lurking 2: women! shut up!
This is the second post in my new series publishing comments that surprise me as I lurk round Christian blogs. Two things were brought to my attention yesterday that have affected today’s choice of comment. The first is a suggestion from a Christian reader about the possibility of publishing some nice stuff too, which I think is perfectly reasonable. And the second is an excellent point made by this blogger about the dangers of killing off the weak forms of Christianity, leaving room for an evolutionary-primed, impregnable superbug religion, rather than simply atheism as I had naively assumed.
So, in an effort to be nice to Christians and to support the nicer interpretations of the Bible that do actually exist, I present an extract of a comment from a Christian blogger attempting to defend the rights of silly women to be allowed to talk to actual men about serious and difficult to understand religious matters in their non-discriminatory house of worship (or anywhere, actually). Enjoy!
I’ll make you a deal. I’ll prevent women from speaking in church if you prevent them from walking in wearing expensive clothes, gold, pearls, and elaborate hairstyles. I’ll also apply Paul’s primogeniture logic if you are willing to enter into a culture, like Paul’s, where the firstborn has greater honor in all things. I’ll also bar women from teaching if we can all agree that women are simply easier deceived than men. And, lastly, I’ll keep women from teaching as long as you add bearing children as a requirement for their salvation.
I’m obviously being silly! Ha! But my point is real: if we’re going to make some of this transcultural, we need to make it all transcultural. I’m pretty passionate that we need to obey the Bible. If we really interpret it to say that women can’t teach men, period, then we need to stop playing games. Forget personal and direct: we need to stop reading books by women, listening to them teach the Bible in any context, and perhaps not accept any instance of a woman exercising authority over a man. It doesn’t help us to interpret it one way, and then find applications that contradict our interpretation.
The quote in the above post is a great example of this. Rather than enforcing Paul’s simple directive that women can’t teach men, his application actually said the opposite: he declared that women CAN teach men, just as long as it’s not in person. So, this pastor and I agree: neither of us interprets Paul as saying a woman can never teach a man. We both agree that a woman can teach a man on any Biblical topic, and she can teach a boy, a man, an elder, or even a sr pastor. The only difference between us is that this pastor made up a distinction based on physical proximity.
I’d be willing to wager the claim that when you actually get down to evaluating most of Paul’s teachings in their cultural context, he was wildly feminist.
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Ah, I was about to say, what the …? But I realise you think that women had a rougher time of it and he was on the liberal side. Is that right?
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Pretty much. He subverted the cultural expectations of a woman’s place on a pretty regular basis. While there are a few places that are a bit on the confusing side, like 1 Tim 2 (though in this instance he does explicitly label his instructions as personal rather than Scriptural), he generally holds quite closely to the “neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Greek” approach.
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But yeah, thanks for posting this! It’s good to see examples of believers who are able to distance themselves from the old literalism trope and examine things using generic literary criticism.
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Hmmm, I’m going to be interested to see what other people think. This blogger is interesting as he rarely says anything that offends me outright and is clearly addressing a conservative audience that are challenged by his thinking. But, as a women, it makes my skin crawl to have men discussing the ‘role’ of women in this way. It’s immensely patronising. But then, when your holy book is horribly sexist, it’s bound to happen.
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There’s one teaching in this passage that is almost never discussed: “the older women should teach the younger.”
So (in the spirit of the OP), if we REALLY want to be biblical…then no man should be saying anything about a woman’s role. =P
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Sooo, what I’m seeing is that women can put instructional videos on youtube, but if they are in my presence and feel the need to enlighten me about something, they should shut it and go make me a sammich. I swear.
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Sorry, the comment is a bit out of context. In the third paragraph, he is summarising the views of another pastor, who, as you mention, thinks YouTube videos are okay, just no instruction in the evil/silly presence of females. The blogger who made the overall comment disagrees with this as well, but it’s difficult to pick that out without the context.
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He does kind of mock it in a ‘kind’ Christian way “The only difference between us is that this pastor made up a distinction based on physical proximity.”
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Ahhhh… I see. He does get there in a roundabout way. Well, I mock the pastor he was talking about then – and I’ll go make my own sandwich.
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Exactly! Someone does have those completely illogical beliefs. So I’ll make your sandwich for you. 🙂
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I can’t believe, in the year 2013, that people are STILL having this discussion. Unbelieveable!
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Actually, if you look at the Rachel Held Evans blog, you see a more liberal Evangelical American addressing the more conservative evangelicals on such things as Complementarianism- even if a woman is a Black Belt and a man is dyspraxic, he should defend her if they are mugged because that is the Man’s Role, for example. RHE says that is all nuts.
She also quoted Titus 1:12 which is good for biblical literalists: 2 One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’[c] 13 This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith.
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It is crazy though. I was really surprised to find that people hold views like this – I’m following an outspoken-sounding female Christian writer who turns down speaking engagements if she thinks there’s a chance of a man being in the audience. Horrifying! And Titus? Well, there you go, another book of the Bible I’ve never heard of! But I’ll be looking out for those cretans (see where that came from now).
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Violet, if this is being good to Christians and this is a good comment then I really don’t know what bad would look like. It is beyond ridiculous
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Haha! I think I said ‘nicer interpretations’ rather than ‘good’. It’s all relative. The blogger who made this comment obviously works with some very conservative (i.e. nutty) people, and makes the effort to fight for more inclusive interpretations of the infallible word of his benevolent god. The person he was responding to thinks women should NEVER speak in a church if men are present; the pastor he was criticising thinks it’s okay if women teach by video (wtf!); and he thinks it’s his place to ‘allow’ women to speak in his church. My skin crawls but he’s definitely the ‘nicer’ of the bunch. And we have to fight for the survival of the nicer version of Christianity so that the sinister new superbug religion doesn’t take hold!
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Ah I think I missed that part but it is still interesting how Christians do mind gymnastics with the supposed words of their god.
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What beats me is that this person is still willing to even have a conversation with a guy that defends women can teach man “as long as it’s not in person” but not in church.
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No, his conversation is with someone who thinks women should never teach men, under any circumstances. That makes it all nicer, doesn’t it? 🙂
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Go read this!
(Nice pic…I don’t understand the post. It’s weird.)
http://tonguesandwich.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/excuse-me-im-trying-to-get-into-your-pants/#comment-762
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Tongue Sandwich and I clash. I think he’s pompous and intellectually condescending, and he thinks I’m an ignorant waste of his time. I think he’s eyeing me for his first spam bin action. But I’ll go read it anyway and leave another comment for him to shudder at.
How cool is that picture!! No-one else mentioned it. I think it’s magic and weird and everything a bee picture should be. (I won, again!!!)
The post: pastor guy is defending the right of women to speak in churches against another man who thinks they shouldn’t, then he refers in the final paragraph to yet another pastor who thinks it’s okay for women to teach by YouTube. Make sense?
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TS writes very witty and sharp blogs. He also does a bang up job with some archaeological and history posts. Good stuff. Go read his latest one on a dig in London and the Roman finds. Cracking read.
Chill, as the ‘urban youth, say 🙂
The post.
Why should he have to defend anything? Are these people complete morons?
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I agree with what you say about TS but I would add he’s immensely smug with himself for doing so. There’s also a sleazy edge towards women which is off-putting. But then I’m just critical of everyone, I guess. 🙂
The post: Exactly. Yes.
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Interpretation. You let people like this get under your skin, and I don’t pick up any malicious intent.
Now,P&W…a different kettle of fish altogether…
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Okay, I think you’ve just given me license to unleash my keen psychological analysis of the two relationships. TS is clearly an older, educated man who shares your slightly outdated attitude towards women – he impresses you with the books he’s read and his eloquent of turn of phrase. Mature male respect for educated mature male. PW is a young whippersnapper (early/mid 20s I’m sure), highly scientifically and factually intelligent with the classic “I know everything!” attitude that many people have at that age. It grates you to have a younger man showing up your logical and factual errors and you have therefore painted him with ‘malicious’ glaze with your irritated mind’s eye. He is simply exploring his loss of faith and doing so in sharply analytic way with constant reference to facts, and with the unavoidable sense of arrogant ‘right’ that is natural at his age (before the doubt of the 30s comes crashing in). It’s tiring but, with my infallible and uncanny powers of online psychological assessment, I can tell you it’s in no way malicious. You’re easily bruised for a harsh ranter, but don’t let that you colour your attitude towards essentially nice people.
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RFLMAO.
Or….my dear Violet, you might have a limited sense of humour. 🙂
Nothing in blogland is real…and I have found over the years most folk take things, including themselves, far too seriously and are also incredibly gullible during ‘discussions’.
I am generally quite honest about my motivations for blogging, and have explained this on numerous occasions in the past, and this includes my approach to topics of discussion, yet people continually ignore such ‘warnings’ if you like, and head off on their own tangent.
You have been ‘warned’
Le Ark
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There you go again, getting all touchy and resorting to ‘humour’. I’m very aware that things may not be what they seem in Blogland. But then that doesn’t differ much from real life. There’s no point in paranoia-ing over trolls, satirists and identity projects – most people can’t be bothered making that much effort, and, in any case, it’s easier to deal with those that appear be as if they were genuine.
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(I thought Raut was an invention of yours for quite a while, but decided in the end he’s too earnest.)
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You think too much…this is half the problem.
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I thought my head was about to implode until I came to your exchange with Ark. Now that was worth reading. Summed him up to a T. He’s gloriously patriarchal and sexist isn’t he? I’d tell him if he was around and it was relevant.
I must read the sharptongue link.
Isn’t it funny how many men resort to the ‘you have no sense of humour’ ‘you take yourself too seriously’ ….?
When women own most of the world’s real estate and financial resources, have most of the head of state posts, most of the CEO posts, and earn most of the money, I will take great delight in telling men they have no sense of humour at my funny little jokes at their expense. Oh and laugh at their quaint carnivorous eating habits. Trouble is, I will be even older than Ark for that to happen.
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Oh I forgot about Tongue Sandwich. That all ended in tears. I did a post about Israel and he banished us all from his company.
As for Ark, this is the start of our relationship. He’s my best blogging buddy but he’s a sexist shite.
http://attaleuntold.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/objectifying-women-post-for-violetwisp/
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Such a nuisance to not know the history:
While I have been following Clare and Pink for some time, you, Ark, John Z and Victoria are pretty new to me. I pegged Ark for being sexist pretty early on but he does make me laugh. As does John.
If I excluded all sexist bloggers, male and female, I’d have very little to read, although that might be a good thing. Feminism is an interesting one. It’s the one that men will actually argue about! Uh? or maybe not Uh? at all.
I had a comment the other day saying I was the only person someone had fallen out with on blogs (he’s also said my blog is his favourite) and that was a compliment! Either way, we still comment on each others’ so, not a bad thing. More to the point, he has said he’s thought more about my comments on sexist language and now thinks about what words to use. Maybe we should both work on Ark?
I don’t have any BBBs but if I had SoM on my pages my comments would seriously increase 😀
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