Further reading on feminism

Jennie Baddeley has provided some suggestions for further reading on feminism. Some of these resources have already been mentioned during this month, but I decided to leave them here also with Jennie's particular endorsement:

Evangelical Feminism: A New Path for Liberalism? By Wayne Grudem

Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions by Wayne Grudem (very thorough and very long!)

Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism: Biblical Responses to the Key Questions by Wayne Grudem (a condensed version of Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth)

Here is an interview between blogger Adrian Warnock and Wayne Grudem, where Grudem discusses his books, church government and slavery as well as explaining why he believes Evangelical Feminism is not biblical. The interview is in 9 parts (you can link to the next part at the end of each post), and posts 2-5, 8-9 are particularly relevant. You’ll also get to ‘know’ Wayne Grudem a little more, which is worthwhile.

Kirsten Birkett The Essence of Feminism. This is a much easier (and thinner!) book than The Feminist Mistake, but comes to much the same conclusion as Mary’s book. It doesn’t have as much detail or indepth analysis as Mary’s book, but is more accessible for that reason.

Andreas J. Kostenberger and Thomas R. Schreiner (Eds.) Women in the Church: An Analysis and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 (2nd Edition). Useful for exploring one of the key biblical texts upon which the conversative position on women’s role in church is based.

If you don’t have time to read The Feminist Mistake, you might like to listen to Mary Kassian speak at the recent True Woman conference (previously mentioned). This is a good summary of the major parts of the book and takes only about 45 minutes to listen to. You can also check out Mary Kassian’s website.

The Essence of Feminism

If you've enjoyed thinking about feminism this month, or even if you haven't had a chance to read this month's book, you might be interested in reading The Essence of Feminism by Kirsten Birkett.

The focus and argument of the book is that instead of feminism making life better for women (as promised), feminism has actually made it worse. She argues that the attack on the institution of marriage has been a disaster for women. Not only that but the possibility (and expectation) of paid employment outside the home has forced many women into a role they don't want:

In the collapse of marriage and in work, conditions are such that many women are unhappy, lacking support, even abused and traumatized. In the public media, we tend to hear the anecdotes of the unusual women who manage to juggle career and family, and cope happily with the strain; we do not hear the stories of the majority who do not. Women are bearing the brunt of social forces which often leave them confused and frustrated. A woman's life is full of unpleasant choices and hard realities.

I thought the chapter on the morality of feminism alone, with its case study of abortion, makes the book worth reading. Surely this is the area in which feminism has hurt women the most. It's a powerful chapter.

There are similarities with The Feminist Mistake in that it is a book that examines the philosophy and development of feminism in western society. But it's simpler and more concise (about 125 pages) and because it is written by an Australian, it covers a bit more Australian history, and has the added advantage of including statistics and information from our current-day Australian context.

You've Come a Long Way Baby!

This month's author, Mary Kassian gave a talk on Feminism a couple of weeks ago at True Woman conference, with the catching title 'You've come a long way baby!'. It covers some of the same ground as The Feminist Mistake, looking at the history of feminism and portrayal of women in the media over the last 50 years. It's well researched, meaty stuff, with lots of details I hadn't come across before about the history of the movement. More importantly, she concludes by looking at a Biblical picture for women, and why it is worth embracing.

Pic from True Woman conference.

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 6

Reading Mary's book has hopefully helped us think about feminism a little and realise, as Mary points out, that feminism is an experiment that has not really succeeded and can be legitimately challenged at several points, even though it is the default setting for our culture now. Let's turn to think together about how it might affect our evangelism.

This is where it might be good to think about our aims in telling people the good news of Jesus’ death for our sins. When we have friends and family who are either self-consciously feminist or ‘accidentally’ feminist (or ‘lipstick feminist’ as they have been labeled), and who are not Christian, what do we long for them and pray for them? We want them to come to know Jesus most of all. So we have to keep reminding ourselves of this again and again, and keep it central.

Having said that, however, our position on women will often interrupt good conversations about Jesus. This should not surprise us too much. The devil will use everything to stumble people and keep them from putting their faith in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, people are usually unwillingly to trust a God who acts in way that they are convinced is immoral. What do we do if we keep ‘getting interrupted’ because our good friend or family member simply won’t let us get past the ‘women’s issue’?

I have a few suggestions. Please add yours to the comments so that we can learn more about this together!

First, let’s think creatively about how to talk about Jesus. It’s him that we want people to meet, so let’s try and subvert endless conversations about the ‘women’s issue’ and turn the attention to Jesus.

For example, if I had a friend who kept telling me that God was too ‘male’ and I was sure that it wasn’t just a cheap shot, but had become a stumbling block for her in listening to the Gospel, I could try and lead the conversation towards talking about Jesus, specifically. I would probably try and do this by saying that Jesus is the only way we can really know God and that he tells us that the most important thing we need to know about God is that he welcomes us if we put our faith in Jesus and his death for our sins. God is so unlike us that we can’t know him all by ourselves, whether we are male or female, but we need God to tell us about himself, which he has done in Jesus. I would try and challenge my friend gently, as to whether she knew God well enough to be confident he was ‘male’. (And it goes without saying that this would probably be the work of many conversations on many different occasions!) What might you do? What have you done in similar situations?

Coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ is how people become Christians. So, let’s work out how we can speak about him and how he has changed our lives and given us hope, at any and every opportunity.

Second, give people time and work towards getting gospel categories across to people. Some of the most successful Methodist revivals, which swept across England in the late eighteenth century, were among people who had been thoroughly catechised and knew all the ‘facts’ about Christianity. The preaching they heard helped them to realise that they needed to respond in faith to the Lord Jesus, whom they already knew about. Today, in the Western world it is usually quite different.

In her book, Mary shows how some of the esoteric feminist spiritualities have become mainstream (pp 282-284). This means that it would not be difficult to find someone who did not know or did not believe: that Jesus died to save us (because they believe that Jesus is male and therefore cannot be a saviour for women); that human beings have sinned (because they hold that men have certainly done wrong things and that women need liberation, not forgiveness); that Scripture is the word of God (because they view it as a collection of writings chosen by men to subjugate and exclude women from the church), and so forth. Feminism has stolen the categories which make it easier to tell people about Jesus. Building them back up for people takes time, prayer and great wisdom. It is worth remembering that living lives of obedience to Jesus and patiently listening is significant in this process as well. It can be a long road to Jesus for someone who has been told so many lies about God and his kindness towards us in Christ. Sometimes God’s mercy can move someone in an instant, but other times it is a gradual process.

Let’s remind each other that we can trust God with our loved friends and family; his love for them exceeds our own. Ultimately, God in his kindness and by his grace is our Saviour, saves us despite ourselves (Ephesians 2:8).

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 5

Responding to Feminism

One of the most helpful things about Mary’s book, I think, is her conclusion that western society has become culturally feminist (Chapter 21). Feminism is the new black: everyone is wearing it. Even people who would never call themselves ‘feminist’ are functionally feminist: men and women.

This has affected us and our society in all kinds of ways. Let’s just consider two implications for ourselves and how we might respond.

Non-feminist views (of any kind) are now unpopular. So it shouldn’t surprise us when people are shocked at or scornful of our views if we believe that men and women should relate to each other in ways God has instructed in Scripture. Out and out mockery is even harder to deal with, but both responses are a reminder of how strange our views have become to the world. Believing in Jesus is always counter-cultural, but sometimes specific patterns of life associated with Scripture come to be unpopular in a particular society. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy that ‘… everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (3:12). This helps us realise that it isn’t just believing in Jesus which will lead people to sneer at and dismiss us, but that living under his lordship by obeying Scripture in our actions and thinking will lead people to reject us in all kinds of ways.

Now society has moved in a feminist direction it will reject our view that God has ordered his world such that women and men have different roles in the church and the family. Believing this and therefore being treated poorly in any number of ways is another area of our life where we now need to entrust ourselves to God, act wisely, speak graciously and pray for others. If we don’t get a fair hearing, if we don’t have a witty comeback, we don’t need to feel stupid or angry; we can trust God to give us strength and comfort, and pray for those who treat us this way. Being treated poorly for believing and following Jesus is not a sign that we’re doing something wrong. It’s normal.

Another way this observation helps us is that it can make us aware of things which otherwise might just creep up on us without us noticing. Feminism has affected our culture and so it has affected how we relate to and think of each other. Big ideas have filtered down and become smaller ways of behaving.

For example, Mary helps us to see how excluding feminism can be. The emergence of ‘women-church’ demonstrates this (Chapter 17). Some women withdraw from churches to ‘women-church’ which will, it is expected, ultimately attract men, but are now exclusively for women. Men are excluded. It is hard to see how this is much different to the accusation leveled at men that they have marginalised women. But ‘Women-church’ is an extreme example of what has become commonplace in our society: women laughing at or excluding men. It is now common for women to make the kind of sexist jokes that would cause outrage if they were said by a man about women. It is popular for women to insult men in all kinds of ways (‘man-flu’; jokes about men and pain, multi-tasking, disparaging jokes about ‘the hubby’ etc). I’m sure we can all think of examples – from conversations at work, at the school gate through to advertising. One way we can respond to feminism is by refusing to participate. We can aim to treat the men (and women) around us with respect and gentleness. Sometimes it is hard not to get sucked into the promise of friendship with other women by mocking a ‘common enemy’, but that is a completely non-Christian attitude. As women we need men, just as they need us. So, we need to reflect that, not only in what we say we believe, but in how we treat others.

These are just two examples of how feminism transforming society may have an affect on us. Perhaps it might useful for us to spend some time thinking about how feminism has affected us and our relationships and attitudes. Do we need to trust God about anything in this area? Do we need to repent of something we’ve been doing or thinking? Are we grateful for someone else’s example in living counter-culturally on this issue?

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 4

Egalitarianism

In her book, Mary says that the "… philosophy of egalitarianism is well on its way to thorough acceptance in the evangelical church" (pp 287-288). Because it is so influential and because egalitarianism is at the heart of feminism, it would be useful to examine exactly what is meant by this rather long, awkward word.

Mary helpfully explains egalitarianism as: "... equality necessitates role interchangeability. A woman cannot be a man’s equal unless she can assume the same role as he” (p 287). In other words, if a woman cannot do the same things as a man, she is not equal with the man.

Behind this philosophy lies a basic position on what equality means. Equality means sameness. Equality cannot mean difference of any kind, or exclusion from any role because that automatically implies inferiority and no-one is inferior. If I can’t do what you are doing, then I must be inferior. If I am inferior then we are not equal.

There are a range of problems with this.

Suppose you have a person gifted with words but basically incapable of manual labour; you have another person who can refit a carburettor with extraordinary skill and precision, but is practically inarticulate. Are they equal? The two people do not have role interchangeability.

At this point the real focus of egalitarianism comes out. Egalitarianism will judge roles upon their desirability. Some egalitarians will judge the two to be equal because they don’t see any superiority in having a job which involves speaking over one which involves car mechanics. Many egalitarians (because egalitarians are most represented in the middle class) consider trades and physical labour to be inferior to white collar roles and would consider the speaker superior to the mechanic.

However, the most likely response of an egalitarian will be to say that my example is irrelevant. That is simply not the kind of role interchangeability they are concerned about. The role interchangeability that they demand is between being a leader and a follower. For egalitarians, leadership must be based upon merit. Leaders must earn the authority they exercise over people by being more intelligent, more discerning, more perspicuous, more able to influence people. For egalitarians, leaders are superior to ordinary people, which is why they are permitted to exercise authority.

This is why excluding a gender from exercising authority is so offensive to egalitarians. To say that a gender (women) cannot exercise authority is to say that that gender cannot have the qualities necessary to be a leader. It is to say that women are automatically inferior because of their gender.

Egalitarians (for the most part) still want a world in which there are leaders and followers. But they want a world where everyone has the chance to prove that they are made of better stuff than the average and so earn a leadership role. There are superior people, and they should not have arbitrary barriers put in their way in their ascent to the top.

And for egalitarians, to say that the differences between men and women might be more significant than simply plumbing and reproductive roles is like saying that a particular race doesn’t have the qualities to lead.

This is where the dark side of egalitarianism comes in.

If I am not sufficiently the ‘same’ in society for whatever reason I cannot be equal. If I am not sufficiently ‘equal’ my life may not be valuable enough to sustain. The lives of disabled persons, of unborn children, of dementia patients and the terminally ill are all in different ways under threat, if not being ended prematurely already in different countries where egalitarianism forms public policy. Why? Because they are not the same, they are not equal. Because they don’t have the same economic productivity as others, they are not equal economic contributors to society. Therefore they are not equal, they are inferior. And increasingly, society is treating them without pity and using their apparent ‘inferior’ status to question the validity of their existence. It started as a ‘quality of life’ excuse but more recently it has become more clearly a questioning of their right to live in society without being equal economic contributors. Again, it is worth noting that not all egalitarians would take such a stand against the vulnerable in society. But this is the effect that egalitarianism is having on public policy.

Christians get angry about this. And rightly so. Because a Christian perspective on people is that we are all different, and ‘inferiority’ is an irrelevant category. We are all made in the image of God and this is the bedrock of our identity that is held by all human beings. The fact that we are all made in the image of God means that any difference, and the presence or lack of qualities that a particular culture or class of people might esteem, is irrelevant when it comes to a person’s true worth and dignity. Because each of us is in the image of God we are therefore required to treat each other with great care and dignity. (See James 3:9-10 for one outworking of this.)

A Christian looks at the world and expects to find others not like herself. In particular, a Christian looks at the world and expects to find others who may benefit from her help in any number of countless ways, whether they are ‘weaker’ or ‘stronger’ in some way than herself. Equality for a Christian, basing her life on Scripture, means looking at others and seeing them as made in God’s image, like herself. It is not interchangeability of role, but equally valuing all roles that is true equality for the Christian. She knows that God loves variety, that difference creates contexts for care and love, and that people were always intended to be interdependent and not autonomous or the same.

Equal does not mean same. Different does not mean inferior (or superior).

Egalitarianism lies behind many (but not all) feminist arguments. Part of the contempt that feminists seem to have for women who choose motherhood as their primary role would seem to lie in the perception that it is effectively a blue collar, labouring role with little inherent intellectual stimulation, and no direct economic contribution to the marketplace: it doesn’t fit what is valued by the middle class and by academics. Because egalitarianism is more than just feminism it needs to be thought about on its own. It is bigger than the issue of men and women and their responsibilities in church and family life. It has to do with all people in society.

Ultimately egalitarianism tries to locate our true identity and value in our ability to contribute to our society. This pushes us away from each other into individualism, because my value is tied to my contribution. Even worse, for all its talk of equality, it creates a society where the beautiful, clever people have more value than the Jill Average, who has more value than a child with Downs Syndrome.

By making us through his Son in his own image, God has given us a better identity and value, one which extends equally to all, beautiful or not. We carry the image of the one who made Heaven and Earth. Any difference between us pales compared to that. And in Christ that image is restored, renewed and deepened.

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 3

The Problem of Suspecting and Rejecting Authority

Who gets to decide how things work? Who is in charge? It’s a good question and as Mary goes through her book she helps us see how feminists view authority.

The first thing we learn is that feminists have looked at the world and decided that the reason it is distorted and a hard place for women to live is because men have decided things for so long. Men may not be individually responsible for society being as messy as it is, but men have been in charge of society for so long that they have destroyed what used to be (according to feminists) a society filled with peace and harmony, run by and for women.

So feminism has assessed society as not a good place for women, and blamed this state of affairs on men, or a patriarchal system. Patriarchy is leadership by men of a group of people. Feminists argue that men have broken society. They have destroyed peace and safety and replaced them with disharmony, violence and power plays. Even worse, they have relegated women to the side-lines, suppressing their natural abilities and rendering them powerless in society.

In coming to this assessment, feminism rejects authority of all kinds, linking it with patriarchy. Anything connected with patriarchy cannot be trusted and must be viewed with suspicion. There simply is no safe place at all in patriarchy for women. All the tools of a patriarchal society: its literature, rules, norms, history, politics, language and so forth must be viewed with serious suspicion (see chapter 7). Women have been tricked and subjugated; in order to be free, women must not be tricked again, and as patriarchy is built into every part of society that means nothing associated with it can be trusted.

In particular Scripture is viewed as a product of a patriarchal society. That means that for feminism the Bible is just an invention of a group of men intent on excluding and controlling women. It is, in that sense, a political and social construct and has no relationship with truth or real authority. Therefore, as Mary shows, feminists have felt that they need to reconstruct Scripture as well as find alternatives to orthodox faith outside of Scripture with heretical Christian groups and non-Christian religions (see chapters 8, 12). For feminism, Scripture cannot be trusted because it is a product of a patriarchal society and so is against women.

Feminism must look on everything produced by what it believes to be a patriarchal society with suspicion in order to be true to itself. It is not hard to see that when it does that, it must question and ultimately dismiss all authority. The only authority which can remain is its own. Feminism can only trust itself. It alone is not trying to impose patriarchy on unsuspecting women. It alone is free from patriarchy.

Feminism is its own authority.

What does this rejection of authority mean?

One implication is that in rejecting God and his Word, and seeking to ‘name’ God, feminists cut themselves from finding God. They can’t trust the Bible: it is a patriarchal tool for controlling others. But God has inspired Scripture so that we can trust it. It is in Scripture that we meet Jesus, who reveals God and if we can’t know Jesus, we can’t know God (John 14:6). If we reject his revelation of himself, we can’t find him. God has named himself as Mary rightly observes (pp 293-295). There is nowhere else to go. Jesus reveals God – God as Father, sending his Son to die for us so that we can be his loved sons, in the image of his own Son – and if we are to rejoice in his salvation, we must accept his revelation declared in Scripture (John 14:6-7, I John 3:1-2, Colossians 3:10, John 3:16-18). If we reject Jesus’ revelation of God, we reject God and anything/one we put in his place is nothing more than a useless idol, though s/he may be made of more interesting fabric than old-fashioned idols. Worse still, if we reject God’s revelation of himself in Jesus, we reject his salvation, and then we stand alone without Jesus on the final day when God will call us to account (Hebrews 9:27-28). And we will stand condemned for our pride in rejecting the God of the universe. What shall it profit a woman, if she name (and therefore gain) the whole world, and lose her own soul? (Mark 8:36).

Mary uses the findings of her book to show us that those who have tried to be evangelical feminists have drifted further and further from their commitment to Jesus and his word, until they are involved in goddess worship and other beliefs and practices incompatible with following Jesus Christ (see chapter 20). While she acknowledges that not all who do this will reach the logical conclusions of their commitment to feminism, it serves as a warning to us. Her case is particularly compelling because one of the main points in her book is that religious feminism has never been far behind secular feminism and both ‘camps’ of feminism reach the 21st century indistinguishable from one another in all but some external trappings (pp 241-246).

Ultimately, one cannot be a committed feminist and a Christian. The two are incompatible. Indeed, Mary quotes Phyllis Trible who notes that ‘… no woman can serve two authorities, a master called Scripture and a mistress called feminism’ (p 278). It isn’t hard to see how this would work, when a view of authority means feminists must reject (or at the very least suspect) Scripture’s authority. And this is the crux of the matter. Christians serve Jesus, who is true Lord of all, including feminism. That means that in turning to follow Jesus we say ‘no’ to all other authorities of any kind which claims first place in our lives (as feminism requires of its followers). If we try to be feminists and Christians we have irreconcilable authorities warring for our loyalty and ultimately we will choose one over the other.

As serious a challenge as feminism is, it is simply one manifestation of the human heart’s constant drive to reject the knowledge of God and to submit to another, created, authority in the place of God. Feminism, and the fate of evangelical feminists over the last thirty years, remind us that there are always things pulling us away from wholehearted commitment to Jesus. Simply avoiding feminism does not make us people who walk by faith, even though one must reject feminism if one is to follow Christ where he leads. Our commitment to the Lord Jesus must topple all other priorities and claims. It must be more important than feminism’s claims, or whatever other claims jockey for first position in our lives (materialism or money, ambition, education for our children and so forth). Let us all ‘set apart Christ as Lord’ in our hearts every day we live (I Peter 3:15, and this chapter which also explains how this will look in our lives).

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 2

The Big Idea: What The Feminist Mistake is all about

Mary Kassian arranges her book around her big idea: that feminism has emerged as feminists have demanded the right to name first themselves, then their world and finally, God.

On the surface this looks fairly innocuous. Calling things by names doesn’t usually seem to us to be that significant: here in England I am obliged to call eggplants ‘aubergines’. It is still the same vegetable despite its more elaborate name. Does it really matter that feminists want to rename themselves, their world and God?

Yes. As Mary shows, naming is more than just changing the label on something. Naming involves identifying the essence of the thing and defining who or what it is. We only have to look to the debates over ‘sex worker’ versus ‘prostitute’ or ‘asylum seeker’ versus ‘refugee’ to see this. Names matter. Feminism looks at women and names them and by naming women feminism defines who we are. It then turns to do this with the world and with God. In the process of doing this feminism rejects what it considers to be patriarchal society’s definition of women, the world and God. This is a massive shift in thinking and it happened over only a few decades.

Mary shows how this thinking evolved:

1960-1970 – Naming the Self (Chapters 1-6)
Here feminists sought to redefine women. Feminists argued that women had been wrongly named by men and patriarchal society as second class people as lesser than men, or even as deformed males. For feminists, the clear biological differences between men and women had led to the subjugation and demeaning of women, identified by various feminists as a kind of ‘rape’ by patriarchal society. Feminists attacked these ways of thinking about women, and called for the right of women to create their own identities and ways of thinking about themselves, or naming themselves.

1970-1980 – Naming the World (Chapter 7-11)
This part of the project was to understand and redefine the world through women’s eyes. Patriarchal society had wrongly defined women and so tried to force women to act and live in certain ways. Feminism rejected this definition of women. This meant that they rejected the society that they thought had imposed this definition. And so they turned their redefining tools onto society and started to think, “What is a feminist’s perspective on this society and how should it be changed to accommodate feminists?”. Things are re-examined on this basis. Things like language, literature, history, sociology and so on. Unsurprisingly, such things are seen as constructed by men to exclude women or to reinforce the demeaning view of women held by men. In response, new perspectives are given specifically from a woman’s viewpoint and history is re-examined for ‘lost’ women who were suppressed and silenced by patriarchy.

It may seem that this is all so far in the clouds that it doesn’t matter much to people in the real world. But by changing language, literature, history and the like, feminism seeks to change society and people at levels more fundamental than most of us are even conscious of.

In this phase, feminists redefine their world, so much so that there is no longer a common starting place between feminists and others. The decision whether you are feminist or not creates a fundamental gulf between people that prevents rational discussion across the divide. Important in this part of the movement is that absolutes are overturned and questioned. The only ‘absolutes’ that are allowed are the values that support feminism and its recreation of the world.

1980-1990 – Naming God (Chapter 12-17)
Feminism then turned to naming or creating God. Mary helpfully shows that this was the logical conclusion for much of feminist thinking. Having set up women’s experience and feminist theory as the criteria for judging society, feminists turned to use this criteria for understanding God. Both within and outside the church, Mary shows how feminists reject the authority of Scripture, the one-ness of God and Christianity as it stands. Feminists asked how to construct God and the church on feminist values and then proceeded to do just that. The Christian God revealed by Jesus Christ is replaced by a mutated, feminised version of the Christian God understood as ‘God/dess’ or a nameless force or ‘Be-ing’. Behind this however, lies the feminist view of god. Ultimately, for feminists, ‘god’ is oneself, and Mary shows how this is present in all sorts of ways in secular and in religious feminism.

I have not attempted to summarise the political dimension of the debate, which, as Mary shows, is important for a thorough understanding. All through these decades the feminist movement poured energy into recruiting and consciousness-raising in various ways in order to fulfil the dream of feminism to transform society. Instead of following this line of Mary’s argument, I have tried to pull out the main ideas which continue to grow and development throughout the movement, and which are important to understand the ideas of the movement.

It’s a lot of stuff to take in, but I think there is one conclusion we can draw from Mary’s study which is worth realising.

Feminists are not woman-centred, they are feminist-centred. That is, they are concerned to pursue the goals of feminism. They claim to be for women, and this gives them a lot of their rhetorical power – to be anti-feminist is to be anti-women. But in reality that are only for a particular kind of woman – the woman who embraces feminism. In naming women, they have defined their ideal woman and they do not support and even actively attack women who deviate from and question that definition. If, as women, we disagree with their directions or goals we are “betraying the sisterhood”, we are unenlightened and we are rejected by the movement. I stumbled across an excellent example of this last week in an article about the Republican nominee for Vice President in the United States, Sarah Palin, which argued that she was not a woman (click here). Not that she was a bad example of a woman, or that she had not reached her potential as a woman, but that she was not a woman. The reason was that, as a conservative, she wasn’t a feminist. This is a useful thing to realise. When feminists name women, they exclude everyone who does not fit that definition, regardless of their gender.

This is a negative kind of point, but the positive practical point is that we can raise this with people who like to see themselves as feminist. We can ask them whether feminism has anything to offer non-feminist women (other than the chance to become feminists) and point out that feminism only serves the interests of a very narrow group of women in the world. We can then contrast that with Christ who is for women of every tribe and language and tongue.

Feminism is about feminists, not women. Christ embraces all who come to him in faith (Matthew 11:28).

The Feminist Mistake - Pt 1

What is this book? It looks a bit scary…!

The Feminist Mistake could look a bit daunting at first glance. Something about the red marker slashing through one of the words on the cover or just the word ‘Feminist’ in the title makes one reach for the kettle. Clearly, this will be a book which requires caffeine and possibly even chocolate.

Yet, in many ways, it is an easy book to read for what it sets out to do. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that you don’t need to do an exam on the book. You won’t need to recall the detail that you will find in this book – unless you are part of a very unusual bookclub which has exams at the end of each book (and if that’s the case, who am I to judge?). The detail is important because it is the evidence Mary Kassian uses to back up her case. We need the evidence to be certain that she is on the right track. But we don’t need to remember every shred of the evidence. You can even let the detail waft over you if you’ve had a rough night with the kids, you are feeling wretched for one reason or another or you have run out of chocolate.

The book is also fairly easy to read because Mary Kassian is rather good at making her main point clear. This book is well written. The big idea does not lie obscurely in a footnote somewhere; it is out in the open for you to see and it is repeated. And this means that even if you get lost, she’ll remind you of which direction she is going and what the big idea is.

It does use formal English, which might slow you down if you are more used to books with slang and short words or just haven’t exercised your ‘reading muscles’ lately. If you do find yourself rereading whole paragraphs, it might be worth skipping to the end of the chapter and reading the short paragraph at the end which usually summarises the whole chapter for you. Then you can go back and read the rest of the chapter with that summary in mind. That way, you can find out where the chapter is heading and not get lost in the detail, but without missing out on the detail.

The book is challenging for three reasons:
· it has a lot of detail
· it has a lot of intellectual ideas by people not grounded in the real world
· it requires attentive reading; you can’t skim this book.

Why should you read this book?

This is such a valuable book if you want to understand the world you live in as a woman!

Mary states in her introductory chapter that feminism has become so influential in our society, there is a sense in which we are all feminists to one degree or another. I think Mary is right. I am not a feminist, and I suspect that many reading this blog would not describe themselves that way. But living in Western society as we do, how much have we adopted feminist ways of thinking and behaving just by growing up and living in our culture? Mary’s book helps us to understand feminism and so gives us some tools to unpick our own cultural blindness and ask ourselves the question:

How much have I really been influenced by this movement?

We need to be able to answer this to be able to then tackle the question that really matters:

How can I be counter-cultural, not for its own sake, but in order to live out a Christ-centred, Scripture based life?

And once we’ve thought this through for ourselves, we are that much more able to help our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and so forth think outside the categories they too are adopting just by growing up in Western society.

If you do embark on this book, chocolate in hand, let me jot down some things you can expect from this book, and some things this book will not do for you.

It will
· help you understand what feminism is all about at its heart and why it is at odds with Christianity.
· show the characteristics of feminism and how it has affected society and the church, right up to where we are now. This is particularly helpful because this book gives us a framework to understand feminism. Feminism is not an easy movement to understand. Mary helps us get an overarching view of the main ideas without over-simplifying the issues.
· give you a model of how to respond to feminism. Mary is not nasty and does not mock. She deals respectfully with other people’s ideas and in doing so, shows us what it looks like to listen carefully, and then to be gracious in response, and yet firm in one’s own beliefs. It is worth reading this book for this alone.

It won’t
· give you a blow by blow analysis of the conservative Evangelical position on manhood and womanhood, covering Biblical texts and explaining key passages. Mary obviously believes that the Bible is the sole authority for understanding manhood and womanhood, but that is not the focus of her book. It is an analysis and critique of feminism, not a response that spells out the alternative biblical position.
· write off feminism’s questions as stupid and ridiculous. Mary does question whether the answers that feminism provides are good for us. This is useful, because some of feminism’s questions are good ones to ask (and they are asked by more than just feminists): what should women do in domestic abuse situations? If a woman is unsupported by a man (single, widowed, divorced, etc), should she still require a man to organise her finances for her (and therefore need a male guarantor for a bank loan)? Issues to do with women should never be written off by us as ‘feminist’ just because they are issues women face. Christianity is profoundly interested in the welfare of women.
· provide you with arguments which roundly defeat any feminist.

Here in the blogsphere, I’ll be doing some thematic posts, rather than going through chapter by chapter. Hopefully this will help keep the main point firmly in our heads and also help us to keep thinking through the implications of what we are reading, rather than it becoming an academic exercise. In the next post will summarise the main idea of the book and take it from there.

Enjoy!

The Feminist Mistake

We still haven't finished reading this month's book (I've got the final post scheduled for Monday), but I thought I would quickly fill you in on next month's book, The Feminist Mistake. As the book's title indicates, it's all about feminism and how we should view this philosophy as Christians. Here's an interesting excerpt from a recent post about the author, Mary Kassian:

The philosophy of feminism adds a subtle, almost indiscernible twist to the basic biblical truth of woman's worth. Feminism asserts that woman's worth is of such a nature that it gives her the right to discern, judge, and govern that truth herself. It infuses women with the idea that God's teaching about the role of women must line up with their own perception and definition of equality and/or liberation. Feminism does not present itself as an outright affront to the Bible, but it nevertheless contains an insidious distortion that erodes the authority of Scripture. Acceptance of the feminist thesis may not drastically alter one's initial beliefs, but if followed it will naturally lead to an end miles away from the Christianity of the Bible.

This month's contributor, Jennie Baddeley, has already written an opening post (which will go up on Thursday next week) which explains why the book is worth reading, but in the meantime, can I encourage you to get your hands on a copy, and start reading now? It will be an advantage to have a few chapters under your belt before next week!