Feminism is not compatible with Christianity?

[roamer_1]

Yeah, they're both feminists and needed feminism to get that done regardless of how much they say otherwise.

How do you figure that?

 

[98cwitr]

7 pages and Im still not sure how exactly we are defining "feminism" for this discussion. Help!

 

[ImaginaryDay]

Here is a summary to show why Feminism is incompatible with Bible Christianity:

LIBERAL FEMINISM
Humanistic
Scripture: Divine

Gender prejudice responsible for inequality
Scripture: All human beings are sinners

Legislation can change inequality
Scripture: The New Birth changes people from within

SOCIALIST FEMINISM
Humanistic
Scripture: Divine

Economic dependency responsible for inequality
Scripture: Woman created for man

Mother, home maker, child rearer = ideological myths
Scripture: God-given roles of women are not myths

Reform rather than revolution
Scripture: Spiritual transformation is a necessity

MARXIST FEMINISM
Demonic
Scripture: Divine

Capitalism = exploitation, oppression, discrimination
Scripture: Human sinfulness produces exploitation

Patriarchy is evil
Scripture: Patriarchy is according to Divine order

Family system is evil
Scripture: Families are according to Divine order

Revolution is necessary
Scripture: Spiritual transformation and submission essential

RADICAL FEMINISM
Demonic
Scripture: Divine

Men are enemies of women
Scripture: Men and women are complementary

Patriarchy is evil
Scripture: Patriarchy is according to Divine order

Marriage is exploitation, and sexual relations are politics
Scripture: Marriage was instituted by God

Lesbianism supports equality of women
Scripture: Homosexuality is perversion

Rebellion is necessary
Scripture: Submission is necessary

Where do you get this??? :/

 

[ImaginaryDay]

Yeah and I could just as easily link these websites:

http://www.gotquestions.org/divorce-remarriage.html

Um, you might want to read this one ^^^^^ again if your point is to argue against divorce. They seem to be pretty level headed about things.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women's_rights_(other_than_voting)

History of women's rights world wide

 

[roamer_1]

History of women's rights world wide

So what?

 

[Dan61861]

I'm staying out of this one, cause I love my wife...she told me so.

In Christ
Daniel

 

[mkgal1]

I thought we've made it clear "what type of feminism" we're speaking about (the kind that BlondePudding posted the definition of). The kind where women aren't blamed for their own abuse ("she shouldn't have been there alone at night"..."she should have married a 'more godly man' .....etc)....the variety that allows women's voices to be heard (including from the pulpits).....the kind that does away with stereotypes and biases (and, instead, gets to know people on an individual and intimate level)......the kind of feminism that honors and respects all people and doesn't perceive them with a specific label over their head. That kind. To me.....that all runs nicely in line with the Gospel.

 

[mkgal1]

Probably one of my favorite articles about equality (from Jimmy Carter):

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.


We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-po...for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html#ixzz3zPK1PSxx
Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook

“Yes, of course I consider myself a feminist,” President Carter said. “If a feminist is someone who believes that women should not be persecuted and women should have equal rights, then all men ought to be feminists.”

 

[mkgal1]

And maybe this makes it even more clear what I mean by "feminism":

Feminism is about both women and men. It affirms women’s full humanity, but it is not a putdown of men’s humanity. Rather it is a critique of patriarchy as a system that distorts the humanity of both women and men. Men are distorted by patriarchy both in being socialized into aggression, but also shamed when they seek their other creativities. Feminism critiques both distortions, and liberates men as well as women.~Rosemary Radford Ruether, Ph.D. Professor of Feminist Theology at Claremont Graduate University and Claremont School of Theology

 

[ValleyGal]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women's_rights_(other_than_voting)

History of women's rights world wide

This is a real eye-opener, especially given what was said earlier by mmbattlestar about his idea that women should have either the right to own land OR be married. That idea goes all the way back to 1707! LOL. No, I'm not going back to look for the post, but it is here because I even addressed it when it was made.

Um, you might want to read this one ^^^^^ again if your point is to argue against divorce. They seem to be pretty level headed about things.

Gotquestions looked at the Greek for the term "marital unfaithfulness" but did not look at the Hebrew (and later Greek, when Jesus quoted the passage) for "divorce" in Malachi. The actual word is "shalach" and the translation is to send away without the benefit of the divorce certificate (which allowed the person sent away the right to marry someone else). So the Gotquestions blog is an opinion, not a thorough study of the subject. A more thorough study is at www.divorcehope.com.

 

[mkgal1]

Mother, home maker, child rearer = ideological myths
Scripture: God-given roles of women are not myths

I'm just going to focus on this one for a bit (because that's mainly the issue).

"God-given roles"? Where are you getting that the Bible limits a woman's role to what you listed? There are far more roles for women described even in the Bible---why should they be limited to what you just listed?

I think it all comes down to what Genesis says: that there will be enmity between satan and women. Christ came to set ALL people free from the curse, though.

 

[ValleyGal]

Okay. Here it is. If we should go back to a time when women were not responsible for themselves, but were under their husband's or father's covering, that could be fun! Oh BOY! I could sleep in till noon, bathe all afternoon, not bother with making meals, watch tv all day, bring home as many lost kittens and puppies as I wanted, ignore my husband's needs, hang around with my friends all day and evening, eat him out of house and home, never lift a finger to do anything, pretend to faint if asked to do any work because it would be far too much for my delicate mind to handle so he must purchase a servant girl for that... I could go into temper tantrums for not getting my way and blame it on "the female condition" (hormones), do horrendous things that my husband would have to pay for and take responsibility for simply because I'm HIS toy and HIS full responsibility. So wait, ladies, this could be FUN!!! Just think! We'd never have to work another day in our lives! Oh BOY! I'm game to give it a try.

 

[mkgal1]

Family system is evil
Scripture: Families are according to Divine order

You mean according to your set of beliefs? Because we only have a very short description of our Creation sans sin...and this is what that looked like:

“So God created mankind (humankind) in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:27-28)

So Adam and Eve were co-equals. I see no "order" or hierarchy there.

 

[mkgal1]

There are far more aspects to feminism than just abortion---can we discuss those (and leave abortion out of it)? Or is that really the only valid issue people have *against" feminism?

 

[mkgal1]

A few more thoughts about women being see as more than just a means to an end:

In a recent post, I mentioned I read through a commentary of Genesis by Derek Kidner in the Tyndale OT series. It is copyright from 1967. The point in noting its older date, is that I was surprised (pleasantly) by some egalitarian or progressive thoughts on the opening chapters of Genesis.

In the introduction Kidner states, in regards to the Fall:

“The shattering of the harmony of man and wife, not by any mutual disagreement but by their agreeing together against God, proved at once how dependent it had been on His [God’s] unseen participation. Without Him, love would henceforth be imperfect, and marriage would gravitate towards the sub-personal relationship foreshadowed in the terms ‘desire’ and ‘rule.'”

Kidner goes on to say that the rest of Genesis confirms this tendency. “Polygamy is partly to blame for this, but polygamy is itself the symptom of an unbalanced view of marriage, which regards it as an institution in which the wife’s ultimate raison d’etre is the production of children. Where God had created the woman first and foremost for partnership, society made her in effect a means to an end, even if a noble end, and wrote its view into its marriage contracts.”

In regards to the creation of the woman in Genesis 2:18-25, Kidner further states:

“So the woman is presented wholly as his partner and counterpart; nothing is yet said of her as childbearer. She is valued for herself alone.”

As Christians we should not be basing our marriages on the curse, but seek to emulate relationships that have been redeemed by Christ, reflecting pre-Fall harmony between husband and wife. Of course, we remain sinful people, but why would we seek to model our marriages on men ruling and the subjection of women? Why would we want to do anything to encourage a gravitation towards the sub-personal relationships of desire and rule? Our goal should be marriages of mutuality and partnership~https://lightenough.wordpress.com/2...mments-from-a-1967-commentary-on-genesis-1-3/

 

[mkgal1]

A book on the topic:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Discovering_Biblical_Equality.html?id=VGWKAAAACAAJ

 

[HannahT]

Do you really want a wife who will just always give in to your command at all times?

-Yes.

lololol 98cwitr lololol!

You made my day!

 

[mkgal1]

The argument that women can't serve as pastors is often based on the idea of "biblical family structure". This scholar (IMO) addresses that well:

2) Women can’t be ministers because then they would have headship over men, including their husbands— and this will never do, and is a violation of the household codes in the NT. This argument is often complex and at the heart of it is an essential confusion of what the NT says about order in the physical family and home, and order in the family of faith, wherever it may meet. It is certainly true that texts like Col.3-4and Ephes. 5-6 and other texts in 1 Pet. for example do talk about the structure of the physical family. As I have argued at length, the patriarchal family was the existing reality in the NT world, and what you discover when you compare what is in the NT and what is outside the NT, is that Paul and others are working hard to change the existing structures in a more Christian direction. Paul, for example, has to start with his audience where they are, and then persuade them to change. And you can see this process at work in Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians. For example, though the language of headship and submission is certainly used in these texts the trajectory of the argument is intended to: 1) place more and more strictures on the head of the household to limit his power and the way he relates to his wife, his children and his slaves; 2) make the head of the household aware that women, children and slaves are in fact persons created in God’s image, not chattel or property. This becomes especially clear in Philemon when Paul urges Philemon to manumit Onesimus on the basis of the fact that he is “no longer a slave, but rather a brother in Christ”. Paul is working to place the leaven of the Gospel into pre-existing relationships and change them. Similarly with the roles of husbands and wives, in Ephes. 5.21ff. Paul calls all Christians to mutual submission to each other, one form of which is wives to husbands, and then the exhortation ‘husbands love your wives as Christ did the church, giving himself….’ can be seen for what it is— a form of self-sacrificial submission and service. Submission is no longer gender specific or unilateral as Paul offers third order moral discourse here, working for change (see my commentary on Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon– Eerdmans). Furthermore, we need to keep steadily in mind that what determines or should determine the leadership structures in the church is not gender but rather gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. The family of faith is not identical with the physical family, and gender is no determinant of roles in it. Gender of course does affect some roles in the Christian family, but that is irrelevant when it comes to the discussion of the leadership structure of the church. This is why we should not be surprised to find even in Paul’s letters examples of women teachers, evangelist, prophetesses, deacons, and apostles. Paul is not one who is interested in baptizing the existing fallen patriarchal order and calling it good. One of the tell tale signs of Paul’s views on such matters can be seen in what he says about baptism— it is not a gender specific sign that we have for the new covenant unlike the one for the old covenant, and Paul adds that in Christ there is no ‘male and female’ just as there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free. The implications of this are enormous. The change in the covenant sign signals the change in the nature of the covenant when it comes to men and women.~Ben Witherington

 

[mkgal1]

staff edit.

When we "keep reading" we're reading about the consequences of sin (which was my point). We only have a short time to read about what Creation looked like w/o sin. Everything after that is skewed and distorted by sin (and other ways to perceive God).

I am in the group of others that have a different take on "thy desire" and "rule over thee". The verses (in this version) read like this:

Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you. (Genesis 3:16b, TNIV)

I'm of the belief that's exactly what caused the fall---Adam and Eve were in agreement against God. I believe we have an inherent desire for relationships (with God and others). When there's a conflict (like there was in Genesis 3) it's a struggle for how to remain faithful and connected to both God and others. If we choose to desire others more than God (and their influence--how they feel about us-- means more to us than God's influence)---those people (and it doesn't have to be a spouse) will rule over us (not God).

No where does the Bible describe that it was "Adam's responsibility to let Eve know of the tree of knowledge". She walked with God each day, too. She had to have known about the tree, because in verses 2-3 the text says: "And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ " We don't know from the text where she got her information (God or Adam).....but she had the information correct (she just had the added part about not touching the tree).