Sanctified Sexism

When asked whether reading a Bible commentary written by a woman would be placing a man under the teaching authority of a woman, the well-known evangelical preacher John Piper responded as follows:

It might be. Uh. He may feel it that way. And if he does, he probably’s not gonna read it. He shouldn’t read it. . . [But] It doesn’t have to be experienced that way I don’t think. And here, here’s my reasoning. 

The point of Paul in I Timothy 2:12 where he says. . . I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men. That’s a key text. I Timothy 2:12. I don’t permit her to teach or have authority. And those two things together, I think, constitute the eldership office. Teaching and authority. . .

What is the dynamic between how men flourish and women flourish as God designed them to flourish when an act of authority is being exerted on a man from a woman.

And so I distinguish between personal, direct exercises of authority that involve manhood and womanhood.

Because it’s personal. She’s right there. She’s woman. I’m man. And I’m being directly, uh, pressed on by this woman in an authoritative way. Should she be doing that? Should I be experiencing that? And my answer’s, No; I think that’s contrary to the way God made us.  So that the, the personal directness of it is removed. And the man doesn’t feel himself, and she wouldn’t feel herself, in any way compromised by his reading that book and learning from that book. Because I’m not having a direct, authoritative confrontation. She’s not lookin’ at me, and, and confronting me, and authoritatively directing me, as woman. There’s this, there’s this interposition of this phenomenon called “book” and “writing” that puts her out of my sight, and, in a sense, takes away the dimension of her female personhood.

Whereas if she were standing right in front of me, and teaching me, as my shepherd, week in and week out, I couldn’t make that separation. She’s woman. And I am man. (Transcript of portion of John Piper podcast provided by Bible Literature Translation.)

Notice that though John Piper uses the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 to support his view that a man can learn from a woman through a book, his actual point is that he would "feel" himself "compromised" if she came into his office and spoke to him in person-- presumably even if she quoted exactly, in person, the same words he just read in the commentary.  The fact is that as far as I can see, the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 really doesn't distinguish between a woman being physically present, or just reading what she wrote in a book.  The traditional reading is more about (as he himself admits above) whether she's an  "elder."  But that really doesn't seem to be what Rev. Piper is talking about.

As long as he doesn't have to notice she's a woman, Piper says, he has no problem receiving teaching from a woman who would be considered enough of an authority on the Bible to have her commentary published.  Apparently it isn't authoritative teaching by a woman that's the problem.  It's authoritative teaching by a woman in front of him, in the same room.  And this is a problem even, it seems, if she holds no "eldership office" anywhere in any church, but is instead a doctor of theology. 

So is this really about Dr. Piper's interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12?  Or is it more about Dr. Piper's feelings about how women should act towards men? 

John Piper considers himself a "complementarian." Theopedia.com gives us this definition of "complementarianism":

Complementarianism is the theological view that although men and women are created equal in their being and personhood, they are created to complement each other via different roles and responsibilities as manifested in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. . .Complementarianism holds that God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the Church.  

Complementarianism, holding that women are equal to men in their ontological being, thus sets itself apart from the more traditional view held both by Christians and the whole of society from the beginning of recorded history until at least the beginning of the 20th century-- the view that women were simply inferior to men.  As the Encyclopedia of Women and Gender, Vol. 1 states: 

"Early philosophical speculation emphasized the inequality of the sexes on all dimensions of social importance. . . [I]n later centuries female inferiority was viewed as a function of divine fiat, physiological instability, or defects in the brain.  Though the rationale for this belief changed over time, its substance remained the same: females in every respect, were viewed as lesser beings."

This belief was certainly not confined to the church, as Charles Darwin and his fellow evolutionists unabashedly declared that women were evolutionarily inferior to men.  But it is this traditional attitude that women are inferior that forms the basis of what is called "sexism," just as the belief that certain races are inferior is the basis of "racism."  

Here is one of Dictionary.com's definitions of sexism:

"discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women." [Emphasis added]

The online Social Science Dictionary simply says:

Beliefs which hold one sex superior to the other thereby justifying sexual inequalities. [Emphasis added]

A complementarian, therefore, should eschew sexism by principle.  Since complementarianism purports to base itself on Scripture alone for its view of the essential equality but functional differences between men and women, it seems reasonable to expect that those church leaders who publicly define and defend complementarianism in and for the church in general, would reject sexism, insisting that nothing but Scripture should define how men think of and act towards women.

Unfortunately, it's not always that simple.  

Human nature being what it is, most of us hold attitudes and ways of thinking which we have imbibed since we were children: attitudes that come from existing in our bodies in the societies and among the cultural mores in which we live.  Complementarians sometimes say that egalitarians, in rejecting "biblical" male-female roles and "male headship," are capitulating to "modern, feminist culture."  But the roots of sexism in American life lie far deeper and more entrenched than we may realize, and feminism (which has only existed for about 100 years) is really still the new kid on the block.  And complementarianism, of course, is itself informed by feminism when it re-examines the traditional Christian view and disagrees that the Bible supports the notion that women were created inferior.

So when the most public faces of complementarian Christianity in America today speak of men, women and male-female relations, Christians (complementarian and egalitarian alike) should be willing to confront them when the things they say, and the attitudes they reveal, show not so much a complementarian viewpoint as a sort of sanctified sexism-- a reflection of a deeply entrenched societal devaluation of women, a culturally imbibed societal expectation of favoritism towards men as the superior sex.

To do him justice, John Piper says this in the same podcast:

So, I think the point of that text is not to say that you can never learn anything from a woman. That’s just not true. It’s not true biblically, and it’s not true experientially, because the reason for saying that I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men here is not because she’s incompetent. It’s not because she can’t have thoughts. In fact, the women in your church, and the woman in, the woman you are married to, have many thoughts that you would do well to know. [laughs] And to know, and learn, and to learn from. And so the issue there is not that she doesn’t have thoughts that you wouldn’t benefit from. Or that she can’t, uh, teach you anything.

The, the issue is one of how does manhood and womanhood work. 

Piper obviously believes that he believes men and women are equal.  He doesn't think he can't learn from a woman, or that women are incompetent to teach men.  But he can't seem to get past his discomfort in having a certain kind of experience of women-- an experience that gives him a feeling of being "directly pressed upon by a woman in an authoritative way."  Remembering that according to the complementarian injunction that a woman is excluded only from being a church elder, and not from being a theologian who comments on the Bible-- this is not about what she's teaching or where she's teaching or how she's teaching.  It's whether he has to directly experience a woman being an authority on a subject in his presence. 

It looks like sexism to me.  Sexism that's sanctified by its ostensible complementarianism, so that it slips under the radar as just part of complementarian doctrine.  But what Piper's words are really communicating, whether he intends it or not, is that he doesn't want women to get uppity in his face.  He doesn't want to feel, in the presence of a woman, that she might have more knowledge than him on a particular Bible text.  It makes him feel uncomfortable about his manhood.  

Is this, at its heart, about what Scripture says?  Or is it about how a man (raised in the 1950s and 60s when men expected to be deferred to by women) feels when a woman is not deferring to him? 

The same sort of thing happens in the most recent Pat Robertson controversy being picked up in the media:  the one where Pat Robinson (who became a married adult during the Father-Knows-Best 1950s) counsels a woman whose husband has been cheating on her that "men will be men":

"Here's the secret," the famous evangelical said. "Stop talking the cheating. He cheated on you, well, he's a man."

The wife needs to focus on the reasons she married her spouse, he continued.

"Does he provide a home for you to live in," Robertson said. 'Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children... Is he handsome?". . .

"Recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit," Robertson said. "What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander. . . ."

In another appearance back in January of this year, Robertson told a woman,

We need to cultivate romance, darling! ... You always have to keep that spark of love alive. It just isn't something to just lie there, 'Well, I'm married to him so he's got to take me slatternly looking.' You've got to fix yourself up, look pretty.

This certainly has a lot in common with traditional social attitudes towards male adultery, as illustrated in a Los Angeles Times article from 1987:

In a Parliamentary debate in 1857, the Lord Chancellor said that "A wife might without any loss of caste condone an act of adultery . . . but a husband could not condone a similar act on the part of the wife . . . as the adultery might be the means of palming spurious offspring on her husband." Englishmen could get a divorce for any evidence of adultery, while Englishwomen had to prove that the adultery was incestuous or otherwise unnatural.

Unflattering as it is towards men to say they shouldn't be required (or expected) to control their sexual urges, this mindset is part of traditional permissiveness towards male sexual behavior, while female behavior has traditionally been tightly controlled.  Though it may seem on its face to treat men as the inferior sex, what this attitude is actually rooted in is a devaluing of the woman to her sexual/reproductive functions as primary to her nature, while men are treated more as whole persons.  Not being expected to control himself is part of historically male autonomy, while being kept under rigid social control is part of historically female subordination.  So also is being told, in essence, to just be grateful for a roof over your head (which frankly, in this era when women usually contribute almost equally to the household rent, mortgage, grocery bills and clothing purchases, simply sounds ludicrous).

But what does this have to do with the Bible?  Where does the Bible say a man shouldn't be expected to control himself, or that it's a wife's job to stay pretty so that her husband won't stray?  On the contrary-- throughout the Book of Proverbs it's the man who is warned to not to be enticed by adulterous women, not the wife told to keep him from getting enticed! In fact, Proverbs tells men to choose to see the woman they married as beautiful, no matter how old the couple has become: 

May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

Prov. 5:18-20, emphasis added.

There is no onus laid upon women anywhere in the Bible to stay forever youthful in appearance, or to take responsibility for keeping their husbands from adultery.  Women are instead told not to focus on beauty, but on "the hidden person of the heart."  (1 Peter 3:4).  And far from being expected to just be grateful for being provided for by a man, Proverbs 31 shows that Old Testament women (wealthy ones, at least) had their own incomes, businesses and land ownership!

So-- are Robertson's words complementarian (focused on Scripture as teaching male-female equality along with difference in role)?  Or are they just sanctified sexism? 

It looks like the latter to me. 

So here's my respectful request and challenge to complementarians:  Please, no more sanctifying of sexism.  If an attitude that one of your public spokesmen (however well-intentioned) is perpetuating about women has nothing to do with what you believe the Bible teaches, then please, speak up about it!  Egalitarians and complementarians might be able to find some common ground here-- an area where we can work together for the uplifting and honoring of all our sisters in Christ. 

Just because a preacher is well-known doesn't mean he can't make mistakes, or that his mistakes shouldn't be addressed-- or that he shouldn't be encouraged to retract them just as publicly as the mistake itself was public.

Perpetuating the notion that the heart of Christianity is sexist-- devaluing to women and treating them as inferior-- isn't doing any of us any good.  

Are you with me? 

Christian Male Identity

This post is an invitation to a conversation, because I don't have all the answers. If you've found this blog, I'd like to know what you think.

J.K. Gayle over at Aristotle's Feminist Subject has brought up the current fear among many Christians that the empowerment of women is emasculating men. He cites the new book by William J. Bennett (former U.S. Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan and former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George H.W. Bush) called The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood. Bennett appears to voice a concern I've read in several places on the Web, that women's social and economic gains are somehow leading to a male identity crisis.

My first reaction is to ask myself, why should it matter to men, ultimately, what women are doing? When Peter to said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?" referring to Jesus' plans for John, Jesus answered, "What is that to you? You follow me." John 21:21-22. Shouldn't following Jesus be enough?

And yet as a follower of Jesus, I myself must not be selective in doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. What I would have done unto me is for my concerns to be taken seriously and listened to. So I must listen to my Christian brothers.

One thing I'm certain of. Men should not define themselves by whom they get to be in authority over. Is a man in slavery, beaten by a master, any less a man? Is a man interred in a concentration camp any less a man? So, even though the Christian Patriarchy movement seems to want to define men in terms of their "leadership" in the home, I cannot feel that a man must be in charge of someone else, in order to feel like a man.

Two Friars and a Fool, makes this point rather well. But the other thing they're saying also should be heard:

"Patriarchy is not masculinity. The two aren’t the same. But, apart from patriarchy, what is masculinity? The thing is, none of us know, because almost no one is thinking about it. Or worse the only people thinking about it are the ones who just want to push patriarchy in disguise... What is it to be a man, apart from either being part of patriarchy or being told how evil you are for being part of patriarchy? If I knew, I would tell you, but I don’t. I’d like to, though."

There is an interesting thing going on here. Women (except perhaps those embracing Christian Patriarchy), because we have traditionally been the "other" sex, tend to want to be viewed primarily as just people. We don't want to be defined by our sex, but by our humanity. But the question being asked here by men is, "what defines us as men?"

Traditionally, men have been the "default" sex. To be human has been viewed primarily in terms of being human as a male. The traditional name for humanity is "man." What humans do that makes them human has, through history, been seen in terms of what men do. Until recently, being a man meant just doing what men-- that is, people-- do. Working, resting, praying, having a family. Self-expressing through art or literature or craft or sport. Being in charge too-- but that was only part of it.

Now men are finding that the meaning of words have changed, as a concerted effort has been made in the last few generations to include women as part of the default of what "human" means. We no longer say, "man," we say, "humanity." And now many men seem to feel themselves at a loss. If "humanity" is no longer, by default, male humanity, what does it mean to be male, as opposed to being female? Particulary since women, who have always worked, rested, prayed and had families, just like men (only without being in charge, and with their self-expression largely suspected, suppressed and devalued), want to be defined mostly as just "people"? And maybe to get to be in charge sometimes too?

If you're a man, only you can be a father. And if you're a woman, only you can be a mother. And those are different things, and the differences are important. And there are physical differences, and hormonal differences. And they tend to affect the way we behave-- but not universally. There are always exceptions. And there are no good traits that are the exclusive province of one sex or the other. For Christians, Jesus is our example, and he modeled all good traits, all of what it means to be human. And Jesus was male, but was not afraid to describe himself as spreading wings like a mother hen and taking chicks under them!

Perhaps the answer is not to come up with a certain set of traits and call them "manhood," and another set of traits and call them "womanhood," whether the word "biblical" is attached to these terms or not. Perhaps men as well as women need to simply look to the humanity of Christ for an example of what being a human ought to be. If you're doing your best to be like Jesus, then you are a biblical man. You are also a biblical woman. Not because there are no differences. Males and females are different, and the differences should be celebrated. Christianity is not a religion that calls the spiritual good, and the physical bad. Our bodies are good, and they are part of who we are-- and our bodies are gendered.

But the problem my Christian brothers are expressing-- those who don't want to embrace patriarchy as part of the definition of manhood-- is not fully answered by saying, "Let's just all follow Jesus and not worry about it." One of the commenters on Two Friars and a Fool, Douglas Hagler, put it this way:

"I would say that I have been thoroughly taught to see masculinity as bad. Only recently have I begun to see the possibility of another view. That is, obviously, part of my motivation here. I guess I would also say that I have also been taught to see certain things as associated with masculinity - violence, domination, unconscious privilege, etc. - and that all of those things are negative things."


The problem also goes deeper than mere perception. There is also the fact that unconscious privilege is apparently now actively hurting men, particularly in education. MaryAnn Baenninger, in her article in The Chronicle: For Women on Campus, Access Doesn't Equal Success, notes that women are not really "winning" in the way William J. Bennett seems to fear-- but she also notes this:

"And while we were focusing on gaining access for girls and women, we neglected the needs of boys and men. We didn't plan well for the consequences of a society that taught one sex that it had to work harder to gain access, and the other sex that access was guaranteed. We find ourselves surprised each time we learn that the educational system is not serving boys and men as well as it might."

So though I disagree with the Christian Patriarchy movement as the right solution to the problem, I do not deny that there is a problem. Many men-- even egalitarian men-- feel a sense of disorientation. The traditional ways they have always acted are now associated with negative things such as domination and privilege-- even violence. Maybe it's not so much that men don't know who they are, as it is that they don't know how to act; they don't feel it's ok any more to just be themselves. And maybe it's not as easy for them, just living life, as it used to be.

Can we, their egalitarian Christian sisters, help them, without having to be ourselves forced into traditional, subordinate roles that we don't feel reflect the nature of the New Creation kingdom? Brothers, do you have input on how men can learn to be comfortable with themselves without returning to the patriarchy of the past?

If you have thoughts to share, please keep them respectful and accepting of others who may differ. Thanks!