Bad Girls, Bad Girls
Rachel Held Evans, in her Sunday Superlatives links, provides a link to a post by Sarah Bubar on The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood blog titled The Bad Girl’s Club.
In this post are featured four women for this “bad girl’s [sic] club”: Julian of Norwich, Ann Hutchinson, Margaret Fell Fox, and Phoebe Palmer.
Now it’s not my plan to explain how these four weren’t bad girls. Rather, I’m interested in just what Sarah Bubar thinks they have in common. Apparently, the real problem is that they all failed to bow to the proper authorities and thus came up with doctrines that are, perhaps, objectionable. I say, “perhaps” because I would have a different opinion on certain of these.
There are two critical things in common between these women, as far as I can see. First, they all saw visions or emphasized spiritual experience. Second, they exercised, or tried to exercise leadership.
I recall once discussing biblical inspiration with another man. At one point I asked how, if one hears a voice, does one know whether it’s from God or not. His response was, “We’re not talking about voices; we’re talking about the Bible.”
Well, I’m afraid that if you want to read the Bible you are going to read things written by and about people who heard voices. In view of this post, I’d add that your going to read things by and about people who saw visions.
And you’re also going to read about women who did all those things. So here’s my list of bad girls.
- How about Miriam, a prophetess? She was leading singing, but there must have been a reason she was called a prophetess. And yes, I know about her later experiences for challenging Moses; but remember she wasn’t the only one who had such problems (Exodus 15:20-21).
- How about Deborah (Judges 4:4), prophetess and judge? You may argue that Miriam was leading women, but Deborah went much further than that. You know, this prophetess thing pretty definitely indicates some kind of spiritual experience.
- How about Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20), giving God’s instructions to the men of the temple in Josiah’s time? Visionary experiences and teaching the men, I’d say.
- Or Anna, a prophetess who affirmed Jesus (Luke 2:36-38). If women can’t speak with authority, why record her words for all Christian generations?
But there’s another side. How many men who do not claim any special spiritual experiences go off track. We’ve had plenty of heresies started by men whose method for finding their own “new truths” was in searching through texts.
The fact is that you can find good an bad examples of people of either gender in any time and place.
And since I note that women in scripture exercised more authority than certain modern Christians believe is legitimate, I think there’s good reason to think that exclusions of women were, in fact, limited in terms of time and place.
Henry
It sounds as if you are making an argument that the passages of Scripture that we are all familiar with that restrict women leading in the church/family or teaching in the church are limited to that time and place based on a few examples, three of which of from the Old Testament. Even the example of Anna is a passing mention. On the other hand the passages that Paul and Peter wrote are pretty unequivocal and appeal to universal themes that go all the way back to Creation and not at all to the culture and time they were written.
Well, I was responding with an argument from four examples from Christian history—ones which I think are not very applicable—with that variety of argument.
Were I to write in a more extended fashion, I would refer to more evidence of the leadership of women in the New Testament and the early Christian church, and also would examine more closely the specific passages which you mention. It would, perhaps, be a good idea for me to do so over time, and invite response.
I will note, however, that in such a discussion I would include the Old Testament examples. In my own understanding of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, I would not see a reason to exclude them. They do show a different time and place, and we see women in leadership there. That is one indication that perhaps certain commands are not so universal as many suppose.
Ha! Now you have me singing the Cops song in my head… (except with the words “Bad Girls” instead of “Bad Boys”).
Great article. I’m glad I stumbled across your blog today.