Author Rachel Held Evans has announced a theme for her blog this week: “A week of mutuality,” which she describes as a week of blog entries “dedicated to discussing an egalitarian view of gender—including relevant biblical texts and practical applications. The goal is to show how scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all support a posture of equality toward women, one that favors mutuality rather than hierarchy, in the home, Church, and society.”
This topic -- of a Christian view of gender roles, including the debate between complementarianism and egalitarianism -- is one that has been weighing heavily on me for some time, and my inability to address it adequately in writing has accounted in large part for my silence as a contributor here at Thinking Through Christianity. But now, Rachel Held Evans is dedicating a whole week to the issue, and her training and writing style are a treasure for anyone who has struggled with this issue and wants to know more. Now, I should be clear that Ms. Evans is clearly aligning herself with one side of the debate -- and, I'll just come out and tell you that I agree with her; however, this week of blog discussion is valuable no matter which side of the gender-roles debate you find yourself on because it offers thoughtful, well-researched, respectful conversation about a difficult issue, and that is something we value here at Thinking through Christianity.
So, I’m writing to direct you to this resource. It’s only Tuesday, and with two posts a day, there’s already a lot of reading material, but I recommend starting at the beginning with her blog entry on defining the very confusing terms, complementarian and egalitarian. These are the two main, broad views on the roles of men and women in Christianity, and the first time somebody told me about them, it took a long time for me to stop being confused by the terms and definitions. Rachel's explanation is quite helpful.
Her next post tackles the Genesis creation account and some of the ideas about men and women that Christians tend to take away from that text. Her post, 4 common misconceptions about egalitarianism will help clear up any nasty rumors you may have heard about egalitarians, and today's post on the role of women in the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament writers helps to provide cultural context for some of the instructions Paul gives for men and women in his writings.
We here at Thinking Through Christianity also want to join the discussion, so be on the lookout for more posts this week from one or more of us giving our own perspectives on this issue.
5 comments:
Let me begin with a confession. I haven't had time to read Rachel Evans' posts. I have only looked over the one about the New Testament.
Here are my initial thoughts.
First, she's right that Paul and Peter are telling Christians to live Christianly in the situations in which they find themselves, not necessarily endorsing them. Hence there is no convincing New Testament defense of slavery.
Second, I think she's wrong when she says "if Christians are to use these passages to argue that a hierarchal relationship between man and woman is divinely instituted and inherently holy, then, for consistency’s sake, they must also argue the same for the relationship between master and slave." No, they don't. Just because Paul and Peter aren't necessarily condoning a form of hierarchy in the Greco-Roman world doesn't mean they are necessarily not condoning it. Paul condones wifely submission in his letter to Timothy where he points to a background in Genesis for wifely submission; he never does any such thing for slavery.
Third, the paragraph beginning with "What's great about the Christian remix," and the paragraph following, seem very confused. They seem to conflate Christ's humble love for the church with submission. The roles of Christ and the church are not symmetrical. Christ dies for the church; He doesn't submit to her, but she submits to Him.
Fourth, I think she misunderstands the "submit to one another" line. This line, in both the Ephesians and Colossians versions, does not refer to a symmetrical submission of any Christian X to any Christian Y and vice versa. It refers to the submission that is instituted by God or approved by apostolic authority, namely the three submissions listed. If that passage tells husbands to submit to wives, then it also supports the illogicality of masters submitting to servants and the very, very unbliblical idea of parents submitting to children.
Finally, Rachel Evans does very well to take the authority of Scripture seriously. As long as we remember this in our debates, and bear in mind "the continuing debt to love one another" (NIV '84), the church will be ok.
Mark, I appreciate your wise and helpful perspective. There's lots I agree with Evans about and lots I disagree with, some of which you've listed. I think the second issue is a hermeneutics issue, one I hope to address in the post in the queue on William Webb's Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.
PS. Do you hold a more complementarian position? I think it'd be great to have both positions represented here on TTC.
I'm a complementarian. The main point of my post wasn't to defend complementarianism, though. I was just trying to explain why I don't find this defense of egalitarianism hermeneutically plausible.
Indeed. I think it would be beneficial to have a post, separate from this one, the main point of which is to defend complementarianism.
Post a Comment