Patriarchy Destroys Love: How Misogyny Undermines the Gospel
In those days,
I will pour out my Spirit even on my servants — men and women alike — and they will prophecy.
(This one is for my mom, Jennifer, my sister, Brooke, Becky, Anna, Hannah, Danae, Susan, Shayna, Sara, Mrs. Henneman, Ms. Beeler, Mrs. Rubus, and all of the women who have crossed my path who have been hurt and/or overlooked by the church. Hope it is a blessing).
“I just think the man should lead.”
We had been on the phone for four hours. The early-stage, smitten kind of long talk where you go way past your adult bedtime but stay on the line because the teenage, infatuated part kicks the rational out the door.
“But why?”
“I don’t know. It just says so in the Bible.”
I remember I stayed on the line for several seconds, bothered and/or confused on two fronts. First, there are a lot of weird parts of the Bible that, bear minimum, require some level of exegesis, explanation, context, or understanding. Just saying you believe in something because the Bible says so, I’d argue, is similar to quoting an article you read and claiming it as truth because you found it on the internet. Now, I know I just lost some of you by comparing the Bible to the internet, but all that I’m suggesting is I find that reasoning not solid enough to hold in a corporate sense.
Secondly, in a similar “corporate” sense, I never resonated with the idea of male leadership as it was taught to me as a young man. I am not extroverted. I am not quick to claim or state value judgments on others or movements or trends. I am slow to speak, and sometimes slower to act.
But I have now been in several positions of leadership in churchy, spiritual ish capacities. And I don’t think it was because I am a guy. Or because of how “manly” I am. I think it’s due to my traits more than my genitalia.
I believe leadership in the church has more to do with who you are in Christ than what body parts you carry.
I probably lost some more of you, but before I go further, I will put a disclaimer here. I know and am friends with both men and women who adhere to “classic” standards of gender and “orthodox” interpretation of female leadership, specifically in church, who are very loving, very kind, and very good examples of Christlikeness. Although I fall in the egalitarian camp and they complimentarian, I do not claim to have the moral high ground as far as my ability to love the Lord, our God, with all of who I am and to love my neighbor as myself compared to them.
However, I believe patriarchy, in the way that it has persisted within the church in the west (and probably east too), has damaged women (and men) far more than it has successfully preserved classic standards of male and femaleness.
I have heard way too many stories of women I know and love ignored, belittled, and ridiculed at the very least and abused, accosted, and sometimes raped whilst in church communities where the only leaders were men. I have heard too few stories of churches led solely by men responding well to allegations against one of their fellow members, himself a man, of him harming a female congregant.
Further, I would argue that this is damaging to men too. This inhibits the very character formation Paul (often cited in defense of abhorrent misogynistic behavior), Peter, John, and Jesus Himself are focusing their energy on in all of the NT. Even in situations with churches led solely by men, supposing they were all good and Godly, how could they understand, in a better, more “rational” way, abuse at the hands of a man toward a woman, than a woman in that same position of leadership? Is it even rational for a woman to bring her abuse from a man to a group of solely men?
To me it seems absurd to point to four or five passages, all relatively obscure and all richly contextual, regarding women in leadership or in marriage or at church, that circumvent several hundred passages that resoundingly promote equality, love, self-sacrifice, and justice in every page and in every sentence of the Gospels, in all of the letters from the disciples.
Elaine Health, minister in the United Methodist Church, describes it this way:
“It’s how you read the Bible. Whose lens are you wearing… (in liberation theology) we call it ‘reading from below.’ Instead of reading from the dominant group that has all the power and feels entitled, you’re reading from the perspective of everybody else who is at the bottom of the power pyramid.”
In short, patriarchy destroys love. In the romantic sense, the platonic sense, the corporate sense, the Christian sense. It undermines the very fabric of the Good News. If 50% of the population can enjoy (or “take the burden of”) the task of leadership, how can that be good for the other 50% who live in a world already dominated by the other population? Where can they run to take refuge if not the church?
Using Jesus Himself as an example of leadership, we see a man that was completely unselfconscious (Are Women Human?, Dorothy Sayers). Here was a man who never mansplained, never condescended, never ignored a woman on the basis of her gender. How could He? Here was the Creator and Author and Lord of all, including gender, being a servant to all, including women. And how did the women respond?
They were the ones at the Cross. They were the ones to see Him rise. And they were the ones who didn’t use rational logic, quality exegesis, or orthodox theology to reject Jesus invitations. There are no accounts of Jesus encountering a woman in the four gospels where the woman walks away from following Jesus.
I’ll write that again so that it sinks in; in all four of the gospel accounts, centered on Jesus, the main guy of Christianity, there are zero occasions where after Jesus rebuked, corrected, or (usually) gently redirected a woman, she did not continue to follow Him.
It is almost as if those below, on the margins, found something particularly compelling about this teacher from Nazareth. And it was not just the women. The plagued, the racially impure, the economically impoverished, the cultural outsiders, the demon possessed, the little children, yes, even young kids, were all blessed, moved, compelled, repented, and/or turned toward this self-proclaimed Son of Man.
It was men, usually of significant religious or economic power, who hated Him and sought to kill Him. It was the rich young ruler who, though very righteous and who followed every tenant of the Torah, would not give up all of his money to follow Christ. It was the Pharisees, so assured in their moral righteousness and theological impeccability, who ignored the very Savior they spent their whole lives searching for. It was His own disciples, save for one (my boy John), who abandoned their Rabbi in his most dire hour or, worse, outright denied Him.
It was Jesus mother at his birth and death. It was Jesus’ sister at His resurrection.
It was women who believed, trusted, and loved that this man, the truest and best example of manhood we will ever find, was who He said He was.
It was those below who believed in the One who came from the Heavens, who came down to be below with them. They knew Him as Emmanuel, God with us, the Lamb who was slain, and the incarnation of divinity and flesh.
Jesus is our patriarch. Our Father in heaven is our patriarch. He is patient, He is kind, He is love.
And He made all of us, men and women, in His own likeness, out of His own essence. Male and female, this is what God designed.
So why would we deny half of the likeness God made in positions to lead those whom He created? If God’s likeness is male and female, why would we deny half of God’s design because of a few obscure passages contextually written in fiercely patriarchal times for very specific audiences? Why would one passage of the Bible, read for it’s surface message alone, supersede the thrust of all of the rest of the Gospels?
Lastly, why then and why now are women, instead of men, more likely to believe in God with absolute certainty, believe the Bible is the Word of God, and to pray at least once a day?
Let’s then, instead, empower women to follow the True Patriarch. And let’s abandon our ill-conceived notion that they must be led only from other men about the man who called Himself the Son of Man.