Women, men, and the church

Women in the church and in Christian communities are frequently marginalised and are not given opportunities to fully exercise their God-given gifts. I'd like to excuse this by inferring that things are (almost) as bad in the wider community, but that's a cop-out. The Christian community should be leading society in this regard, not lagging behind.

Jenny Baker writes about this in what I guess we can without controversy refer to as her husband's blog, since it is called jonnybaker blog. I believe Jenny's post is on the mark and whether in the emerging church movement or just part of the wider Christian community we need to accept what she says and consider how to respond in our lives.

One aspect of her post got me thinking further though. She wrote, "Because there has been such an unspoken fear of inappropriate relationships between men and women developing, most opportunities for strong healthy relationships have been squashed as well", and, "Single women are, of course, especially dangerous." A number of comments from other women on Jenny's post indicated they also had the experience of being treated as dangerous goods. [Objectification deliberate, but not endorsed.] The interpretation of the behaviour of men seemed to be that it implied the men thought the women would find them irresistible, that the women might be seeking inappropriate intimacy, that the women might...

Well, there may be an element of this. Among married Christian men however I suspect there is another factor. To be a man is not to be a woman. The fear displayed by many men in forging deep one-to-one relationships with women may be because men too easily confuse philios and eros, friendship and sexuality. I think the “danger” is the fear men have of what they have found inside themselves. Lust.

I am not advocating separation of the sexes in our Christian communities and ministries. Men can learn to forge deep and productive, non-sexual, relationships with women. I work in health, where the vast majority of my colleagues are women. I have been out for drinks with my workmates where it has been 22 women and me. I am comfortable in these situations. There is an inherent risk, however, that we need to be aware of. I would rarely go out for a drink after work with just one female workmate. That's not about them, it's about me. I will happily provide one-to-one clinical supervision for women in my workplace. Approximately half my clients are of course women. However, I would be nervous about being a spiritual mentor for a woman in a Christian context, unless it was in a structured and well-established (essentially professionalised) organisation.

So how can we all move to a place where women display greater leadership in our Christian communities? If the attitudes of men “simply” need to change, that may with effort happen over time. However, the problem may have arisen because men have identified their own weaknesses and have been actively working to manage them. Women may then face a double barrier. No doubt to some extent the latter virtue (be safe) is used to justify the former flaw (negative attitudes to women). After all, speaking personally my motivation is always richly self-serving. We need instead to find ways to enable men to live up to their (and God's) standards, without the “solution” of excluding women. A culture of genuine raw accountability would be a good start. I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to ask the first questions though, let alone to be asked.

In any case, I wonder to what extent our leadership structures themselves have been built in the images of men, and are thus unappealing to many women. Would women today develop a different Christian community, if they were involved as we re-designed from scratch? Oh wait, is that what the emergent church movement is trying to... which brings us to Jenny's post... oh... hmmm...