Thoughts on women...

Lately we've seen the UK public plant themselves at two different ends of the spectrum. Racist and antiracist. It was like a real life theatre piece of good versus evil, and on a day of antiracist protests it seems, 'good' won, with the racists predominantly staying home and the antiracists claiming the streets. It was both heartening (to see such support or our black and brown brothers and sisters) and worrying (because the violently intent racists haven't disappeared, they just stayed home for a day).  However, my thoughts today aren't predominantly about racism. While these events have certainly caused me to keep it in my mind and to check in on my black and brown friends, my thoughts for this blog post have landed on a philosophical topic and I am wondering if seeing such polarisation leads us to believe that there are only ever extremes of views and no room for nuance in the conversation. What I've learnt about racism over the past however many years is tha...

I'm back with more (personal!) thoughts on Elders. This time about 1 Tim 2:13 "For Adam was formed first, then Eve". See my previous post here focusing on 'Pronouns and Traditions'  based on 1 Tim 3:1-12. I think for some who have a complementarian stance, the linguistics of the passage in 1 Tim 3:1-12 are not so relevant an argument, it's more about what they see as the original principles of male headship, ergo male only elders. So if you truly believe that male headship is correct, then of course the linguistics of chapter 3 are irrelevant because you'd only see the explicit language as confirming the male bias. So headship. First up two things, I think it's interesting that male headship is not mentioned until Ephesians 5:23 (when Paul first used the term 'kephale'). I also think it's interesting that Jesus didn't mention headship at all and when he did talk about marriage, he said it in the context of the Eden blueprint of a husban...

Let me first start by saying that the only skin I have in this particular game is that I love to pick away at threads where I feel that patriarchal systems have sought to supress and 'keep women in their place' through an interpretation of the scriptures. I don't personally want to be an elder, nor do I think I necessarily fulfil all the requirements regardless. I do however believe that the church family and wider church is poorer for this prohibition and that is my motivation for this whole blog really.  That off my chest, for this post I wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts on this so far. Also, they are just that, my thoughts so far and for this post I've landed on 'pronouns' and 'tradition'. I've come on a journey from a complementarian stance to a mutualist/egalitarian stance and I hope I am still learning and developing all the time. I've talked to MANY people about this and funnily enough it was a recent discussion about the ...

Exploitation: "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work" The exploitation of women and girls represents the ultimate outcome of multiple layers of inequality. Women and girls are more likely to be in poverty, less likely to have an education, more likely to have suffered abuse at the hands of family members. Girls who have no access to school but need to work end up with no autonomy over workplace so are more vulnerable to being exploited by 'recruiters'. They are therefore disproportionately represented in modern slavery - 99% of victims of sexual exploitation are women and girls. One of the reasons modern slavery continues to proliferate is the gendered power imbalance which is upheld by patriarchal structures globally. Culture, some religious beliefs, laws, societal norms and gender roles all contribute to this power imbalance and this is clearly demonstrated in human trafficking where women are dehumanised to the extent t...

A couple of weeks ago we heard at the Covid Inquiry that a lack of female perspective at the heart of government had a significant and negative impact on policies implemented during that time. Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary pointed to resistance within government to consider the gendered impact of the lockdown, including women and children experiencing domestic violence, childcare, unpaid carer roles and the impact on pregnant women's experience of maternity care. Many of the findings of the inquiry have been difficult to hear but they aren't surprising. When women's voices are not represented or listened to, the result is inequity between the sexes and women usually bearing the brunt of it. It is interesting to discover that globally, when women are in positions of government and influence, outcomes for all are improved, including healthcare, education and policies relating to inequality of all kinds. Governmental decision making is improved when women ar...

When the Barbie movie first came out I'll be the first to admit I was a bit ambivalent. I wasn't a big Barbie fan as a child and I do think that in many ways historically the concept of Barbie has served to perpetuate the idea that women have to meet societal beauty standards. But people started to ask me if I'd seen it (which seemed odd to me) and then I started to see memes on social media about the film and my interest was piqued. It helped that Greta Gerwig is already a legend so when yet another friend asked about it, I decided to go. Armed with a Meercat 2 for 1 Wednesday ticket and a tub of popcorn, we took ourselves off to the cinema. By the time I watched the film that day I had already read a number of articles and opinion pieces about it. Phrases like feminist propaganda, anti-men and super-woke were as prolific as joyful, empowering and enlightening. There seemed to be camps within the camps if you know what I mean. Both conservatives and progressives seemed to ...

1 Timothy 2:11-15 11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. First things first. I'm no theologian but I'm grateful to the many amazing voices and brains who've dedicated time, faith and energy to the Word. Second thing... This passage is HARD so the second thing is actually the most important thing. When reading passages like this, which on the surface really seem to subjugate women, we have to remember the premise which underwrites everything we know. God is good. That's it, full stop, no "God is good... but...", Psalm 107:1 says "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures fore...

I wrote for Woman Alive recently about wedding traditions, including taking the husbands name and wearing a wedding ring. Are they biblical? Do we have a Christian obligation to do so? I consider them here. https://www.womanalive.co.uk/opinion/which-wedding-traditions-are-biblical-should-you-take-your-husbands-name-or-even-wear-a-ring/15955.article

Keen as ever to have a firmer grip on what my beliefs are, it is always worth looping around every now and then and thinking and reconsidering a stance. I do the same in my midwifery role too and challenging deeply held beliefs is an important way of staying fresh and focused. And in the same way that midwifery is a continually emerging field of research, the same is true for this topic area in Christianity. The more we learn and scrutinise our practices and the way we understand the world, the better we are able to be and the better our care towards others. In the immortal words of Maya Angelou, "When you know better, you do better".  As a woman who has been brought up in the complementarian sphere, my journey into the egalitarian camp has been a somewhat tumultuous one. At points it has almost felt too hard to stay in this new 'camp'. Surrounded as I am by good people who hold the complementarian set of beliefs with such conviction, it is impossible not to confronte...

If you'd asked me this many years ago I would have confidently told you that it meant 'saving yourself for marriage'. That's what I was brought up with in my church denomination. Saving sex for marriage was idealised (as it should be) but little to nothing was said about the challenges of achieving that. You could buy commitment rings which you could wear on your wedding ring finger as a sign that you were saving sex for marriage but I wonder how many of those trinkets survived the trip home. Looking back, they could have done this so much better and given us far more clarity. Show me a teenager and I'll show you a master at exposing loopholes in an instruction. My lasting impression is that of adults who were scared to talk about sex, presumably because they thought if they mentioned it, we might want to do it. While youth leaders lacked courage to face the challenge head on, they still wanted to get the message out there. And nowhere have I seen this demonstrated ...

I've always appreciated the fact that Jesus' family tree is a bit suspect and had it's fair share of nuts. I've also been pretty guilty of skipping past verses 1-16 because I'm just not that interested in a boring list of names. Truth bomb. However I set out recently to look at every single interaction Jesus had with women and study them. So I started to read Matthew and so here I am, stuck at the first verse because wow, there He goes again. Including women even before He was born. And not just any women. Specifically those who in the first century church, at the time it would have been written, would have been seen as even more 'less than' than your average first century woman. Two apparent prostitutes, a Moabite widow and 'Uriahs wife' (who?). Tamar - This woman had a tumultuous and tragic life life. Married to a man who was 'wicked in the Lords sight', she was widowed young. She was subsequently handed off to her husbands brother, Onan, ...

Matthew 27 & 28 Mark 15 & 16 Luke 23 & 24 John 19 & 20 The accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection are a powerful read this morning, on Good Friday. Reading them together gives an incredible 360 view of the scene. Reading the Bible through the lens God has given me, I'm usually drawn to the women in the narrative. None of these accounts of Christ's death and resurrection disappoint. The women are there. They follow him to the hill of crucifixion, they stay with him as he dies, care for him and watch over him in death and first witness the empty tomb and his resurrection. Jesus addressed them on numerous occasions, to comfort them, to care for them and finally to send them as the first messengers of the gospel. It is incredible but not surprising to see Jesus in his final hours reaffirming the presence and integrality of women. Throughout his life Jesus never missed an opportunity to include women and to elevate them to the status of human, bucking social n...

John 4:4-42 The Samaritan Woman I was recently introduced to Sheila Gregoire (to her work, not to the woman herself sadly), an amazing writer and women's rights advocate, particularly in the church sphere. She wrote a fascinating piece about Queen Vashti ( read it here ) and it blew my mind. She was hopelessly positioned as the villain of the piece rather than the disrespected sex slave she ultimately was. It got me thinking about other times when women have been misrepresented in bible accounts. Bathsheba is one (she was not on the roof ok!) but the other one I recently discovered was the Samaritan woman at the well. I have to be honest and say this one hit me in the gut because I have believed those misrepresentations of this woman. She has been held up as the woman who had 'many husbands' and was currently living 'in sin' with a man who was not her husband. The implication being that she had left these men one failed marriage after the other. We are taught that s...

I've said before that complementarianism does not exist. For me, complementarianism rests on a spectrum, as most things do. First a definition. Complementarianism is the view that men and women are equal recipients of grace from God and have different roles and responsibilities. Sat on this spectrum you have a vast array of interpretations of this statement and from what I can make out they are largely centred around 'roles and responsibilities' and the value and interpretation assigned to them. It is this problematic inconsistency which makes complementarianism so difficult to pin down or to align with. At one end you have a version which insists on the submission of women in all aspect of life, society and church. Women serve 'at the pleasure of' the men in their lives. Education is seen as unnecessary because their role will be within the home, raising the children and supporting a husband. A man-made 1950's caricature of the well-kept home, wife and kids is ...

When I hear this phrase, my mind goes immediately to the Mel Gibson film 'What Women Want' (because, y'know, films...). For those of you unaware of the premise, Mel Gibson plays a chauvinistic business executive who, after getting electrocuted in the bath, is able to 'hear' what women are thinking. Much hilarity and eventual introspective naval gazing occurs as he navigates the implications of hearing what women really think. His initial reaction is to work out how he can manipulate this ability to his own end, reflective of his original inclination to objectify women. Eventually however, listening to the innermost thoughts of women leads to better relationships with his daughter, colleagues and potential love interests. Of course we would probably do well not to read TOO much into this film. It makes some pretty unhelpful comments about how when a man is so attuned to a woman's thoughts and desires that he must be gay for example. Does it play into and reinforc...

I am going to start this post in the same way as most narrators about the subject of complementarianism. It is worth saying straight away that there is much about this view that I am in agreement with.   I believe, and see that there are differences between the sexes to be treasured.  However  I would say that I am egalitarian in that I believe there to be equal authority between the sexes, both in secular and spiritual life. I see both of these demonstrated in the Bible and don't believe them to be mutually exclusive. I am, as ever very mindful of the fact that I am not a complete work. I like the picture of a piece of sea-glass on a beach - various waves and seasons make their mark.  In the Bible, God establishes things in pairs.  Sun and moon, l ight and dark, e arth and water. These things exist in relationship to one another. It is reasonable to say that each needs the other to fully flourish and be distinguishable in and of itself. He then made man and wom...