{"id":2962,"date":"2012-06-28T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/?p=2962"},"modified":"2012-06-28T06:00:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T10:00:47","slug":"christian-objectifcation-of-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Christian” Objectification of Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My friend Meg,<\/a> who is a professor of Biblical Studies at Messiah College<\/a> in Pennsylvania, told me this story from her trip to Bolivia last summer:<\/p>\n

\u201cI took an all-female team to work [\u2026] in a small mountain community\u00a0[\u2026].\u00a0 At first, I don\u2019t think [the community] quite knew what to do with us.\u00a0\u00a0[\u2026]\u00a0 Over the week, we worked hard and even got a chance to lead their little Baptist church in service.\u00a0 I preached, the girls sang and gave testimonies, and the people in the community got to know us and our hopes and dreams as we got to know theirs.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

At the end of our time together, one of the staff, by far the\u00a0most educated man in the village, spoke about his experience with us.\u00a0 He said that he had a four-year-old daughter and that watching all the women on our team who were studying to be doctors, nurses, nutritionists, teachers, etc. had opened his eyes to a whole other life that might be possible for his little girl that he\u2019d never dreamed of before.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explain in Half the Sky<\/em>, lifting women and girls through education and economic empowerment lifts whole societies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By contrast, the perpetuation of patriarchy and disempowerment of women tends to maintain cycles of poverty, abuse, and violence.<\/p>\n

What upsets me when I hear stories like Meg\u2019s is that there are increasingly vocal evangelicals who would openly critique what happened there in Bolivia. {They had a woman preach?}<\/em><\/p>\n

{Heck, via Meg, I\u2019ve even read a Christian attack on The Hunger Games<\/a> which bemoaned Katniss\u2019s \u2018masculinity\u2019 and Peeta\u2019s \u2018femininity\u2019 as a reversal of \u2018God\u2019s design\u2019 for manhood and womanhood.}<\/p>\n

It seems to me that despite the insistence that such a perspective is Biblical, there is, in fact, an unwitting confirmation of consumer culture\u2019s perspective of women<\/a>,<\/strong> which is that women are not\u2013or at least shouldn\u2019t be\u2013the subjects of their own lives but the objects of other people\u2019s gazes and desires.\u00a0 The \u201cBestselling Books for Christian Women\u201d<\/a> at ChristianBook.com include a disproportionate number of books that more or less argue that the way to <\/em>be a really \u2018Biblical\u2019 or \u2018true\u2019 woman of God is to, essentially <\/em>submit to the authority and control of men, because doing so is submitting to the authority of God.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As unlikely as it may seem\u2013and as historically and culturally myopic as it is<\/em>\u2013there are churches that are once again insisting that a woman\u2019s rightful place<\/em> is in the home of her father until she\u2019s married, and then in her husband\u2019s home, and that for her to be the \u2018breadwinner\u2019 is against \u2018God\u2019s design,\u2019 and, conversely, for a man to do housework is against \u2018God\u2019s design\u2019<\/a> for him. Where it is pointed out that highly patriarchal cultures tend toward violence, abuse, and poverty, \u2018Biblical\u2019 patriarchalists insist that this is because such cultures aren\u2019t \u2018doing patriarchy well,\u2019 not that there\u2019s something inherently amiss with patriarchy itself.<\/p>\n

{And this position is supported by the insistence that God is, if not male, exactly, then certainly masculine<\/a>.}<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Could being in the US in the 21st century blind us a bit to what\u2019s really at stake when we talk about women\u2019s equality and women\u2019s rights or what is always disparagingly referred (by all those men and not a few of the women authors of bestselling Christian books) as \u201cfeminism.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that we\u2019re not even a hundred years removed from the time when women couldn\u2019t vote and maternal mortality was high.<\/strong> Worldwide, maternal mortality<\/a> still claims one woman per minute. <\/em>There are still honor killings\u2013where a woman must throw herself on the funeral pyre, for example, to demonstrate her commitment to her husband.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But when women hold the purse-strings\u2013when they are empowered to start businesses\u2013when they have some capital and some say\u2013things get better for everyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meg said:<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes cross-cultural interchanges are great examples of cross-pollination.\u00a0 We just have to be careful about what type of seeds we\u2019re sowing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am glad that most women in America have a choice about what they\u2019re going to do, and it\u2019s fine and wonderful when some choose to stay home (as I do). I consider\u00a0it a privilege to\u00a0be able to make that choice.\u00a0But stamping that choice with the term \u2018Biblical\u2019?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

{And, besides? Aren\u2019t we supposed to care more about being like Jesus<\/strong> than about performing culturally coded gender roles?}<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Meg, who is a professor of Biblical Studies at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told me this story from her trip to Bolivia last summer: \u201cI took an all-female team to work [\u2026] in a small mountain community\u00a0[\u2026].\u00a0 At first, I don\u2019t think [the community] quite knew what to do with us.\u00a0\u00a0[\u2026]\u00a0 Over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2070,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[332,843,1096,1534,1659,1760,2049],"class_list":["post-2962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bolivia","tag-evangelical-complementarianism","tag-half-the-sky","tag-meg-ramey","tag-nick-kristof","tag-patriarchy","tag-sheryl-wudunn"],"yoast_head":"\nThe "Christian" Objectification of Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My friend Meg, who is a professor of Biblical Studies at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told me this story from her trip to Bolivia last summer: "I took\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The "Christian" Objectification of Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My friend Meg, who is a professor of Biblical Studies at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told me this story from her trip to Bolivia last summer: "I took\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rachel Marie Stone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-28T10:00:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/files\/2012\/06\/252266_321481031269717_947308619_n.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rachel Marie Stone\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rachel Marie Stone\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/\",\"name\":\"The \\\"Christian\\\" Objectification of Women\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-28T10:00:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-06-28T10:00:47+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/#\/schema\/person\/c46cec1db7f3461f4f3d5289c79a2a8c\"},\"description\":\"My friend Meg, who is a professor of Biblical Studies at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told me this story from her trip to Bolivia last summer: \\\"I took\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2012\/06\/28\/christian-objectifcation-of-women\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The “Christian” Objectification of Women\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/\",\"name\":\"Rachel Marie Stone\",\"description\":\"Faith, Family, Food; 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