and Husband Tyranny
If you have not been following Waneta Dawn's blog, you should. She has just written an excellent statement declaring independence from the tyranny of complementarianism. This is just what women need. Many of us have a trained resistance to declaring ourselves independent of what the church teaches. We think it may end us up in hell, but some of us were living in hell already. It was time to go. It helps to have someone else voice this for us if we have strong imhibitions preventing us from rejecting the damaging traditions that we have inherited.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Many of us have a trained resistance to declaring ourselves independent of what the church teaches. We think it may end us up in hell, but some of us were living in hell already.
Many thanks for this statement! It's the trained resistance, I think, that gives the hellish contemporary teaching its power. And thanks for introducing many of us to Waneta Dawn's blog. Her declaration and post reminds us of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's (et al) Declaration of Sentiments of 1848. It was the beginning of a long effort towards equality in the U.S. for women -- to vote as government of, for, and by the "people" was not a right of women in the USA until 1920.
Men need resistance from complementarianism too. I cannot stand the entire concept.
Thank-you Suzanne for your supportive comments about my post.
J.K. Gayle, I looked up Elizabeth Cady Stanton's declaration, (she also bases hers on the Declaration of Independence) and find her second and last two facts that she puts forth are still pushed by many churches today.
"He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."
Although in the first one, husbands claim to give their wives a voice by "allowing" them to speak their minds, in reality, when the husband already believes he has the final say and can do what he wants and that he knows best, he frequently neither hears her, nor assigns weight to what she says. That is the same as having no voice.
In the next one, their declaration that subjection to the husband is a God-ordered "role," they take from wives the freedom to determine for themselves what God is saying. In other words, they become as God to their wives and collectively to all Christian women.
In the last one, claiming that wives do have equality, but that it looks like subjection, tells her that she cannot trust her own sense that she is being belittled, both by her husband and by the church in general, and thereby destroys her confidence in her own abilities to weigh important matters and to give weight to her own assessment of matters before her and to her God-given intuition.
"Men need resistance from complementarianism too. I cannot stand the entire concept."
Rod, according to Piper and etc, you must be one of those who is very passive on his home turf if you do not take the authority role. The only thing left is passivity and uninvolvement.
I am fairly certain that is not your stance and appreciate your statement. It is refreshing to "meet" a man whose driving goal does not involve taking control of at least one woman in order to serve his own preferences and pleasures.
I don't usually think in terms of a man not wanting to take that authority, and not needing to restrict himself from taking it, so it intrigues me when a man states that he cannot stand the concept.
As I try to get my mind around that, I recall a man who was in the batterers education program that I facilitated, who stated what a relief it was to stop checking up on his wife all the time, to stop regulating her life for her.
As I follow through on that, I see all kinds of freedom to pursue other interests and to be enriched by some degree of involvement in, attention to, and encouragement of his wife's interests, rather than restricting her and as a result restricting himself as well.
Hummm, your statement has started the wheels of my mind turning. Who knows, it may wind up in a fiction character in my next novel. :-)
Post a Comment