Fathers' Influence on Children's Church Attendance: What Does this Study Actually Show?

This week I want to talk about a particular set of social science statistics published in 1994 by the Council of Europe called The demographic characteristics of linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland.  As I have dialogued on the Internet about gender roles in Christianity over the last several years, I have noticed that male-headship believing Christians, or complementarians, really love this study and bring it up over and over again.  Here is a detail of the results of the study, as set forth in Wikipedia's Article on Church Attendance:

Practice of religion according to practice of parents (%)

Practice of Parents	Practice of Parents	Practice of the children	Practice of the children	Practice of the children	Practice of the children
FATHER	MOTHER	REGULAR	IRREGULAR	NON-PRACTISING	TOTAL
Regular	Regular	32.8	41.4	25.8	100.0
Regular	Irregular	37.7	37.6	24.7	100.0
Regular	Non-Practising	44.2	22.4	33.4	100.0
Irregular	Regular	3.4	58.6	38.0	100.0
Irregular	Irregular	7.8	60.8	31.4	100.0
Irregular	Non-Practising	25.4	22.8	51.8	100.0
Non-Practising	Regular	1.5	37.4	61.1	100.0
Non-Practising	Irregular	2.3	37.8	59.9	100.0
Non-Practising	Non-Practising	4.6	14.7	80.7	100.0

The point, as I understand it, is that a father who attends church regularly is much more likely to have his children attend church regularly after they grow up, than a mother who attends church regularly; and if the father is not a practicing Christian, his children are very likely to grow up to be non-practicing themselves, even if the mother is a regular church attender.

There is also supposedly an American study showing that "If the mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow. But if the father is first, there is a 93 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow."  According to this article in The Baptist Press, the study is cited in the book The Promise Keeper at Work by Bob Horner, but I have been unable to locate any reference online to the actual study which generated these statistics.

In any event, I have seen this Swiss study cited over and over again by male-headship proponents as a sort of definitive proof that male headship is God's blueprint for humanity. As one commenter on  this discussion of gender roles at the Wartburg Watch put it:

To briefly summarize, the mothers spiritual life has virtually no effect on her children. But the fathers is HUGE. What dad does is what the kids will do. 

This, in conclusion, is why I contend for comp theology. Can mothers and women be amazing teachers, Godly examples, skilled leaders, etc….Absolutely. Is there an internal wiring that is deeply dependent upon male leadership (in this case…fathers) that shapes us, and our communities, in a way that women, regardless of their “skills” do not have? I think it is obviously and observably true.

Touchstone Magazine wrote an article showcasing the Swiss demographic study in June of 2003, now available online as Touchstone Archives: The Truth About Men & Church.  Here is one of the main points Touchstone used the study to make:

The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society. 

A mother’s role will always remain primary in terms of intimacy, care, and nurture. . . No father can replace that relationship. But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world “out there,” he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for his role model. . .  

Mothers’ choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers’, and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.
[Emphasis added.]

Touchstone goes on to blame the advent of women priests for the decrease in church attendance in Switzerland-- and anywhere else where church attendance is declining.  According to them, men just can't stand going to churches that flout God's created order by letting women lead, and when men stop going to church, so do their children.  Touchstone goes on to blame feminism and the rise of women leaders for a plethora of society's ills:

The disintegration of the family follows hard upon the amorality and emotional anarchy that flow from the neutering, devaluing, or exclusion of the loving and protective authority of the father. . . In the absence of fatherhood, it is scarcely surprising that there is an alarming rise in the feral male. This is most noticeable in street communities, where co-operatives of criminality seek to establish brutally and directly that respect, ritual, and pack order so essential to male identity.

After going on to denounce the feminization of the church (which I have written a refutation of here), the article concludes:

A church that is conspiring against the blessings of patriarchy not only disfigures the icon of the First Person of the Trinity, effects disobedience to the example and teaching of the Second Person of the Trinity, and rejects the Pentecostal action of the Third Person of the Trinity but, more significantly for our society, flies in the face of the sociological evidence! 

No father—no family—no faith.

Never mind that the First Person of the Trinity is also described using mother images. Never mind that the Second Person of the Trinity never taught "male headship," and specifically spoke against the father-rule of His own earthly time and culture.   Never mind that the Third Person of the Trinity was poured out at Pentecost on "sons and daughters" alike. To challenge male headship is to challenge fatherhood itself, and to challenge fatherhood is to cause the demise of society.

The important thing to ask, though, is whether this one Swiss demographic study from 20 years ago really supports all the claims that have been pinned upon it.

We have to take into account, for one thing, the religious climate in Switzerland, especially from around the time of this study.  This Swissworld article on the religious landscape in Switzerland looks at the state of the nation six years later:

In a wide ranging poll of Swiss attitudes taken in 2000, only 16% of Swiss people said religion was "very important" to them, far below their families, their jobs, sport or culture. Another survey published the same year showed the number of regular church goers had dropped by 10% in 10 years. Among Catholics, 38.5% said they did not go to church, while among Protestants the figure was 50.7%.

Given that the same article shows that in the year 2000, roughly 42% of the Swiss population was Roman Catholic and 35% was Protestant (with another 2% in Eastern Orthodox and other forms of Christianity), this means Switzerland was 79% Christian in 2000.  And yet only 16% considered religion "very important."  Does the relative lack of priority given to religion in Switzerland, compared to the United States, have any bearing on possible causes of the study's results?

I think that if we're going to look at this in terms of sociology, we ought in fairness to consider another documented sociological factor: gender contamination.  In short, "boys and men. . . are more tightly constrained by the prevailing views of masculinity that associate being masculine with avoiding anything feminine.”  In a country like Switzerland, where very few people consider religion a high priority, what happens to a family's view of churchgoing if only the mother does it? Touchstone's article itself gives the answer:

When children see that church is a “women and children” thing, they will respond accordingly—by not going to church, or going much less.

Is this really the same thing as there being some intrinsic, God-given authority built into men and not women, so that children naturally follow their father's example and not their mother's?  Even assuming that the study's results are accurate (and corroborating studies seem pretty hard to find)-- and even if the same dynamic is going to repeat itself in every culture everywhere (which is not proven), there are three even bigger assumptions being made, none of which are proved by the study: first, that this father-influence is innate to humanity; second, that it is from God; and third, that it comes from or is part of what Christians call "male headship": that is, the essential spiritual authority of manhood over womanhood.

First of all, it cannot be definitively shown that fathers have an innate influence over their children that supersedes the influence of the mother.  After all, what the study's numbers seem to show is that a mother who wants her children to be regular churchgoers would do better (if the father is a regular churchgoer) to stay in bed eating bonbons and watching soap operas than to go to church with the family.  The numbers show that if the father and mother are both regular churchgoers, their children are 32.8% likely to be regular churchgoers-- but if the father is regular and the mother is non-practicing, this percentage jumps to 44.2!  This actually would mean that the mother actually has a big influence in pushing the children to follow their father even more closely.  But does this even make sense?  Is it logical to think children would react against their non-churchgoing mother to that extent?  Couldn't it be more sensibly accounted for by other factors?

For instance, what may be going on is that in Western culture as it stands right now, it takes a certain kind of man-- one with a great deal of energy, devotion and sense of responsibility-- to get his kids ready week after week to go to church with no help from their mother.

Comparatively speaking, a mother who is devoted to church attendance when the father is not, is a different story. We still have a culture (and this is apparently true in Switzerland too) where the mother does most of the day-to-day dressing, nose-wiping, and gathering-together-and-herding-into-the-car-ing. In short, mothers are used to it. But for a father to get his kids up in the morning, dress and wipe noses and herd them into the car while the mother watches TV or lies in bed, he's got to really want to go to church.

The dynamic, then, wouldn't be so much that the children's tendency to stick with church attendance rises with the mother's slackness at all. The dynamic would be that children whose father puts himself to extra effort to get his kids to church while the mom stays home, is the kind of man who is more than usually devoted to church attendance-- and that superlative devotion is what rubs off on the kids.

I suspect that many dads who want to go to church, but mom doesn't, simply say to themselves, "This is too much trouble," and don't go at all, thus moving the family into one of the different statistical groups.  In short, this influence of the fathers is probably not innate, but a result of social factors. Raw numbers in a sociological study simply don't give us the whole story-- and because they don't, they  certainly don't prove that the fatherly influence they show is innate.

Second, it simply cannot be shown that this father-influence is from God, even if it were innate. Not everything that is innate to humanity is from God; orthodox Christian doctrine states that humanity is deeply affected by sin.  Often, indeed, society's role is to civilize humans so that we can live peacefully together, through the imposition of laws and social rules.  But then again, not every law or social rule is from God either.  As Christians, we can look to the Bible, of course-- but does the Bible ever advise children to pay more attention to their fathers than to their mothers?

Well, in fact it doesn't.  The Bible tells us to "Honor your father and mother." Exodus 6:2.  Proverbs 6:20 says, "My son, keep your father’s command, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching."  Even Ephesians 6:1, which continues from the Ephesians 5 passage so often used to support male headship, says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord."  Although the Bible often assumes a male power dynamic, it seems to be more in terms of accommodation than in any explicit teaching that says, "men, you are to take charge."

It's just as likely that this extra influence of fathers, if it truly exists, is a factor of sinful human power structures that enhance the influence of one group while marginalizing another.  Children pay more attention to their fathers because the world around them pays more attention to their fathers-- and so, sadly, does the church.  In a culture which still puts spiritual women on a pedestal (a place where we can be admired and yet be prevented from having any real power or influence), is it that surprising that there would be an attitude of “My mother was a saint, but she was just my mother”?  It certainly doesn't mean women should despair that no matter how devoted to God they are, it will do their children no good unless the father is also devoted.  It means we should work to counteract this marginalizing influence, not glorify it.

Third, even if fathers have a greater influence over their children than mothers do, and even if this influence expands beyond this churchgoing study to other areas of life, we can't actually move directly from that to "thus, male headship."

If the Swiss study tells us anything good, anything worth noting, what is it?  Only that children having a relationship with an involved and spiritually committed father is a good thing; something we already knew. Only that fathers have an important role in their children's lives-- that they should appreciate their powerful influence on their kids and act responsibly.

What the study certainly does not tell us is anything about mothers being subordinate to fathers. The study says nothing whatsoever about husband-wife relationships or that men belong in leadership over their wives. Neither does it imply that mothers cannot be leaders in their homes and churches, or that mom must be "first mate" and not "co-captain" with dad.

Finally, the study does not actually give any reasons as to why any of the study group went to church, or didn't go to church, or stopped going to church.  It doesn't address whether or not Swiss culture encourages grown children to do their own thing, like American culture does, or to stay more in line with parents' practices.  It doesn't address the individual dynamics of each relationship between a child and his or her mother, or in what ways it differs from that child's relationship with his or her father.  It's a sociological study; it's not a judge of internal motives, or a cookie-cutter shaper of every home into its own image.

The fact is that many complementarians are taking this one 1994 Swiss study and using it to support a large number of things they already believe, whether or not the study actually justifies or even addresses what they conclude from it.  Wouldn't it be better to recognize the study's limitations and keep our responses more in line with those limitations?

I would suggest that the best way to use this study is for dad to use any extra influence he may have, to make sure the children pay more attention to mom.

That would certainly be the Christlike thing to do.

Susanna Wesley - Forgotten Woman in Church History?

Susanna Wesley, the mother of John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) and of his hymn-writing brother Charles, isn't exactly a forgotten woman in church history.  In the evangelical circles in which I spent my formative Christian years, she was one of the only historical Christian women who was mentioned in teachings and sermons -- usually by women leaders of other Christian women, who held up Susanna Wesley as the superlative example of what it meant to be a good Christian woman: wife of a church leader, mother of many, and devoted to God.

Susanna Wesley, I was taught, was a gracious and submissive minister's wife who had 19 children and raised 10 of them to pious adulthood through her strict but loving parenting.  Susanna devoted one hour a week per child to one-on-one spiritual counseling, but when she sat in her kitchen and pulled her apron over her head, all her children knew she was in prayer and that punishment for interrupting her unless in dire emergency would be severe.  Susanna was the Christian woman we all should take as our example and strive to emulate.  Susanna was proof that it was possible to be a good mother to so many children, and we all should desire to have as many children as we felt in our hearts God wanted us to have. (Maranatha Campus Ministries, where I was taught these things, was pre-Quiverfull and officially rejected the anti-birth control message just beginning to be spread by Mary Pride-- but Maranatha women still learned that the highest honor they could attain was to be a pastor or missionary's wife -- and thus automatically a leader of women's ministry-- and a mother of many).

What my Maranatha teachers apparently didn't know was that in Susanna Wesley's time, being a minister's wife did not put you in charge of women's ministry.  Women were forbidden to minister at all-- not even to other women.  But even so, what was most emphasized in their teachings about Mrs. Wesley was that motherhood itself was the most important thing for a woman.  And if you were as good and godly a mother as she was, you might even raise a John Wesley!

The biographies of Susanna Wesley I have found online also tend to emphasize her motherhood of the famous Wesley brothers, almost to the exclusion of everything else.  Susan Pellowe's blog, for instance, opens with this:

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), although she never preached a sermon or published a book or founded a church, is known as the Mother of Methodism. Why? Because two of her sons, John Wesley and Charles Wesley, as children consciously or unconsciously will, applied the example and teachings and circumstances of their home life.

I would be the last to say this isn't an amazing accomplishment.  Raising children who contribute to the good of the world is a very meaningful thing-- whether we're mothers or fathers.  But the above blog is incorrect about Susanna Wesley having never preached a sermon; she actually preached hundreds of sermons, to men, women and children alike, during the absences of her husband, Samuel Wesley, from his Anglican parish.  According to Daughters of the Church: Women in Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present by Ruth Tucker and Walter Liefeld, John Wesley himself is quoted as calling his mother a "preacher of righteousness."  (p. 237)

The way it came about was this.  Samuel Wesley was apparently an autocratic and intolerant minister and a strict disciplinarian of his flock, resulting in his widespread unpopularity in his own parish.  In fact, he was often harassed by his parishioners, and there were many times when he was away from the parish (Ibid, p. 236).  During the winter of 1711-12, Samuel was away for an extended period, and Susanna began holding meetings in her home.  The History's Women website details the situation:

Samuel was attending a long church conference leaving his pulpit in charge of another minister, a Mr. Inman. . . .Since there were no afternoon church services, Susanna began an evening family gathering where they sang psalms, prayed and Susanna read a short sermon from her husband’s library. It began with the family and the servants but soon word spread and others neighbors appeared, and soon there were too many for the parsonage. Susanna had written her husband of what she was doing, but then in his own letter when he perhaps saw the services as competition, Mr. Inman complained to Samuel. . . [because] at that time the idea of a woman having any part in a worship service – even in her own home – was unheard of.   Samuel suggested to Susanna that she have someone else read the sermons, but still Mr. Inman complained and finally Samuel told Susanna to discontinue the meetings. However, she declined as she described how the meetings were a genuine and effective ministry to those who attended and that Mr. Inman was about the only one who‘d objected. The services continued.

Daughters of the Church, describing these meetings, says that "Susanna could not prevent the spontaneous growth. . . to the point where she could say: 'Last Sunday I believe we had above two hundred.  And yet many went away, for want of room to stand.'" (p. 238)

The people of the Wesley parish strongly preferred Susanna's sermons to those of either Samuel Wesley or his chosen replacement.  They could have simply attended morning services and considered their spiritual duty done-- but what Mrs. Wesley was offering was clearly something that spoke to their hearts and met their spiritual needs.  They came because they wanted to come.  As this series on women in church history has already frequently illustrated, the Holy Spirit has often found cracks in the systemic repression of women's ministry, through which to speak through God's daughters-- despite the best efforts of their brothers in the faith.  

And despite the emphasis of my teachers on Mrs. Wesley as a submissive wife, Susanna was not particularly submissive-- even despite the fact that the law of the time required women to be obedient to their husbands.  History's Women explains:

Susanna was a strong supporter of the Stuart King James who had been overthrown in 1688 and replaced by William, his Dutch son-in-law. In 1702 when in family prayers Samuel prayed for King William Susanna refused to say “Amen.” She was, as her son John described it later, “inflexible”, and Samuel was equally so.

“Sukey,” he told her as he left home. “We must part for if we have two kings we must have two beds.” Susanna asserted that she would apologize if she was wrong but she felt to do so for expediency only would be a lie and thus a sin.

In her own writings (quoted in Daughter of the Church, p. 237), Susanna Wesley said that after calling her into his study, her husband "imprecated the divine vengeance on himself and all his posterity if ever he touched me more or came into a bed with me before I had begged God's pardon and his, for not saying amen to the prayer for the King. . . I have unsuccessfully represented to him the unlawfulness and unreasonableness of his Oath [referring to 1 Cor. 7:5's admonition that husbands and wives should not "deprive one another" except for short periods of prayer] . . . that since I am willing to let him quietly enjoy his opinions, he ought not to deprive me of my little liberty of conscience."  

More than a year later, after the death of the king whose rule had caused the conflict, Samuel returned to Susanna and to her bed, and it was shortly after this that John Wesley was conceived.  Susanna had proved herself right about her husband's foolish oath.  Nor did she afterwards refrain from expressing her differences of opinion from her husband, but had no difficulties telling John when she thought her advice for his future was better than the advice of his father. (Ibid)

Mrs. Wesley was not, however, unmindful of the English laws requiring her obedience.  The United Methodist Women website notes that when Samuel Wesley asked Susanna to discontinue her unauthorized meetings, this was how she worded her dissent:

"If after all this you think fit to dissolve this assembly do not tell me you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity for doing good when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The wisdom and intelligence of this answer is admirable.  In effect, Mrs. Wesley placed on her husband the responsibility before God of stopping what she believed, and desired Samuel to believe, was God's own work.  Her words had the effect she apparently intended, because Samuel never issued that command. 

Susan Pellowe (see above) also notes:

Susanna Wesley wrote meditations and scriptural commentaries for her own use. She wrote extended commentaries for instance on the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments. Alas many of these were lost in the rectory fire, but many survive. The most accessible means to her writings is Charles Wallace's excellent and important Susanna Wesley, Her Collected Writings.

Those surviving writings reveal her as "a practical theologian in her own right. . . in conversation with contemporary theological, philosophical, and literary works," according to Google Books.

With such a mother as this, John Wesley could hardly help being open to God calling women in his own movement into full public ministry, even though he was initially against it.  As Daughters of the Church puts it (p. 242), "Wesley eventually became so convinced of the rightness of women's ministry that he openly encouraged women to preach, despite the opposition he knew they would face.  [Methodist preacher] Sarah Mallet recalled that he had advised her 'to let the voice of the people be to me the voice of God; -- and where I was sent for, to go, for the Lord had called me thither.'"

Susanna Wesley had influence on her son John, all right-- but in evangelicalism, this particular result of her influence is somehow never brought up.

In light of all this, the cherry-picking of Susanna Wesley's life story, such that she is only known as a minister's wife and mother of the founders of Methodism, seems profoundly unfair.  Why are women so often defined only in terms of the men in their lives?  The Christianity.com website thoroughly illustrates this in its entry about her, which is entitled "Susanna Wesley, Christian Mother" and mentions none of her other accomplishments.

Susanna Wesley may not be a forgotten woman in church history-- but the whole Susanna Wesley-- the complete person and all her accomplishments-- certainly is.  If evangelical Christianity is going to hold a woman up to us as a historical example for Christian women everywhere, we Christian women should be given the whole picture, not just what Christian leaders want us to hear in order to keep us compliantly in our place.  Susanna Wesley is not just an example of a godly mother-- though of course she is that.  But she is also an inspiration to women everywhere to do the utmost with what they are given with their whole selves, remembering that:

". . . religion is not to be confined to the church... nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that every where I am in Thy Presence." 

Amen, Susanna Wesley. Amen. 

Speaking Strongly While Female

I don't generally watch Fox News.  But this discussion hosted by Megyn Kelly at Fox News in response to this Fox News discussion hosted by Lou Dobbs, has engendered a lot of Internet discussion among the blogs I frequent.   It's all about whether women are somehow hurting their children if they are the primary breadwinners in two-parent heterosexual families.

If you listen to the Lou Dobbs discussion, what it amounts to is four men reacting to a recently reported statistic that in four out of 10 married heterosexual families in the U.S., the woman is the primary breadwinner.  I listened to the discussion carefully and discovered that the ensuing conversation was entirely about everything that these men believe is going wrong in society, which they believe this women-as-breadwinners situation is either a symptom or a cause of-- or both.  However, as the men went on to discuss divorce, abortion and deficient public school education, they made no real attempt to connect any of this to the actual statistic they were supposedly discussing.  How exactly women being breadwinners was related to divorce, abortion, or the travesty which they consider public school education to be, was never made plain.  The idea seemed to be simply that the "natural order" of the world was being upended if even 40% of married couples had the woman as the primary breadwinner-- and apparently this supposed disruption is cause for great alarm and despondency.*

One of those involved in the discussion, Erick Erickson, then wrote a follow-up blog post in which he says:

"But we should not kid ourselves or scream so loudly in politically correct outrage to drown the truth — kids most likely will do best in households where they have a mom at home nurturing them while dad is out bringing home the bacon. As a society, once we moved past that basic recognition, we’ve been on a downward trajectory of more and more broken homes and maladjusted youth."

Erickson links to the Core Beliefs of the patriarchal Christian website Center for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) at the end of his article.  CBMW then supports Erickson's position in their own article.   But it is noteworthy that Erickson's article never actually cites any studies supporting this position-- and throughout his article he contrasts, not couples where the man is primary breadwinner with couples where the woman is primary breadwinner, but couples where the man is primary breadwinner with single-parent households.  In short, he is comparing apples and oranges.  His point appears to be that because children of single-parent households do not do as well as dual-parent households, therefore children should be raised in households where the man is the primary breadwinner and the woman stays home with the kids.  (Hannah at Emotional Abuse and Your Faith does a very good job at picking apart the arguments both in Dobbs' discussion and Erickson's article.)

But all of this is just background for what I want to talk about today.

My purpose in blogging about this is not to defend the position that women are not harming their children or upsetting the natural order if they become the primary breadwinners for their families (though of course I agree that they are not).  Rachel Held Evans has done a marvelous job of defending that position both rationally and scripturally in her post Why the Church Can Support "Breadwinning" Wives Too, and I don't have much I could add there.  What I want to talk about is what happened to Megyn Kelly when she confronted the opposing viewpoint in her Fox News discussion.

It appears that though Megyn Kelly of Fox News is certainly politically conservative, she is not of the CBMW camp.  She is married with a powerful and highly visible career, and according to this article she and her husband are now expecting their third child.  There is no way I can see that Ms. Kelly could not have felt that the main topic directly impacted her as a woman and a mother.  Her opening remarks, though said with a smile, are a challenge to the two men whose vocally held position is that women like her are harming their children by their life choices.

"What makes you dominant and me submissive, and who died and made you scientist in chief?" Kelly asks laughingly -- this last being in response to Erickson's assertion that "liberals" are being "anti-science" in ignoring the natural male dominance supposedly prevalent in the animal kingdom.  She then goes on to point out that the data does not actually support the idea that children in two-parent homes where the woman is primary breadwinner and the man is home with the kids, fare any worse than children in two-parent homes where this is reversed.   Erickson then states that he believes the studies were primarily focused on wealthy couples and could not hold true for the middle class, which "cannot have it all."  Why "not having it all" only applies to women who want to care for their children and be the primary breadwinner, but not to men who want the same, he never actually addresses except to insist rather vaguely that women in general are more nurturing.

Kelly calls Dobbs and Erickson out on their claim that they were "not being judgmental" in insisting that women who make the choice to have careers with young children at home were "imposing a worse future on their children."  She says it is "offensive."  To counter, Erickson states that it is a simple "statement of fact" that it's hard for a woman to work full time and nurture her children. Again, he does not state why this is only true for a woman and not for a man.

Kelly quite calmly states that the blog did offend her.  She holds up the documents showing the studies that support her position and accuses Erickson of claiming not to be judging while actually judging anyway:  "[You're saying] 'I'm not, I'm not, I'm not; now let me judge, judge judge.  And by the way it's science, science, science."  She does not raise her voice while stating this, though she is emphatic about it.  At this point the men begin to smirk, and Erickson chuckles to Dobbs as he re-enters the conversation, "Be careful."  The implication is "Watch out for the angry woman!"

As Dobbs begins the same argument he was making in his original video, listing all of society's ills and then linking them to women in being in the workplace, Kelly calls him on it:  "Why are you attributing that to women in the workforce?"

His reply?  "Excuse me, let me just finish what I was saying if I may, oh dominant one!"  He thus picks up on Erickson's jab and amplifies it.  This seems to me to be a direct attack on her for being a woman while being host (i.e., in charge of the discussion).  Would he have mocked a man in this way?

As Kelly, taken aback, asks, "excuse me?" Dobbs begins to talk about studies supporting the problems in single-parent households. But the fact is that this is not evidence that supports the position that there is any harm caused to children by women in two-parent families being a breadwinner, or even the main breadwinner.  Kelly quite reasonably insists that the statistics for the latter really do not support the point being made against the former, and reminds Dobbs that she had defined the discussion from the beginning as being about two-parent households where the woman works outside the home.  Dobbs then begins to insist that they have to talk about single mothers, that this is absolutely what the discussion is about.  As he attempts to wrest the conversation away from her onto a tangent that Kelly, as the discussion leader and moderator, has determined to be off-topic, she must fight to regain control of the exchange.

It seems to me that Dobbs is insisting that the conversation must include the problems of single motherhood because to him, it's all part of the same thing: the upsetting of the natural order in which men protect/provide and women nurture, and all of society's ills are part and parcel of the same.  Kelly, however, does not start from this presupposition, nor does she buy into it.  Dobbs begins to laugh at her as she forces the conversation back to what is to her the point-- whether women in two-parent homes being the primary breadwinners is damaging to the children.  She then turns the conversation back to Erickson, quotes his article, and then begins to cite long-standing studies that contradict his position.  Kelly is very emphatic by this point and its clear that she is a little ruffled.  Erickson replies that the studies she cites are "politically motivated" (while his own statements presumably are purely objective).

Erickson then cites a Pew Studies poll in which three-quarters of those polled agreed that "the increase in moms as breadwinners makes it harder to raise kids," as he paraphrases it.  Kelly points out that the public majority has been wrong in the past-- in the area of inter-racial marriage being harmful, for example.  Erickson admits to this but insists that it's still better in the majority of cases for the mom to be home.  After the studies that Kelly has cited, this frankly comes off as, "I've made up my mind; don't confuse me with the facts."  He insists that he is not, as Kelly puts it, "denigrating the choices made by others."  But to insist that another person's choice (Kelly's, for instance) is actually harmful to children is a denigration of her choice whether he likes it or not.  His position amounts to "What you're doing is wrong and damaging to the most vulnerable members of our society, but I'm not saying anything bad about you for doing it," which is self-contradictory to say the least.

David Hayward over at NakedPastor has responded to this with a cartoon and comments: Emotionally invested preconceived stereotype of women.  He points out some of the difficulties Kelly faced in that interview which a man would probably not have faced:

"She was the host and yet had to constantly fight to maintain moderating position. She literally had to verbally fight, along with raising her voice, to keep control of the interview. The reasoning of those two men is obviously not based on research but on emotion drenched in traditional mores. But it's typical of people who have issues with strong women to point to their style rather than content. She had content that she used a strong style to try to communicate. They used rudeness, along with a domineering attitude, interrupting, overtalking, to communicate no content."

Now, I'm not saying that Kelly conducted the interview with absolute perfection. But some of the comments on Hayward's blog included the idea that Kelly was "yelling" and had "become aggressive," and that this constituted a "weakness" in how convincing her point of view was.  I don't believe that those making these comments were being consciously sexist.  But the fact remains that according to the entrenched social attitudes that still prevail today despite all the strides forward that women have made in terms of equal dignity, women are expected to always remain "sweet," and any emphatic or passionate behavior is usually held against them.   A man who strongly, even angrily, confronts an injustice is often admired, while a woman who does so is considered "strident" or "aggressive."

But logically, someone's argument is not necessarily weak just because they are impassioned about it.  The question is why they have become impassioned.

The fact is that as a woman, Kelly had to fight to have what a man would be given without a fight-- the right to moderate the discussion as leader and host.   Her  raised voice in this case was related to trying to do the job she had been given-- even if that meant interrupting a participant who seemed determined to take over.

Also, is it appropriate to compare the level of calm of someone who has no direct stake in the issue at hand, with that of someone who is actually one of the subjects being attacked by a position being taken on that issue?  As a woman, Kelly was the only one in the conversation whom the subject of conversation directly and personally impacted.  What these men were saying amounted to a direct attack on the choices Ms. Kelly herself had made in her life.  Should she be faulted for getting upset about that?  Should the male participants be commended for not getting upset when their life choices were not under attack?  No one was telling the men, "Your having a career is hurting your children!" 

It's kind of like looking askance at a person of color for being unable to discuss Jim Crow laws without raising their voice, while a white person is able to remain dispassionate.  

Kelly should not have had to endure the condescension and mocking of those men.  She should not have had to force them to allow her the place of leadership to which she was entitled as host.  She should not have been subjected to laughter and raised eyebrows for using such force.  And she should not have been faulted for having emotions about a topic which could not help but be an emotional one for her.

Particularly when she was able to back up her position with evidence that the men in the conversation were sorely lacking.

Megyn Kelly is a conservative and I'm a moderate, and we may not actually agree on very much.  But we're both women who have careers and children at home.  And when it comes to having a right to speak strongly while female-- I'm completely on her side.


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*I am being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but I don't believe I'm actually exaggerating the emotional nature of the Dobbs video discussion. The men really were very alarmed and despondent about so many women being breadwinners as pointing to the anticipated demise of everything they hold dear.  It seems a bit hypocritical, then, that they would appear to treat Kelly's emotion in her video as if it were a point against her.

Is God's Nature "Father" and not "Mother"?

There is an argument among Christians today about whether the Father God can also be thought of as a Mother.  Paul R. Smith's Book Is it Ok to Call God Mother? - Considering the Feminine Face of God answers "yes."  Many other Christians have also pointed out the many feminine/motherhood metaphors describing God both in the Old and New Testaments.  Clearly, according to Genesis 1:27, both male and female humans are made in the image of God; therefore, though God is a Spirit and without gender, God's nature must encompass both male and female.  Shouldn't this mean that God our Father is also God our Mother?

Certainly not, other Christian groups say.  Jesus, they point out, taught us to call God "Father," but He never called God "Mother."  Some cite Ephesians 3:14-15:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. (KJV) -- which in some translations reads:  "from whom all fatherhood, earthly or heavenly, derives its name" (Phillips) or "of whose fatherhood all heavenly and earthly fatherhood is a copy" (Barclay, Daily Study Bible).

Proponents of this doctrine say that theologically, we need to discard the idea that being Father means God is male; but the nature of God is Fatherhood, and all fatherhood on earth springs from God's very essence.  "Father" is what God is called-- one of God's names-- and therefore describes the nature of God.  But since God is not called "Mother" in the scriptures, the motherhood images of God are merely metaphors-- word pictures to help us understand something about God, just as referring to God's "feathers" (Psalm 91:4) does not make God a bird.  God is Father, not Mother-- and indeed, some who teach this insist that it is actually blasphemy to refer to God as Mother.

There are problems with this teaching, however.  First of all, the word translated "fatherhood" in certain translations of Ephesians 3:15 is the Greek word "patria"  As I quoted above, the King James version translates this as "family," as do most other translations, with only a few using "fatherhood."  There are only three instances in the New Testament where this word "patria" is used.

Luke 2:4 - And Joseph went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into. . . Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage (patria) of David.

Acts 3:25 - Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made. . . saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds (patria) of the earth be blessed. 

And, of course, Ephesians 3:15 - Of whom the whole family (patria) in heaven and earth is named.

Ephesians 3:14-15 does make a play on words between "Father (pater) of our Lord Jesus Christ" and "of whom the whole family (patria) of heaven and earth is named."  God the Father is seen as the Pater of the patria, which is a word linguistically related to "father."  But just because it is related to the word "father" does not make this word mean "fatherhood"!  "Fatherhood," as proponents of this teaching mean it, is "the state or nature of being a father."  But patria is not a concept word referring to a state of being; it is a concrete word referring to a group of people that are related by familial descent.  Therefore, meaning of this verse in its original language has to do with God being the source and engenderer of all people groups-- not the source of a state of being called "fatherhood" that women and mothers can never share.

This verse simply does not say that the nature of God is fatherhood and not motherhood.  In fact, there are certain implications of the idea that the nature of God is fatherhood and not motherhood, which the teachers of this doctrine may not have anticipated nor even desired.

1. If fatherhood is directly derived from God’s nature and motherhood is not, then what this would mean is that fatherhood is not only a biological thing, but a spiritual, divine thing, while motherhood is a biological thing only. This would mean that only fatherhood, and not motherhood, can have a spiritual dimension.

2. This wreaks havoc with the idea (which is often also believed by those who accept the doctrine of God-as-Father-only) that motherhood is a woman's highest calling. If motherhood is not spiritual and does not partake of the Divine Nature, how can it in any sense be a high calling?

3. This view degrades motherhood and thus womanhood, for if this necessary function of women does not reflect the nature of God, while the corresponding necessary function of men does reflect the nature of God, then women do not reflect God in one of the main aspects of the very nature of womanhood. ("Necessary" here is used in its meaning in logic-- not that it is necessary for women to be mothers, but that the potential  to be mothers and not fathers is "necessary" to the definition of womanhood.)  However, the holders of this doctrine usually believe men and women are both made in the image of God and are equal before God; that they just have different "roles."  But tying these roles into the nature of male vs. female humanity, and then saying the female role does not reflect the nature of God, contradicts the assertion of equality.

4. To find it insulting to God, or blasphemous, to think of God as having a mother's nature as well as a father's, smells of misogyny. Why should the Motherhood of God be blasphemous, unless there is something unholy about motherhood/womanhood?

5.  If only fatherhood, and not motherhood, can have a spiritual dimension (see point 1), then women must also, being made in the image of God, be able to partake of this spiritual, divine thing called Fatherhood, so women must be able to be spiritual fathers. To say otherwise is to say women are not as much made in God’s image as men are.  And yet the idea that women as well as men can be spiritual fathers is distasteful to those who believe this doctrine-- most likely because they associate "fatherhood" with authority that they believe women were never intended by God to have.

So, given that one way of testing an idea is to follow it through to its implications-- the implications of this idea seem to end up in a very self-contradictory place!  Perhaps it makes more sense to say that the nature of God is to engender, which both fathers and mothers actually do, and that there are other reasons why God is not called our "Mother" in the Bible that are unrelated to whether motherhood is also God's nature.

I'm going to go through some of the arguments in an online reprinting of Why God is Father and Not Mother by Mark Brumley, managing editor of the Catholic Faith Magazine (who originally published this in the July/August issue of 1999), to see how well his arguments hold together and if another way of looking at the issues he raises makes more sense.

Brumley says:

Since Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, they must hold that He most fully reveals how we, by grace, should understand God: as Father. Otherwise they tacitly deny the central claim of their faith—that Christ is the fullness of God’s self-disclosure to man. Non-Christians may do that, of course, but Christians cannot—not without ceasing to be Christians in any meaningful sense of the word.

Here is the doctrine made explicit:  Jesus revealed God as "Father," and if we say otherwise, we are denying Christ and ceasing to be Christians.

The problem, of course, is that my understanding of the God-as-Mother concept is not that it denies the Fatherhood of God-- not at all.  Rather, that the Motherhood of God is a viable concept in addition to that of God's Fatherhood.  I am not saying we should stop viewing God as Father, but only that it is possible to view God as Father without excluding Mother.  Jesus, of course, stands in a special relation to God in that God is His Father in a way that God is not Father to the rest of us, except by adoption (see Galatians 4:5).  As Brumley himself says:

Now whatever else we say about God, we cannot say that He is Jesus’ mother, for Jesus’ mother is not God but Mary. Jesus’ mother was a creature; His Father, the Creator. "Father" and "Mother" are not, then, interchangeable terms for God in relation to Jesus.

Brumley then insists that if God was not Mother to Jesus, He [male pronouns for God are intended to be understood as generic here] cannot be Mother to us.  But that is precisely what Brumley cannot say, given his own words.  Jesus had no human father; He did have a human mother.  But the rest of us have both human mothers and human fathers.  Jesus could not call God His mother because God was exclusively His father.  God is not exclusively our Father, for we have human fathers as well.  Since God is our Father in a different way than He is Jesus' Father, it is not impossible that God could also be our Mother in that same way.

We cannot escape the fact that Jesus taught us to pray to "Our Father" and not "Our Mother."  But how restrictively should this be understood?  Brumley believes that it is wrong to call God anything other than what is revealed:

Undergirding Jesus’ teaching about God as Father is the idea that God has revealed Himself as to be such and that His revelation should be normative for us. God, in other words, calls the theological shots. If He wants to be understood primarily in masculine terms, then that is how we should speak of Him. To do otherwise, is tantamount to idolatry—fashioning God in our image, rather than receiving from Him His self-disclosure as the Father.

So is it wrong for humans to call God something other than what God calls Himself?  There is at least one place in scripture where a human does just that-- and God does not rebuke her.  Genesis 16 tells the story of how Hagar, Abraham's slave wife, was driven away by Sarah, and how God met Hagar in the wilderness.  Genesis 16:13 tells us, "And she [Hagar] called the name of the Lord who spoke to her 'You, God see me,' [or, "the God who sees"] for she said, 'Have I also here seen Him who sees me?'"   

There are actually many names for God used in the Old Testament, including names taken from other ancient religions.  There is one-- the name transliterated "Yahweh"-- which God calls His own Name, speaking to Moses in Exodus 3:14, but there is no indication that each and every other name used for God, including "El, "Adonai," and "Shaddai" [or "El Shaddai"], and "Ehyeh," were names God personally revealed to humanity as His names.  There are stories throughout the Old Testament where a person has an encounter with God and speaks of God using a new variation on one of these names.  Of course, Jesus' revelation of God should take primacy-- but there is simply no place where the Bible states that it is wrong for humans to give names to God.

Brumley goes on:

The fact is, whenever the Bible uses feminine language for God, it never applies it to Him in the same way masculine language is used of Him. Thus, the primary image of God in Scripture remains masculine, even when feminine similes are used: God is never called "She" or "Her." As Protestant theologian John W. Miller puts it in Biblical Faith and Fathering: "Not once in the Bible is God addressed as mother, said to be mother, or referred to with feminine pronouns. On the contrary, gender usage throughout clearly specifies that the root metaphor is masculine-father.

The question here, of course, is "why?"  Brumley dismisses the idea that the use of masculine pronouns and names for God could be driven by the patriarchal mindset of the times in which the Bible was written, but the fact remains that the word "father" (and other masculine names) in ancient times would have conveyed things God intended to reveal about Himself which the word "mother" (and other female names) could not have conveyed.  Women had no legal power in those times and were considered property to be transferred from male to male.  But this is no longer the case today.   Women today in society have the same rights and powers as men, and mothers today hold the same legal authority over their children that fathers do.  Therefore, the word "mother" no longer carries implications of powerlessness or dependence.

In fact, since fathers and mothers are different in the way they relate to their children (and children relate differently to them) motherhood conveys different concepts of relationship-- not inherently better, but different-- so that the desire to relate spiritually to a religious mother figure is widespread in humanity. Brumley, who says "Catholicism’s doctrine that Mary is the 'Mother of Christians' is correct," himself embraces a spiritual Mother in Mary. Protestants believe Mary should be honored as Christ's mother without becoming our own Mother. But many Protestants feel something lacking in relating to God only as Father. Is the desire for a divine mother-child relationship a genuine human need, and does it actually spring from the Motherhood of God? God is the One who said, after all, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so shall I comfort you." Isaiah 66:13. Though God does not call Himself "Mother" in the Bible, there certainly are promises of Motherhood in a verse like that one!

What are the reasons Brumley gives for why God is Father and not Mother, given that he disagrees that it has something to do with the Bible's patriarchal cultures? Brumley says:

A father is the "principle" or "source" of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring’s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways. Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman.

This idea is inherently male-centered in perspective.  As Brumley says, it used to be thought that only the father was an active agent of conception: that he contributed the "seed" to which the mother's body was merely the "soil" in which the seed was planted.  We now know that both mother and father produce a "seed"-- sperm and an egg-- which combine together to become a child.  But the idea that the father "enters" the mother to "impregnate" her is neither more nor less accurate than the idea that the mother "encompasses" the father in order to "take" his seed.  Many men can testify that when a woman wants to become a mother, it is frequently not the man who "initiates activity"!  In short, there is no reason why God's generative, life-giving power is not as physically analogous to motherhood as it is to  fatherhood.

Another idea of Brumley's is this:

Because the father procreates outside of himself, his child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) other than his father. Likewise, the father is other than his child (though also not wholly). In other words, the father, as father, transcends his child. Fatherhood, in this sense, symbolizes transcendence in relation to offspring, though we also recognize that, as the "source" of his child’s life, the father is united or one with his child and therefore he is not wholly a symbol of transcendence.


On the other hand, because the mother procreates within herself—within her womb where she also nurtures her child for nine months—her child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of herself. And similarly, the mother is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of her child. In other words, the mother, as mother, is one with her child. Motherhood, in this sense, symbolizes immanence, though we recognize that as a distinct being, the mother is also other than her child and therefore not wholly a symbol of immanence. . . .

Which leaves us with the obvious question, "If this is so, why does traditional theology use only male language for God?" The answer: because God’s transcendence has a certain priority over His immanence in relation to creation. . .

To prevent God’s transcendence from being lost sight of and God being wrongly reduced to, or even too closely identified with, His creation, language stressing transcendence—masculine terms such as father —is necessary. . .

Thus, in order to express adequately God’s infinite transcendence and to avoid idolatrously identifying God with the world (without severing Him from His creation, as in deism), even on the metaphorical level we must use fatherly language for God. Motherly language would give primacy to God’s immanence and tend to confuse Him with His creation (pantheism). This does not exclude all maternal imagery—as we have seen even the Bible occasionally employs it—but it means we must use such language as the Bible does, in the context of God’s fatherhood.

In other words, God’s Fatherhood includes the perfections of both human fatherhood and human motherhood. Scripture balances transcendence and immanence by speaking of God in fundamentally masculine or paternal terms, yet also occasionally using feminine or maternal language for what is depicted as an essentially masculine God.

In a self-contradictory fashion, Brumley here associates masculinity with God's essence while simultaneously admitting that both motherhood and fatherhood image the nature of God-- one through transcendence and one through immanence.  I am inclined to agree that this analogy (fatherhood is to transcendence as motherhood is to immanence) has some merit.  However, I am not at all convinced by Brumley's idea that if we think of God as Mother, we will lose sight of God's transcendence and become pantheists. This would only be the case if we replaced the idea of God as Father with the idea of God as Mother.  But if we think of God as both Father and Mother, then God's immanence and God's transcendence achieve a balance.  

You see, I am also not convinced that God's transcendence should be given priority over God's immanence.  Jesus came to reveal God the Father-- but the Father also revealed the Son as Emmanuel-- "God with us."  Matthew 1:23. The Holy Spirit came from Father and Son and now dwells within us.  John 14:17.  And Psalm 139:7-10 states:

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.

All of these are ideas of immanence.  If we focus on God's transcendence to the point where it takes priority over God's immanence, we can end up with a distant, removed God who commands from afar, and can miss the fact that God is very near.  In many branches of Christianity, it is transcendence, not immanence, which is overbalanced in Christians' worship and service of God.

Brumley concludes by discussing the Trinity and the Incarnation in terms of Fatherhood, in that it is necessary to see God as containing an eternal, engendering relationship between God the Father and God the Son, who nonetheless are One.  As a Trinitarian, I wholeheartedly support this-- though I think Brumley is associating "Father" with maleness and supposed male authority, in spite of his assertions to the contrary.   When he says:

Thus, within the Trinity, there is fundamental equality—each Person is wholly God—and basic difference—each Person is unique and not the Others, not interchangeable. And there is also sacred order, with the Son begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. This shows that equality and difference, and even equality and hierarchy, need not be understood as opposed to one another. . . .

--he is arbitrarily adding an idea of hierarchy to the Trinity, and from there to human male-female relations, that is simply unnecessary and without basis.*  Once he has done so, he has weakened the female and rendered it dependent, which may be at the heart of why he disagrees with ascribing motherhood to God. 

In short, there is no reason to follow Brumley's reasoning to deny the Motherhood of God, especially in light of the negative implications that I have described early in this post as proceeding from such a denial.  I believe it is most accurate, therefore, to say that God's nature and essence encompass both fatherhood and motherhood.  

Both fathers and mothers reflect God's image when they relate to their children.  And we can relate to God both as a Father and Mother.  

For which I am truly thankful. 

______________________

*Note: I have discussed this further in Part 3 of my series, The Bible and Human Authority.

Thoughts on the "Quiverfull" Movement

A grass-roots movement has been growing for the last 20 years among evangelical/fundamentalist Christian families. Using a literalistic approach to the Bible, these families withdraw from modern culture into a strict patriarchal structure where birth control of any kind is eschewed and fathers control an ever-growing brood of children, home-schooled by a submissive wife. Considering children to be a “quiver of arrows” in the culture-wars over “family values,” people in this movement describe themselves in many terms. “Quiverfull” is perhaps the most convenient.

This movement defines Christianity largely in terms of the raising up of “godly families” to lift up God’s standards to the surrounding culture. Women are asked to lay down any individual hopes and dreams, for the sake of motherhood as their “highest calling.” The wife is there to support the vision and calling of the father, and the children are to do the same until (if they are boys) they become fathers themselves, or (if they are girls) they are given by their father to a husband, so that they can fulfill their own call to motherhood. Women can also have a ministry in this movement of teaching other women to be good wives and mothers-- but all of a woman’s existence revolves around these roles.

But as we look at Jesus’ practices and teachings, and the practices and teachings of the apostles, we simply don’t find anything to indicate that the kingdom of God that they preached about consists of, or is to be ushered in by, the raising up of “godly” families-- or any evidence that this is what the kingdom consists of for women.

The best way to determine the main message Jesus preached is to look at His words at the beginning and the end of each gospel: the words that set up and wrap up His earthly ministry. Matthew 4:17 encapsulates Jesus’ basic message like this: “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” In a nutshell, Jesus taught that His listeners should listen to His message and change their ways, for a new kingdom was coming and was already among them. Most of the rest of what He taught was either a fleshing out of what He meant by “repent,” or of what He meant by “the kingdom of heaven” -- or both.

Luke’s gospel sums it up best. Jesus began His ministry by teaching that the Scriptures about the coming of the Messiah had been fulfilled in Him (Luke 4:18), and wrapped it up by saying that He had completed “what was written” about Him, and that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations. . . and ye are witnesses of these things.” Luke 24:47-48.

Jesus’ message was that He was bringing in the kingdom of heaven through His life, death and resurrection. The kingdom, He taught, was a new way of simply being in harmony with God, a new way of living in God’s abiding presence (John 15:10) which would grow and mix with all of life until it had changed everything. (Matt 13:31-33) The kingdom is characterized by loving our enemies (Matt 5:44), laying down power and authority (Matt. 20:25-28), and putting our trust in Christ (John 3:15). Jesus said nothing whatsoever to His disciples or to the people along the lines of “Now go and marry godly women and raise up children to be arrows for the kingdom of heaven, to raise up God’s standard in the culture around you.” He said instead that His followers were to “go and make disciples” to follow Him as he had taught them. Matt. 28:19. In a patriarchal society that was very focused on fatherhood, Jesus consistently taught that human fatherhood was not to be the focus of His disciples: “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” Matt. 23:9.

Paul showed throughout his ministry that he had dedicated himself to this message and no other. 2 Cor. 5:20; Gal. 1:8. The only other injunction that was laid on Paul (besides being an ambassador calling, “be reconciled with God”) was that he should “remember the poor.” Gal. 2:10. And though Paul taught principles for the conduct of marriage and family, he did not treat marriage or family as anyone’s “high calling” -- rather, he taught that marriage was one option only, for both men and women: “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.” 1 Cor. 7:8.

If the calling of women as Christ’s followers is a call to homemaking, marriage and motherhood-- if women’s place is to serve their families and support their husbands in their callings-- then what can we say about Christ’s words to Martha in Luke 11:38-42? Martha was working in the kitchen to prepare a meal for the men while Mary joined the other disciples and sat “at Jesus’ feet” (which meant to be taught as a disciple -- see Acts 22:3). Martha was fulfilling everything this teaching says it is a woman’s role to do-- but it was Martha, not Mary, whom Jesus rebuked for focusing on what was not “needful.” And it was Mary whom He defended as having chosen “the good part.” Jesus said nothing to either of them about getting married, having children, and supporting their husbands’ callings. Instead He commended Mary for choosing to sit with the other disciples and be a disciple herself.

Homemaking, marriage and family are simply not held up in the Scriptures as the focus of the kingdom of heaven for anyone-- and women as well as men can be co-workers in the gospel (see Phil. 4:3). Many women traveled with Jesus in His earthly ministry (Luke 8:2-3), and Paul commended many women in Romans 16 for their discipleship. Neither Paul nor Jesus ever told these women that they should be home having children and taking care of the house.*

I believe the idea that Christianity is about getting married and raising up children to be “godly arrows” in warfare against worldly cultures, is a distortion of the gospel that Jesus brought, and of everything He came to do. In Him men and women alike are set free. I would encourage anyone who wants to follow Jesus, to stick with what Jesus actually taught, and not to be distracted by what Paul would have called “another gospel.”

----------------
*Paul did tell Titus that younger women should be taught to love their husbands and children and be "keepers" of the home-- but that word was the same word used for the "keeper" of the garden where Jesus was buried. It did not mean "homemaker" or "housekeeper," but "guard/watcher." And he said this should be done so that the gospel movement would not get a bad reputation in the surrounding (patriarchal) culture they were trying to reach-- not so that women would be restricted to "keeping the home" and nothing else. Titus 2:4-5 (compare with Romans 16:1-15).