A conversation started up in the comments of an older post called Should Women Say The Lord’s Prayer in Church? I started writing a lengthy reply and realized I think this is important enough to put in a post.
Kris said here:
I think we already have a disaster for conservative women in the church. Many are deconstructing and going over to the liberal progressive side. As a result, I see women believing and taking in so much either politically or in the church and believing it all to their detriment. Having little discernment left. Cherry picking scripture to fit their beliefs (Christian or otherwise) instead of looking at context.
On the other side of things, there are conservative women (like many of us) who are just struggling with being in the church in general and not being able to speak. They are still strong in their faith, but don’t agree with the complementarian model or totally with the egalitarian model. Don’t like the patriarchal aspects of the church either. Many conservative women believe it just because their husbands do and will stay with it because of that.
So rather than leave this as a comment, here are my thoughts as I would reply to Kris.
I am completely in agreement with your observations in your second paragraph that there is a cohort of conservative, born-again Christian women who believe in the authority of the Bible who don’t fit in anywhere. I think there are more than people realize. How many women are there who still faithfully show up on Sundays, but feel a level of disconnect that is emotionally, spiritually, and physically painful? They don’t believe they can walk away from a weekly gathering, but they gain almost nothing from it spiritually or personally.
In addition, how many have left the institutional church and are in home churches or organic churches now? I would argue many of our best Christian women have left the institutional church in order to find a place to use their gifts. I am not talking about going to liberal churches. I’m talking about seeking out anything that doesn’t feel like she has to choose between her own spiritual well-being and compromising theologically in a way she simply won’t because she is a conservative, born-again Christian woman who believes in the authority of the Bible. See my posts on Alana Lagares leaving Calvinism and moving to a home church. She represents just one of many women.
I disagree with part of your first paragraph. I don’t think it’s possible for a conservative, born-again Christian woman who believes in the authority of the Bible to go progressive and deconstruct. I really don’t. She might have appeared that way on the outside, but there had to be something amiss under the surface that grew and she allowed it to lead her astray.
(Different people might view it differently based on their beliefs about eternal security and once saved always saved. I personally do not think a person who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ can be lost. They can make lots of bad choices, but I don’t think they can remain in sin and rebellion. Other good brothers and sisters in Christ will disagree with me and that’s fine.)
In the end, those of us who are conservative, born-again, Bible-believing Christian women are stuck in a paradigm that just kind of stinks. I loathe the term egalitarian which I’ve mentioned before. Complimentarianism is patriarchy lite and full of blatant contradictions in how it is practiced. Patriarchy is not defensible from the New Testament. There is just no good category for us at this point in time.
I have a whole bunch of posts about this that I haven’t republished because I used the term conservative biblical egalitarian in them out of desperation to find some label that would work. That was in the 2012-2015 timeframe. If conservative biblical egalitarian was a loaded term then, egalitarian in any form is just completely toxic now after the past ten years of sexual madness and chaos. I don’t want to defend that term and so I’ve dragged my feet at republishing them even though there are some really good posts in that collection. Complimentarity without hierarchy works in a way, but who wants to keep using that term when writing and discussing? (Update: I’ve now republished most of them.)
There is an entire cohort of us who don’t fit in anywhere.
Here are a few related posts.
- Voskamp, Challies, One Thousand Gifts, and What is Truly Ironic to Me
- Life Lessons From Warren Wiersbe’s Faith and Rachel Held Evans’ Deconstructing
- The Imperative to Put Limits on Women According to Calvinistic and Reformed Men
- Patriarchy, Complementarianism, and Egalitarianism Are All Wrong
This is my opinion and observations…I have taken some DV advocacy training. I have noticed that women who have come out of abusive marriages or a spiritually abusive church situation that many of them go towards the progressive movement. The TRUTH is now very difficult for them to see because they have been lied to for so long and are now very disillusioned. This is what I see that is “amiss below the surface” with this group of women. I have just seen this repeatedly happen. Some stay conservative, but many do not. The TRUTH of who Jesus is and the context on many biblical and political issues they now deny and cherry pick for what they want to believe. Believing something simply because it is posted on social media, therefore, they deem it to be true.
I just thought I would put this out there from my observations on this issue from women in the church and where they “fit”.
Hi Kris,
I agree that domestic violence and spiritual abuse can impact a woman’s faith. Having experienced church abuse of varying degrees a couple of times, I know the impact it can have on someone for a very long time.
But it never made me question God or His Word. David and I were able to focus on the problem (people who wronged us) and work to discern how they twisted God’s Word for their agenda.
This is the same thing I’ve observed regarding women in the church dealing with an abusive marriage (whether in real life or online). The women who have kept their Christian faith all looked to the Bible for answers, recognizing that something about their situation was not biblical. They didn’t blame the Bible or God. They blamed the person who abused the Scripture to get what he wanted. The women who focused on the idea that the Bible enabled the abuse or even required it seem to end up walking away more often than not.
It would be interesting to know how many women who are able to separate the two had a strong faith before they married. If you already walked with God when you were single, I would think it would be more probable you could distinguish the difference.
That makes me think of Merrisa’s story that I shared here. She knew enough from her upbringing to realize that she had married into a cult.
https://sallieborrink.com/escaping-the-two-by-twos-merissa-of-little-house-living
Observing from a distance, I think this is where Rachel Held Evans went wrong. She wanted the Bible to say certain things and went to great lengths to convince herself it did. She didn’t really believe in the authority of the Bible. She didn’t believe it or God were good or trustworthy. It made it possible to convince herself all kinds of clearly wrong things were acceptable for Christians.
This is yet another reason why our daughters need to be thoroughly instructed in the Bible and able to skillfully pick apart a theological argument in a debate.
It’s hard to sort out because there are multiple dimensions; not just sex, but also spiritual gifts, faith, the local social hierarchy, training, and what God is doing. Maybe also some others.
I very recently learned some of my own church’s history that I didn’t know before. Some of the members went out and did a home-based church plant back in the 1940s. It took root, and became a viable congregation.
After forty-plus years, they acquired a new pastor who was very gifted across the spiritual, social, and vocational dimensions. He was respected by Christians whose respect was quite hard to earn.
The church exploded into one of the biggest megachurches in the state. I was floored to learn of the connection.
I didn’t see Kris’s comment before I wrote mine, but yes, personal history also matters.
Are you talking about Piper’s church?
No, another one.
“It’s hard to sort out because there are multiple dimensions; not just sex, but also spiritual gifts, faith, the local social hierarchy, training, and what God is doing.”
I agree with this. Mentioning the local social hierarchy is interesting because most people won’t factor that in. Over the past 5-10 years I’ve realized how much value people put on fitting in. That need ranks low for me compared to so many other things so I really didn’t understand the lengths even Christians would go to in order to fit in. That’s been something that has honestly shocked me more than once over the past several years.
Related to the topic of the Bible and domestic violence…
That comes up fairly early in the discussion at the link I shared in this post.
Wrong link, I think. I”ll have to find it later.
This video by Melissa Doughterty covers this some. I found her insight very good. She is talking about the comments following the Share the Arrows conference put on by Allie Beth Stuckey. What the culture is saying and what women really need in the church today.
https://youtu.be/sC9ZqJuGaZU?si=xTygDXn5TT2lojQ_