The High Calling of the Christian Woman

Surrogacy, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), egg “donation”, and even certain forms of contraception are considered by many women–including Christian women–valid options for addressing their reproductive dilemmas despite the embryo-destructive nature often associated with these advancements in technology.

Over the years, I have known many women in churches who have traveled down these paths only to suffer the pain of knowing their very prolife intentions have led to some not-so-prolife results. For some, they have come to understand that the embryos they placed in frozen storage for future “use” are their children whether or not they are eventually born or do not survive the process of implantation. Others are still learning that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is not actually a therapeutic treatment of their very tiny children, but a means of discarding imperfect offspring, a technological “achievement” grounded in a philosophy that says only certain lives are worth living. PGD has come to be a routine practice as IVF has come to be more about quality control.

We continue to love and minister to the women and families who have found themselves in these unfortunate circumstances without being fully informed; ridicule and rebuke have no place as there is so much misinformation about these issues. But as a matter of proactive, educational ministry, women in the church must learn more about these decisions they are contemplating.

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The Feminist Majority Prefers Women Kept Stupid

Yesterday, the Feminist Majority put out a statement against Colorado's Amendment 48. Apparently, Amendment 48 would recognize the personhood of embyos. This is what the Feminist Majority had to say about that:

we want to make sure that women have more rights than an egg!

Well, either their statement reflects a profound ignorance--because those of us who are prolife do not equate eggs with embryos-- or this is what they have been wanting to say all along. With smoke and mirrors, they speak of the embryo in its pre-fertilized state so as to avoid the scientific truth we know about all embryos...that they are living human organisms. Eggs are not. Why do they do they insist on ignoring this scientifically obvious difference? Because the Feminist Majority really does believe that grown women have more rights than smaller humans, and that this goes against the conscience of the majority of Americans. It is necessary to their agenda to obfuscate this issue because an egg with moral worth is not an egg, its an embryo. Young women in their reproductive years are being psychologically primed to donate their eggs for research purposes, but these eggs never remain eggs, they become embryos. If they are persuaded to believe falsely that their eggs forever remain eggs, then they don't have to consider that the eggs they give up actually become their embryonic offspring. What woman is not repulsed by the notion if giving up her offspring for research? For the Feminist Majority to speak of fertilized eggs as simply eggs is scientifically false and a deliberate attempt to confuse the same women they believe have more rights than these much smaller humans. How can they, the Feminist Majority, claim to respect the rights of women if they can't respect our basic intelligence?

Hearing Her: Evangelical Women's Voices in Bioethics

When we think about women's voices speaking to any particular issue in society, it's easy to assume those voices belong to secular feminism and not evangelical theology. This isn't to suggest that there are no evangelical women theologians involved in important areas like bioethics, but the numbers are low and have little bearing on what is referred to as "women' issues." This is a topic I will be speaking about next week at CBHD's summer bioethics conference.

Part of the problem is internal. Evangelicalism doesn't provide much space for the female theologian as she is almost always relegated exclusively to matters of the home (if she is married).. The debates over roles in the church and family limit the likelihood that a woman would enter into the theological academy, and as a result her voice is silent and she has little influence on other women in church and culture.

Feminists and other women's rights activists have a significant voice in public debate largely due to the fact that the Christian community is viewed as being oppressive of women, something that is not entirely true. But the absence of female voices can feed into that generalization.

Grounded in a theology committed to a historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture, evangelical women can bring a voice of faith, reason and experience to bioethics issues. The experienced joy of womanhood within the framework of a Christian worldview is an invaluable resource for the church in ministry to women in church and society at large.

Feminization of the Church: Random Thoughts

Bonnie’s posts at Intellectuelle as well as my own engagement with the church’s concern over the feminization of the church has prompted numerous random thoughts. To springboard a bit from Bonnie’s posts on the topic, we need to know how it is being stated that the church’s feminization manifests. This is what I have learned through some of my own research:

1. The majority of those who attend church (on average) are women, over 60%. Related to this fact is that somewhere between ¼ and 1/5 of this percentage are women who attend without their husbands.

2. Some of the music reflects, supposedly, a femininity that men cannot identify with. This, in my mind, begs the question of what masculine music sounds like. I think we’re in safe territory questioning the theological depth of much of our worship music, or the quality of the music as art. Are we to identify the masculinity of music as that which lacks a supposed level of sappiness that is wrongly construed as feminine? Are songs such as Change My Heart Oh God and As the Deer considered feminine whereas songs like He Is Exalted and Blessed Be Your Name might be considered more masculine? I’m not even sure if these would be considered masculine, but they often differ (depending on the worship leader) from the former in tempo and key. If, indeed, tempo and style, speak anything about masculinity or femininity, I fear what might be said about some of the greatest classical works like those of Brahms, Handel, and Haydn.

3. Women in leadership. This is an area where I part ways from many of my friends. I’ve settled on the complementarian perspective, that Scripture does not permit women to be elders, thereby preventing them from the role of senior pastor. This, however, need not be a limitation for women with leadership gifts to serve the church in areas of teaching other women and coming alongside the male leadership in a consultancy capacity. There is a great deal that women have to contribute to the health of the church in addition to teaching Sunday school. It would serve the church well to respect the intellectual gifts of women. As men are discussing the feminization of the church, it would serve them well to be in dialogue with thoughtful, theological women in this process. More men might also consider taking on the role of Sunday school teacher. Teaching children should not be a concession to women (as it seems to be), children should be viewed as the greatest resource of the church to make an impact on our culture in future generations. If the church has been feminized because of anything women have done, might it be because so few men are involved?
In the context of a church with a complementarian culture, the issue of women in leadership is a moot point. This cannot be the blame (if that’s the term we are using) for the feminization of the church. As has been attributed to Phil Johnson at a 2007 men’s conference, the feminization has been caused largely by the abdication of Christian men.

Nancy Pearcey quotes Ann Douglas from her book The Feminization of American Culture, that

"ministry lost a toughness, a sternness, an intellectual rigor which our society then and since has been accustomed to identify with masculinity” and instead took on 'feminine'” traits of care, nurturing, sentimentalism, and retreat from the harsh ethos of the public arena” (Total Truth, 335).

I’m terribly bothered that intellectual rigor is considered a masculine trait by default. The seeker movement and the therapeutic Christianity that has come to dominate the culture of so many publishers and churches is the product of male leadership and lacks a great deal of intellectual rigor. I’m quite sure that having more men in the pews will not repair this epidemic, and I’m not sure that a church with a female majority is really the problem. More and more women within the evangelical community want to do the challenging work of theological reflection and are bored to tears (pardon the pun) with talking about their feelings and only allowed to do church in the form of parties revolving around cosmetics and chocolate. They want more, and a great deal of male leadership has pigeon-holed women’s ministry as a place to be emotional and fluffy, perpetuating the problem.

Looking at feminization through the lens of history, however, perhaps we can better understand it by considering the role the industrial revolution played in taking husbands out of the homes to work in factories, placing women in necessary functional leadership roles in the family. And in this sense, perhaps we can suggest that it was the industrial revolution that sparked the feminist revolution and the feminization of church and culture. Progress may have more to do with feminization than anything else.

Final Thoughts
As a Christian woman with a passion for theological precision, and coming from a Reformed perspective, I think that this whole discussion about the feminization of the church has been without concern for how it affects women. Because certain traits are regarded as masculine and feminine, it’s as if the rug has been pulled out from under women who might be hurt by the tone of the discussion. I say this, because if “hurt” or “sensitivity” are considered feminine “feelings,” then by virtue of the topic, a negative response to it by a woman would probably be considered evidence of the problem. Setting the topic up this way, in itself, lacks virtue and logic. I hope more women can be brought into the discussion, because this is much deeper than masculine or feminine, it’s about Christ-centeredness or human-centeredness, the latter which is typified through the therapeutic subculture of the church.

I have SO MUCH MORE to say on this topic, but I will conclude for now with the place of women in the biblical narrative. I wonder if the disciples thought Jesus was feminizing their new movement by engaging so many women….Mary and Martha of Bethany, the woman at the well, the prostitute who anointed Jesus’ feet, the women he appeared to at the resurrection. We read a great deal about how Jesus interacts with women and cares enough to bring them to theological maturity. In this sense, I find this aspect of who Jesus is absent from so much of today’s male leadership in the church. I expect more. And I know women need more.

Prime Time Bioethics: The Myth of Hollywood Neutrality

The Return of Jezebel James
Boston Legal
House
Law & Order
CSI
Ugly Betty

The above is a short list, but represents some of the current work being done in Hollywood to say something about the issues hotly debated in bioethics today. If the popular culture can be swayed on the issues, the academics who agree with Hollywood have less need for precise, rational arguments their points and our elected representatives have less work to do--or a lot more, depending on which side they fall on the issues.

Egg harvesting is the latest topic to go mainstream, an attempt to bring the process into every day vernacular. While this has been more closely associated to surrogacy on many of these shows, another application is also embryonic stem cell research. Those of us on the side of human dignity have been drawing attention to the dangers of egg "donation," the problem of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome.

Religion is alive and well in Hollywood, and the sect that seems to be winning the culture war is the one that denies the inherent value of all life, the one that believes we can use people to meet the wants and whims of others, the one that treats the female reproductive system as a manufacturing plant. How they are winning the culture war is beyond me given their very low view of women.....perhaps one reason is the lack of basic logic taught in our public educational system.

Primetime Bioethics: Surrogacy on Fox

Glorification of multiple sexual partners, mocking of Christianity, trivializing of relationships, comedic gynecological visits....these are a few ways Fox is participating in our culture's affair with unfettered sexuality and science. The show is The Return of Jezebel James and is about the lives of 2 sisters, one who has a career as an editor with Harper Collins children's book division and the other who seems to be wondering life aimlessly and unable to make the simplest of decisions, except the one to carry her sister's child. Sarah is the sister unable to have her own child, given the options only to adopt, hire a surrogate, etc. This is the first time in her life she's been confronted with any serious challenge to getting what she wants, so she is able to profit from her sister Coco's lack of focus and rent her womb.

We are way past the point of asking what's become of this world, we can only inquire as to how we, as caretakers of God's creation, can participate in the restoration of a view of humanity that respects the dignity inherent with being created in the image of God. Correcting society's view of human dignity is fundamental to addressing the particulars of society, whether the issues are as basic as our treatment of each other in our families, work, and other relationships, or the very serious bioethics issues of our time that violate human dignity to the extent of compromising life.

While television is indoctrinating the intellectually vulnerable about how to treat one another, those who hold a strong view of human dignity need to work hard to have as much impact on the people around them. This is a high spiritual calling that belongs to the Church.