I don’t know what makes me more angry, the Alabama abortion ban itself or the fact that it was passed by a bunch of white men. ALL white men. My friend Kay Bruner says that Gilead cannot exist without the complicity of women. Well, we’re getting closer to Gilead.
The only antidote to complicity is action. We must have women leading in every sphere and at every level of public life. We must have more women senators and representatives, in state houses and in Washington. We must have more women CEOs. We must have more women judges and justices. We must have more egalitarian marriages. We must have more women deacons, elders, and pastors.
And that’s where it all starts for so many of us — in church. What is our theology of women? Do we believe that men and women are “equal but different” and because of this men get to make all the decisions and women have to dutifully submit? Do we believe that men are our “spiritual authority” and we can only be pastored and taught and shepherded by people with penises because they have a more direct line to God? Do we believe this because “the Bible clearly says so,” according to…men?
It’s time to reject the toxic theology of John Piper and his ilk who tell domestic violence victims to return to their abusive husbands and pray for them to change. It’s time to push back on the gentile types like Tim Keller too, who also restrict women from church leadership and preach women’s submission, but are like “really really nice” about it. Benevolent sexism is still sexism.
It’s time to call out The Gospel Coalition who opted to stand with CJ Mahaney instead of abuse and harassment victims. It’s time to call out the seminaries who don’t allow female students to preach in front of their male classmates (if they can take preaching classes at all). It’s time to call out the denominations who would rather restrict the spread of the gospel than ordain women to preach (at least to white, wealthy, American men — if they want to go preach to poor black and brown people on other continents, meh, that’s cool).
Renowned Southern Baptist teacher Beth Moore said in her epic Twitter thread this week:
“All these years I’d given the benefit of the doubt that these men were the way they were because they were trying to be obedient to Scripture. Then I realized it was not over Scripture at all. It was over sin. It was over power. It was over misogyny. Sexism. It was about arrogance. About protecting systems. It involved covering abuses & misuses of power. Shepherds guarding other shepherds instead of guarding the sheep.”
It’s about sin. It’s about power. It’s about arrogance. And we don’t have to take it lying down anymore.
I’ve had it with the unspoken mental vortex of “God loves you-loves you-loves you, but because of (insert gaslighting tactic here) you need to stay quiet and stay in line.”
Don’t tell me that slaves submitting to their masters was cultural, but wives submitting to their husbands is universal. Don’t tell me that Jesus has written my name in the Book of Life, but my role is to be man’s helper. Don’t tell me that all people are one in Christ, but that I am less in the Church. Don’t tell me I am the apple of God’s eye, but also the weaker vessel, the first to sin, the more easily deceived sex, and automatically disqualified from ministry. Don’t tell me that it is for freedom that I have been set free, but that I’m not free to serve Christ if my gifts threaten you. Don’t tell me that the Lord rejoices over me with singing, but that I must be content in a Christian culture that debates my dignity.
Enough with the bait and switch theology. You can’t have your cake (men and women are equal) and eat it too (women must submit and can’t lead). The game is up.
It’s about sin. It’s about power. It’s about arrogance. And we don’t have to take it lying down anymore.
What we think about ourselves is so closely linked to what we believe God thinks of us (even if you don’t believe in God — this filth is in the water, it’s in the air). And when we’re conditioned, programmed, and gaslit to think we’re less than our brothers, we sit back and create Gilead.
And maybe it’s tolerable — even peachy — for us suburban white women to play out this patriarchal script, but that’s not the case for poor women and women of color, for whom this abortion ban and other abhorrent legislation like it disproportionately affects. So we better sit under the teaching of the marginalized while we work this out, we better think about how our theology of women plays out for all women. As poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Sisters, we must shake ourselves from our stupor and remember that before Genesis 3 came Genesis 1 — we were created “very good,” and goddammit, women are supposed to rule as well as men. The Hebrew Scriptures tell us we are eshet chayil — women of valor! We are ezer kenegdo — warriors!
Complementarianism, patriarchy, equal but different — I don’t want to drink that water. I don’t want to breathe that air. I want better for my sisters, my friends, my mother, my daughters, myself. I want to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven in which all hierarchies are obliterated, not the nation of Gilead in which women are hosts and property.
I refuse to be complicit. I hope you will too.
Photo credits in order:
- By faestock on Adobe
- By rondakimbrow on Adobe
- By phones on Adobe
- Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
