Inequality and Violence

Rachel Held Evans is hosting a Week of Mutuality on her blog this week. In her first post outlining this series she says,

The purpose of this week’s series is to make a case for egalitarianism, (though it should be assumed that people of goodwill and sincere faith can disagree on these issues).  I'm not aiming to spend much time arguing against complementarianism, but rather showing that egalitarianism is a tenable position for Christians, based on scripture, reason, tradition, etc. 

I felt compelled to offer my support for Rachel's Week of Mutuality, and to also make my case for egalitarianism as one committed to Christian pacifism. First, to make sure we are on the same page, I would also like to include Rachel's definition of egalitarianism:

Egalitarianism (also known as “mutuality”): Christians who identify as egalitarian usually believe that Christian women enjoy equal status and responsibility with men in the home, church, and society, and that teaching and leading God’s people should be based on giftedness rather than gender.   

As an egalitarian I completely agree with Rachel and I believe that women must be allowed to enjoy equal status and responsibility with men. As a pacifist, I am further concerned about the possibility that beliefs contesting egalitarianism might readily open up Christians to the possibility of supporting or engaging in violence. Violence is the "easiest" option for conflict resolution when one person or group believes it is superior because they have the upper hand in the inequality of strength or authority. But if the Church as whole came to accept the validity of egalitarianism, I am convinced that the body of Christ's acceptance and/or use of violence would be severely limited or even, hopefully, eliminated. Nonviolent conflict resolution becomes more reasonable when both parties recognize their equality to each other.

Furthermore, the inability of the Church to come to agreement on this issues exposes its inability of tell the biblical story in its wholeness.The relationship dynamic that proclaims men to be superior to women is often accompanied by assigning damaging gender roles to men regardless of the fact that Gospels portray Jesus as eschewing violence and even condemning his own disciple who used violence to defend Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:50-54; Luke 22:49-53). What it means to be a "man" is associated with violent behaviors, while what it means to be a "woman" is associated with nurturing behaviors. In an article from Christianity Today from April 2008 titled "A Jesus for Real Men," Brandon O'Brien observes the overwhelming portrayal of Christian masculinity that fuels the fire that assumes that God designed behavioral and temperamental differences between genders. For example:

David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church (Thomas Nelson, 2004), founded the group Church for Men because, while the local congregation is "perfectly designed to reach women and older folks"—with its emphasis on comfort, nurture, and relationships—it "offers little to stir the masculine heart, so men find it dull and irrelevant."

O'Brien continues with more examples from pastors like Mark Driscoll who says the Church has faulted for producing "a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks," [Driscoll] explains, "and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks." Even more tragic is the picture of Jesus that Driscoll believes in:

The aspect of church that men find least appealing is its conception of Jesus. Driscoll put this bluntly in his sermon "Death by Love" at the 2006 Resurgence theology conference (available at TheResurgence.com). According to Driscoll, "real men" avoid the church because it projects a "Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ" that "is no one to live for [and] is no one to die for." Driscoll explains, "Jesus was not a long-haired … effeminate-looking dude"; rather, he had "callused hands and big biceps." This is the sort of Christ men are drawn to—what Driscoll calls "Ultimate Fighting Jesus."

It is saddening to read these inflammatory and derogatory words from men pastoring a large group of Christians. Language that not only belittles the nurturing image of God present throughout the Bible (Rachel linked to this blog post with a list of these nurturing images of God), but those who embody that image (women, caring and nurturing men, LGBT). The assumed superiority of men to women is clearly laid out in the above definition of Jesus who is, for people like Murrow and Driscoll, the perfect model of a "real" man. I certainly agree that Jesus is the perfect model for how we shape our lives, but I disagree with their picture of a strong, fighting Jesus nor the belief that women cannot model their lives after Jesus. Clearly, these men fail to see the biblical understanding of God in its wholeness, especially when God was most clearly revealed in the loving, nurturing ministry of Jesus.

I personally encountered the definition of the male identity as "strong" a few summers ago. I make my living driving buses, and I was asked to help drive for a men's retreat hosted by a church that I have never attended (and still have not and will not ever). A member of their church was scheduled to help drive the bus, but he had a last minute emergency and I was asked through a third party to take his spot. Get paid to go camping, white water rafting, etc.? Absolutely!

Among the list of activities offered during that week was to go shooting in an open field near the property on which we were camping. And being adventurous and having never fired a gun before, I took a few shots (this being before my so-called "conversion" into a pacifist).When I look back on that event I see the tragedy that a church event sought to strengthen the men's "godliness" and the relationships between the men of that church through the use of weaponry. Luckily, the targets were inanimate objects and not living creatures, but the outcome of using a weapon in practice or for recreation is always destruction. I do not want to imply that I believe owning or firing a gun automatically makes a person "un-Christian," but the event is noteworthy because weapons are clearly symbols of strength and destruction - two descriptors that I find damaging to the loving image of God revealed in Christ.

Along with some of the activities that reinforced a strong, violent image of God to which men were called to embody was biblical exhortation of this image. As we were all gathered one evening, the pastor in charge of this retreat took the opportunity to give some substance to the time and the activities spent together through a short devotional. Of course, if you want to understand what it means to be a strong man of God we just need to look at the story of David. In this devotional, David was lifted up as a model of strength and leadership that God afforded to this man, and by association all men. But sadly, no mention of God's condemnation in 1 Chronicles of David's exorbitant bloodshed was made.

[David] called for his son Solomon and charged him to build a house for the LORD, the God of Israel. David said to Solomon, “My son, I had planned to build a house to the name of the LORD my God. But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood in my sight on the earth. See, a son shall be born to you; he shall be a man of peace…. He shall build a house for my name’” (1 Chron 22:6-10, NRSV).

David is a popular model of biblical manliness, but this model never takes this 1 Chronicles passage into consideration. Again, this model of biblical male identity neglects to take the wholeness of scripture into account.  In contrast to David, Jesus offered a different portrayal of what it means to be godly. Jesus did not raise up a nation nor a military, but gathered together a heterogeneous group of followers committed to serving others. Returning to the feminine imagery of God in the Bible, it is clear that a complete understanding of what it means to be godly does not differentiate between male and female. Godliness is for all of God's children and scripture contains numerous descriptions that many may categorizes as "feminine" or "masculine," but more importantly these descriptions are not gender specific. If humans are truly made in the image of God, then men must also be shaped by the loving, nurturing images of God.

Egalitarianism recognizes the universality of the images of God, and the reflection of those images commands Christians to resist the sinful temptations of violence. The egalitarian, feminine, and masculine images of God shape Christians in light of God's portrayal in scripture as a source of healing and redemption, not retaliation. Men must be affirmed that it is okay, and even desirable to reflect the nurturing, "feminine" images of God. The lack of connection between the feminine imagery of God and what it means to be godly (regardless of gender) contributes to the overwhelming amount of bloodstains on the hands of the Church body. In an article in the December 3, 1999 edition of the National Catholic Reporter titled "An Image of God Beyond Violence," Catholic theologian Kathleen Fischer says, "Human relating that is going to mirror the divine life has to be equal and mutual. Relationships must reflect the Christian ideal expressed in an early baptismal fragment from one of Paul's letters: 'There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus' (Gal 3:28)" (p. 38). Otherwise, a male dominated hierarchy is going to encourage violence. Fischer continues,

As we have seen, domestic violence has its remote but vital root in the exclusively male imaging of God. If God is male, then male control in the world is legitimated at the highest level. From this notion flows the patriarchal family, in which wives and daughters are owned and exploited as the property of men. Relationships of dominance and submission become perfectly legitimate. Far different is a culture in which the divine is imaged in both male and female ways, supporting a relationship of equality and mutuality. (p. 39)

If egalitarianism recognizes that women share equal status with men in the home, the church, and in society, then it is also important for its recognition that men share equal status and responsibility with women to share in the nurturing, caring, and loving images of God that many pastors like Mark Driscoll are too afraid to acknowledge. By removing a male dominated hierarchy that is associated with strength, might, and violence the Church body might be able to move forward as a reflection of the peaceful, loving image of God.