Making of Biblical Womanhood

A few weeks ago, I read the book called The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr. This is a very important book that Christians everywhere need to absorb.

Beth is a professor of mediaeval history. She looks at how the church’s attitude to the role of woman has changed through history. Her main point is that woman have always been subordinated to men, but the church’s theological rationalisation of this has changed significantly throughout its history.

The teaching that men should lead and women should submit as articulated by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is a very recent development, and it is shaped more by cultural and economic changes than by the unchanging truths of scriptures. Throughout the medieval period, and as recently as the 1960s, women preaching was accepted and supported by conservative churches.

Here are a few quotes from the book to whet your appetite.

Patriarchy looks right because it the historical practice of the world (p.24).

Patriarchy wasn’t what God wanted; patriarchy was a result of human sin. Patriarchy is created by people, not ordained by God. (p.29). Above all else, we must search the attitudes of Christ Jesus himself toward women (p.36).

Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support patriarchy (p.36).

Christian household codes address all the people in the house church—men, women, children, and slaves. Everyone is included in the conversation… This is the key to the Christian subversion of Roman patriarchy. Because the Christian household codes are directed to all members of the Roman household, instead of presuming the guardianship of the male head, they contain within them the overturning of accepted positions accorded to men, women, slaves, and children, and the expectations placed upon them. Instead of endowing authority to a man who speaks and acts for those within his households, the Christian household codes offer each member of the shared community—knit together by their faith in Christ—the right to hear and act for themselves. This is radically different from the Roman patriarchal structure. The Christian structure of the house church resists the patriarchal world of the Roman Empire (p,49).

In Colossians 3, Paul opens his discussion of the household with a call to wives first—not to the man presumably in charge. Instead of grounding the instruction to the wife in her husband’s authority, power, leadership or status in a hierarchy, the ground is radically otherwise: it is grounded in the Lord’s way of life (p.49).

Likewise, Ephesians 5 can be read as a resistance narrative to Roman patriarchy… Ephesians 5 underscores the equality of women—they are called to submit in verse 22, just like their husbands are called to submit in verse 21 (p50).

Gender hierarchy had more to do with politics and economics than with divine order (p105).

Why didn’t Protestant sanction women to teach and preach, even though it had declared the priesthood of all believers... Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband (p.116).

Historically, women have flourished as leaders, teacher and preachers—even in the evangelical world (p.178).

When the China Inland Mission called for two hundred volunteers in 1929, 70 percent of those who left the following year were women, and all but four were single. But the home offices that sent them were run predominantly by met, and when the woken came home, they were reminded quickly of their place—beneath male authority (p.114).

Evidence shows me how Christian patriarchy was built, stone by stone, throughout centuries. Evidence shows me how, century after century, arguments for women’s subordination reflect historical circumstance more than the face of God (p.205).

We can no longer deny a link between complementarianism and abuse (p.206).

Hierarchy gives birth to patriarchy, and patriarchy gives birth to the abuse of both sex and power... The historical reality is that social systems that invest some people with power over the lives of other people result in the destruction of people (p.207).