it sounds like a whisper
(A small contribution to the revolutionary movement begun by smallcorner and lilytodd and espero, continued by zoomtard, and immortalised in film by vox. With apologies to vox for extended use of the first person plural)
Paul had a dream
It was a good dream. A long time before Martin Luther King, Paul dreamed that one day all of God’s children, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, men and women, could join hands and sing in the words of the not-yet-written negro spiritual, “free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.”
“In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.” That was how he put it, and it was probably the most socially revolutionary idea expressed by anyone for several hundred years on either side.
Of course, Paul was a practical man as well as a dreamer. He wanted to actually make a difference in the real lives of real people in his culture. He knew that if he stood on the roof-tops and shouted “abolish slavery” and “full equality for women” people would find him very entertaining but society would remain unchanged. The economic world of his time was built on the practice of slavery, and the social world was built on the extended patriarchal household. These things weren’t going to change any time soon.
So Paul wrote letters to people living in the realities of that culture. He gave instructions for how people should relate to each other within households. He assumed that for now,the slaves were stuck in the slave system, and the women were stuck in the patriarchal system. So he focused on the masters and the men. He told them to treat the slaves and the women with dignity and respect, as real human beings made in God’s image. He told the men to love their wives in such a way that they would be willing to lay down their lives for them. All over the Greco-Roman world people heard Paul’s ideas and fell off their chairs. This was subversive and radical and dangerous thinking.
And for a while, people really got it. They caught the dream. For a while, the Christian community was good news for slaves, for the poor, and especially for women. Women were drawn in large numbers to the Christian faith because it gave them full dignity as children of God, and the Christian communities were places where they could be honoured and respected, and given real responsibilities and a real voice. One of the reasons the Christian church grew so rapidly was because the Christians refused to follow their culture’s habit of leaving baby girls to die on the rubbish dumps of their cities. They believed that baby girls were as valuable as baby boys.
But then time passed. The cultural gap between Paul and his readers grew. We forgot that Paul was not a philosopher like Plato, expounding universal statements of universal truth for all people at all times. We forgot he was a pastor who cared about real people, immersed in the detail of his time and place, writing real letters to particular people in a specific cultural context. We assumed that when he told certain women in certain churches to stop stirring up trouble and be quiet for a while, that was his final, absolute statement on women in the church (and ignored all the times he referred in passing to women who were leading and preaching and prophesying in the churches he had planted).
We forgot to listen carefully for the song, the dream, behind and beneath the letters on the page. We started to treat his writings as theological bricks in space, without context, without any human clothing or language or colour. We heard Paul saying that women were to be eternally subordinated to men in the church and in the home. We ripped the commands out of their place in the story and made them into ugly sticks to keep women in their place.
And so we stopped hearing the dream. The song was silenced, and so were the women.
And now some of the women are frustrated and hurt and angry. And rightly so. And they want to know what some of us men are going to do about it. And they won’t be satisfied with clever blog-posts.
I have no doubt that lilytodd will bring up her girls to be amazing and confident women, with bucket-loads of grace and gift and beauty to offer to the world. Our challenge is to raise our boys in such a way that they will be men who listen to these women with respect and give them a voice in family and church and world.
But of course it’s a cop-out to postpone the revolution until the next generation. As espero says, some of us need to get our asses off the sofa and start acting a bit more like Jesus, stop tolerating that which enslaves and wounds, and start empowering our sisters to live freely. And that should be the final word.
(Except go and watch this).
zoompressed says:
November 9th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Yeah, you pretty much just wrote what I wanted to write, but you know, that much better…
lilytodd says:
November 9th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
I’ve just decided we’re moving up North, front row seats every Sunday to listen to your wisdom. Hurry up and come home you guys x
QMonkey says:
November 9th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
(devil’s / Paul’s advocate)
So Paul really deep down wanted to say abolish slavery and full equality for women, but didn’t think it would go down very well? I’m not sure it’s fair for you to say that you know the dreams of Paul, and he actually didn’t mean what he said in Ephesians… bit of a thin wedge? Any other bible writers who’s dreams are actually different to what they wrote – st john?
jaybercrow says:
November 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
QMonkey – I know it can sound that way, but it’s not about reading Paul’s mind. It’s about reading him thoughtfully, with some historical awareness of the cultural conditions of his day. The presumption is on the part of those who assume that Paul is speaking as a 21st century westerner, and therefore assume that we can take his words at simplistic face-value.
Lilytodd – nothing would make us happier than if you and vox showed up in the north! Don’t get our hopes up.
QMonkey says:
November 9th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
i think you’re female readers are smart enough not to be placated with a ‘paul didnt really mean it’ answer…let me put it to you.. that the implications are as follows -
Paul was the kinda guy who thought one thing, then forcefully wrote letters to the churches aspousing something else. Therefore how reliable is he, as someone whos letter should be read as a blueprint for the church?
Simply put, are there things in the bible that, upon further study of material outside of the bible, we realise don’t apply to us.
QMonkey says:
November 9th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Jayber, i should have said. i agree with your post, i think you’re probably right about Paul… was he writting the letters today he wouldnt say what he said – i came to that conculsion maybe 15 years ago…
…it’s just that i think there are massive implications to that – and thats where the rubber really hits the road. A thin end to a wedge.
teragram says:
November 9th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
QMonkey, are you being serious? Paul very clearly said (as Jaybercrow quoted) “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.” The way that his strong statement could be implemented in his context, at that time, was not the same way that we can implement it now. I think Jaybercrow explained it very eloquently, and if you *are* being serious, I think you need to re-read his post more carefully.
Tg
QMonkey says:
November 9th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
i think you’re missing the point Tg. no ones argueing whether there is ‘male and female’ in christ. its about church rolls, maybe re-read Tim 2 and Eph 5 – he CLEARLY said wives submit to your husbands and dont be in a teaching roll. (dont get sarcy )
jaybercrow says:
November 10th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Hey QM – so I agree with you that the position I’m outlining has implications. I just differ from you as to what those implications are.
You seem to assume we need to abandon the idea of the Bible being inspired, and either adopt a “buffet” approach (nice phrase by the way) or stop reading it altogether.
Whereas I think we need to learn how to read. Especially how to read with an awareness of the historical/cultural gap, and with an awareness that the form of the biblical revelation is story. We need to think about what it looks like for a story to have authority over our lives, rather than a list of isolated propositions or commands. Oh look, here’s a post I made earlier (now where’s my Blue Peter badge?) – http://jaybercrow.furiousthinking.org/?p=8
Peace.
QMonkey says:
November 10th, 2007 at 9:23 am
nicely done. i’ll contemplate.
Between The Right To Vote and Pray, A Short Note at Zoomtard says:
November 10th, 2007 at 10:44 am
[...] Jaybercrow wrote his best ever entry last night, (IMO LOL!) about the Pauline perspective on women in the Bible. I am planning to unleash a fucking monster of a Zoomtard on Monday about how to fit the pieces together but the heart of Jayber’s argument, (presuming I am reading him right, which is a safe presumption since authorial intent can actually be read), is the claim that the body of writing passed down to us through the Canon and attributed to Paul is radically egalitarian. Men and women are equally gifted by God. Galatians 3:28 as a kind of cornerstone of Pauline theology. [...]
soapbox says:
November 10th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Great stuff Jayber. The challenge of teaching people to read and understand the scope of the implications and how subversive they still are is still massive in a context where people don’t want to think about the complexity or realise the effects their words and action have in subjugating huge swathes of God’s image bearers…
QMonkey says:
November 10th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
http://maryquitecontrary.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/hello-world/
marty says:
November 11th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Jayber as always I love your writing (when’s your first book coming out?). This is obviously developing into quite a debate but I am concerned that Jayber’s finishing point may be missed.
For me, right now, this is not about what Paul meant or didn’t mean. Personally I’ve been shocked and ashamed (as a man) that there are women who have been made to feel that they are “God’s second best” whether in their role in the church or elsewhere.
This is an idea that has never crossed my mind. I feel I have been totally oblivious to the depth of hurt that this issue can and has caused. And therefore I think I (& we – as men) need to firstly apologise for anything we have done to instill the lie that women are in any way inferior. I am sure I have been guilty in the past of offending some with teasing comments or a lack of sensitivity – if so, I am sorry.
I haven’t found anything in Scripture to support the idea that men are more important than women and therefore how we treat women generally as well as in the church should reflect this.
Today our church appointed the first women to the leadership team. It is a small but an important step. I hope it begins a process of healing and encouragement.
wylie says:
November 11th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
thanks jaybercrow for being one of the people who do something about it by who you are, as does zoomtard… i’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot lately and well quite frankly it’s mind blowing to think that the church should be the one place where freedom and dignity for women (and everyone) is a given – i like this dream, i like this dream so much that i pray it not only becomes a reality for me to enjoy, but also that i become a person who equally embodies the dream making it a reality for others too. NOW GO & HURRY UP AND GET BACK HERE!
Twelve Male Apostoles? « Mary Quite Contrary says:
November 12th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
[...] no responses The story of a Christian debate I’ve found always follows a familiar path, and usually involves a game were the participants are ‘troubled’ by the bible, and can’t understand it, so they pray about it, then people explain to them that the piece of scripture doesn’t actually say what it says (because you’ve read it wrong). [...]
beardy bastard says:
November 12th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
a fine example of the male need to try to answer difficult questions rather than listening to the questioner.
i don’t mean to be harsh (again), but i don’t think this debate needed this “black and white” response, to something that is about people struggling with difficult bits of the bible and the way the church treats people.
i could be wrong – you certainly have your fans out there. (i’m not saying i’m not a fan – i just didn’t particularly like your blog)
Women of the world unite! And the poppy question continues… « the soapbox says:
November 12th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
[...] It’s all been kicking off in the blogosphere – at least in our little corner of it. Women. Women in the church most specifically. So much so espero has been roused from her curtailment of activity by children to start blogging. Zoomtard has also begun to throw his weight around the ring with not one but three posts and another promised tomorrow. Jaybercrow is whispering wisely, while Vox is making comics about the kerfuffle, while all the pots are being stirred by a cheeky monkey. Mysmallcorner and Lilytodd – didn’t realise what they were starting – but thanks for making me start thinking about something I hadn’t given much thought to before. [...]
jaybercrow says:
November 13th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Marty – thanks for bringing us back down to earth with a stupendously wise comment.
Wylie – get off your ass and start your own blog you legend.