In this next post in my book analysis series of Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I’m going to take a look at chapters 4-6. Hold on tight, we’re going to go fast.
Chapter 4: The Cost of the Reformation for Evangelical Women
In chapter 4, Barr argues that, although she is a Protestant and upholds the values of the Reformation, nevertheless, the downside to the Reformation is that women paid a price regarding their options and opportunities. Contrary to what we looked at in my previous post, where Barr discusses how medieval woman were afforded much more freedom and opportunities outside the realm of the home, one of the results of the Reformation was that there was more and more preaching about how the woman’s place was in the home, and that to be truly holy, women should focus on being good wives and mothers.
After briefly mentioning the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, led by Paige Patterson (along with his wife Dorthy’s dissertation that argued “biblical womanhood” [i.e. submissive wives and mothers] was ordained by God and articulated by Paul), Barr argues that that view arose in the aftermath of the Reformation. She writes, “Women have always been wives and mothers, but it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that being a wife and a mother became the ‘ideological touchstone of holiness’ for women.’ Before the Reformation, women could gain spiritual authority by rejecting their sexuality. Virginity empowered them” (103).
Barr goes on to point out that after Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church, he traded in his monk habit, got married, and encouraged other former Catholic priests-turned Protestants to do the same. He taught that marriage was God’s best for both men and women. It was his writings, Barr argues, that “helped popularize the godly role of wife and mother” (108). This “elevation” of the role of wife and mother, Barr argues, led to the idea that a woman’s place belongs in the home. Before the Reformation, in medieval Europe, women worked and were known for both their work and marital status. But after the Reformation, and leading into Evangelicalism, “wife” and “mother” became the pinnacle for woman’s holiness.
This elevation of the married wife and mother, Barr argues ends up hurting single, career women, causing them to feel inferior to married women. Barr also points out that in medieval church services, men and women were separated according to their sex: “Grouping women and men by their sex instead of by their families encouraged the single-sex parish communities that flourished in late medieval England” (125). By contrast, ever since the Reformation, families sit together, and single women often feel left out and inferior in the church.
On top of that, Barr shows that in medieval Europe, Paul’s writings were never used to try to keep women out of leadership roles or to tell them that their God-ordained roles had to be wives and mothers. The theological emphasis was on “redemption and penitence rooted in the sacramental community,” and applied equally to both men and women. In fact, since most men would never be priests, they were seen as being on the same spiritual footing as women. It wasn’t until the Reformation that Paul’s writings were used to argue a woman’s place was in solely the home.
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In general, I think Barr is correct, but I do question a bit regarding the way she frames the issue. We have to remember that in the early Church, especially from about the fourth century onward, many in the Church were influenced by Stoic thought, which taught that the body and its passions were base and that people should strive to renounce their base passions and be “purely spiritual” in the sense of a disembodied oneness with nature. This mindset went against one of the main convictions of the Christian Gospel, namely that the material world was good and that Christ had come to redeem our entire persons—both body and soul.
In any case, after the fourth century, it was often taught that to be truly holy was to be a virgin. If you were a man or woman who got married, well okay, but we all know it was because you couldn’t control your sexual urges! This negative view of sex obviously was a factor in the Catholic Church when it came to priests being celibate. As we saw in the previous post, there were other factors too, but the mentality that virginity = holiness was certainly there.
Given all that, when Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church, he got married and started to preach and reassure married people that marriage was a good thing; having children and raising them was just as holy and godly as a being a celibate monk or nun. Yes, he was “elevating” the roles of wives and mothers—and that wasn’t a bad thing. We should be clear, that notion that being a virgin made you more holy is wrong. One’s holiness is not a matter of whether one is a virgin or whether one is married. In short, Luther was affirming marriage and motherhood as good, God-honoring things.
Now yes, over time (and especially in modern Evangelicalism) people (being the over-reactionary and stupid people we often are) take things too far, to where now many in Evangelicalism are telling women that being a wife and mother is how women are truly holy, and if you’re not a wife and mother, you’re somehow less than holy. We shouldn’t substitute one over-reaction (virgins are more holy than married people) with another over-reaction (wives and mothers are more holy than single women…and men!). We should take our cue from the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 7 [honest question: why doesn’t Barr mention this passage?]: basically, “If you’re single, great! If you’re married, great! You’re not sinning (but married life is hard!).”
The way I see it, Evangelical churches shouldn’t tell women that they were meant to be homemakers, because that’s what God wants—submissive female followers of men. The Bible doesn’t say that, and as Barr shows (from her medieval examples) a good part of Church history didn’t teach that either. Still, it would be equally wrong to automatically equate being a stay-at-home wife and mother as being “less than” or being oppressed by men. I know far too many women who want that and who thing that is the most important thing in their lives that gives them fulfillment. If that’s your calling and your desire, go for it—that’s good and godly. If your calling is to be a career woman, or to stay at home with the kids until they hit school age and then go back in the workforce, go for it—that’s good and godly too. I’m pretty sure Paul would agree with that.
Chapter 5: Writing Women Out of the English Bible
In chapter 5, Barr focuses on the “gender-inclusive language” debate that began in the nineties. For background, in the mid-90s, the NIV came out with a revised TNIV that included a certain amount of “gender-inclusive” language (like when Paul would say, “Dear brothers…” it was changed to “Dear brothers and sisters…” because he was obviously addressing churches that included both men and women and was addressing both men and women). Complementarians like Wayne Grudem and John Piper didn’t like it, and that was the impetus for the publication of the ESV.
I’m not going to say much on this chapter because, quite frankly, the issue bores me. Common sense should prevail…but often doesn’t. There are certain instances (like the one I mentioned above) that shouldn’t upset anyone. There are other instances (like the NRSV translating “Son of Man” as “O Mortal”) that are utterly cringeworthy—it’s a TITLE that has important interpretive weight in places like Daniel, Ezekiel, and the New Testament.
Besides, no translation is perfect (aside from mine!). I personally love the way the NRSV reads, but I cringe at that “O Mortal” translational choice. I also think the ESV reads well too. I think the NIV is pretty lame, but hey, when it comes down to it, 98% of all these translations still are pretty similar.
I do have to quibble with Barr’s handling of I Timothy 3:1-13, though. It’s the passage in which Paul articulates the requirements to be an overseer or deacon. She writes, “We assume [it] is referencing men in leadership roles (overseer/bishop and deacon). But is this because of how our English Bibles translate the text?” (147) She goes on to claim that none of the male pronouns in our English Bibles are in the Greek text. Therefore, she concludes, the problem with female leadership isn’t found in the text; it’s found in the male biases of the translators.
I’m sorry, but that is highly misleading. Yes, it is true that the English male pronouns (he, his) are not found in the Greek text. But the fact is that all the adjectives and nouns describing what an overseer or deacon should be are masculine. Also, the fact that Paul says an overseer or deacon should be “the husband of one wife” (or if you want a wooden Greek version, “man of one woman”) is pretty much a dead give away—Paul is talking about men. That is what the text is saying. It’s not some male translator’s bias. That being said, this doesn’t bar women from certain positions in the Church. As Paul himself mentions in Romans 16:1, Phoebe was a deaconess. My point here is simple: you can make a clear and convincing argument regarding women’s roles in ministry and the Church without this questionable take on I Timothy 3:1-13.
Chapter 6: Sanctifying Subordination
In chapter 6, Barr gives us another history lesson to show where this idea that “the Bible tells us God ordained women to be submissive housewives” comes from. She (as in the previous chapter) again notes that in the medieval world women “found holiness” through virginity, whereas with the Reformation, they were told they were to “find holiness” through marriage and motherhood. Like I said before, that teaching was applied to men as well: virginity = holiness, married people can’t keep it in their pants!
And so, even though Barr is correct when she says medieval women were considered “closest to equality with men when they were furthest from the marriage state” (153), I don’t think that was necessarily a good thing. Although it is good for everyone to maintain control of their sexual passions, the idea that being a virgin made you more holy is wrong. Similarly, even though Barr is correct when she says after the Reformation, “…the spiritual economy flipped, so wives received the highest honors, followed by widows. This time, virgins—now demeaned as spinsters instead of celebrated as saints—brought up the rear” (153), I don’t think that was a good thing either. Yes, it is good to tell wives and mothers that being wives and mothers is holy and good; but not at the expense of telling single women that there must be something wrong with them.
Linked to this is the notion of “sexual purity”—not the traditional Christian teaching that sex should be for marriage, but rather the hyper-fanatical Evangelical obsession with “sexual purity” that seemed to really blow up in the 90s. You know, the thing that books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye championed. I was fortunate that that kind of extreme stuff wasn’t part of my teenage years. Figuring out sexual issues and coming to terms with and learning to control your own sexual urges is hard enough!
And I sympathize with women and girls who are constantly told by “men in the church” to “cover up” because they might cause a boy to lust. Well, news flash, teenage boys’ propensity to lust is as common as breathing. It’s going to happen! Sure, women, and men for that matter, should want to present themselves in a way that is not purposefully provocative or sexual, but every honest person will agree that girls are too often made to feel ashamed of something they shouldn’t be ashamed of.
For example, I remember at one Christian school I used to teach at, there was this one girl who, there’s no other way to say it, was just drop dead gorgeous. She would make a burlap sack look good. She was always being sent to the office (mostly by women teachers!) because they thought she was dressing too provocatively, when in reality her actual clothing wasn’t much different than the other girls. I can only imagine how that sort of things can affect young women.
In any case, Barr ends the chapter by defining four parts to what she calls the Evangelical “cult of domesticity”:
- Women are naturally more religious than men and more attuned to spiritual matters (piety)
- Women are not naturally sexual creatures (purity)
- Women are not designed to lead (submission)
- Women are not designed to work outside the home (domesticity)
There’s no other way to say it—any church that pushes that view of women is probably not a good church to be going to. Again, though, that is not to say that women who want to be homemakers and who want to stay at home are doing anything wrong. But let’s all agree: (1) women are not naturally more pious than men; (2) women are just as much sexual creatures as men; (3) God did not “design women” to submit to men; and (4) nowhere in the Bible does it say God designed women to be housewives—for that matter, as Barr clearly shows, that wasn’t the view or teaching throughout most of Church history.
Barr ends her chapter by saying, “What evangelicals have failed to realize…is that the ‘traditional concept of femininity’ that we believe to be from the Bible is nothing more than ‘a nineteenth century construct’” (171). Well, that’s not incorrect! We are all products of our own culture—and that is very much a part of the late-modern culture in which we’ve grown up and hasn’t always been the case throughout Church history.
