My Journey to Egalitarianism (Part I)

I didn’t start thinking about smashing the patriarchy overnight.

When my first daughter was born I started thinking about her life and all the possibilities that lay before this perfect tiny girl. It was everything in the world — except vocational ministry, except being a pastor, except being a true partner in her future marriage. Because women did not do that, because we were “equal but different,” because the Bible said so, because…she had a uterus.

Suddenly the narrative that I had previously accepted for myself was unacceptable for my daughter.

I had always choked it down — complementarianism, the prettying-up of patriarchy that teaches that men are the leaders of the church and home (like Christ), and that women should submit to their godly leadership (like the Church submits to Christ) — but it was a repressed wellspring of questions and pain that would eventually erupt.

Let me back up a minute.

It wasn’t until high school that I was exposed to Christianity in any meaningful way, and I whispered a prayer for salvation under a starry night sky on New Year’s Eve of my freshman year. As a brand new Christian, I wrote “Help, God” in the margin of the page after my very first reading of 1 Timothy 2:12 – I felt it even then, the pain from those words. See, I wasn’t raised “in a Christian home” and in hindsight, my intuition knew immediately upon reading that verse that something was off. 

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

My cognitive dissonance with conservative Christianity started almost right out of the gate. I didn’t know what any of it meant – I genuinely, deeply loved God and trusted that the Bible was his Holy Word, so to read verses that were just…mean, and relegated me to a second-class citizen, was incredibly confusing. It didn’t make any sense. There was the God I knew and talked to, the God I loved and who loved me. The God who created me, adored me, delighted in me. And then there was this other God who popped up in my Bible from time to time, and he wasn’t anything like the God I knew…but everyone acted like they were one and the same. 

Oh, I did all the good conservative Christian girl things. I read Captivating by Staci Eldredge. I wrote love letters to my hypothetical husband when I was single and prayed for him to be a strong spiritual leader. I verbally disapproved of female pastors because obviously those churches weren’t “Bible-believing.”

But I harbored a suspicion of complementarian theology (and later, a disdain). I accepted that it was the correct theology, because it came from the Bible, but as I got into my twenties, I didn’t mind giving God some side-eye about it — and, later, my husband too. Oh that crap? Yeah, yeah whatever. He knew not to bring up “the s word” (submit).

I played along. I towed the line. I thought it was stupid, but I also thought the Bible endorsed it, and I believed the Bible to be straight from God’s mouth to my ear. And I married a really sweet, easygoing guy, so it wasn’t much of an issue that I was, umm, “rough around the edges” when it came to submission. And I had no desire to be a pastor myself, so I wasn’t even thinking about that part (restrictions on women’s ordination).

And then I had a baby girl. And then my edges were gone completely.

After Phoebe was born I started researching. A friend encouraged me to read Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey. At first I was mad: “Oh sure, Sarah, this sounds great and all, but where’s your proof??! What about this Scripture, and this Scripture, and this Scripture? You’re missing about a hundred footmarks, because you can’t just like, come up with your own theology!!!”

I felt threatened, even panicked. She was offering something that was tantalizing – women’s equality in Christian marriage and in the Church – but it was also scary and disorienting. If she was right, if another theology was possible, then why had no one ever told me? What was I to make of all the teachers I’d had up to that point? What about the conservative denomination that ordained my husband? What about the conservative pastor’s wife that I was supposed to be?

The questions ate me alive and I began a very intensive season of research.

I devoured books and articles and every blog post from The Junia Project. I couldn’t get enough. I read, and read, and read for months. I interrogated the Bible, all the verses used to support complementarianism and all the verses used to support egalitarianism. I dug into academic papers. I listened to podcasts. Formative teachers emerged, like Sarah Bessey (I stopped being mad at her), and Rachel Held Evans, who taught me that God loved me as a woman absolutely as much as I always hoped he did. 

I learned all about egalitarianism – this whole other way of thinking about the Bible and women and gender roles that everyone conveniently forgot to tell me about. I fused my love for women with my love for Jesus, the way it always should have been. It felt so whole, so right, so just. I realized being a feminist and being a Christian were not mutually exclusive, and I was furious no one had ever told me this before. 

They let me think that in order to honor God I had to be less than they were, and they did it with the gentlest voices and the sweetest words.

One day I watched John Piper, revered Reformed pastor, say on video that “well, what kind of abuse are we dealing with” when asked if women should submit to abusive husbands, and that wives may have to “endure verbal abuse for a season,” and “perhaps getting smacked one night.” And then something just BROKE inside me. I mean, BROKE. There was no going back. John Piper was justifying domestic violence, and using God to do it, and I wanted to vomit and I wanted to scream and I wanted to burn every Piper book in the whole goddamn world. 

Additional reading/listening:

• Defusing the 1 Timothy 2:12 Bomb by Gail Wallace (article)
• Faith and Feminism podcast with Meghan Tschanz (every episode is fire!)
• 5 Myths of Male Headship by Kate Nunnery (article)
• Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (book)
• We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (book)

Photo credits in order:

• Personal photo
• Personal photo
• Photo by Picsea on Unsplash
• Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash
• Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash