Freedom, it is what we all dream of attaining and in the West, we have much of it. In Canada we have the freedom to have individual morals and religion. We have the freedom of our own thought belief, and expression without the fear of being punished. We have the freedom to meet as an assembly and we also have the freedom of association. It is amazing that we can think and act out on our opinions with any fear of punishment, like this blog perhaps. We have the freedom to enjoy life, and to pursue what we want when we want it. Yes, we love and value our freedom. In fact we love it so much we take for granted what a privilege it is to be free. The West thinks it has a right to be free and free they are, at least in the realm of politics and individual thought.
There are those however that feel that they have been oppressed by stronger powers that exist. They rightly feel that the minority they associate with has been unfairly persecuted because of who they are as a minority. Those specific people are Latin Americans, Black people, and Women. Each minority has been persecuted and oppressed by another people group and the oppressed have fought to be treated equally.
Along with the quest for equal treatment, there has arose differing theologies to justify the differing causes. They are formally termed, Liberation Theologies and each minority has its own liberation theology. All liberation theologies rightly exist because of a failure of traditional theology to meet the needs of the people. Traditional Western theology does not always meet real life and therefore for these minorities are left questioning if God is real when then see a failure by western theology or at least the people to hold to it fail to intervene. James Cone said that traditional white theology cannot move past intellectualism into real life. Thus these minorities take it upon themselves to create a theology that meets people where their situation meets them. There would be no need for liberation theologies if traditional theology was not so obsessed with rationalism and intellectualism. Real theology is intellectual, but also meets people practically. If it does not, then God is just some abstract idea and never becomes anything more than an academic exercise. The failure over 2000 years of traditional church theology was to translate intellectualism into practicality and because of that oversight liberation theology was born. Latin American, Black, Feminist theologies are different in their own right, but they are all termed liberation theologies because they have one common belief. That belief is that the basic problem in humanity is the need for freedom. Each theology views it self as the weak group being oppressed by a forceful people. People that hold to these views would hold that the Holy Bible always deals with the oppressed. They would point out that Jesus always went to the outcasts of society. They would also look to the exile of Israel as justification of this view. Liberation theologies hold to the view that God is active in our world, that he is involved with those who are suffering. According to them, they do not see God is active in traditional western theology.
The last point of commonality between all liberation theologies is that all four theologies interpret the Bible in light of their experience. Most liberation theologies will see the Bible as a history book and teach that the message that comes from it, is that God lifts humanity up out of the dark pit of slavery. This can be good but it can also be a tiny bit misguided. Instead of reading the Bible and then applying what it has to say to our life circumstances, they are letting their life circumstances determine what the Bible dictates. This can be dangerous for liberation theologies because although the theme of freedom does run throughout the Bible and that does apply to when people oppressed, it doesn't mean that the main oppression comes from that particular group's experience. Main oppression is a result from sin and Christianity is about freedom from sin which results in freedom from other situations like slavery. Feminist theology is, “is the critical, constructive and creative re writing of Christian Theology. It regards women and their bodies, perspectives and experience as relevant to the agenda of Christian theology.” Like all liberation theologies, this one arose because men, even Christian men were treating women poorly. Women wanted to be treated as an equal. Women were thus being oppressed and men were the oppressors. Feminist theology seeks to free women from this oppression by showing the value that God places on women. However, if the focus is on the external issues, the underlying problem will not be dealt with, only the symptom. When the oppressed feel freedom from their various oppressors they will find themselves frustrated because they will deal with similar issues that deter themselves from living life abundantly. The core issue, humanity's natural tendency to live life selfishly in sin, will manifest itself in a different way.
To be fair, every Christian who does not identify himself through a liberation theology needs to take time to seriously evaluate if their own theology is lacking in the areas the discussed theologies represent. Would there be a need for feminist theology if we properly addressed the value of women in the first place?
Feminist Theologies seeks to explore what God is like beyond is “male” characteristics. Feminist theologians seek to prove to women and men that God values women and Christianity isn't a man's religion. People who hold to this view have trouble using strictly male language to describe God. They would argue that using only male terminology excludes women from relating to God. They foresee two main problems that occur when God's maleness is focused on to the extreme. The first extreme teaching is because God is strictly referred to as male it subtly teaches that men are closer to God. The second issue would be that because Jesus was male, men resemble Jesus more because they are physically alike, which in turn gives way to the idea that women cannot be saved the same way women can.
The fact that Jesus was a male raises questions about the extent of atonement, if a male messiah can actually save women. Feminist Theologians struggle what it means for Jesus to be male in light of that fact that this theology interprets the Bible in light of women.
Lessons Learned:
A positive outcome of Christianity from this perspective, is that it shows that God does value women every bit as much as he values men. It points out that we as a Christian culture have not given women the respect that they deserve. The social stigma that we have given to women is that God created them as an after thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. Women were created as the finishing touch on creation. That's not to say that they're above anything else in creation; it just means that when women were created it was the last thing to display the glory of God.
This theology shows us that God created men and women in the image of God. That shows that there is something about women that reflect the glory of God in a way that masculinity is not able to reflect. We have to thank feminist theologians for making us aware of these facts.
Unhealthy Results:
Egalitarianism is not the same as Feminest theology. Egalitarianism is the idea that because men and women are equal there is no difference as far as roles are concerned. However, in practice it shares a similar goal of making women equal to men. This is a good goal!!! However, just like feminist theology (in practice not in doctrine or idea) Egalitarianism is ONLY focused on making women equal. Which is the wrong idea because God’s heart on the issue is men and women would be one AS HE IS ONE. Each member of the Trinity plays different roles and even submit to another member. Although we do have a lot to be thankful for because of Egalitarianism there is a huge danger if men and women use this theology as their core belief. The danger is that if emphasized too much, it will contribute the all ready growing problem of men not going to church. In his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church,, David Murrow states that todays church is driving men away. He states that we have overemphasized the female characteristics of God at the expense of the male characteristics. We have made the church too feminine. This is not the oneness that we see God desires. As a result, unchurched men don't go to church because they feel it's for women or extremely effeminate men. (How do you get an Alpha male jock who has never been to church before to sing love songs to Jesus, another guy ?To the unchurched man singing I could sing of your love forever to Jesus, a man, is - well -weird). The two demographics that are more likely to attend church are women and older adults aging from fifty and up. (Even with male leadership) The demographic that is least likely to attend church are men and young adults ages eighteen to twenty-nine.
Egalitarianism could be harmful because it is contributing to the cause of why there are a lack of males in churches today. It is almost as if they are fighting a battle they've all ready won - a church more feminine. Because the church has emphasized masculinity for so long, feminist theology seeks to make itself known. The church has focused on the feminine so much that we have lost the masculine. If that is true, then we are in danger of losing our men and also a part of God's image that cannot be seen through femininity. A good example of this trend is in the emphasis on women's ministry at church. It's not uncommon to have a fully developed women's ministry, with someone in the church directing the whole sphere of women's ministries. But men's ministry is a breakfast once a month and a church work bee.
Egalitarianism could also be dangerous because of its lack of teaching on the value of masculinity. In an effort to make women feel valued, as they should, we have stopped talking about the value of men and as a result there are men who feel like they don't understand what it means to be a man anymore. Our culture makes fun of men by portraying them as dumb, stupid, and uncommitted. Feminist Theology can be dangerous in this regard because there little to no affirmation of what masculinity is truly about. All that men hear is that men are bad for suppressing women and therefore we need to talk about the value of women. The problem is it happens at the expense of the value of men.
Listen to what Mark Driscols address about this issue:
If this doesn’t sway you because it’s all theory and conjecture, let me make it real for you: The Majority of people that attend make up a church conjection in North America are women. The split is varies between 60/40 with male leadership. That’s traditionally what it looks like. When women are the lead role that ratio changes from something close to almost 85 female. So right away guys don’t go to church even when men lead. It doesn’t seem wise to me from a purely practical point to make the situation worse by making women the primary leaders in church. I can hear you now, “ Dan, that’s a weak argument. It’s not my problem if men are too insecure to come to church because women are the primary leaders. They should get over it.” Fair. I can see that but I want to suggest two things in response to this:
1) Men think that church is too feminine even when men lead. So women leading compounds the fear that women will not be able to relate God to men.
2) If you’re response is to just get over it, I question the true motives of women in ministry. The Gospel never requires people to believe the same things we do before they come to church. If the attitude is to simply get over it, they may never come to church, they may never know Jesus. No you don’t wait for people to get to a certian level - you take them as they are and train them and teach them to the level you want them. You might say, “That's fine they can go to a church were men lead. There are plenty of those” But again, where is your heart at? What's more important to you, fighting for the right, or the gospel? Why would you intentionally turn people away from church who would otherwise go, just because it is your right? I would gladly give up my rights as a youth pastor to a female sponsor who could teach my girls how to be awesome women of God. I could go on, about all the problems that come along with Egalitarianism, like how a growing number of women who don’t want to feel required to lead because if they don’t they are somehow fostering a spirit of suppression by encouraging men to lead. Listen to what Ms. Jensen says in her address to the Australian government ( a woman speaker I might add) on this issue on. Listen to what she says about being too tired….
You see what we’ve done? In an effort to make women equal (which is something to fight for) we devalued men, and well they have given up and fallen silent. Should it happen? No. Did it happen? Yes. Egalitarianism doesn’t have an answer to it because we made the focus women being equal instead being one as God is one. We’ve made men feel devalued in the name of making women strong. We have even seen in the last decades a push to give women equal status. For years prior in our civilization and in many other Western Civilizations, women have been treated at times, as the lesser sex. That has been wrong and needed to change. Men over the years have abused and mistreated women. But now, we are an enlightened civilization; recognizing that it doesn't matter what sexual organs we have; we are equal. We as Christians know our worth is not from what we do, but what God sees in us. However, we think like the world when it comes to this issue of value and women. While it is an advancement in our civilization to give women equal status, there have been unintended consequences in our current society.
We have devalued the role of men. Don't misunderstand, women are equals and needed to be treat as people, not as objects but because we as a culture don't want offend women, the timeless value of a man has been devalued. It is politically correct in our culture to make fun of men, portraying them as stupid, dumb, lazy sexual animals that cannot control their sex drives (Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson). If we protrayed women like that in our commecials, we would get sued. In some ways, in postmodern culture, we are no longer equals, but the lesser human. On Mother's Day in churches, we give our women flowers and tell them how great they are and on Fathers day, we beat up men by telling them they need to do better job. Do you know what the curse of a man is? In Geneisis God tells Adam that from now on weeds will come out of the ground. So in other words Adam still had to do the same job he did before but this time with endless weeds. Could you imagine how that felt? No matter how hard he worked it would never be good enough, there would still be weeds. In the same way in the heart of every man is this fear or thought that no matter how hard we work, no matter hard we try - to be a good father, or husband or worker, even if we try our best to correct the sins of our fathers by making sure our women feel equal, our toils will never be good enough. And we have created a church culture that that presses into this wound.
A church in Vancouver BC, surveyed its men (150) and asked them what they want women to know about men. One man responded by saying, “Men struggle with what it means to be a man in society today.” How did this happen? Over the years we have downplayed the role and value of men in order not to offend women in the feminist movement. If we are taught that women can do everything a man does what is the benefit in being a man? This is why I stated that picking a theology based upon the pain another one has caused is not good. Often what happens is we say I choose Egalitarianism because I was hurt but when it’s pointed out that Egalitarianism has done similar things the only options are to a) ignore the failures of the doctrine b) Place a value on which person’s pain is more important and pick one. This is known as picking the lesser of two evils. But who are we to tell other people that their sin should be tolerated for the greater good? This is why you can’t pick what you believe on this issue based upon what happened, because there are both good and bad experiences and it just becomes a merry-go-round about who has the best war wound. This is also known as the victim mentality. The healthiest way to go about this to to ask what is the character of God like? THEN ask if people have been abused within this camp? THEN determine why? Is it because of the doctrine? Or is it because people are using it an excuse to sin just like the church used the passion story as excuse to be racist against jews? Repent. Then we ask ,"Since we are made in his image, which doctrine best represents this?
By Dan Renton
