Elisabeth Elliot, Beth Moore, Denny Burk

From Beth Allison Barr, featuring Beth Moore,

Which starts here…

In Let Me Be A Woman, Elliot draws a clear line in the sand. Women are different from men, and women should stop trying to claim equality with men. Women’s submission is the divine order of the universe and it is time for women to embrace it.  As she writes: “It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single – which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.”

Elliot’s words made quite a splash in conservative Christianity.  The paperback cover states that more than 250,000 copies are in print, which I think has now been greatly surpassed.  Elliot is quoted by John Piper and Wayne Grudem in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and I suspect her argument lies at the heart of their argument.

… and then goes here:

All of this was in the back of my mind yesterday when Chris Gehrz alerted me to a twitter conversation between Denny Burk and Beth Moore. Denny Burk asked Beth Moore to reject Rachel Hollis’s recent books which have exploded in popularity. (See Katelyn Beaty’s excellent review “Girl, Get Some Footnotes”). Burke wrote, “I’m here to beg you to reject Hollis’s teaching, because it’s both exhausting and damning.” Beth Moore gave an interesting response. “I think the larger conversation that needs to be had is the vacuum that conservative Christianity left for women that leaves it wide open to fill with brand answers. The whole thing’s hard to watch. We’ve yet to deal honestly with why these are best sellers among Christian women.”

Did you catch that? Beth Moore said the problem isn’t with Hollis; the problem lies with how conservative Christianity has failed women. Listen to how she continues.  “Somewhere along the way, Denny, we have to reckon with the fact that we–myself included–went too far. We put limitations on women that exceeded what Christ demonstrated. We did it instead of wrestling with the tension between the Gospels & epistles. We’re watching a backlash.”

Beth Moore knows scripture. She is a Bible teacher and has been her whole life. She realizes that there is a disconnect between how conservative evangelicalism has prescribed women’s roles and how Jesus taught and treated women. In her very gracious way, she opened the door for Denny Burk to consider that maybe he has been wrong about women. Since the 1970s, conservative Christians have been forcing women into a very small mold–gracious and submissive wife and mother who support and submit to their husband (with chaste singleness as a second best back up plan). But maybe there is more for women? Beth Moore seems to realize that there is. Yes, Jesus calls women to be wives and mothers who love and support their husbands (I do this myself!). But maybe his calling isn’t limited to this. Maybe he calls women to more?? Indeed, Beth Moore’s later tweet seems to indicate this. “Women,” she writes, “you may get called all sorts of things if you take Jesus at His word. Let them call you what they want so long as Christ can call you faithful.”

Praise God, Beth Moore. Let me be a woman, indeed–let me be FAITHFUL to God in whatever way he has called me.