Men and Women Warring in the Church

I am mostly caught in the meme of writing about men and women in marriage–how they can live happily together, what kind of threats from inside and outside might potentially overtake them–so that I don’t often write about men and women in the church. I supposed I could do more, because, well, a lot of the brokenness that wends its way through marriage is in the church, but, well, just to go on hedging, it’s dicey.

But a friend sent me this old article that I missed when it came out, and pushed and said, what about men and women in the church. I kept on backing away and saying, first I’ll write about children in the church. I have an entire book’s worth to say about children. And then maybe I could write about how to choose carpet color. And then I could go wash my hair….

The article linked above, which is good and helpful, illustrates nicely what a mess we are in. Certain brands of evangelical churches don’t allow women in pastoring roles, but do have a sort of hazy space where women do ministry–a nice nebulous word that can indicate a wide variety of activities. Anglicans, as we all know, have themselves in a serious pickle over women. Honestly, I don’t like to say very much because I really like particular people on both sides, and I, well, gosh, I just don’t really want to talk about what a mess we’re in. Maybe sometime I should, but, ugh.

However, some general and some particular thoughts coalesced themselves as I worked through the article above and thought about that woman’s experience. First of all, the conflictual nature of women and men trying to relate to each other is primordial. It was the First Problem. Sin came into the world through Eve but was blamed on Adam who was With Her. There was already some kind of tearing apart at the seams that became manifest in that first bite of fruit. He was supposed to articulate, teach really, the very first word of God to her, and he was supposed to protect her from Satan, and he didn’t bother. He just stood there.

If you wonder why men and women can’t get along, can’t talk to each other, can’t work with each other, the roots of it are in these first fresh, creation moments. We’re not experiencing anything new and exciting. And therefore, the solution to our problem has to be as old as the problem itself. No amount of trying harder and looking for practical solutions will restore the brokenness.

We should be looking very carefully at the cross, as an antidote to the War of Men and Women Against Each Other. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Adam stood around while Eve sinned, Jesus died to rescue his Church. If a man wants to understand how he ought to be, he must look to Jesus dying.

Women aren’t supposed to be a quiet afterthought in the church. They aren’t meant to be the problem. If they are the problem, certainly they should repent, but the fault, the blame lies with the men. Adam, as they say, had One Job, to take care of Eve and make sure she had an open, clear understanding of God’s perfect word. She wasn’t supposed to sit quiet in her pew, she was supposed to be working alongside Adam. But she couldn’t properly do that because Adam wasn’t doing his part. And so war, and death, and usurping, and passivity, and everything that we are still in today.

One reason why I don’t like talking much about women in the church is because Good Shepherd is like a beautiful sparkly unicorn of gender peacefulness. The kinds of wars and troubles that are going on in other places, are not really heard or seen in our works and worship. It was not always so, but through prayer and keeping first things first, the ship is careening along pretty placidly.

And what are the first things? They are boring things. The primary, primordial one is that everyone needs to study the bible. Everyone. It’s not the women’s job to read the bible because they need it more, it’s the men’s job to read it and make sure their wives have room to read it too. Everyone must read it–married men, single men, married women, single women, children, random people who walk in who can’t be pinned down in any one direction–everyone.

Really, the men do have to read the bible. In the early days of our time at Good Shepherd, a men’s Bible Study was formed. For ten years now, a sizable segment of the Good Shepherd’s male population get together early one morning a week for breakfast and bible study. This isn’t everyone sharing what they feel about the bible. This is study. They study. They are taught. They endeavor to understand what the text is saying. As this group has met, more and more men have felt like doing work in the church. When we came in, all the work, it seemed, from top to bottom, was done by women and two very faithful and forbearing men. Now it is shared very equally, if not tipped over so more men are heading up whole ministries then women. A woman who is invested in the importance of something no longer has to say yes. She can say no to stuff, because there are people around who are willing to do work.

As I like to say, Does he woman really have to do all the things? That’s a drag. Does she have to make the coffee, sweep the floor and then stand up and preach the sermon? Is there no man who can wake up early enough to prepare a message? If the man is a human being, surely he can be clever enough to read the bible and try to say out-loud what it means.

Which leads me to my second Main Thing, and then I’ll stop because all the hedging has made this too long. The Men should try to be men. If the men show up to do the work, it is restful. If they go ahead into moments of trouble, if they can be trusted to rightly teach the bible, if they don’t, through complacency and neglect starve the women, the women won’t have to stand up to do all the work.

One of the things that is breaking my heart as I labor through RHE’s Biblical Womanhood is the description of the church, particularly the kind of teaching that she grew up under. If the male pastor spends more time talking about how women should be, then working systematically through the text to nourish and strengthen the whole body, men and women, he should not be surprised when the women revolt and decide to do it themselves. But that has been the mainstay of American Evangelicalism. How should everyone be behaving. No. That’s not the gospel. And on that note, I will let this fall, perhaps to pick it up again, ugh.