{"id":69670,"date":"2019-01-26T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=69670"},"modified":"2019-01-26T23:01:38","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T06:01:38","slug":"women-and-apologetics-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/01\/women-and-apologetics-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Women and Apologetics (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GBH<\/a>
The Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni Center on the campus of Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, where I\u2019m currently sitting. \u00a0 \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continuing with some thoughts on the subject:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frankly, men tend to dominate apologetics because men are more inclined to be combative and more interested in certain styles of dispute. \u00a0This really isn\u2019t open to question, I think. \u00a0It shows up in international politics, in crime statistics, in sports, and so forth. \u00a0It appears already in children, when boys roughhouse and make weapons out of sticks while girls . . . \u00a0play in other ways. \u00a0(I\u2019m trying to avoid political incorrectness here.) \u00a0I saw a cartoon once \u2014 I haven\u2019t been able to find it today \u2014 in which a husband is indicating how he and his wife divide up the responsibilities in their ordinary middle class home; his wife manages the house, the family budget, the family diet, the education of the children, vacation planning, and the like, while he concentrates on government economic policy, presidential politics, and appointments to the Supreme Court. \u00a0Put another way: my own very level-headed and effective wife finds my more obsessive critics simply ridiculous and can\u2019t figure out why in the world I pay them even the slightest attention.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all gender-based, of course. \u00a0I was always amazed, in talking with the late great Richard Lloyd Anderson, to see how serenely unconcerned he was with the harshness of certain criticisms made of him and his work. \u00a0I would call his attention to some recent attack or other leveled at him, and he would be surprised to hear of it. \u00a0\u201cReally? \u00a0Maybe I\u2019ll have to look at that sometime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, of course, testosterone \u2014 if that\u2019s a relevant factor here \u2014 is more relevant to polemics in particular than to apologetics in general. \u00a0Apologetic scholarship isn\u2019t necessarily polemical or combative. \u00a0It has nothing to do, necessarily, with what some are now calling \u201ctoxic masculinity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I come to the Interpreter Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From time to time, certain folks like to criticize today\u2019s Interpreter Foundation because its writers and its leadership are preponderantly male. \u00a0And this is undeniably true<\/a>. \u00a0The critics\u2019 insinuation is that, whether deliberately or out of sheer, unreflective, chauvinistic, patriarchal bias, we exclude women.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The subject has come up again lately because of a specific case involving a woman who apparently volunteered for a time to copyedit some of the manuscripts submitted to us. \u00a0(We don\u2019t have a \u201cstaff.\u201d \u00a0We have no brick and mortar office. \u00a0We rely almost entirely upon volunteers.) \u00a0She was, I\u2019m told, a very good editor. \u00a0 Apparently, though, she backed away from volunteering for us, a few months ago, on the grounds that she was just too busy. \u00a0And now she\u2019s publicly announced that she\u2019s left the Church. \u00a0(So far as I can tell, her departure is connected to her stance on gay rights and perhaps on gender issues more broadly. \u00a0I can\u2019t really say; I don\u2019t know her and have never met or, to the best of my knowledge, interacted with her.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is it the policy of Interpreter to exclude women? \u00a0Absolutely not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we can only engage as volunteers people who volunteer to be engaged.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We can only accept and publish manuscripts that have been submitted to us in the first place, and we have no control whatever over who sends work to us for consideration. \u00a0For a few years, the Interpreter Foundation offered an annual prize designed to encourage female writers. \u00a0(It was largely, though not entirely, sponsored by my wife and me.) \u00a0We discovered, though, that the supply of female writing was, as an economist might say, relatively inelastic. \u00a0If our prize had any effect on the number of submissions from women at all, that effect was negligible. \u00a0Perhaps things would have been different if the prize had been significantly larger. \u00a0I can easily imagine, for instance, that an annual prize of a million dollars might have had a measurable impact. \u00a0But we did what we could.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve lost several people over the years for various reasons, including a few women. \u00a0One, a seasoned professional editor who was serving as a volunteer copyeditor, died. \u00a0(Interpreter\u2019s board of trustees has no jurisdiction in such matters.) \u00a0Another, whose participation I miss very much, is busily involved these days with a small but very lively toddler and a new baby. \u00a0(Interpreter\u2019s board of trustees will not demand that she neglect them.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even so, we\u2019ve published work by a number of women, and a number of women are involved in our efforts (e.g., managing our peer review, managing our editorial process, volunteering as editors, helping with donor relations, and participating in our scripture roundtables, podcasts, and radio broadcasts).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve never had as many women involved as we would have liked and we would welcome more manuscript submissions from female writers. \u00a0Very, very much, in fact. \u00a0We like articles from a variety of perspectives; they help us to see things that, from our own point of view, we might have missed. \u00a0And we appreciate input on Foundation decisions from different viewpoints. \u00a0We impose no barriers whatever based on gender, ethnicity, age, academic background, nationality, place of residence, or preference in breakfast cereals. \u00a0We\u2019re simply looking to encourage and publish high quality, faithful scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

(To be continued.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Continuing with some thoughts on the subject: \u00a0 Frankly, men tend to dominate apologetics because men are more inclined to be combative and more interested in certain styles of dispute. \u00a0This really isn\u2019t open to question, I think. \u00a0It shows up in international politics, in crime statistics, in sports, and so forth. \u00a0It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,2475,975,114,55,2860,2201],"class_list":["post-69670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apologetics","tag-gender","tag-interpreter","tag-interpreter-foundation","tag-mormonism","tag-patriarchy","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\nWomen and Apologetics (2)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Continuing with some thoughts on the subject:   Frankly, men tend 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