In articles like this, an emphasis on the sacrificial love of Christ is used to cover up the fact that women are commanded to submit to their husbands in everything. That’s not okay. Ever. No one should have to submit to anyone in everything. So husbands are supposed to love their wives? That sounds a bit like being a beloved slave. The love thing is nice, the whole slavery thing is not. I don’t want to be anyone’s beloved possession. I’d much rather be their beloved equal.
Marc of Bad Catholic has offered a “rebuttal” of my post of last week criticizing that simplistic dandelion rose illustration supposedly showing the bad fruits of contraception and the good fruits of chastity. I’m not going to bother with most of his rebuttal—feel free to go over and read and critique it yourself—but I do want to point out some rather bad logic.
When I read blogs written by Christian feminists, one feeling I get is that the church needs to shut up, to stop talking to women, and to start listening to women. Because to be perfectly honest, the advice the church gives women is terrible, and it’s usually (though not always) given by men, is terrible. In this post we look at advice that women should stop whining and get married already.
When I saw this image I thought of a recent article in Prodigal magazine. It was called “The Lost Art of Servanthood (A Letter to My Feminist Sisters).” It hit on all of these same points, arguing that if Christ calls his followers to be servants, fighting for equality should be out of the picture. And thinking about this, I realized that there are two Christian doctrines that can easily stand in the way of any attempt to reach equality or justice—servanthood, and suffering.
Forward Thinking is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month’s prompt: “What do is the purpose of marriage?” There was lively debate in the comments section of the original prompt, and nearly a dozen blog posts were written in response.
I am no longer surprised when I meet a woman raised in the same quiverfull Christian homeschooling culture as I who grew up to leave it all and yet still married young. There are a number of reasons for this, including habit and familial expectation. In this post I want to focus on a few common themes I’ve noticed in these situations.
Supporters of patriarchal gender roles and hierarchical marriage relationships often argue that feminists want to pit men and women against each other, but what they don’t realize is that by turning marriage into a relationship based on dominance and submission, they are the ones pitting men and women against each other. In seeking equality, feminism envisions relationships built not on dominance and submission but rather on communication and cooperation.
This evening I went to a marriage equality rally outside of my town’s courthouse. The first speaker was the pastor of one of a local Christian church. She started her address by saying that she wants to challenge the common conception that being Christian meant being anti-gay. I agree with her on the importance of challenging this conception, an think that it’s extremely important not to let the Christian Right control the narrative.
In this two-part series, Samantha offers her thoughts on a Focus on the Family radio interview with Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian, authors of True Woman 101: Divine Design. DeMoss and Kassian’s book is more mainstream than is Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet, but the messages laid out here are chillingly similar. Part II focuses on women’s role as humble and obedient servants.
In this two-part series, Samantha offers her thoughts on a Focus on the Family radio interview with Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian, authors of True Woman 101: Divine Design. DeMoss and Kassian’s book is more mainstream than is Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet, but the messages laid out here are chillingly similar. Part I focuses on whether women should pursue self-actualization.
The fact that Driscoll can’t even see that we might be able to work towards a society where there are fewer abusive boyfriends and sexually harassing bosses, or work to empower women to value and protect themselves and refuse to put up with any such shit from the men in their lives, makes me want to strangle something. Mark Driscoll may think he has has some new improved attractive version of patriarchy to sell to his flock, but the stuff he’s peddling has been around for millenia, and it hasn’t gotten better with age.
I told Sean earlier that I think today pretty much sums up our lives together, and I wasn’t kidding. Marriage and parenting are things that are beautiful and enriching when you zoom out and take a long view, but will naturally have bumps and turbulence along the way. Just like life. And in many ways, today was a really good picture of that.
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