Rebecca Groothius recently blogged that one can be a Christian egalitarian without following the politics of feminism. In her first major point she writes:
Biblical equality is not equivalent to the politics of feminism (the incessant rhetoric of patriarichal-complementarians not withstanding). Rather, biblical equality seeks to understand and explicate biblical teaching regarding the mission and meaning of women and men in the family of God. The question specifically at issue is whether or not the believer’s authority in Christ is conditioned by the gender of the believer. Feminism, on the other hand, is fundamentally a political and cultural agenda. The question of a woman’s biblically-based authority in Christ is not a question that concerns culture at large, but is rather a biblical and theological concern. Thus, a biblical egalitarian is not necessarily a feminist, and a feminist is not likely to be a biblical egalitarian.
How do you think that Christian egalitarians diverge from the politics of feminism?
Well, the question of abortion comes to my mind quite quickly.
Good, Mike. Rebecca deals with the question of abortion extensively in her long blog post.
I do acknowledge differences between male and female, I am not trying or wanting to take the place of men, nor do I think men are unnecessary. In fact the opposite is true.
Biblical egalism strives for spiritual equality while ‘feminism’ does not.
“How do you think that Christian egalitarians diverge from the politics of feminism?”
In one sense my answer is I don’t know. The reason is that “feminism” seems to mean something very different in the UK compared to the US.
Just like socialism does.
So think we would need to unpack what we mean by “the politics of feminism?” to be sure we were comparing egalitarianism to the same thing.
For example, in the UK I believe there is quite a range of views on abortion by those who would consider themselves feminists. For example many/most Catholic feminists would take a stand against abortion.
Part of the challenge is that early feminism (1900s)was almost all Christian but later (1960s) became secularized. So that same word ends up meaning different things depending on the time period.
Perhaps the most obvious example of differences is that the early feminists were against abortion while the later feminists were for it.
I really enjoyed reading her post.
I didn’t necessarily agree with her definition of feminist…don said it well when he brought out that there are many different forms of feminism.
Radical feminism is something that I, as a Christian, am not able to be. However general feminism, the belief that men and women should be treated with equality, seems like it doesn’t go against my beliefs as a Christian. Nor does working towards a political or cultural agenda (which Christians do all the time, when they work to eradicate laws that make abortion easy, when they fought for laws that would enable all children to be educated, etc).
In my opinion, we can work for a political or cultural agenda in good conscience, as long as we have beneath it a spiritual “agenda”—meaning, as long as we realize that simply changing politics or culture is not enough, the real change must be affected in the heart.
Apart from that difference, which may just be semantics, I really liked what she had to say.
This is great:
The question of a woman’s biblically-based authority in Christ is not a question that concerns culture at large, but is rather a biblical and theological concern.
Fully agreed, and I think we see this on display in church and society. In most conservative churches, a woman can be a CEO of a major corporation, but when the church business meeting prepares to vote on a matter, only the “heads of households” vote, and the woman has no voice except as represented through her husband (if he decides to listen to her). Culturally and politically, much has changed. But because the argument has not been approached Biblically on a mass scale, the policies inside the walls of the church remain the same.
“”How do you think that Christian egalitarians diverge from the politics of feminism?”"
Christian Egals look to Scripture as their source for authoritative information.
“How do you think that Christian egalitarians diverge from the politics of feminism?”
Wayne, I think this is a loaded question. It divides us: us Christian egalitarians from us feminists (as if none of us is ever both). So we try, here, to calculate precisely all the wedges: abortion, secularism, radicalism. If Don’s history is correct (I think it might be), then why not ask whether Christians in America abandoned feminists? Why not remember that early feminists (Christians) were also against abortion because abortion was in the hands (literally) of men and men only (i.e., male gynecologists, husbands, law makers, law enforcers, lawyers, and judges)? It was the Supreme Court, mostly Christian men, who had to side with women on the abortion issue. These men were three Presbyterians, two Methodists, an Episcopal, and one not a public believer. (The two dissenters on Roe v. Wade were a Lutheran–Rehnquist, and White, who was not a public Christian in any sense.) And each one of these believed “Jane Roe” (Norma L. McCorvey) who claimed she had been raped. The Christian-feminist-political issue WAS not so separatist then. It was an issue of compassion by Christian Justices hearing a woman’s plea.
I know you’re following Groothius’s first major point, “Biblical equality is not equivalent to the politics of feminism (the incessant rhetoric of patriarichal-complementarians not withstanding).” But how pointed and divisive and derisive a point. Not sure this is the way to win the culture war. But it sure is a way to fight it. (Seems to me quite different from Jesus, who is a feminist, I say, and who fought culture wars against the religious bible quoters while fighting for the raped, the judged, the sinners.)
Good points you’ve made, Kurk. My question was, as you noted, a followup to Rebecca’s article. I earlier blogged how I would approach the definition of terms and I think my opinions are similar to yours.
Great comment, JK…thanks. Good stuff.
JKG: I know you’re following Groothius’s first major point, “Biblical equality is not equivalent to the politics of feminism (the incessant rhetoric of patriarichal-complementarians not withstanding).” But how pointed and divisive and derisive a point. Not sure this is the way to win the culture war. But it sure is a way to fight it. (Seems to me quite different from Jesus, who is a feminist, I say, and who fought culture wars against the religious bible quoters while fighting for the raped, the judged, the sinners.) ENDQUOTE
you forgot someone, Kurt
you forgot “the least of these”
you forgot the baby
so, the baby is not “equal”?
size discrimination is fine?
how is that different than Nazi Germany? Deitrich Bonhoffer was “divisive” too.
I say that it is incompatible with GOOD NEWS to claim that “compassion” for a woman means we support her killing her baby
Personally, I think Jesus cares about the baby. And I think that a woman aborting her baby will not bear good fruit.
But I’m not egalitarian, nor feminist like you. So I don’t have your qualifications for answering the question Wayne posed. I am a woman, and I don’t wish to be “equal” to men who think its “compassionate” for me to kill a baby for convenience, for my pocketbook, to hide my shame, nor even for another’s horrible sin against me.
I think Groothuis has identified a serious flaw in “egalitarianism”.
Groothuis is one of the editors of “Discovering Biblical Equality” so she is a Biblical egalitarian, but not a secular one.
I think Groothuis has identified a serious flaw in “egalitarianism”.
IMO, This question of abortion has nothing to do with being either eglitarian or complementarian. In ancient Greece, the father made decisions about when a foetus had to be aborted based on economic considerations. The mother might have no choice about this. Also in many countries, abortion is related to larger issues of economic control, land allotment, and control over women. Abortion is used to eliminate female babies before they are born.
Abortion is a tool of economic control and can be used either by the country, cultural group, father or mother who wishes to control the birth rate.
It has absolutely nothing to do with being either egalitarian or complementarian. Restrictions on the birth rate was an integral interest to land division and patriarchal societies in ancient Greece, in Victorian England and in any country where men wished to limit live births. The fact that in this present moment patriarchal groups wish to boost their birth rate is incidental. Patriarchy has taken on this issue for their own purposes.
My experience is that of being under a father-in-law’s authoritarian stance which dictated that women:
- must limit their live births to two or be publicly berated for “breeding like rabbits.”
- must never have an abortion
- must not raise any child born out of wedlock but give it up for adoption
- should probably have only one child
- should work full time in some role which supported their husband’s calling
- should give the baby to a nanny and then send it to boarding school at the age of 6
- should only express opinions which he agreed with
- should spend their life on the mission field in some country where women were more or less kept under control
He thought that all children were an attempt on the part of women to have a domain of their own in life and therefore should be restricted.
This is one stream of patriarchy which I experienced.
To have children, to not have children, to home school, or send children to boarding school, to have an abortion, or not have an abortion, all these things have been the tools of patriarchy throughout history.
Conversely, they can also, all of them, be the tools of radical feminism. Let’s get a grip on how people use these things as boundary setters and instruments of control.
My perception is that the chief spokespeople for Christian egalitarians today are anti abortion.
I don’t think that there is any question that abortion was a popular means of birth control for any woman with more than two children in Victorian England among the landed gentry. OTOH, mistresses were another method of limiting the number of legitimate children a man might father.
Personally, I think Jesus cares about the baby.
Thanks, Gem. I couldn’t agree more with you on this. Jesus also cares about the Jews. He was a baby and is a Jew. Anti-abortionists would have protected him in his mother’s womb; Bonhoffer would have protected him from Hitler. Jesus also protected an unnamed women caught in adultery, deserving public execution by stoning, the kind of execution designed to sanctify marriage under the Jewish legal and moral code. Jesus also protected an unnamed woman who was not Jewish but rather a half-breed Samaritan who wasn’t very moral or very married at all–and she may even be the very first compassionate evangelical Christian because he listened to her story, and he did not condemn her for her choices or her impure race.
However, where’s such compassion in Rebecca Groothius’s statement? Drawing lines to purify the political camps does not easily allow any of us to sympathize with others, whose impossible experiences and circumstances put them in moral and legal binds. Why do “the politics of feminism” (as Groothius might parse that) really have to be so different from what she labels “Biblical equality”? (And is it really helpful to compare the Third Reich to any of the four waves of feminisms in America?) Will my daughters, if they find themselves in moral and legal binds, find compassion from Christians OR from fourth-wave feminists or perhaps from both?
Christian, scriptural egalitarians are not demnding their rights. They desire to serve to the fullest measure that their God-given gifts, talents, abilities and calling will allow.