Many years ago I was watching the Old Time Gospel Hour on TV. The Old Time Gospel Hour was the flagship program of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell was preaching about women and the Equal Rights Amendment.
I have never forgotten what Jerry Falwell said:
We don’t believe in equal rights for women. We believe in superior rights for women. We believe in putting women on a pedestal.
I remember thinking, at the time, that makes a lot of sense. The Equal Rights Amendment was viewed as an attempt to blur the lines between the sexes. To make our culture unisex, which was considered by all to be a grievous sin. (and still is by some today)
The Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christianity of my youth taught me:
- Women are to submit to men.
- Women are best suited to be mothers and keepers of the home.
- Women are emotional whereas men are logical.
- Women should be discouraged from going to college because this makes it less likely that the woman will be a good mother and a good keeper of the home.
- If a woman is insistent on going to college she should go to a Christian college. Her choices? Pastor’s wife, single missionary, Christian school teacher.
- Women are not suited to intellectual endeavors.
- Women should not be involved in making decisions. The decision maker in the home is the husband. The decision makers in the Church are the men. Government is reserved for men.
- Women were to give the husband sex whenever he wanted it. If she didn’t put out she was risking her husband having an adulterous affair and it would then be HER fault.
The viewpoints above showed up in sermon after sermon. Is it any wonder so many Fundamentalist/Evangelical marriages are dysfunctional? That women schooled in such an environment have difficultly functioning in the real world?
Even in my own marriage, I was a typical “I am the boss, chief decision-maker, you submit to me” husband. I made ALL the decisions. For twenty years this is how we “did” marriage. Gradually, as I became more liberal in my understanding of life, I realized how hurtful this was to women in general and to my dear wife in particular.
My wife finds it hard to make decisions. She told me one time that she was “afraid to make decisions because she might might make a wrong decision and then you’ll be mad at me.” I said ‘Yep. That’s the price of admission. Making decisions means you might piss someone off.” I see my wife throwing off the bondage of the past but I wonder if she’ll ever be totally free of teachings of the the past. Submit. Obey. Do what your husband says. He is the head of the home. It is hard to shake such indoctrination.
Is marriage really a partnership when only one partner decides everything? Certainly we each have our strengths, our weaknesses. I am not about to enter my wife’s kitchen. First, we will all starve. Second she is a far better cook than I will ever be in ten lifetimes. I pay the bills. I write the checks. I manage the money. I am good at it. I am able to analyze numbers on the fly. (it is called Gerencser math in the family) So, I do what I am good at and so does my wife.
Now there is ONE area I refuse to relinquish control. The remote control!! 
It’s mine. Don’t touch it.
I digress…
How did Jerry Falwell’s superior rights for women work out practically in the Church?
You judge. Does what follows seem so superior to you?
- Women sang in the choir and did special music numbers
- Women played musical instruments
- Women cleaned the church
- Women worked in the nursery
- Women taught children in Sunday School and Jr Church
- Women cooked food for potlucks and Church meals
Looks very similar to what was expected of women at home.
Women were not allowed to be pastors, deacons, elders, teach older children. They were never allowed to teach any group of people that had adult men in it.( thus usurping the authority do men)
Granted, there is great improvement in some sectors of the Christian Church. Women can now be pastors, elders, deacons, worship leaders ,etc. Women teach theology at some Christian colleges. Thanks to feminism women have a lot more opportunities than they did years ago.
But the Church still has a long ways to go.(i.e the Catholic Church is still in the 12th century) Vast swaths of the Fundamentalist/Evangelical Church still practice the repression of women, They sincerely believe they are following the teachings of the Bible when they do so. If God said it…end of discussion. As a result thousands upon thousands of Churches continue to be man only institutions.
One Church I pastored wouldn’t even allow women to speak in a public Church business meeting. If they had a question they were required to whisper the question to a man and then he would ask the question.
I visited a Mennonite Church years ago where the women sat on one side and the men on the other. Keeping to the mantra that women should never lead, when the Congregation sang the women always started singing a note after the men. (that said, the singing was spectacular)
In the early 1970’s my mother gave me an important lesson in equal rights. She worked as as nurses aide at Winebrenner’s Nursing Home in Findlay Ohio. Female aides were paid less than male aides because the male aides did more of the “heavy” work. Truth was, that both sexes did the “heavy” work.
So my Mom, the crusader that she was, sued Winebrenner’s. It seemed so silly. There was only a bit of change difference in the wages. I was so embarrassed when the lawsuit story hit the front page of the newspaper.
But, she was right. Winebrenner was discriminatory in their treatment of women. My mother filed a federal lawsuit under the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Title 7) The courts agreed and my mother won.
While I was embarrassed at the time (I was 15) I now see how brave my mother was. To stand up for what was right. To dare suggest that women should be treated equally.
We still have a long way to go on the issue of equality. Women are still treated as inferior to men. The glass ceiling exists, regardless of whether or not bigots like Phyllis Schlafly can see it. Yes, things are BETTER but we should not rest until we are a society that is blind to sex, sexuality, race, and religion.
Utopian? Perhaps.
Justice and fairness require that we press forward even when it seems failure is certain. That’s one lesson my Mom taught me that I will never forget.
YOUR MOM ROCKS. another post i’ll put on my facebook page to share with the masses…
My Mom was complicated. Hopelessly a right-winger. Had a real sense of justice yet that justice seemed to go away when it came to blacks. She was a child of her times. I would like to think that it she were alive today she would have embraced the times and developed a more liberal view of the world.
Bruce
Isn’t it strange how we all end up with our own “brand” of justice? She sounds like some people I know and love, too. In our family, you did not say the ‘n’ word, and it was not until I grew a bit that I ever knew that racism against blacks existed. My father taught at an inner-city school and I felt comfortable walking around with “bus kids” at church when the adults probably didn’t think that was too great.
But homophobia and extreme sexism were as much a part of my parents’ belief system as anything, all based on their biblical worldview.
Wait. Do we really want a society that is blind to sex, sexuality, race and religion? I like being who I am. I like being recognized by the things that make me a little bit different from everyone else. If everyone around me is blind to those things, I am going to be just another faceless human, and that doesn’t sound too good. Rather than your blind (and bland)utopia, I would have a colorful society at peace with its differences. Our differences do not have to divide us, do they?
Hi Honour,
You mistake individuality with equality.
I am all for individuality. However I am also for each individual being equal regardless of sex, sexual preference, race or religion.
Your world is the one that now exists is it not? How peaceful is that? We live in country and a world where people are routinely judged by the color of their skin and their genitals.
There is nothing bland about equality. in fact, equality raises the individual to heights never before imagined. In a blind society everyone is free to be themselves. No concerns over color, religion, sex, sexual preference.
Utopian? Yes.
But just.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Bruce, I don’t think my perfect world exists now at all. In my perfect world our differences would not bring division or violence. But that’s my perfect world, not the world that is. I’m all for being equal, but don’t make me the same. I just dislike the word “blind” because it makes it sound like we’re not supposed to notice that we’re not all alike.
When I look at how women are treated in that culture, it often comes across as a combination between a servant/child/walking reproductive organ. Not a person with inherent rights, or a person in her own right. A woman is always defined by her relationship to her uterus or her relationship to others. She’s not someone who has thoughts, dreams, ideas, intelligence.
I see a lot of evangelicals trying to justify this with the Ephesians verse about wives being subjected to the husbands by saying that the husbands are to be like Jesus and self-sacrificing, so it really is an equal relationship. Really? Because that verse says that husbands are to Jesus as wives are to the church. Since when has the church been considered equal to Jesus, if Jesus is the head of the church?
Haven’t there also been articles about how men aren’t joining the church at the same rate that women are? And that part of that is the church is considered to feminine? It’s too emotional, too in touch with one’s feelings? So they’re recommending that the church become more masculine in order to attract male participants. So both men and women will go to church when it’s masculine. But men won’t go when it’s feminine.
Hey Bruce, it seems to me your mom was going way outside her cultural envelope by doing that. Didn’t she get the cold shoulder from her church when she did that?
She had divorced my Dad by then and quit Church. She was viewed, within the Church, as being a wacko women’s libber. (and she was)
Bruce
Great post.
Oh my gosh, Bruce, I have so much to say on this post, that I don’t know what to say.
OK, I’ll say something about putting women on a pedestal. I loved hanging out with elderly brothers as a Christian. They were nice, retired, and relaxed. But I hated it when they insisted on opening doors for me, or giving me their seat, or that I went ahead of them on a queue.
I hated it because I didn’t NEED the seat or the privilege. I’m a big girl. I can wait for my turn and open my own doors.
What I NEEDED was to be intellectually respected at the same level as the men. I wanted to have a voice, to be heard. But, no, that I couldn’t have. I was intellectually inferior, worthy only of being taken care of by the guys, like a weak vessel.
Weak vessel my ass…!
Lorena,
You raise a point I missed. The whole “weaker vessel” notion. Women are “inferior” by design. They “need” men to make up for their shortcoming. (s)
You hit the nail on the head. Respect. Are women respected? Truly respected? Where their viewpoint is honesty considered? Where their words carry weight?
Of course many women in Evangelical Churches lack intellectual substance because they are not encouraged to “think.” Men are encouraged to read theology. Women? Christian romance novels. Child rearing books. How to make your husband happy books. I met few women who had an interest in theology. Was it because of their sex? Of course not. They were trained to NOT like theology. Theology is what men did.
I have no problem opening doors ,etc. I do it cuz I have always done it. But I can also now see why some women may find that offensive, especially coming from a religious background that depreciated them for who they were.
Women have much to offer the Church. In some circles they are starting to listen. In the circles I grew up in? Pretty much just like it always has been . Just keep the man fed, have sex, and pop out the babies and all is well.
Bruce
Oh yeah, the romance novels. I used to volunteer at the church library, and the women couldn’t believe that I’d never read a Christian novel. I was into Philip Yancey, The Christian Research Journal, and Christianity Today.
I honestly don’t know that I could be part of a church that didn’t allow women to preach or teach. For me, it’s more than being a feminist.
How can it be righteous to hinder God’s work in people’s lives, and quench the gifts of the Holy Spirit?
There are some tremendously gifted women out there that God has called to lead Christ’s church. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal church is one of them.
Good post Bruce. One thing I ran into in the ‘church’ was the problem of being a ’strong’ woman. One who was NOT afraid to speak up and voice an opinion. This is another VERY unacceptable practice. Your husband will never ‘get ahead’ in church hierarchy with an ouspoken woman…even if she ‘knows her place’ and is ’submissive’. The husband ‘needs to control his wife’ if he wants to be a leader in the church. I had to ‘BE’ what I wasn’t….I couldn’t be me. It was very frustrating! Glad that is my PAST and not my FUTURE!
Honour,
I agree. (yes shocking I know)
An equal world where individuality is important difference can be celebrated. We can celebrate that certain ethnicities like certain foods. We can black men do jump higher without being called racist. We can celebrate the genetic traits that make certain people and races different.
I certainly don’t want my wife to be a man. However I want her afforded the same rights and privileges as every other person.
I certainly don’t have any desire to be gay. In fact I don’t get it at all. I am hopelessly heterosexual. However I want my gay friends (man to even think I HAVE gay friends) to be afforded every opportunity and right as I have.
I want to be able to read a magazine or newspaper that doesn’t feel the need to mention the race or sex of the person in the story.
I suspect we want many of the same things. Perhaps our wording is different.
Bruce