that affirmed women as human beings, and capable of serving in any avenue of ministry. I still believe that if you are a Protestant, any avenue of ministry is open to you - male or female. Pretty much all Evangelicals and other non-sacramental Protestants claim a "sola scriptura" model of scriptural authority; It's the <u>hermeneutic</u> (and also a bare literal reading in many cases) that makes the difference in how women are viewed.
In Orthodoxy, I have returned to the freedom (I have theological reasons for not reverting to RC). No, women can't be ordained - but again, that is the only exception. Women actually have more freedom than ordained men, who mostly have to remain in their parishes, to go anywhere God leads them to go. At its deepest, Orthodox theology does not vest authority in males; all authority belongs to Christ, even if males and females get confused about that. Everyone is called to serve, even - but not limited to - the guys wearing robes. The priesthood reflects two things: 1) the historical continuity of Christianity from within Judaism, which had no priestesses because it was not a fertility religion; and 2) the iconicity of Orthodoxy, in which the visible, especially in the worship setting, points to invisible realities, the greatest of which is the Incarnation - the union (begun at a point in time in Mary's womb, and continuing beyond the ages) of God and Humanity. I realize that culturally in the US it is easier for Orthodox women that in "the old countries", even now, but THEOLOGICALLY women are, and have always been, fully human and on the same level as men in God's Kingdom, differentiated, like men, only in their spiritual capabilities. We have the Holy Myrrhbearers who saw Christ first after his resurrection. We have multiple women whom we call "Equal to the Apostles" because whole people groups came to Christ because of their witness. We have many female saints who were physicians, and otherwise educated. We have Mary the Mother of God, who is our "Champion Leader", so called in one of our oldest and most famous prayers - whom the vast majority of Protestants disdain (along with all the other saints, who are worthy of at least respect as our older brothers and sisters in Christ). I'm not trading away that freedom ever again.
Had a pastor who once declared from the pulpit; "I am married to a hottie!!" The fact was, she dyed her hair blond, was "required' to wear contacts, never her glasses in public, was required to look 25 when she was almost 50. The pastor also dresses like a 25-year old, though he has a 20-something year old daughter. Image is everything.
After moving from being a missionary in Asia for 20 years and becoming a pastor at a multi-site evangelical attractional model church in California, I began to be surprised about what the new, US white evangelical millennial ideal Christian woman was expected to be. The phrases used here such as “ quiet, gentle little wifey” and “more in the shadows” and “wholesome yet hot, strong yet submissive… sexy, in a modest, Christian sort of way” and “calm” and “modest, selfless, humble” and “blond, thin” and “white” and “not ambitious or career-oriented” and “political” (right wing, anti abortion, abstinence) and also engaged on social media all certainly fit. Image management and the female avoidance of the shame of not being seen as perfect (as Brene Brown prolifically describes in her research about US culture at large) were all palpable in this scenario. To be seen as nuanced in one’s opinion on abortion, to be seen as ambitious in one’s career or to not be small/thin was to be seen as flawed, dangerous or automatically discredited. Thanks for writing about this. We need more of this kind of conversation in the US church.
Scot, are you asking what I was taught she was like or what I thought she would ideally be like? Those two questions have very different answers. For me she is independent and active and adventuresome (I'm not taking time here to describe in more specific terms what I mean). To the contrary, growing up in a conservative church and attending a conservative college, I was given no reason to develop skills beyond good homemaking and the habit of saying, "Yes, Sir!" to almost everything. There really was no room for personal development beyond personal appearance and domestic skills. GROAN. But as an adult woman I've spent more than 30 years helping godly women gain freedom from those strictures. (And over time 46 women have graduated from my D.Min. program for women at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary - women who found their voice (!) - with a few more still in the pipeline.)
Married, mother, compliant.
(I've just started reading Gaddini's book too -- read her RELEVANT article first, and then found the book. Glad you're looking at it too. I think there's a lot to learn in there.)
I hate evangelical “roles”. It is a fake role to try to give some men the power, control, and authority they abuse scripture to get. (I skipped your first question And went to later ones). Nowhere in my Biblical studies does Jesus say to put a fake role above Him, but I am not a Biblical scholar. This is hypocritical, false teaching, and wrong viewpoint of who He is.
When I was in middle school, all of the girls were in a discipleship group with the pastor’s wife and the boys were in a group with the youth pastor.
The girls had Bible studies about humility and submission. I remember we did an in-depth study of Philippians and we had to memorize the Christ-hymn in Phil. 2. We studied Proverbs 31.
Meanwhile, the boys met in the gym, played basketball, and learned about the heroes of the Bible (which were all men). These were not nuanced views of Bible characters. They were used as moralistic stereotypes of leaders and heroes.
I didn’t realize it then, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. We were being cultured in specific gendered roles. Girls were to be humble and submissive. Boys were raised to be leaders and heroes.
I tried so hard for years to be what I was supposed to be, but I had a curious mind and I loved the Bible and theology from a very early age. I couldn’t figure out why my curiosity and questions were so threatening—I loved Jesus and I was eager to learn. I was too much. The same skills that earned me honors at school made me suspect in church.
I became a Christ follower as a teenager and quickly learned that Christian women were to have gentle and quiet spirit and be submissive. I never fit that model and tried for too long. I remember at the small, conservative Bible college I attended that the women were required to take Hermeneutics our senior year with the understanding that we weren't allowed to preach (except in the class of course). My friends and I found it more than odd. Fortunately, I had a Greek prof who encouraged me and was very supportive of women in church leadership back in the late 70s. It's still been a challenging journey.
The things I was taught growing up in church about what women should be like was not so much an explicit curriculum - it was more about implicit expectations, in view of the role models we had (the wives of the men who were leaders in our church). They were supporters, homemakers, they lead choir and taught children in Sunday school, but they were NOT leaders. However, they were VERY EXPILICIT when it came to teaching us about sexual purity - that it is the woman's responsibility to protect it - for herself and for all men she came into contact with. In college, when I was a small group Bible study leader, one of our training sessions was given by the wives of the pastors - it was largely about appropriate attire and behavior, and all the things we need to take into consideration so that we "don't cause our brothers to stumble." Purity culture for sure robbed me of a healthy view of sexuality and what relationships between men and women should look like in the church.
The first three things that came to mind for me were: service-oriented, extroverted hospitality, and faithful/involved (especially in church activities and daily quiet times).
Her look: trendy but modest, big necklaces, always smiling, hair and makeup always done.
I grew up in a huge SBC megachurch in Dallas. I didn’t get a lot of messages that women should be quiet and submissive although women were not in the top leadership. Rather, the ideal woman was extroverted and rather bold in her faith. There was not a lot of room for quietness or introversion. There was also not room for subtlety or nuance in theological matters.
I probably should not comment but here goes. To be a respected woman in the church is to be Christlike using the wisdom that comes from living “In Christ” through knowledge of scripture. It seems the world has so invaded the church that we are measuring ourselves by worldly standards. I am a 78 year old Christian of the Wesleyan persuasion having spent my life in the Methodist Church and yes some of those years in leadership. The ideal Christian woman looks like Jesus…..serving with wisdom and strength from above wherever God chooses. I have never experienced exclusion or callous comments because of my gender but I grieve for those who have. Perhaps I am blessed by living in the Bible Belt and being of my generation when ladies were treated with dignity, even when they have opinions!
Strong, supportive, faithful. Those words would describe my mother, as well as many other women in the farming community I grew up in, doing what needed to be done to keep things together in a harsh, difficult life. While no longer on the farm, the world remains a hard place for most, and those qualities remain valuable.
I was away from the computer and didn't see this until today.
I had the advantage of growing up Catholic. Even in the '50s and '60s, women were not pigeonholed into looking or acting a certain way. Women could aspire to do any honest job in society, and to do any work of mercy/service/ministry in the Church. Even though ordained priestly ministry was not an option, the priesthood was the ONLY exception. Women could do anything Our Lord led them to do. In marriage, both husband and wife were seen as "the head" of the family; deference to the husband was enjoined but was anything but heavy-handed.
Interestingly, I gave up that freedom when I became an Evangelical, because of my respect for Scripture; I was one of the few Catholics I knew who had - and read - a Bible. (I asked for a Bible for my 6th birthday, and got it - the old Douay-Rheims version - difficult for a child to read, but I did my best to navigate, enjoying the stories and parables.) I wanted to follow "what the Bible said", and therefore I took on the hermeneutic of '70s - '80s Evangelicalism, and that particular view of women and what they could do; the people I trusted in ministry had studied The Bible way more than I had, and I figured they knew what they were talking about. I am ashamed to say I even bought a copy of <I>The Total Woman</i> (read it once, put it in a box, threw it away some years later) from good motivation - I wanted to be the Christian God wanted me to be - also partially driven by my perfectionism.
As I became aware of what was behind the perfectionism and began to experience healing, and with further study of Scripture and the influence of better teachers, I moved away from the tight expectations of the more fundamentalist kind of Evangelicalism and into a hermeneutic that affirmed women as human beings, and capable of serving in any avenue of ministry. I still believe that if you are a Protestant, any avenue of ministry is open to you - male or female. Pretty much all Evangelicals and other non-sacramental Protestants claim a "sola scriptura" model of scriptural authority; It's the <u>hermeneutic</u> (and also a bare literal reading in many cases) that makes the difference in how women are viewed.
In Orthodoxy, I have returned to the freedom (I have theological reasons for not reverting to RC). No, women can't be ordained - but again, that is the only exception. Women actually have more freedom than ordained men, who mostly have to remain in their parishes, to go anywhere God leads them to go. At its deepest, Orthodox theology does not vest authority in males; all authority belongs to Christ, even if males and females get confused about that. Everyone is called to serve, even - but not limited to - the guys wearing robes. The priesthood reflects two things: 1) the historical continuity of Christianity from within Judaism, which had no priestesses because it was not a fertility religion; and 2) the iconicity of Orthodoxy, in which the visible, especially in the worship setting, points to invisible realities, the greatest of which is the Incarnation - the union (begun at a point in time in Mary's womb, and continuing beyond the ages) of God and Humanity. I realize that culturally in the US it is easier for Orthodox women that in "the old countries", even now, but THEOLOGICALLY women are, and have always been, fully human and on the same level as men in God's Kingdom, differentiated, like men, only in their spiritual capabilities. We have the Holy Myrrhbearers who saw Christ first after his resurrection. We have multiple women whom we call "Equal to the Apostles" because whole people groups came to Christ because of their witness. We have many female saints who were physicians, and otherwise educated. We have Mary the Mother of God, who is our "Champion Leader", so called in one of our oldest and most famous prayers - whom the vast majority of Protestants disdain (along with all the other saints, who are worthy of at least respect as our older brothers and sisters in Christ). I'm not trading away that freedom ever again.
Dana
Had a pastor who once declared from the pulpit; "I am married to a hottie!!" The fact was, she dyed her hair blond, was "required' to wear contacts, never her glasses in public, was required to look 25 when she was almost 50. The pastor also dresses like a 25-year old, though he has a 20-something year old daughter. Image is everything.
gracious, self-controlled, hospitable
Strong, gracious, wise
Quiet, submissive, gifts of helps & hospitality
Hostess, Demure, Hardworking