Femininity has been so drastically redefined over the past one hundred years. Women have unprecedented opportunity and freedom which has motivated many to stop and consider the questions you have just been contemplating. Choice unveils values and character because in order to say ‘yes’ to something, you must say ‘no’ to an unknown number of other opportunities. It is easy not to think about direction when walking down a one way street but crossroads tend to provoke thought. In this way, women’s liberation has been a great tool to inspire women towards contemplating what their expression of womanhood could be.
Heresy, for example, provides a beautiful opportunity to discover afresh truths that are worth debating. Many of the Church's greatest and most beautiful creeds initiate from strife and division in the Church. It seems that through every age, the church has had its unique battles as culture adopts different worldviews. Often virtues rise in importance in order to combat the current of the culture; the most superficial readings of other era’s writing confirm this. C. S. Lewis writes of this: “Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes... The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds... not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.”
My experience with the church’s teaching on the subject of womanhood has always been narrowly focused on two or three good points. These, unfortunately, were over-taught to the exclusion of most everything else. I hope this has not been your experience. But because this was mine, I found myself on a very passionate pursuit to try and understand why I was experiencing frustration at what was being taught about ‘biblical femininity’ within women’s circles. This search led me to the feminist movement.
Every book on the shelves of the Christian woman’s isle has its section on the feminist movement, and how it has poisoned the modern Christian woman. Because of this, I am inclined to apologize before I begin mine. If it helps, my thesis is the opposite of what is normally stated which is why I broke my initial vow not to write on the issue. It is true, the feminist movement has shaped the way most 21st century Americans view the role and nature of femininity. The reason that I am addressing this issue is not to re-state this point, but to suggest that perhaps the American Christian’s view is more sharply influenced by the church’s counter attack of the movement’s assertions. For this reason, I feel it would be beneficial to revisit the recent history of the feminist movement in order to analyze how the church has responded to it. Though I did not witness the events—being only twenty years old—as much as I have been able to gather, this is a summery to my understanding, of what occurred:
Continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment