At its heart, the modern “biblical womanhood movement,” as embodied by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and organizations like it, is not really about returning to a biblical lifestyle; it’s about returning to an idealized vision of pre-feminist, 1950s America that relegates a woman’s identity to her roles as wife, mother, and homemaker. Far from being counter-cultural, it is profoundly cultural, in that it emerges as a reaction to feminism and finds its ethos in nostalgic esteem for a specific time in American cultural history.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Rachel Held Evans on Women of Valor
Her entire post can be found here, but here's a quote that strikes at the heart of one of the main reasons why complementarianism is so frustrating to me:
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I think the authors that Evans quotes represent an extreme view of complementarianism. I have never heard a CMBW advocate say the kinds of things referenced in the article, like how the only way a woman honors God is in the home.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the title of the post presents a false dichotomy. The debate isn't about roles VERSUS character. It's about both. One's role doesn't preclude growth of character; growth of character doesn't preclude the possibility and performance of divinely assigned roles/responsibilities within the family.
Also, Evans says that following Christ--not motherhood--is a woman's highest calling, which I agree with, but she makes the same mistake as other feminists: she confuses motherhood with the "ability to procreate." In other words, she confuses one's role with one's biological capacity. Being a WOMAN is the ability to grow a child within one's body; being a mother is the role of raising and providing for the child in his biological capacity as a female. Similarly, being a father does not mean supplying sperm to a woman for a child--that is his biological capacity. Being a father is the role of raising and providing for the child in his biological capacity of being a man.
ReplyDeleteA woman's worth is not measured by her capacity to bear children or to be a mother. She should follow Christ with everything she is and has, whether she is within or without a family, husband, or children. But if she chooses to marry, she chooses to place herself under her husband's headship--a role that she herself has not been given within the family. Outside of the family, it's a different story. She may be a great leader. But within the family structure, she is called to adjure to her husband's (selfless, loving, servant) leadership.
I also really like Evan's section on Ruth.
ReplyDeleteBut if you notice the author she references, it is a CBMW author, and the article is found inside their ridiculously large work "Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood". For whatever YOU feel complementarianism is, the truth is that the largest, loudest voices (INCLUDING people like John Piper and Wayne Grudem) are the ones saying the very things Evans is arguing against. The biggest voices on complementarianism are missing the mark of what it means to be complementarian, if indeed complementarianism is only what you say it is.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know! I saw that after I posted my comment. Weird. But I guess I never heard Piper or Grudem say something like that. Or any pastor I've talked to. Or any complementarian wife...I think.
ReplyDeletePiper actually says in one of his pieces of writing that a woman should be submissive to the point where if she's even giving driving directions to a man she ought to do so in a submissive manner. Have you read Piper or Grudem? Things like this are all the way through them.
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