Fall/Winter 2005: Belief

Good News for All

Biblical feminist belief and civic participation

By Alena Amato Ruggerio

"It doesn't honor God!" one student bellowed.

"I'm telling you, it's an exercise of the free will God gave you!" another shouted in response.

The argument had grown so heated that the two students were roaring at each other. For them, the decision to cut class and sleep through that morning's chemistry lecture was a theological issue.

This episode was my introduction to a Christian club during my first year of college, and it's a good example of how religion is an essential part of everyday life and how the most mundane details, as well as the most weighty issues, can become a theological issue in evangelical Christianity. Viewing life through such a framework was new to me at the time. I'd grown up in circles where the sacred and the secular were neatly divided, with the former confined primarily to church attendance on one day of the week. Yet, this all-encompassing religious worldview was attractive to me because of its emphasis on God's personal involvement with an individual's life. That such a view could have negative as well as positive consequences was something I would learn later. But for me, the positives continue to outweigh the negatives.

My religious community is the biblical feminist movement, which sprang out of the evangelical tradition. Yet, this movement is different from what most people think of when they hear the word "evangelical," which comes from the Greek euangelion, meaning "good news." Biblical feminists believe the message of Christianity should be one of good news to all people, and thus we hold progressive political positions on issues like women's equality, peace, gay civil rights, and environmental protection. We hold and advance such views because of our Christianity, not in spite of it.

To many people, such a statement might come as a surprise. Perhaps the greatest success of the Christian Right is that when most Americans think of the intersection of evangelical Christianity and politics, they think of the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority. Over the past forty years, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson convinced most of the country that all evangelicals are politically ultraconservative. These religious leaders believe their worldview is the only correct view and attempt to use the legislature, the court system, and even the office of the president to force those who disagree to conform. They have inherited the Puritan legacy of demanding religious freedom without granting it to others.

Unfortunately, they also inherited the Puritan view of conservative gender roles. Organizations like James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood believe that women are subordinate to men, gays and lesbians are marginalized, war is necessary to hasten the second coming of Jesus, and the earth's plants and animals are mere objects to be manipulated by humans.

Christian conservatives arrive at their political positions from plain readings of the Bible, often without regard to cultural and historical context of particular passages. They may use selected scriptures, for example, to place restrictions on gender roles or to argue against gay and lesbian rights. In an earlier period of U.S. history, biblically based arguments were used to condone slavery.

While it is one matter for conservative Christians to interpret and apply certain biblical passages in their own lives, it is quite another to foist those beliefs and behaviors onto others who may disagree. Yet, that is what is happening at the present time. A prime example was the controversy surrounding the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. When President Bush and others emphasized her membership in a conservative evangelical church, they assumed her position on several important political positions. "Evangelical" used this way was a kind of code for the views of the Religious Right on issues such as reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, cloning, global warming, and the Iraq War. It's not surprising that critics are calling for a sharper separation between church and state.

The best way to oppose distasteful speech is not to silence that speech, however, but to counter it with more constructive speech. Biblical feminism represents one such voice that has consistently opposed Christian conservatism's agenda of cultural dominance. Like their conservative evangelical counterparts, biblical feminists acknowledge the authority of the Bible and its importance in everyday life, but they reinterpret those scriptures that have led to silence and oppression. Instead of making a plain reading of the passages, biblical feminists assume that one must examine the original languages, cultural contexts, and the overall message of the Bible to arrive at the meaning of Bible verses. They take the Bible seriously, but that does not necessarily mean taking it literally.

In many ways, reading the Bible is like making a map of a country. One kind of map may be an image of precipitation levels, another of topographical elevations, and yet another of population densities. The country itself remains the same; it is the set of assumptions underlying each map that changes, ultimately resulting in completely different pictures. Similarly, the text of the Bible is the same when read in conservative evangelical churches and in biblical feminist services; what differs is the set of assumptions in interpreting that text, which ultimately leads to different judgments about how Christians should act in society.

Biblical feminists apply a different strategy in interpreting the Bible, which produces different conclusions about the Christian worldview. They reinterpret the Bible as a form of resistance against oppression. Biblical feminists believe that with careful interpretation of the Bible, it is possible to be both Christian and feminist, both evangelical and socially progressive, both religious and politically engaged. "Biblical feminism" is no oxymoron.

The Christian Right has often given the impression that it holds a monopoly on the word "tradition," implying that the intersection of Christian belief and public politics has always been conservative and that today's biblical feminists are reading into the Bible their own modern political agenda. In reality, people have read the Bible for its liberationist content for centuries. The American Christian feminists of today trace their heritage from first wave abolitionists and suffragists of the nineteenth century--including Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Reverend Lucretia Coffin Mott, Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Reverend Anna Howard Shaw--whose civic activism grew directly from their religious convictions. That nineteenth-century tradition of religious feminism continued into the twentieth century with the birth of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (EEWC). As Nancy Hardesty reported in a speech at the 2004 EEWC Conference, a predominantly male group that would later call themselves Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) was organized in Chicago in 1973 to address issues of poverty, injustice, and war from a progressive Christian perspective. Thanks to the few women present, the Chicago Declaration released by the ESA included the statement, "We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship." When ESA met again in 1974, it divided into smaller caucuses to discuss the individual causes described in the Chicago Declaration, and the Evangelical Women's Caucus (EWC) was born. Through these caucuses, founders began a pattern of civic action, passing resolutions that called for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, attention to gender issues and inclusive language in religious education, and an end to sex discrimination in hiring policies in Christian churches and universities.

In 1990, EWC added "ecumenical" to its name to reflect a membership that included women and men from mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations. The EEWC retains in its title both the words "evangelical" and "ecumenical" to emphasize that the two are not antithetical. Today, the EEWC is part of a constellation of biblical feminist resources. Along with its sister organization, Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), EEWC holds international biennial conferences, sponsors regional chapters, publishes periodicals, and maintains an internet presence through e-mail distribution lists, and websites. Although the EEWC and CEB face challenges in increasing their memberships and improving their profiles in public dialogue, biblical feminists continue to cater to the small niche of people who are interested in maintaining complex religious and political identities.

For biblical feminists, religious belief comes first, and political advocacy, on issues such as domestic violence, child abuse, reproduction, contraception, homosexuality, gay marriage, and environmental protection, flows from those alternate interpretations of the Bible. For example, the domestic violence against women and the sexual exploitation of children are sometimes sanctioned in explicit or unspoken form within certain evangelical communities. In the winter 2001 issue of EEWC Update, Anne Eggebroten, an EEWC leader, analyzed the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother convicted of drowning her five children, through a biblical feminist lens:

The tragedy would not have happened without the presence of one more invisible character: a conservative Christian culture that continues to empower controlling and abusive husbands while telling women they belong at home with their children, as many children as God and their own fertility provide.

While certainly not condoning Yates's actions, Eggebroten raised important questions about the role of conservative Christian culture in the tragedy.

Evangelical churches are not universally supportive of women attempting to flee abusive situations. Some conservative pastors and Christian counselors invoke scriptures exhorting wives to be submissive to their husbands and also promote punitive punishment of children. For these women, biblical feminists would provide the scriptures reinterpreted to support their full humanity and need for safety in the eyes of God. Evangelical feminists also support Catholic women's initiatives to ordain women as priests, believing that Catholic policy decisions on birth control, family planning, and child molestation by priests could be strongly influenced by voices of women within the power structure of the church. For biblical feminists, the public issues of domestic violence and abuse are inextricable from the religious issues of the treatment of women and children in the home and church.

That concern for women and children extends to the public dialogue surrounding reproduction, contraception, and abortion. The Christian Right dominates the popular perception that evangelicals are inevitably pro-life, when in fact sincere believers who have carefully considered the Bible disagree on reproductive issues. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, a founder of EEWC, wrote for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice that granting women the agency to make their own reproductive decisions reflects the freedom God gave to Adam and Eve to make their own choices (and to reap the ensuing consequences). And Eggebroten edited the book Abortion: My Choice, God's Grace, an anthology of stories of women who reconciled their Christian faith with their decisions to have abortions. It is an act of biblical feminism just to bring to the public arena those voices in the abortion controversy that would otherwise have been silenced, demonstrating that it is possible to be both Christian and pro-choice, a private decision with significant community implications.

Another issue at the intersection of private faith and public legislation is the push for the full inclusion of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (GLBTI). Among biblical feminists, the question is so controversial that it tore the movement in two. Historian S. Sue Horner writes that at the 1986 EEWC conference, the organization affirmed a resolution "in favor of civil rights protection for homosexual persons." Some members opposed the resolution, claiming that to divide the focus between women's rights and gay rights would dissipate biblical feminist power. Others feared that their jobs in conservative evangelical churches and universities were endangered enough by taking a stand for the equality of women but would be immediately terminated if they took a stand against heterosexism. Still others argued that while they agreed with the reinterpretations of the passages concerning women, the scriptural reinterpretations prohibiting homosexuality were less persuasive. After an anguished split, many of the dissenters eventually formed Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), a biblical feminist organization that to this day focuses solely on the goal of equality for heterosexual women within evangelicalism and in broader society.

Most of those biblical feminists who believed that the Bible provides "good news" for GLBTI people remained within the EEWC. In 1978, Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott penned Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? A Positive Christian Response. In 2005, Scanzoni coauthored with psychologist David Myers another book, What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage, in support of the benefits of legal marriage for couples regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression. The biblical feminists of EEWC are joined by other progressive Christian activists upholding gay rights in the church and society: Evangelicals Concerned, Christian Lesbians Out, and the powerful nonviolent protest organization led by Reverend Mel White, Soulforce. These groups and others like them collectively affirm that for those who are both Christian and gay-welcoming, the welcome does not stop at the church door, but must spill out into legislation and public conduct.

For many feminists, a desire for rights and respectful treatment of human beings extends naturally into a desire for rights and respectful treatment of flora and fauna. At the 2000 EEWC biennial conference, I asked Catholic feminist Sister Joan Chittister what Christians could offer to an ecofeminist effort led primarily by neo-pagans and other non-Christians. Her response was, "Jesus." Jesus, who opposed domination of the "least of these" (Matt. 25:40), who reminded his followers of God's care for the sparrows and the lilies as well as humans (Luke 12:6-7, 27) and who incarnated as a fellow inhabitant of the earth (John 1:14). This perspective on nature differs from the dominant evangelical paradigm, which reads God's command after creation of humankind to "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Gen. 1:28) as a mandate to subordinate the earth to human needs regardless of long-term environmental consequences. Catholic feminist Rosemary Radford Ruether explains in her book Gaia and God that a theology of ecofeminism is particularly important because the destructive relationship between humanity and the earth has been "enshrined" and "sanctified" in Christianity. Typical of Christian feminist hermeneutics, however, Ruether also recovers from the Bible a useable core of scripture to support the healing of the earth. For Ruether, eco-justice is a function of relationships free from domination not only between us and nature, but also between us and our fellow humans.

The college students who were arguing over God's response to cutting class innately understood that the division between belief and public life is a false dichotomy. The intersection of the two is not inherently frightening. What is frightening is when one group attempts to convince others that there is only one way to participate in civic dialogue as a believer. Instead, we can choose to use a different map showing a diverse landscape of people of faith active in the public sphere, including progressive evangelicals working toward inclusion, peace, and justice for all people.

Published in the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2005 Oregon Council for the Humanities