Radical equality

It seems to me there are some things Christians need to get seriously angry about. Three new books have focussed my thinking on one of these issues – attitudes to women.

In Equals, Jenny Baker describes the transformational effect of genuine equality between women and men, but highlights the many issues still to be addressed – for example, women on average still earn less than their male counterparts, women are in a minority in leadership positions in business and politics, one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.

Former US President Jimmy Carter’s A call to action: women, religion, violence and power is a devastating chronicle of injustices to women world-wide. Honor killings, genital mutilation, rape, the forced marriage of young girls. Domestic violence – against which there is no legislation in a third of countries.

Trafficking – at least 480,000 girls and women are trafficked annually across international borders and sold into the sex trade. The genocide of girls by abortion, neglect and murder – statistical calculations suggest that 160 million women are ‘missing’ as a result of this breathtaking holocaust.

Both writers are deeply concerned Christians convinced that a key element of our faith is the equality of men and women. I believe we must say ‘Amen!’ to Jimmy Carter’s ‘call to action’, energetically and prayerfully supporting agencies working to ensure men and women are given equal opportunities of fulfilling their God-given potential.

We must speak out in condemnation of the scandalous injustices to women. We must confront attitudes in our own communities and in our own hearts which spring from stereotyped views of the roles of men and women. We must, in love, get seriously angry.

But there’s another problem. The third book I’ve been reading is Women in waiting: prejudice at the heart of the Church by Julia Ogilvy. It’s a series of powerful interviews with marvellous Christian women (largely in the Church of England, although the first woman Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Alison Elliot, is included.) They are women of strong faith, certain of their call to the ministry, bringing a distinctive female perspective to their work.

There have been women deacons in the Church of England since 1986, priests since 1992, but women are still barred from becoming bishops. Many of the interviews mention how difficult the speaker found it to be accepted in ministry as a woman, and the prejudices they encountered.

The Roman Catholic Church has no women priests, although Pope Francis acknowledges ‘It is necessary to widen the space for a more inclusive feminine presence in the Church.’

Despite the fact that there have been women Church of Scotland ministers for over 40 years, there are still many churches of different denominations across Scotland where ministry and leadership is not open to women: women are sometimes seen as simply supporting men, undertaking traditional women’s roles.

So the problem is this: how can Christians speak our convincingly about injustices to women when our own house is not in order, even part of the problem?

There is much to suggest that the church across the centuries has got it horribly wrong, and that male-dominated approaches to building society are a symptom of our human sinfulness, which the liberating power of Jesus Christ conquers, setting men and women free to flourish together as equals.

Jesus’ attitude to women was, for his time, revolutionary. He treated men and women as equals, rejecting all implications of the inferiority of women. ‘There is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,’ wrote St Paul. A third of the names in one of Paul’s list of leading Christians were women.

I respect the views of those, women among them, who argue from other passages of Scripture that, though equal in status, men and women have different, complementary roles. But I believe this view obscures the Bible’s powerful vision of men and women equal in worth, equal in the variety of gifts God has given them, equal in the roles God entrusts to them. It’s tragic if the attitude of some Christians hinders the flourishing of women.

Some look back over 50 years of feminism in society and say ‘we must not let culture shape our thinking.’ But what if a mistaken, generations-old church culture is blinding us to  reality? What if God is speaking to us through our culture, showing us in the convictions of our neighbours what we have been so slow to learn?

I believe we are called to express in our world the revolutionary culture of Jesus, which includes the radical equality of men and women. It is the culture of God’s kingdom, and only when this kingdom is fully come will the equalities which my reading this week has highlighted be gone forever.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 1st May 2014)