{"id":793,"date":"2014-04-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/shine-it-up-the-preacher-patriarchy-and-the-the-rhetoric-of-shame.html"},"modified":"2014-04-03T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T07:00:00","slug":"shine-it-up-the-preacher-patriarchy-and-the-the-rhetoric-of-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/shine-it-up-the-preacher-patriarchy-and-the-the-rhetoric-of-shame.html","title":{"rendered":"“Shine it Up!”: The Preacher, Patriarchy and the The Rhetoric of Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

by Kimberly Peeler-Ringer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

R3 Contributor<\/span><\/div>\n

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A North Carolina pastor recently came under fire\u2014and brimstone\u2014for a comment he posted on Twitter giving women advice about marriage: Ladies if you want to be the only woman your man looks at shine it up! Don\u2019t let the hoes he comes across out shine you! #savemarriage. After the inevitable backlash for his comments, he then took the opportunity to post an apology of sorts on You Tube, available here<\/a>. \n

In the video, this pastor attempted to qualify his tweet, explaining that his purpose was to \u201chelp wives to save their marriage, to be successful in their marriage.\u201d Rather than continue the personal attacks being lobbed at this pastor for his profound lack of judgment, I would prefer to use his social media commentary as a point of departure for a much needed conversation about how we talk about women in the church. <\/p>\n

Just a quick perusal of this pastor\u2019s Twitter account suggests that he may be holding up a patriarchal standard that is a familiar norm in too many churches. Patriarchy, in its simplest terms, is a social system that privileges maleness. I believe the most common method used to enforce patriarchy in some churches is the identification and association of women with sin. When the tweeting pastor said: \u201cthere are some women who don\u2019t necessarily have the respect that they used to\u2026some women don\u2019t respect their husbands or the commitment the husband has made to his wife,\u201d it is easy to infer that he is suggesting that it is that certain segment of women who entice husbands to cheat. My problem is that the pastor seems to absolve the husband of all sin responsibility. This is a dangerous trope that plays on an endless loop in too much church doctrine and so-called \u201cpreacher speak.\u201d If only Eve hadn\u2019t tempted Adam with that fruit, Samson would have been alright if only Delilah hadn\u2019t seduced him, the sinful woman brought before Jesus who was caught in adultery (all by herself), all point to women as the \u201csin\u201d causation. <\/p>\n

The pastor continues this train of thought when he suggests that the reason husbands cheat is not that they have failed to exercise the fruit of the spirit called temperance, the reason men cheat is that a certain type of woman enticed him to cheat. Some churches have been a very public space for \u201csin-shaming\u201d women, particularly when young girls who got themselves pregnant are brought before the entire church absent the young boy (or often, grown man) who impregnated them. I can\u2019t tell you how many sermons I\u2019ve heard where gossip is identified as an exclusively female activity, or lines of distinction get drawn between \u201cgood girls\u201d and \u201cother women.\u201d The purpose of \u201cgarden tool language\u201d is a means of shaming women who exercise their sexual agency, plain and simple. It is time we paid attention to the possibility that the attempt to control a woman\u2019s sexual agency or to \u201ctake women down a peg\u201d may be a crack that provides a space where abuse in all of its forms can thrive.<\/p>\n

As Dr. Yolanda Pierce<\/a> stated so eloquently on Twitter, \u201cgiven the global degradation of Black women, the church should be a sanctuary, not a place of further insult.\u201d Far too many churches are not healing spaces for the female psyche. What does it say to the well being of a Black woman (who more than any other cultural\/ethnic\/social group finds herself nearest to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder), to be identified with sin? What does it say to the self-worth of a Black woman, who more than likely earns less than her White male, White female, and Black male co-workers, to be told that the reason she is not prospering is because her faith isn\u2019t strong enough? This is particularly troubling when you consider the fact that so much of Black church wealth is comprised of the dollars of working-class Black women. <\/p>\n

In many churches, the leadership of the church is primarily male, yet close to 80% of church membership is female. I contend the reason for this imbalance is patriarchal in tone, due to the belief that God only selected a portion of humanity to lead churches. Many believe it was God\u2019s intent for women to be second-class Christians, and it is worth noting that this belief is held by both women and men. As Dr. Pierce suggested via Twitter, the mission of the church is \u201cto speak life, and not death.\u201d Perhaps part of the church\u2019s charge to loose and set free should also include unloosing the shackles of patriarchy and gender injustice than bind nearly three-quarters of church membership. <\/p>\n

But back to the pastor\u2019s tweet. The tweet not only offends by using garden tool language, there is also the matter of what I like to call appearance-related marital salvation. Specifically, when the pastor suggests wives \u201cshine it up,\u201d the inference is that husbands are enticed to cheat because their wives don\u2019t look like Beyonc\u00e9 on a daily basis. I note with interest that there wasn\u2019t a single tweet dedicated to husbands \u201cshining it up.\u201d I found no tweets encouraging husbands to keep hair from protruding from their ears and other orifices, no encouragement to keep their appearances up whatsoever. This tendency to place the entire burden of keeping marriages whole on the wife alone needs to stop post haste. Black women in particular are burdened enough. <\/p>\n

There comes a time in every little Black girl\u2019s life when she realizes that her beauty is different, that her beauty isn\u2019t commonly lauded. Every little Black girl experiences a moment when she must come to terms with the dominant culture\u2019s lack of appreciation for her hair texture. And sadly, some of these same little Black girls come to occupy pew space in a church with messages that claim that if she only took the time to keep every strand of her hair in place, her man wouldn\u2019t have strayed. The Black church should be a refuge for Black women to escape the scrutiny of the dominant culture, not receive a double portion of it. <\/p>\n

Patriarchy suggests that women are to be placed on a pedestal; that women should stay at home and take care of the children and look like June Cleaver while doing it. The unfortunate reality is that Black women in this country have seldom been afforded the opportunity to just stay home and dote on their families as patriarchy erroneously suggests. Black women have always had to work, whether it was side by side in the fields of slaveholders, or as domestics who worked for white families, or in the women\u2019s benevolent societies of Black churches, it is a sin and a shame that even in the 21st century women are expected to live the life of the ideal wife in the patriarchal imagination, and be chided for not \u201cshining it up\u201d while doing it. <\/p>\n

The tweeting pastor also noted, \u201cIt is hard to express an idea in just 140 characters.\u201d I will grant him that. It is easy to have things taken out of context when you employ a limited space social media outlet to express your theology and dispense marital advice. I feel confident this pastor meant well. But if our love for God is measured in how we treat others, the language we use to speak about women in general and the church in particular must be not only be contended with, it must be examined for its ha
\nrm potential\u2026whether one apologizes for it or not. <\/p>\n

Follow Kimberly on Twitter @kpringer<\/a><\/p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kimberly Peeler-Ringer R3 Contributor A North Carolina pastor recently came under fire\u2014and brimstone\u2014for a comment he posted on Twitter giving women advice about marriage: Ladies if you want to be the only woman your man looks at shine it up! Don\u2019t let the hoes he comes across out shine you! #savemarriage. 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