Do we see the women?

What is the status of women in today's United States?

1. The National Gender Gap widened in 2023 for the fist time in 20 years. Women make 82.7 cents on the dollar compared to men.  (link)
2. Abortion bans not only remove women's choice regarding their bodies, but they also endanger women's health and harm state economies.  Most states with the lowest gross domestic product per capital also have total abortion bans.
3. Women experience higher poverty rates than men, women face specific adverse health conditions, and women are under represented in political office (link)
4. According to Pew Research, there have been gender gap gains  and gaps.  Women outnumber men in the U.S. college-educated workforce.  While women have increased their presence in almost all of the higher-paying jobs, they are still a minority in many of them.  The gender pay gap has remained flat over the last 20 years, and women still lag in leadership positions in business and government. (link)
5. In 1994, the Violence against Women act was signed into law (with bipartisan support).  This law improved law enforcement response to violence against women and provided critical services to women.  Since 2019, it has not been extended due to political disputes (Link)

Adam Hamilton, in the book Luke, says, "Regarding violence and harassment against women, the United Nations reports that 741 million women around the world have been victims of some kind of violence, usually at the hands of a spouse or boyfriend.  In the United States one our of every six women experience either attempted or completed sexual assault - this is over 463,00 women in the US every year. In a recent national survey of 2,009 Americans, eight-one percent of women reported that they had been sexually harassed at some time in their lives."

The full title of Hamilton's book is Luke: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws. The second chapter is called, "Simon, do you see this woman?"  In it, Hamilton makes the point that one of Luke's themes is that Jesus saw the women.

Do we see the women?

 

Women and Early Mission Work

 Many early missionary societies were led by Methodist women, partly due to the MEC's policy of an exclusively male clergy. These societies were precursors to today's United Women in Faith and the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. Discuss these themes, and how women have embodied the Wesleyan emphasis on ministry to the poor, sick, and incarcerated. 

https://www.umc.org/en/content/timeline-of-women-in-methodism

 

The prohibition against women as preaches goes back to the early Methodist movement. Wesley himself would not permit (most) women to preach, although he did authorize Sarah Mallet to preach. In 1957, the United Brethren General Conference passed a resolution that no woman should be allowed to preach.  In 1866, Helenor Davisson was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Protestant Church, making her the first ordained woman in the tradition.  Even though Anna Howard Shaw earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology, she is refused ordinated by the Methodist Episcopal General Conference in 1880.  She joined the Methodist Protestant Church and is ordained.  In 1984, the church rules her ordination out of order.  In 1888, five women were elected as lay delegates to the Methodist Episcopal General Conference; later, male reserves replaced them.  In the same year, the position of deaconess is established for women – women can serve in any capacity that does not require clergy rites – in ministries of love, justice, and service. 

 

Even though women could often not pursue a call to preaching, they were still experiencing the transformed life that Methodism offered.  They heard their calls, and social justice ministry was an outlet opened to them.  Women served as missionaries – sometimes as a spouse, and sometimes as a single person.

 

https://uwfaith.org/who-we-are/our-history/

 

The United Women in Faith is a social justice organization that was founded out of the need to be in service to the world.

 

The United Women in faith website states “In 1869, Clementina Butler and Lois Parker, wives of missionaries to India, made a plea to a group of eight women in Boston about the spiritual and physical needs of poor women in India. They could not be treated by male doctors. Schooling for girls was almost non-existent. Help was desperately needed.”  This was the beginning of what has become the United Women in Faith.  They say they have a legacy of “showing up and getting things done.” This has been my experience with United Women of Faith as well.

 

Other timeline events include that Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave, co-founded Kingston Methodist Church in New York State. She became involved in the abolitionist movement.  Sophronia Farrington, the first single missionary, arrived in Liberia in 1834.  In 1869, Isabella Thoburn and Clara Sawn leave for India.  Thorburn started a college, and Swain began medical work.

The Word

Yesterday, I quoted Rachel Held Evans: "The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget-- that what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out but who it lets in."

Consider for a moment the story of Mary and Martha.  A few years ago, I wrote about this story.  

But that's not what it's about. Mary's decision was radical. Mary decides to not be who she was and to  be someone else -- to be a disciple, sitting at Jesus' feet and learning from him. Ortberg writes,  "Martha did what the culture valued in women: cleaned the house and cooked the food. Mary did  what the culture valued in men: became a disciple".

It's a life transforming decision. And Jesus approved.

Anytime we are struggling with biblical interpretation, we should place our thoughts and teachings against what we know of God and what we know of Jesus.  This is the Word.  This is Truth.

As I thought of this today, I reflected about the evangelical debate regarding complementarianism vs egalitarianism.  When we understand that patriarchy is a synonym of complementariansim, then we understand that the complementarian edict that man should be the head of the household, the head of the church, the head of the world is based SOLELY on the fact that he is a man.  They try to support this idea by saying it is a biblical mandate (my words).  

Compare that to how Jesus lived - the true Word.  Compare that to the idea that God created man and woman in God's image.  I think the patriarchal view espoused by complementarians is supported by our 1950s view of traditional family structure, not by Jesus.  Not even by the Bible, if one reads it deeply instead of proof-texting.  References to Biblical Manhood, Biblical Womanhood, and the Biblical definition of marriage as are used to try to support the edict, but they fail.  The 1950's image of Ozzie and Harriet is not scripture.  Jesus is Truth.  Jesus is the Word.  What does Jesus say?  

And what does the Bible really say?

The Women

Last Sunday I taught a Sunday school lesson based on Genesis 30.  This chapter and the ones around it are concerned with the story of Jacob, Laban, Rachel, Leah, Billhah, and Zilpah.  

You probably know the story.  Jacob goes to Haran and his uncle Laban, brother to his mother, Rebeccah.  He first meets Rachel (Laban’s daughter) at a well.  He falls in love at first sight.  He makes a bargain with Laban to work seven years keeping his sheep in order to marry Rachel.  We know the story that Laban tricks Jacob, and he marries Leah, the older daughter).  He marries Rachel one week later, and works 7 more years.  In those seven years, Leah has four sons, Rachel gave her maid Bilhah to Jacob, and the maid (and therefore Rachel) had two sons.  Leah sent her maid to Jacob, and that maid (Zilpah) had two sons.  Leah had a two more sons and a daughter, then Rachel finally had a son (Joseph).  Rachel had one more son, Benjamin, and died in childbirth.

We often only see the story with the perspective with which we were taught about it, but I think it is important to see it differently - through the eyes of the women.

What about Leah and Rachel.  They have no say in who they marry and when. They have no control over their future - whether they go with Jacob when he leaves or stay with their father (this is part of the bargaining that Jacob does with his uncle).  Their worth is determined only by the birth of sons - Rachel is shamed until she eventually has Joseph.

And think about the maids.  They are truly property.  Their mistresses give them to Jacob, they get pregnant, but their own children do not belong to them.  Maid is probably not a correct word - slave would be a more descriptive one.

How does this change how we see the story? When we read it with traditional eyes, do we see the rape of Bilhah and Zilpah?  Do we see the less-than-human standing of Rachel and Leah?  Do we really SEE the women at all?

Changing the Story

I'm reading Inspired by Rachel Held Evans.  The chapter I am currently reading struggles with the violence and warfare of the Bible - and the portion I read this morning speaks about the responses of women in the Bible to violence.

Think of the friends of the daughter of Jephthah who instituted a four day annual remembrance ritual after her death.  "They refused to let the nation forget what it had done in God's name."  Or, says Evans, think of the response of a mother to the sacrifice of her two sons as depicted in 2 Samuel 21.  She goes on to write, "The point is, if you pay attention to the women, a more complex history of Israel's conquests emerges."  

How can we use this revelation to understand our current culture of violence against and objectification of women? I see people responding as if sexual assault doesn't matter or isn't believable.  How can we, as women, respond in a way that protests this conclusion? How can we, as women, stand for those among us (not only women) who have been hurt by those with power? Hurt by those more physically powerful or powerful in other ways? What can we do as women to change our history?

Authority

So, if you have time, go read this editorial piece in Christianity Today:

The question that Tish Harrison Warren is asking is this: Who is in Charge of the Christian Blogosphere? Her premise, I think, is that women (especially women, for some reason) are blogging, and no one is granting them the authority to do so. No one is watching them. No one is pulling them back when the "get it wrong." No one is stopping them from leading people astray.

Hmmm.

Now, don't misunderstand my motivation in writing this post. Warren is not talking about me. She's talking about people like Rachel Held Evans and Jen Hatmaker - women bloggers who have very large followings and who are NOT writing in support of the Evangelical/Conservative doctrines. She's talking about them because they are influencing a large number of people.

But the question of the source of my authority is still there. What is my authority in writing this blog post? In writing my blog at all?

I think my authority comes from God. I have a brain; I have the motivation to share my faith. (It's not secret - we all do), and those are gifts from God. I feel a calling to write this blog, and I believe the calling is from God. Believe me, it would be easier to stop doing it than to do it. But I want to do it, and I see from it that I grow when I do it (just like any other discipline).

 

Do I get it right all of the time? If you're reading this, you know that I do not. I'm telling you what I think - I'm telling you the conclusions that I believe God has led me to. (It's not a secret - it's called Sandpiper's Thoughts). I believe you have a brain, and that God is working through you, too, and that between you and me, God will do what God does, and use what I write to speak God's message to you. 

It's not at all flawless. It's not at all perfect. But I don't need anyone else's authority to do it. I don't need another man (or woman, for that matter) to watch me, or to grant approval on what I am doing. 

And if I don't, then neither does anyone else.