What About Women?

Some of you have been wondering where I've been, what I've been up to, why the long silence? Well ... I was getting ready for church yesterday. I did a lot of prep for that talk yesterday. I hardly used any of it. It's alright, I'm going to blog it later!

In the meantime, I owe some of you book titles and books about women in ministry after reading the Grassy Guy's post and comments. Sorry, I should have gone back to that sooner. I feel pretty strongly about women in ministry (obviously). As in ... women should be in ministry doing whatever God calls them to do. God called me to teaching. At our former church I went to the elder in charge of Christian Education and told him I had some ideas for Adult Sunday School classes (in response to his pleas for teachers). He told me that there wasn't any room for a women's only class. I told him I didn't think these classes were necessarily designed for women only. Then it all broke loose. He became really angry with me when I told him he didn't know what it was like at the back of the bus.

Here's the problem, I was arguing with him with one hand tied behind my back. Oh, how I wish I'd read the prophets. Or at least Amos. I wish I'd known then what I know now about God's vision of justice and how our vision of justice is so small and half-hearted. I doubt it would have changed anything, but I would have had all three legs on the stool of my argument. His mind was made up and unchangeable and there was nothing for me to say. But I wouldn't have sounded so petulant and small; my argument would have carried more weight. Not for me, necessarily, but for someone else in the future. Who knows?

That's the Evangelical/Fundamentalist Church for you. Supposedly the Emerging Church is going to make that all better. I have my serious doubts about that. So far the men are all talk and little action on that front. On my good days I believe that it is innocent, that they just don't get it. They don't understand, and can't, what it's going to take to allow women into the circle. Most of them are 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation Christians whos' families openly resisted the feminist conciousness-raising during the 60's and 70's. They come out of the Christian ghetto where it is openly believed that men and women cannot be friends without falling into bed and sin together somewhere along the line. Their circles simply do not include women and never have. Their blogs have a paucity of women. Some have one or two that they have picked to show that, "Look, see. I've got some friends who are women!" Then they've got a long list of men (some of whom they do not even know!) on their blogroll. But they won't put women they don't know on the blogroll. Men make the cut by having good content. Women make the cut if they are known; a far higher and more difficult standard. On my bad days, well, I'm slightly paranoid, so I should probably keep those thoughts inside my head. But to end, here are a couple of good posts on different blogs speaking to this topic. I guess it's appropriate that they came out near the day that we've set aside to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. who started us on our quest for social justice. So go read them, one by the Abbess of Monkfish Abbey and the other by my Quaker Friend.

UPDATE: So, the LightHusband read the above and asked me a couple of pointed questions (darn him) like, what about your AwakeFriend? And, well, that's the problem with early morning writing and age. One gets confused sometimes. In my head I'd lumped together some comments I'd made on the posts I've linked to above and this post. In one of those comments, I mentioned some "notable exceptions." And, of course, our AwakeFriend is a "notable exception." And not just because he's our friend. Or maybe he is our friend (in part) because he's a notable exception. But because he has done a lot of thinking (I think) about this or maybe he's just thought about how he is going to treat people in general and does not treat women any differently. So for that I applaud him. And thank him for the support he so generously bestows on all of us (regardless of gender) in his sphere of influence. There are others out there too who are trying to break down this wall. I wanted to be sure I said that and didn't make it sound all bad!

I think the hardest part to overcome is the segregation between praxis and home life. Men have traditionally segregated their lives into many compartments and the compartments stay separate. Women's lives are much more integrated. You can see see this very clearly in their blogs (for the most part). Many men's blogs are about one topic (for the emerging church the topic is theology or church or something similar) and that's what they write about. If they get an overwhelming urge to write about other things too often, they start another blog. Women's blogs are about everything all mixed in together. Men (generally speaking) find this frustrating. Men will also find that last idea frustrating. Generally. So they don't frequent women's blogs because they can't be sure what they'll find there. For me, my theology IS wrapped up in what I do all day and that might be teaching my children, making a quilt, helping a neighbor, running errands, being nice to a clerk, any number of weird quirky things. There's metaphor there, but you might have to dig for it.

I'm sure I'll come back to this subject again someday. Maybe later on today if LightHusband keeps asking me more hard questions. Why can't he just ask softball questions anyway?

UPDATE 2: Here's a thought that I had while making congo squares to take to my quilt guild meeting: I also want to point out that I'm talking in this post about the Emerging Church/Conversation in general. So, don't any one of you who reads this think that I'm pointing at you saying, "Hey, Mr. Man, you don't take me seriously." Especially if you're one of the men who go to my church ... this is not about you.