The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is an evangelical Christian organisation established in 1987 "primarily to help the church defend against the accommodation of secular feminism" (see Mission Statement). They remain committed to actively promoting what is described as a "complementarian" view on gender issues, identities, roles and relationships, which they believe to be the Biblically correct one. Key features are the affirmation of male headship and of traditional domestic roles for women.
Once upon a time I would've taken up their message with earnest credence. I too want my life to be shaped by God's truth and not the world's latest ideology, and Grudem and Piper et al. are able to quote chapter and verse with a confidence that a younger me was apt to find compelling. But over the years, as I studied and came to know and love the Bible more and more for myself, I began to seriously question many of the supposedly "obvious" inferences from scripture upon which their theologies of manhood, womanhood, relationship and society are built. A complexity of narratives and ideals began to emerge that eventually led me (initially reluctantly) towards precisely the sort of "biblical feminism" that CBMW exists to protect Christianity from [1]. These days, it is increasingly my heart to help the church defend against the accommodation of secular patriarchy. And organisations like CBMW...well...though I don't doubt the sincerity of their endeavour, they do start to look uncomfortably like manifestations of precisely such an accommodation.
How did we end up with such contrasting – conflicting, even – interpretations of a text...and by parties all claiming to hold that text as authoritative? (Granting, of course, that "authoritative" itself may mean different things to different people). Writer Rachel Held Evans spent a whole year, and wrote a whole book, problematising the inevitably selective and culturally-filtered process by which any supposedly "correct" notion of "Biblical womanhood" is arrived at. Her own conclusion is that "there is no such thing. The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth. [...] I believe that my calling, as a Christian, is the same as that of any other follower of Jesus. My calling is to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself." (Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p294-5).
I am inclined to agree. Or at any rate, if there is such a thing as (coherently codifiable) "Biblical womanhood" I certainly don't want to be the one to try to pin it down. Not least because, the more I actually look at "Biblical women", the less and less inclined they seem to be pinned down...
See Proverbs 31:10-31 as well as (in order of appearance in the above) Judges 4:4-10, Luke 7:36-50/Matthew 26:6-13, Esther 1:10-22, John 4:1-42, Ruth 3, 1 Samuel 25:1-38, Joshua 15:16-19, Judges 9:50-55, Acts 16:11-15, Judges 4:12-22, Luke 8:42-48, Genesis 38, Esther 4-5, Matthew 13:53-55/Luke 1:26-38, Genesis 17-18, Luke 2:36-38, Joshua 2, Luke 10:38-42, Judges 11:29-40, Acts 9:36-42.
[1] If you're interested in my "journey" towards feminism check out some posts that I was writing at the time: Reigning Men, Masters of the Universe, Me and You Versus the Patriarchy, A Feminist By Any Other Word...?
[Thumbnail image "Jael and Sisera" by Jacopo Amigoni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons].
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