In which I thank EmilyW for coming to the table and invite you to join us.

Recently one of my wise English professors told me that when my emotions are stirred by something I have read—when I feel delighted, moved, angry, or full of sorrow—I should probably spend some time discovering “why?” because the words that move us are gifts, pathways to a greater understanding of ourselves and of our world. I’m so busy these days writing what I am assigned that the luxury of writing what will nourish my soul hasn’t happened very often, but when I read EmilyW’s post over at deeperstory.com, I had to write. Emily’s short post triggered many emotions and memories for me, some of them from discussions I have had and others from personal experiences. This is my attempt to get a handle on a few of the threads I started pulling at.

What I heard most loudly in Emily’s post was her desire to see her husband and her boys grow-up to be who they were meant to be. Her love for the men in her life and her heart to see them prosper is something that is very honorable. I want this for my little boy! He is a tiny poet (“Mom, can you feel that? That pushing and pulling is the sound of my heart’s tears. It’s crying because I am so happy.” Oh jeepers. Well now my eyes are crying) with a bold spirit. It is my deepest desire to see him grow to be confident, resilient, and compassionate, and to be strong and love God deeply.

I want it for my daughter too.

I believe Emily’s heart is to see her husband, who to her represents any man within the Church, to become the man he was created to be. When we have a discussion about roles, what we’re really talking about is identity. Identity formation is not a foreign concept for our culture. It is a process that begins the moment we’re born (arguably even before that) and doesn’t end until we die (with a few more tumultuous years here and there). Human identity is never formed in isolation, but always in relationship to community, and to the society around us. How others view us shapes how we see ourselves. If I interpret Emily correctly, what she wants is for her husband to be allowed to form his identity without her role—or the roles of women in general—getting in the way, and usurping his place in the world by stepping out of theirs. I want to offer some thoughts I have about Emily’s concern.

Emily isn’t alone in her thoughts; many people within the Church have been speaking-up with the same worry, which is that there is a lack of male leadership in the Church. They view this “deficit” as being directly related to feminism; Christian women are taking on positions of authority and roles which were previously allotted to men because of the cultural shift that has occurred due to the women’s rights movements. People that are concerned about this believe that men have lost an understanding of who they are because women are taking over ground that has been traditionally men’s.  The order of things has shifted, and where people are placed has changed. Man, whose previous identity was formed, in part, to his higher social placement in the order, is no longer above woman, but looking her in the eye on a level field. This shift, in an order that has been so deeply entrenched, has shaken the formation of masculine identity. Many would say that it has robbed masculine identity.

Here is where I am going to get a little academic, but don’t drift off because it isn’t super complicated. That order of things is a form of hierarchy, a system where one person is ranked above another, and because men are at the top of the ladder in the position of power, it is called patriarchy. Patriarchy has restricted and controlled every aspect of women’s existence; clothing, vocation, where and when they could speak (and who would listen), religious practices, what she could see, who she could see, who her body belonged to and nearly every other aspect of her existence. A hierarchy that has the control that patriarchy does is called a dominant hierarchy, or an oppressive hierarchy.

This is the take home point folks; in the same way that women’s actions are restricted and defined by man, and that her identity is formed by who she is in relation to the power man has over her, the reverse is true for men within patriarchy; man’s identity is formed in relationship to his power over woman as well. Man’s identity, within a structure of patriarchy, is built upon his oppression of someone else, of woman. This is problematic.

What a horrible thing to find your identity in. Nobody’s self-worth should ever be based upon the oppression of someone else.

It should be no wonder to us—given the development of feminism and the rise of equality—that man, whose identity has for so long been inseparable from his status above woman, might struggle with how to find his place in this world now that she is no longer subordinate to him.

I want to suggest a few things.

First of all, I love these words, and I love the rebel who spoke them because he spoke them: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the LORD’s favor has come.” (Luke 4:18-19) There are many things that keep us in chains, restrictions that prohibit us from living the full, free lives that we are designed to live. Emily’s hope for her husband is that he will not be restricted so that he can be free to live as Christ designed him to; wanting freedom for another human being, and working towards it is one of the most important and beautiful acts that human beings can take part in. Christ’s work is our work, and he came to set the captives free, so that is our work too.

Here’s the deal though; I don’t think that patriarchy reflects the heart of God. As a framework that reinforces oppression, its basic function is to bind, not set free. With Christ, “there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female” (Gal. 3:28). Jesus is interested in getting rid of the structures of power that work against our ability to love and be loved (Matt. 22:37-39). The movement towards equality has taken a long time—2000ish years from when Jesus proclaimed the prophet Isaiah’s words—but it is a movement towards God.

And not just for women.

If I’m a follower of Jesus and my identity is built upon anything else but Jesus Christ, I have missed the point of Christianity. From a masculine perspective, this makes patriarchy a major barrier to transformation; identities wrapped-up in power over another remove Christ from the center. The cultural shift that has been occurring should not be viewed as a crisis of masculinity. It is an opportunity for spiritual fullness, for both men and women. The struggle is good. It is through the struggle that Christ continues to extend his arms, to set the captives free.

The greatest challenge of the human life is to figure-out how to come together with the people around us and have life together. Rachel HeldEvan’s (RHE) A Year of Biblical Womanhood acknowledges this very thing through the voices of the women that she invites to speak through her book. We are all born as individuals with utterly unique experiences of the world and where we find meaning, and how we find it differs significantly within the context of Christianity, or even within different streams within Christianity.  I think undertaking this endeavor is harder to do with people from the Church, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that Church people believe their opinions and words carry more weight because they also believe their opinion are God’s.

One of the things I like the most about RHE’s book is that she doesn’t just talk about women—Evangelical women, Amish women, women in polygamist marriages, “Quiverfull” women, Jewish women—but she talks with them. They become a part of Rachel’s personal story and because of that they have become a part of her book as well. Sharing the voices of women is an essential part of understanding the lives of women.

This is why I want to affirm Emily for sharing her voice with us and for entering in to the conversation about the roles of women; her voice matters. Her experience and her questions are important. I think that it took a great deal of courage to speak her heart, share her questions, and voice an opinion on behalf a lot of women who feel the same way.  Thank-you for using your voice and taking part in this discussion, Emily. The discussion is important because it’s where we can hear each other’s stories, and when we can hear each other’s stories, we become real to one another. We understand one another. That shared understanding takes us from being strangers to being in relationship.

I would love to hear your stories if you would honor us by sharing them. Let’s have this discussion. Thanks for reading.