Bible reading: Genesis 2:7-9, 15-24.

Message.

Back in the 1950s, the American suburban housewife was said to be the envy of women around the world. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, and concerned only about her husband, her children and her home. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to a man in his world. She was free to choose her clothes, her car, her labour-saving appliances; in short, she had everything that women had ever dreamed of and had little thought for the nasty and unfeminine problems that existed outside their home.

But these outwardly contented women in fact had a problem. As they made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched home furnishings, ate peanut butter sandwiches with their children who they then drove to Cub Scouts and Brownies, and as they lay beside their husbands at night, they sensed a nagging doubt: “Is this all that life has to offer?”

Those words aren’t mine; they come from Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique” which launched what has been called the “second wave” of feminism. In her book Friedan argued that women are as capable as men for any type of work or career path. That seems perfectly normal for us today but it was revolutionary, even frightening, in 1960s America where educators, psychologists and the mass media portrayed men and women as very different in both gender and the roles they played in society. Nevertheless the genie was out of the bottle and change was coming, with legislation on women’s equality going through Congress and, later, our own Westminster Parliament.

Many if not most Christians, at least in America, were alarmed by this development, and I can think of three or four reasons why. The first is that most Christians are innately conservative: they like the security of things staying as they always have been. In other words, they tend to react negatively to change – just think of the rumpus you get in a church if you decide to set out the pews in a different way!

A second possible reason for Christians being alarmed by the rise in feminism was because Betty Friedan and some of her activist friends had a socialist or Marxist outlook, which American Christians looked at with suspicion. The fact that Friedan was single-minded and wouldn’t take criticism didn’t help – an obituary said that she was “famously abrasive” and could be “thin-skinned and imperious, subject to screaming fits of temperament”.

And that leads me to my third reason for Christians rejecting what was being said: I suspect that it made male church leaders felt insecure and threatened by women who would no longer be content with polishing the pews and arranging the flowers!

Having said all that, I suspect that the main reason Christians were worried about the feminist movement is that it seemed to challenge their understanding of the Bible. For didn’t that say that God created people as male and female, two distinct genders; and didn’t it also say that Adam was created first, with Eve then formed from his rib? – a clear indication of their relative status. Moving ahead, weren’t most of the Old Testament leaders men (with Deborah an awkward exception), didn’t the book of Proverbs extol the virtuous wife (while keeping her firmly based in the home), weren’t Jesus’s disciples all male (although we know he had female hangers-on), and didn’t Paul say not only say that women should keep silent in church but also be obedient to their husbands, as rulers of the household? Above all, isn’t God described as “Father” and wasn’t his son on earth, Jesus of Nazareth, a man? The Biblical evidence for the established order seemed to be strong; when added to the tradition of the Church over nearly two millennia, it was overwhelming. For many Christians, this new movement was a secular heresy which had to put down with the utmost vigour.

So, over the next years, there was much debate among Christians about the place of women. I remember being not at all sure whether it was right to appoint the first female deacon in my own church – that would have been in around 1972. The Church of England agonised for years over the ordination of women, with furious lobbying by one side and stubborn resistance from the other; I was at an ecumenical ministers’ meeting on the day when the final decision was taken and I remember both the jubilation of some clergy and the despair of others when the result was announced. Now we have female Archbishops at Canterbury and in Wales, not (sadly) that everyone accepts them.

Back in America there were many meetings by evangelical ministers and theologians, some of them in secret. Finally, in 1988, they went public with a statement about what they called “complementarianism”. This is the belief that, while both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image and equal before him, nevertheless they were distinct in their man- and womanhood. This means that the roles they should play in church and society have been ordained by God as part of the created order – in other words, they aren’t interchangeable. That is a view I reject (I’ll tell you why in a moment) but it’s one which is held by an increasing number of Christians and churches, even here in Cardiff.

You see, there is another way of looking at women in the Bible. The creation story says that God created Eve because he looked in the animal kingdom for a suitable helper for Adam, but couldn’t find one. Now we think of a helper as an assistant – you know, the pretty girl who holds the magician’s cape. It’s clear that she isn’t the boss. But (and I’m no Hebrew scholar) the word used in Genesis (and in only one other place in the Bible) can also be translated as “an equal partner” – in other words, someone who isn’t subordinate to her husband. If that’s a correct translation – and it seems to be – it makes a huge difference to the status of men and women, almost on the first page of our Bibles.

I’ve spoken about Adam and Eve; I’ve also mentioned Deborah, the judge who led Israel at a difficult time. There are of course other notable women in the Old Testament, some of them quite unlikely characters, such as Rahab, Sisera, Ruth and Esther: you can probably think of others. When we come to the New Testament we do indeed find that the twelve apostles (and the seven deacons in the Jerusalem church) were all men – although we also meet women such as Martha, Mary and Mary Magdalene; we also see Jesus making time for women such as the Samaritan he meets at the well. The book of Acts and the letters show us women such as Lydia, Junia, Priscilla and Phoebe in what can only be described as leadership roles. And, of course, there are the two moments bracketing Jesus’s life, where women were at the forefront: Mary being commissioned to give birth to the Saviour, and the women who were the first to meet Jesus on Easter morning. These were definitely not second-class citizens, hiding in the shadows!

Now I know that Paul seems to say contradictory things about women. Was he, as some folk allege, a misogynist? Did his thinking develop and change over the years? Did he write different things to churches in different situations? I don’t know. However we read earlier part of the list of greetings he sent to the Roman church; seven out of the 17 names in it are women’s ones, and he makes very positive comments about some of them. They are clearly not being ignored! But his most significant remark is one he wrote to the rule-loving Galatian church: “It is through faith that all of you are God’s children … So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus”. “No difference”; “all one”. That seems to hit male domination and female deference firmly in the head, once and for all. I hope you agree!

I know I’ve said a lot which has been quite ‘heavy’ but, before I close, I feel I must touch on two points. One is gender, which we usually think of as binary, that is, we are either male or female. That seems to fit in with the Bible’s creation story. However I’m increasingly coming to regard gender as a spectrum or line, with “male” at one end and “female” at the other, and many folk sitting somewhere in-between. That’s not an easy concept to grasp, for obvious reasons, and I may be totally wrong – but not only is it what the NHS is saying but I think it’s possible to read the Bible in a way which allows it.

The other point I want to make concerns language, which has great power and shapes the way we think and act. Some would say that the use of words in Christianity (and other faiths) has had a profound effect on the way women are treated: for if God is exclusively seen as a male “master” or “lord”, does this mean that men call the shots while women are reduced to second-class believers who must meekly do as they’re told? Yes, God is addressed as “he” in the Bible (although some ministers like to think of the Holy Spirit as “she”). Well, we can’t avoid using personal pronouns when we’re talking about living beings. But surely God, as spirit, is neither male nor female – God is simply God.

Manon Ceridwen James is the Dean of Bangor cathedral. A few years ago she did some research into the history and experiences of Welsh Christian women who, she felt, might have been stigmatised by both their gender and language. Although she found a remarkable praise poem written back in the fifteenth century, she felt that a mortal blow had been dealt to Welsh women by the infamous Education Report – or “Blue Books” – of 1847 which portrayed the people of this country almost as savages jabbering away in a strange tongue. In conversations with thirteen modern Welsh women, Manon discovered that many felt they had been discriminated against, especially in the churches, and so lacked self-confidence. However she also discovered the enduring picture of the “strong Welsh woman”, who battles undeterred through hardship. In a lecture I heard Manon give last year, she said that she could see parallels with the experience of some black women.

Why am I telling you this? It’s because of Manon’s conclusion. She believes that, if the churches are to be effective in reaching women for Christ, they need to take a close look at themselves. They must show humility and be willing to change any practices or theologies which, however unintentionally, shame women or treat them as unintelligent children. It strikes me that the word “repentance” might be appropriate here! For although we are – yes! – all uniquely different individuals, men and women, old and young, black or white or brown, we are all equally precious to God. On this special day, let’s be sure to welcome, cherish and respect the women that God has placed among us.