The unilateral authority of males is evident in shaping nearly
every culture throughout history. Further, when patriarchy is
framed as a biblical ideal, it is not only at odds with the teachings
of Scripture and the purposes of God’s covenant people, it also
becomes a deadly spiritual disease that chokes life all around it.
As Jesus said, if the fruit is bad, the tree also is bad (Matt 7:17–20).
This is not to say that gifted men should not exercise authority,
but, at the same time, they should affirm the gifts and authority
that God grants women as well, working mutually to lead and
serve the church and the world. As a balance, it was thrilling to
see three women receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for their
courageous activism in advancing democracy and justice for
women. Three days later, a blog appeared by CBE member Jenny
Rae Armstrong, who wrote:
I haven’t stopped grinning since I heard the news about the
Nobel Peace Prize recipients. You see, it was in Liberia that I
first witnessed the true ugliness of gender injustice, first understood
that a tiny seed of pride and superiority dropped
into the heart of a man would blossom not into a sheltering
tree but into an ugly, invasive weed that choked . . . life . . .
around it.
My “Damascus road” experience happened when I was nine
years old, peering out the window of our second-story apartment
in Monrovia. Just outside our gate, a woman was curled
up on her side under a palm tree, [a] tee-shirt stretched thin
across her torso as she shielded her head with her . . . arms,
her knees tucked close to her chest. The man kicking her wore
camouflage, and had a government-issued machine gun slung
over his shoulder.
I was horrified. It wasn’t that I hadn’t witnessed beatings
before—to the contrary, they were common in Liberia. But
this was different, an armed man beating a helpless, cringing
woman. And I had heard the whispers, the muted conversations
adults thought I was too young to understand, about
what men with guns did to women.
I heard my father approaching and froze, expecting to be
shooed away from the window. But he stopped a few steps behind
me and just stood there, watching the scene unfold over
my head. Then he sighed, turned, and walked away without
a word.
The tectonic plates in my young soul shifted. For the first time,
I realized there were some things my father, the strong, sensible,
white American male, couldn’t fix. That, if he went out
there and did what every fiber of his being was undoubtedly
screaming to do, he would only make things worse. To rush
into the street and put himself between a murderous mob and
a thief was one thing, and he did it on a regular basis. But
to put himself between a man and a woman would constitute
such an insult that the woman could very well end up dead.
That’s when I realized that violence against women isn’t a
social problem; it is a spiritual problem, a highly contagious
disease that eats away at hearts, souls, minds and bodies. . . .
You can’t address the problem by treating the symptoms—
you have to go deep under the surface and neutralize it at its
root—the ROOTS! that . . . pride . . . and superiority allowed
to germinate in the soul.
That is precisely what the women of Liberia have been doing
for the last decade, recognizing their God-given worth,
claiming their voices, and banding together to demand not
just national, but personal shalom, for themselves and the
next generation. Consider the words of Leymah Gabowee as
she led hundreds of women to the capital . . . in 2003. She said:
“We the women of Liberia will no more allow ourselves to be
raped, abused, misused, maimed and killed! Our children and
grandchildren will not be used as killing machines and sex
slaves!” Liberia still has a long way to go. We all do. But where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and this hope makes
us very bold.1
Armstrong is not alone in her observation. In 2011, Lyn Lusi
received the $1 million Opus Prize. At a banquet in her honor,
she “threw down a gauntlet,” reporters said, in calling churches
to stand with abused women. Lusi runs an organization called
HEAL Africa (an acronym for Health, Education, Action, and
Leadership) for women and youth in Goma, in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the second largest country in Africa. At
her acceptance speech,
[Lusi] highlighted the vital role that churches play in communities
in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. . . .
[They] provide what amounts to the only services and social
safety net available. They can be the real glue of the society.
But she also told a sobering story . . . as several congregations
came together for discussion and training. . . . They did not
agree that women who were raped should NOT be excommunicated
[from church] . . . the attitude that women invite,
even deserve rape extended so deep [within] . . . the church
communities and leadership that they could not see their way
to compassion and support. Where women should be able
to find comfort, consolation, and support instead they met
rejection and blame. The story points to the crying need for
deep reflection and change within Christian communities. . . .
the Opus prize will allow her to work for that goal.2
In the last decade, more and more Christians like Lusi are banding
together to address the violence and abuse perpetrated on girls and
women globally. To borrow a headline from Books and Culture,
make no mistake about it, the church today is on a “Justice Mission.”
While this may seem like a new and exciting turn of events,
the truth is, our Christian and evangelical tradition is one with a
deep and successful history of advancing justice in Christ’s name.
Early evangelicals
The early evangelicals were quintessential social reformers, and
we have them to thank in large part for abolition and suffrage
in the United States. The early evangelicals from North America
and beyond were also responsible for the largest missionary impulse
of all time—what we now call the Golden Era of Missions.
Perhaps it was golden not only because of the sheer numbers
coming to faith.3 It was also golden because the theological convictions
that drove the early evangelicals included a passion for
the gospel that embraced social action. As historian David Bebbington
notes, these early evangelicals believed that “those who
had crossed the deepest line in life,”4 from spiritual death to life
in Christ, were expected to lead a holy life and to make the world
a more just place. In many ways, today’s younger evangelicals are
the true offspring of an earlier evangelical tradition, because for
them evangelism is inseparable from social action.
These early evangelicals, like many evangelicals today, were
devoted to causes such as the abolition of slavery and dismantling
the global sex trade. For them, social justice is the fruit of
their own Christian conversion. They, too, recognized the roots
of gender abuse. After decades of rescuing sex slaves, the early
evangelicals believed that their efforts, though necessary, would
inevitably fail without addressing the spiritual or philosophical
issues that were continually ignored in their work rescuing girls
forced into brothels. The early evangelicals perceived an integral
relationship, an inescapable link, between a view of females as
innately inferior and their marginalization and abuse. Those in
positions of power often legitimate their domination by defining
their victims, those they abuse, as inferior by birth. This is key: it
is often the voice of religion that provides the most exalted, convincing,
or irreproachable devaluation of people groups, whereby
their subjugation is justified. If you can devalue a person based
on a fixed and unchangeable condition like gender, ethnicity, or
class, it is a small step to their marginalization and abuse, as history
makes clear.
The spiritual roots of abuse consist of this: Religion has consistently
declared that women are, in their being, inferior to
males. It was precisely this issue that the early evangelicals challenged
more than one hundred years ago. To end the sex trade
meant that they had to show from Scripture not the devaluation
of females, but that girls and women were equally created in
God’s image. They were equally responsible for sin and equally
redeemed by Christ, and that destiny does not follow biology.
Rather, destiny follows our spiritual rebirth in Christ. Their
biblical challenge was aimed not only at Christians, but also at the
many religious and philosophical traditions that have declared
females inferior at birth. The following examples show the capacity
of religion and philosophy not only to devalue females, but
also to drive worldviews in which the daily lives of females are
made wretched—because ideas have consequences.
Non-Christian views on gender
Consider that, in the ancient world, Aristotle posited, “the male
is higher, the female is lower [being], the male rules, the female
is ruled [purpose].”5 In line with this school of thought, in the
Greek world, girl babies were abandoned far more than boys; the
paterfamilias excluded females from social gatherings of males,
political and philosophical determination, and control over children,
property and self;6 and marriages were not monogamous.
Ideas have consequences.
Also, consider the ancient link between the value given females
and the daily lives of women in Brahmanism. According
to the writings of Manu, a Brahman social commentator, and
also Pandita Ramabai, a Christian convert of Brahman caste, females
were believed to possess a temper or nature that is mutable
or inconstant.7 Females are also said to be destitute of strength
and also of knowledge. They were considered as impure as falsehood
itself, and this was viewed as a fixed rule.8 Ideas have consequences,
and religious ideas have enormous consequences. In
many Brahman cultures today, females are forbidden to read the
sacred texts.9 They are accountable to male authority throughout
life, to their fathers, husbands, sons, and grandsons.10 The gods
are rarely evoked for the birth of girls. Ultrasound is used to select
for gender. Girls remain sex slaves in Hindu temples. They
are called devadasi, or devil’s whore, a term that illustrates their
presumed moral inferiority.
Consider the relationship between the value assigned to one’s
being and the treatment or purpose of women in Islam. According
to Sahih Bukari, an Islamic social commentator, “The character
of women is like a crooked rib, a crookedness that is inherent
and incurable.”11 The Qur’an reads, “Men have authority [purpose]
over women because God made the one superior [being]
to the other.”12
In many Islamic cultures, though not all, females are held
under male authority for their whole lives. Honor killings by
male family members are not uncommon because the character
of females is viewed as promiscuous. Genital cuttings are often
performed to preserve marital fidelity. Females are not viewed as
reliable witnesses. Females are denied medical treatment when
female healthcare professionals are unavailable. Females are frequently
excluded from public education and from working outside
the home.13 They are not viewed as trustworthy.
Other groups have suffered a devaluation made at the level of
being. Consider Nazi Germany. Before the Nazis could convince
Germans to round up Jews and send them to death camps, they
had to redefine Jewish being as distinct from that of the Aryan
race. Triumphantly, the Nazis declared: “. . . there are only a few
people left in Germany who are not clear about the fact that the
Jew is not, as previously thought, distinct from ‘Christians,’
‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholics’ only in that he is of another religion, and
therefore German like the rest of us, but that [they] belong to a
different race than we do. The Jew belongs to a different race; that
is what is decisive.”14
Remember also the devaluation of African Americans that
supported the institution of slavery in the United States. According
to Thornton Stringfellow, a prominent Virginia Baptist
and an influential proslavery Bible exegete, “The African race is
constitutionally inferior to the white race.”15 As a result of such
thinking, French humanitarian Comte A. de Gasparin observed,
“Slavery, in the United States, is founded on color, it is [based on
the belief in] the native and indestructible inferiority [of ] race.”16
Though defended by Christians in the South and elsewhere, slavery
mocked biblical morality in manifold ways. Marriages were
ignored, girls and women were defiled, and murder and maimings
were common. The Emancipation Proclamation did little to
eliminate ethnic abuse because the root—the devaluation of African
ethnicity—had not yet been addressed. Though freed by legal
decree, African Americans quickly encountered Jim Crow laws.
The United States Civil War did not end ethnic violence because
slavery was only one manifestation of a spiritual illness:
that ethnic superiority was posited as a biblical ideal. In fact, it
would take many years before the U.S. was even made conscious
of its own religious constructs that fueled oppression and injustice
based on skin color.17
Ethics Daily published an apology for segregation practices
that were once viewed as a religious ideal. Reporting on a social
shift that may represent a larger leap than the election of an African
American U.S. president, it noted that Bob Jones University,
perhaps the most fundamentalist and segregated Baptist school
in the world,18 has apologized for its practices and policies of racial
segregation. In 1986, a member of the Bible department at
Bob Jones had articulated the school’s position. Separation of the
races, this faculty member wrote, was God’s design. The school
was submitting to the authority of Scripture in its policies, it said.
Now, the school says something other than “biblical obedience”
shaped its racial practices. The statement reports that policies
were “characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture.
. . . We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear
Christian counterpoint to it. In so doing, we failed to accurately
represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandments to love others
as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry.”19
The failure to interpret Scripture accurately so as to regard
African Americans as equal members of the human family made
it possible for slavery advocates to ignore the profound ways in
which slavery transgressed biblical ethics. Our value of human
beings shapes our ethics, an observation made by the early evangelicals
working to end the slave industry.20
Devaluation of women in the Christian church
Women missionaries of the 1800s concluded that, for too long,
they had been addressing merely the social symptoms of sex trafficking.
While their efforts were necessary, they were inevitably
insufficient without attacking the root—the belief that males are
innately superior, a notion embraced as a religious ideal. For
Christians, particularly, the gender teachings and practices of the
church were based on the idea that females are innately gullible.
Consider a few examples from early church history:
John Chrysostom (AD 347–407) contended, “The woman
taught once, and ruined all. On this account therefore he
saith, let her not teach . . . for the sex is weak and fickle.”21
Augustine (AD 354–430) agreed, “Nor can it be doubted, that
it is more consonant with the order of nature that men should
bear rule over women, than women over men.”22
John Knox (1514–1572) continued, “Nature, I say, does paint
[women] forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish;
and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable,
cruel . . . [thus] a woman’s place is beneath man’s.”23
John Calvin (1509–1564) did not disagree, explaining, “Woman
should not hold authority over the man; for the very reason,
why they are forbidden to teach, is, that it is not permitted
by their condition.”24
Even a leader of a megachurch movement in Seattle wrote in 2010,
when it comes to leading in the church, women are unfit because
they are more gullible and easier to deceive than men. . . .
[W]omen who fail to trust [Paul’s] instruction . . . are much like
their mother Eve. . . . Before you get all emotional like a woman
in hearing this, please consider the content of the women’s
magazines at your local grocery store that encourages liberated
women in our day to watch porno with their boyfriends,
master oral sex for men who have no intention of marrying
them . . . and ask yourself if it doesn’t look like the Serpent is
still trolling the garden and that the daughters of Eve aren’t gullible
in pronouncing progress, liberation, and equality.25
Teachings like these represent a longstanding patriarchal influence
in Christian culture suggesting that women are constitutionally
inferior to males. The early evangelicals, especially
women involved in opposing the sex-slave trade, observed that
Christian teachings such as these were used to reinforce the superiority
of males and placed girls at risk. Women like Catherine
Booth, Josephine Butler, and Katharine Bushnell challenged the
superiority of males as a biblical ideal. Who are these women?
Catherine Booth (1829–1890) was cofounder of the Salvation
Army. She endeavored to free girls from prostitution in London’s
East end. She also worked to raise the age of consent from thirteen
to seventeen years. Josephine Butler was a British activist
and prominent evangelical humanitarian who worked with Parliament
to assess brothels established by the British military in
India. Katharine Bushnell (1855–1946) worked as a physician
and activist and missionary who shut down brothels throughout
the United States. Bushnell, together with Josephine Butler,
perceived the need to expose the spiritual teachings that maintain
claims of male superiority, which they believed drove the
sex industry. Bushnell was perhaps the greatest champion among
the early evangelicals of gender equality and justice, both in her
teachings and practices.
The youngest graduate of Chicago Women’s Medical College
in 1878, Bushnell served as a medical missionary to China,
but returned home to head the social purity department of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1886.26 As
part of her work with the WCTU, Bushnell interviewed girls enslaved
in sex camps at the iron mines of Michigan and lumber
camps of Wisconsin. She entered these camps to gain firsthand
accounts, which she compiled and delivered to the state legislature
as an expert medical witness. Arriving to give her testimony,
she once was met by an angry mob at a Wisconsin courthouse, enraged that
Bushnell was pressing for the equality for females at a time when the value
of women had not been taken up systematically
as a biblical ideal. Bushnell’s efforts in court were successful
and led to a bill, dubbed by newspapers as the Kate Bushnell Bill,
which sent men to long prison terms for enslaving girls in Wisconsin,
where this crime was particularly heinous.27
From there, Bushnell traveled to India, where she infiltrated
brothels established by the British military in order to garner and
retain British soldiers and officers. Her autobiography describes
how she
. . . walked through the lines of encampments . . . [and] went
on to the little tents for women . . . and took their testimony .
. . hearts melted and tears flowed, and they were eager to tell
us how they had been brought against their will, or by trickery
or thoughtlessly, into such a horrible life. More than once . . .
they would not let us [go] till they prayed . . . to help them to
get out of virtual imprisonment. We interviewed about 500
such pitiful creatures.28
In discerning how these girls were forced into prostitution, Bushnell
asked hard questions about the complicity of Christians in
the injustices these girls suffered. She asked:
How can officials of high standing as Christian gentlemen be
so indifferent to the wrongs of women and girls, so complacent
in the dealings with the sensuality of men and so ready
to condone their offences against decency? [Men had sent orders]
to under-officials to secure “younger and more attractive
girls” for the British soldiers. . . .
Sir John Bowring, who wrote those beautiful hymns like
“Watchman, Tell Us of the Night” and “In the Cross of Christ I
Glory,” by his legislation at Hong Kong, brought into existence
an ordinance making it punishable for any Chinese girl to live
but with her owner, who kept her for immoral purposes . . .
acts which cannot but seep hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
girls into prostitution.29
Her challenge exposed the moral failings and the horrible consequences
that follow when leaders are indifferent to the sufferings
of females.
She perceived a biblical worldview in which women were, for the first time, systematically
viewed as equal not only by God’s design, but also as created fully in God’s image.
|
After decades working to end the trafficking of girls, Bushnell
believed that God had called her to turn her efforts from dealings
with the symptoms to addressing the root causes, the ideas
derived from a misreading of Scripture—namely, that females
are the cause of sin and are, therefore, in their being, inferior to
males. It was this idea that drove the sex industry, Bushnell reasoned.
She realized that nothing would change
. . . until men come to understand that a woman is of as
much value as a man; and they will not believe this un
til they see it plainly taught in the Bible. . . . Just so long as
men imagine that a system of caste is taught in the Word of
God, and that they belong to the upper caste while women are of the
lower caste; and just so long as they
believe that mere FLESH—fate—
determines the caste to which one
belongs; and just so long as they be
lieve that the “he will rule over you” of Genesis 3:16 is
[prescriptive—or part of the moral teachings of the Bible, rath
er than descriptive—describing life in a fallen world] . . .
the destruction of young women into a prostitute class will
continue.30
Bushnell spent many years learning Greek and Hebrew in order
to research every text in Scripture, more than three hundred passages,
that addressed gender. Bushnell published her findings in a
book entitled God’s Word to Women, completed in 1919. It remains
in print today. For Bushnell, the value of females is established in
the early chapters of Genesis, where identity shapes purpose.
Both Adam and Eve were equally created in God’s image;31
therefore, both were called equally to be fruitful and to exercise
an equal dominion in Eden.32 Their creational destiny to share
authority is disrupted by sin. Bushnell notes that Eve was not the
source of sin,33 and that God does not curse or punish females
because of Eve.34 Rather, it was Satan, not God, who inspired
the domination of men over women.35 God extends leadership
to those who do what is right in God’s sight regardless of their
gender, birth order, nationality, or class.36
In assessing the teachings of the Apostle Paul, Bushnell argued
that the apostle supported the authority and leadership of
women, provided that their leadership was neither domineering
nor abusive (1 Tim 2:12); that those who teach must understand
and advance the truth concerning the gospel (1 Tim 2:11–12; Acts
18:26; Rom 16:1–5, 7, 12–13, 15); and that, when women pray and
prophesy in public, they should not be disruptive, either by their
clothing or their chatter (1 Cor 11:5; 1 Cor 14:34). Ultimately, Bushnell
concluded that women’s value is not measured by the fall,
as so many theologians have argued throughout history. Rather,
human value is measured through Christ’s completed work on
Calvary. To be consistent, a correct interpretation of Scripture
as it relates to “women’s spiritual and social status”37 should be
determined in the same manner as “man’s spiritual and social status,”
based on the atonement of Jesus. To quote Bushnell, “[We]
cannot, for women, put the ‘new wine’ of the Gospel into the old
wine-skins of ‘condemnation.’”38 The cross is good news for men
and women. It is the cross that brings reconciliation and holiness
to the whole human family.
Bushnell’s analysis of Scripture did something that had never
been accomplished before in history: she provided a biblical
worldview in which women were, for the first time,
systematically viewed not only as equal by God’s design, but also as created
fully in God’s image. What is more, she also argued that Scripture
teaches that both men and women are equally responsible for
sin, and both men and women are renewed by Calvary. In short,
she offered a theological remedy—a biblical idea to replace the
flawed, hierarchical one that women are inferior to men—and, in
so doing, she parts company with previous generations of Christians
who had imbibed patriarchy as a biblical ideal, thereby advancing
a spiritual caste system that has choked women and girls
for centuries.
Religious teachings on gender have vital implications for the
gospel because they reveal a worldview that either accurately or
inaccurately represents the moral teachings of Scripture, ideas
that have enormous consequences in the daily lives of females.
Whether we realize it or not, our treatment of females and how
we justify that treatment biblically constitutes a worldview that
provides a rationale for justice, or, worse, injustice. For readers to
gain an appreciation for the achievements of Kate Bushnell, consider
the vast extent of the patriarchal worldview she challenged.
Choosing the right worldview elements
A worldview will always include four basic elements, as Alan Myatt
has so ably shown:39 (1) knowledge or epistemology; (2) being
or ontology; (3) value or ethics; and (4) purpose or teleology.
These four elements have a dynamic interplay with each other.
When one is inaccurate or deficient, it throws the whole system
out of balance. The patriarchal worldview argues as follows:
Ontology or being: It claims that males, in their being, are superior
to females. Purpose follows being.
Teleology or purpose: It supposes that the destiny of males is
to hold ultimate authority over females, and the destiny of females
is to submit to the authority of males. Given their natures,
females in marriages, families, churches, and communities
are created to be submissive to males. (Of course, if you
follow this flawed logic, you might ask why females should
even hold authority over children or other females, as is so
often required.)
Epistemology or knowledge: It proclaims that God has revealed,
through Scripture and nature, that males are superior
to females in their being and should therefore hold authority
over females the whole of their life.
Ethics: Though said to advance social wellbeing, patriarchy
or unilateral male authority has been noted as the cause of
unhappiness and abuse in families and communities as studied
by nongovernmental organizations, counselors and therapists,
law enforcement officials, and social scientists.40
This is the essence of a patriarchal worldview, which encountered
a biblical challenge by Kate Bushnell. She and her coworkers realized
the danger it posed for females as it reached its logical conclusion
in its lack of ethics or justice.
Bushnell offered an epistemological or biblical remedy to a
flawed view of ontology or being. Hence, an egalitarian world-
view argues as follows:
Epistemology or knowledge: God has revealed, through Scripture,
that males and females are equally created in God’s image
and have equal authority in caring for the world as God’s
regents (Gen 1:27–31). They are equally responsible for sin
(Gen 3:13–17) and equally redeemed in Christ (John 3:16; 2
Cor 5:17). Both are gifted by the Holy Spirit for service (Rom
12:6–8; 1 Cor 12:7–11; Eph 4:11–12) and called to use our gifts
for Christ’s kingdom (2 Tim 1:6).
Ontology or being: Scripture extends equal value and dignity
to males and females. Christian faith does not view males as
superior to females, and gender does not create a caste system
or hierarchy of value.
Teleology or purpose: Biology is not destiny. Rather, God calls
and gifts all Christians to service and leadership, based not on
their gender or ethnicity (which are fixed and unchangeable
qualities), but on their character, their intimacy with Christ,
and the gifts God gives each for God’s pleasure and purposes.
Ethics or justice: The dignity and equality of males and females
are biblical ideals that not only open positions of leadership
and authority in church, home, and society to both genders,
but, in doing so, overcome privilege and marginalization
based on gender, thus minimizing opportunities for superiority,
dominance, and abuse of males over females.
This egalitarian worldview, articulated by Bushnell, has remained
intact to this day, with egalitarians and Christian scholars
enthusiastically embracing and enlarging upon Bushnell’s views.
What is more, Christians in the last few decades have observed,
as did Bushnell one hundred years ago, that the church will remain
a weak vessel of justice until Christians interpret Scripture
without reading a cultural devaluation of females into its pages.
Bushnell understood, along with Christians such as Jenny Rae
Armstrong, Lyn Lusi, Pandita Ramabai, Catherine Booth, Josephine
Butler, Katherine Bushnell, the early evangelical women,
and all the supportive women and men to the present day, that,
unless we as Christians make clear the equal value that God holds
for females, the church will remain complicit in the destruction
of girls and women. The social problem of gender abuse and injustice
must have a biblical remedy so that Scripture is no longer
used as a tool of devaluation that leads logically to the domination
of males; that the “he will rule over you” in Genesis 3:16 is
not prescriptive, or part of the moral teachings of Scripture, but is
rather descriptive. It describes the consequences of human sin—
consequences that should therefore be opposed by the church.
Ideas have consequences. We must embrace valuations that are
consistently biblical so that positive consequences will follow.
Notes
1. Jenny Rae Armstrong, “Exciting News,” The CBE Scroll blog, Oct.
10, 2011. LINK
2. Katherine Marshall, “The Modest Heroine of the 2011 Opus Prize:
Lyn Lusi, Huffington Post, Nov. 8, 2011, LINK. Elizabeth W.
Andrew and Katharine Bushnell make the same point, namely, that the
British also blamed the victims, declaring girls confined in brothels as
immoral: “. . . this form of villainy is always excusing itself by slandering
the oppressed women. . . . Most of these women are prostitutes by caste
. . . ” and caste determines destiny. The Queen’s Daughters in India (London:
Morgan and Scott, 1899), 54.
3. Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of
Their Thought and Practice (Macon: GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), ix.
4. David Bebbington, Evangelicals in Modern Britain: A Brief History
from 1730s to the 1980s (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1989), 5.
5. Aristotle, Politics 5.3.
6. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women
in Classical Antiquity (New York, NY: Schocken, 1995), 79ff.
7. Manu IX:15–17,
LINK. See also Pandita Ramabai, The High
Caste Hindu Woman (New York, NY: Revell, 1901).
8. Manu IX:15-17. See also Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, 79.
9. Manu IX:18. See also Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, 81.
10. Manu IX: 2–3.
11. Sahih al-Bukhari, Arabic-English translation, vol. 7, Hadith no.
1113–14 (Alexandria, VA: Al Saadawi, 1996).
12. The Qur’an, with notes by N. J. Dawood (London: Penguin,
1990), 64.
13. Nicholas Kirstoff and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression
into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (New York, NY: Knopf,
2009), 149ff.
14. “Our Battle Against Judah,” Aufklärungs- und Redner-Informationsmaterial
der Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Lieferung 20
(August 1935), trans. Randall Bytwerk, in Nazi Propaganda Archive,
LINK.
15. Thornton Stringfellow, quoted in Mark Noll, The Civil War as a
Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,
2006), 62. Stringfellow was a Baptist from Virginia who offered some of
the most influential biblical arguments supporting slavery.
16. Comte Agenor de Gasparin, The Uprising of a Great People, trans.
Mary Booth (New York, NY: Scribners, 1862), 103-04, and as quoted by
Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 119.
17. See Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.
18. Bob Jones University did not permit interracial dating.
19. Robert Parham, “Bob Jones University Apologizes for Racial
Policies,” Ethics Daily website,
LINK,
accessed June 1, 2010.
20. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 73.
21. John Chrysostom, 1 Timothy Homily 9, emphasis added.
22. Augustine, Anti-Pelagian Writings 10, emphasis added.
23. John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women, emphasis added.
24. John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:11–15, emphasis added.
25. Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Seattle, WA, quoted by Denny
Burk, “Mark Driscoll on Women in Ministry,” July 5, 2007,
LINK,
accessed March 24, 2010, emphasis added.
26. A timeline of the life of Katharine Bushnell is available online at this
LINK.
27. Katharine Bushnell, Dr. Katharine C. Bushnell: A Brief Sketch of
her Life and Work (Hertford, England: Rose and Sons Salisbury Square,
1930), 4.
28. Bushnell, Brief Sketch, 9.
29. Bushnell, Brief Sketch, 12.
30. Bushnell, Brief Sketch, 14.
31. Katharine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women: One Hundred Bible
Studies on Women’s Place in the Church and Home (Minneapolis, MN:
Christians for Biblical Equality, 2003), 9ff.
32. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 10.
33. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 39ff.
34. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 39–48.
35. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 43–75.
36. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 66–75.
37. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 169.
38. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, 169.
39. Alan Myatt, “On the Compatibility of Ontological Equality, Hierarchy,
and Functional Distinctions,” The Deception of Eve and the Ontology
of Women, CBE special edition journal (2010): 29–33.
40. See Associated Press, “Baptists Have Highest Divorce Rate,”
Dec. 30, 1999, LINK,
accessed January 30, 2014. See also Andrea S. Larsen and David H. Olson,
“Predicting Marital Satisfaction Using Prepare: A Replication Study,”
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 15, no. 3 (1989): 311–22,
LINK,
accessed January 30, 2014.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Haddad (PhD, University of Durham) is president of Christians for Biblical Equality. She is a founding member
of the Evangelicals and Gender Study Group at the Evangelical Theological Society. Mimi is an
Adjunct Assistant Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary (Houston, Texas), an Adjunct Assistant
Professor at Bethel University (Saint Paul, Minnesota), and an Adjunct Professor at North Park
Theological Seminary (Chicago, Illinois).
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