The Cold Winds of Patriarchy {book excerpt}

 

****another excerpt from my book project. The deeper I delve into the injustice of inequality of women in the world of church, the deeper I discover it's taproot. No wonder it's so pervasive. 

 

 I’ve heard the word patriarchy thrown around over the years without giving it much thought. I have been too busy raising my children and managing my household to chase after ideological concepts like patriarchy, a word which has had little meaning for me. If you would have asked me, I would have said it had something to do with male-dominated systems like a clan being patriarchal if the decision makers of the clan are always men. To some degree this is an accurate definition. 

In the introduction of his book, The Gender Knot, sociologist Allan Johnson defines patriarchy like this:

A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women. 

Allan also  writes that patriarchy is a “system of inequality organized around gender categories.” This is beginning to sound more familiar, isn’t it? Everyday patriarchy occurs whenever a man’s voice or influence is given preeminence over a woman’s simply because he is a man. When male gender entitles a human being to have power over another human being, that is oppression. Patriarchy is an oppressive system and it is prevalent in the church that is meant to be a society of equals. One of the radical things about Jesus, who is the Founder of Christianity, is that he frequently acted and spoke in an anti-patriarchal way. His conversations with women such as the woman at the well and also the two sisters, Mary and Martha, illustrate how Jesus treated women as humans. He did not perpetuate the patriarchal ideals firmly established in the Roman and Jewish communities he roamed in and around. Jesus was counter cultural and I can only wonder how he would respond were he to come and roam around the halls and corridors of today’s Christendom? 

 Last year I met a woman who has felt the bitter cold of the winds of patriarchy. She grew up in a strict religious home where the roles of men and women were rigid. For her entire growing up she watched as her mother strived to be a good, upright Christian woman who submitted to her husband and pastors. The leadership of their ultraconservative church kept a firm grip on decision making and being the voice for their faith community. Women always occupied subservient roles such as childcare and coffee making. Not because they were better at it, but because they were women. This woman described how she began to realize from an early age that women were not as important as men. “I heard my dad say many times, ‘I have the final say.’ My mom could give him input and her opinion, but in the end, he made the decisions because he was the man.”  It was like that at church, too, she remembers. “Men were in charge,  they were the pastors and elders and deacons and they were the ones who led everything like Bible studies and prayer meetings. Women were always the assistants. I didn’t understand why women didn’t get to lead things, too.”  What she is describing is a typical church scenario and a typical system of patriarchy.  Of course patriarchy runs rampant in many parts of society, but what makes it especially outrageous to me is when it’s not only rampant in the church, but it’s defended as being God’s design. I cannot overstate how much I reject this and I wholeheartedly reject this without any hesitation or reservation. I will not negotiate a diplomatic response to the defense of a patriarchal system that stifles half of humanity in the kingdom that is meant to be the freest, most equality-drenched community of all: The Church.