Does submission lead to sanctification?

The discussion on gender continues. On this post Dave comments,

Kristen and Tim,

To take the slavery example Kristen gives.

Even if you have a wonderful owner isn't slavery still abuse? At the end of the day you are not free, you are not equal. In other words you cannot treat a slave so well that it is not abuse to be a slave.

So as far as I can see it would be true to say "Slavery is abuse. Period".

Should patriarchy really be different? Yes, there seem to be many patriarchal marriages where people are happy but isn't the system of patriarchy itself abuse as slavery is?

For some might the lack of awareness that they are not equal and not free be a sign of abuse?

I don't want to make the jump that all patriarchal marriages are abusive in terms of physical abuse. But equally I do want to say

a) physical, spiritual, emotional abuse is more common in patriarchal marriages.

b)if you are not free to be equal then isn't that a form of abuse? ("image of God abuse"?)

A female commenter on this post admits that submission is difficult, but offers the following justification,

As a woman and wife I often find this command of submission difficult but I believe that God’s word is inerrant, His ways are best, and that obedience to the biblical design of complimentarianism leads to great blessing and sanctification. We have only to look at the culture around us to see that egalitarianism and complemegalitarianism are flawed and ineffective.

My response is that all cultures throughout history have been flawed and ineffective. Women are better off today than ever before. Just because we are not aware of the many women in the 19th century, and throughout history, who remained single all their life, who became prostitutes, who lived in debtors prison, who were raped by husbands and strangers - just because our great novels do not often celebrate their lives - does not mean that they did not exist.

Egalitarianism offers women the chance to earn a living, save for old age, support their children and basically contribute to the well-being of their family when difficult circumstances arise.

If submission brings sanctification and blessing just because it is difficult, I think one could arrange to get cancer or some other suffering of that sort. I do not see the need for the soul-suffering that a life of inequality has to offer. Why would men want to enforce this on their wives anyway? It seems a perverse arrangment to demand of a wife something one knows is difficult and what one has no intention of living with oneself. Women already have to bear children. Isn't that enough?

Storied Theology on women

Daniel continues to write about the role of women - as equals in Plotting Women into the Gospel Story.

Gender Wars

Jocelyn Andersen has written a book called Woman this is War: Gender, Slavery and the Evangelical Caste System. Her thesis is that Patriarchy leads to abuse. Period. Dave Warnock supports this thesis here and muses more on what action his church should take here. He also intends to review Jocelyn's book. I look forward to this.

There are several important statements in Dave's post and comments. He writes,

Oh and friends in the Church of England, don't think we won't notice if you give in to a noisy minority and don't implement full and equal women Bishops. We are watching and waiting, I for one will not be willing to compromise on this.

I for one am tempted to say Methodists should not consider any more steps implementing the Covenant with the Church of England (such as Bishops ourselves) until a women is installed as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I am fully with Dave on this. I do not think that any form of compromise with those who do not treat women as equals is useful. It is only under prolonged pressure and disapproval, that those who do not treat women as equals will shift their position.

It is similar to smoking cigarettes. Once society as a whole disapproved of smoking in public places, cigarette sales decreased. On the other hand, some forms of smoking have gone underground when made illegal - for example, marijuana. Will those who treat women as chattel and babymakers simply retreat further? I don't know, but like prostitution and pornography, I don't think we can compromise in hopes of mitigating these evils. We need to stand against them.

If laws and societal disapproval can decrease the number of people smoking, why not come out against treating women as non-equals in the home and church? Shirley Taylor on her blog, Baptist Women for Equality, asks this of us all.

PS Joel has also written about this issue here linking to a post on Daniel Kirk's blog. I have to run but will read these later.

Reading the Preface

I mentioned recently that gender language in the English Standard Version can only be understood as the translators intended it, if you read the preface. Yesterday a friend handed me a copy of this thesis about the preface of the King James Bible by Edgar Goodspeed. It is an excellent academic response to the KJV only folks.

The author points out the inappropriateness of publishing a book without its preface. There is the added problem that those who read the Bible often do not read a preface even if it is provided. Goodspeed writes,

Especially for students, the Preface, with its wealth of contemporary materials and attitudes, is indispensable. In a humanities survey course for college Freshmen, a western university recently purchased 43 copies of the King James Bible without the Preface. In no other field of study would such a course have been dreamed of. To approach that version historically, and as any student should, without the Preface, is simply impossible. What has been said of the importance of the Preface to the general reader is even more true of the student, and it is high time our teachers of the English Bible in colleges awoke to the fact. But how can they be expected to awaken to it, when very few of them have ever seen a Bible containing the Preface? For the past hundred years, from the point of view of everyone -- ministers, professors, students, general readers, pious readers -- the Preface has been virtually suppressed.

The chief edition of the Bible containing it since 1821 is the English royal quarto, published by the Oxford University Press. This is an expensive pulpit Bible, seldom seen in America, which we cannot expect colleges to place in quantities in their reading rooms. On the other hand, the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society seem never to have included the Preface in their Bibles at all. It has been included in only two other printings of the Bible, so far as I can learn, in the past hundred years.

Cherry Garcia Ice Cream

I have been having a marvelous time in the States the last ten days, and am really enjoying the warm hospitality south of the border. After a delicious desert of Cherry Garcia ice cream tonight and watching the fireworks, I happened on this video. It turns out this is what I have in common with Wayne Grudem - Cherry Garcia ice cream. Listen and enjoy. No negative comments, please. But you can wonder what will happen to little Hannah if you like, the Grudem's grandaughter, who wants to be a pastor.

Websites for women

A commenter has asked,

Is there a group of "abused ministers wives?" I am about to lose my home as some of the continuing fallout from his harrassment after the divorce. No one is willing to help me. No one seems to want to help me. One church said, "We are not going to help YOU!" That seemed like a personal rebuff and hurt greatly. Of course, without support from my children and at age 63, the burdens become greater all the time. At this point in time, no one knows the despair I am going through or the depths of my anguish. Please don't suggest I pray.

I do know some "abused minister's wives" and perhaps some "abused ministers" but I do not know of a relevant group. I can only recommend that you read the following websites and blogs, which will affirm that other people have experienced the same thing.

No Longer Quivering
NLQ Stories (Journey has a similar story to yours)
NLQ Take Heart Project
Submission Tyranny
Women Submit
Emotional Abuse and your Faith
Baptist Women for Equality
Church Exiters
The Redheaded Skeptic is a great blog on this topic. Follow her story starting here and here.

Perhaps my readers could suggest other resources. Thanks.

Pastoring Women

What does this mean? Women who pastor, or men who pastor women? Shockingly, it is the latter.

Somehow I am not surprised that the following "sex act" theology comes from a relative of Bruce Ware. Here is what Owen Strachan wrote on the blog Pastoring Women in order pastor women,

These different roles depend, we should note, both on divine fiat and on the different constitutional and physiological realities which this creative force brought into being.[8] Generally speaking, God made men physically stronger, analytically inclined, and the initiator of the childbearing process. Women are often physically weaker and more emotionally and linguistically attuned than men, and they require physical initiation to bear children. The very bodies of women show that they are designed to nurture children, even if our culture wants to overlook these basic bodily realities. The wisdom of God’s will is embodied by the men and women who bear his image. What God has called women to be in spirit he has made them to be in body.

I will let commenters remark on the many stereotypes found here. But I want to point out that in the scriptures many sex acts which lead to the birth of significant children were initiated by women. Think of Rachel, Hannah, Ruth, and Tamar. I thought at first that most, if not all, historic conceptions recorded in the Bible were initiated by women, and that this was proper. But I have changed my mind.

It appears to me, on reflection, that a sex act can be initiated by either a man or a woman - this important role does not belong to exclusively to one gender. I think that is what Paul meant in 1 Cor. 7 - he meant that it belongs to the man to have the power to arouse the woman, and it belongs to the woman to have the power to arouse the man. This is the reciprocity that Paul writes about.

Anyway, there is lots more to life, and as we age and enter into caring for children, parents, siblings and friends, and life rounds out and fills in, the almighty sex act is not the central piece that this paragraph makes it out to be. We find ourselves to be siblings and friends, coworkers and colleagues, journeying together, finding that we have more in common all the time. We are all of us, women and men, vulnerable, courageous, kind, fearful, voluble and at a loss for words, dense and insightful.

Well, this blog is quite disturbing but it goes to show that some of what I have heard others mention, really is taught to women.

On a final note, I really like what Susan Hunt writes.

On how to find the meaning of a Greek word

Here is an excellent article by Bill Mounce on how we define biblical words. Here is my summary of his points.

• lexicons and translations
• Latin translation
• ancient lexicons
• occurrences of the word classical and Koine Greek literature
• range of meanings in these contexts
• context in the Bible

This is why I usually first study the meaning of a word in several lexicons and in translations starting from the Vulgate to the present day. From the lexicons, one can look up the use of the word in other Greek literature. This is the most basic evidence for what a word means. Context in the Bible is the last piece one uses.

However, you cannot establish from context that a word means something different from what it usually means in Greek literature, without proving that it cannot possibly have a meaning that falls within its normal meaning in Greek. Using "context" is not license to interpret a word in the Bible in accordance with your presuppositions and biases.

This is a very important list for the many times that complementarians and egalitarians differ on the meaning of a word in Greek.

rambling thoughts on feminism

Christian women are torn on the use of the word "feminism." Even if you never use it yourself, as I never did, it will be thrown at you - if you do not scrape the ground and play dead. Then what do you do? Stand up and say, "Not me! I would never agree with equality for women?" Not ruddy likely! So like it or not, a woman has to deal with this word.

The first time I told a colleague at school that I had been called a "...... feminist" online, she spurted a mouthful of coffee right out of her mouth. Clearly, I am not your typical in-your-face feminist in my bricks and mortar life.

The reality is that unless a woman is deprived of rights, she has little reason to ask for more rights. As a female teacher, I have all the rights of the male teachers, and as one of the majority, it is my duty to make the male teachers feel welcome and included. I have been in schools where female teachers do not make the men feel comfortable, simply by steering the conversation in directions that are not easily engaged in by both sexes. But in my present school, we love our male teachers, and make a concerted effort to express our appreciation and concern for what makes them feel included.

Anyway, I am rambling - what a mess. In my work life, I don't have to be a vocal feminist, but in the Christian community it is very necessary because normal rights that we need to carry on basic life and care for ourselves, our parents and our children, are being removed from women.

Here is the link that I meant to pass on about Sarah Palin. She is expanding the use of the term feminism. I am happy with that. Feminism should be a broad term like "conservative" or "liberal" or "Christian" and many other terms which take on meaning in their context. I am happy to be a "feminist," sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal and sometimes "Christian" .

Prodigal Thought

I have recently been reading Scott's blog, Prodigal Thought. In this post, he summarizes his series on the role of women, and continues it. Scott is taking a unique approach, which I am sure you will enjoy.

TC discusses his switch to the ESV here and here. It really bothers me that we do not have a Bible translation which most people can make peace with.

Ken Pulliam blogs about Biblical Counselling and Christian women. Paula has earned a place in the top 50 biblioblogs.

Finally, there has also been a fair bit of talk about an article entitled The End of Men. Mohler wrote about, also Gary Simmons and Julie Clawson.

Another June Wedding

It was a gorgeous wedding, very relaxed and fun. My son and his sweetheart were married down by the beach. There were no prepared speeches but we did have an open mike session. As you can see, it was very lively!

Charis has posted pictures of her daughters wedding, so I thought I would share.

Reminders about the ESV

Since a discussion about gender language in Bible translations has cropped up here and here, let me provide a reminder of why the ESV is not a good Bible translation with regard to gender.

Here is a passage from the preface to the ESV,

In the area of gender language, the goal of the ESV is to render literally what is in the original. For example, “anyone” replaces “any man” where there is no word corresponding to “man” in the original languages, and “people” rather than “men” is regularly used where the original languages refer to both men and women. But the words “man” and “men” are retained where a male meaning component is part of the original Greek or Hebrew. Likewise, the word “man” has been retained where the original text intends to convey a clear contrast between “God” on the one hand and “man” on the other hand, with “man” being used in the collective sense of the whole human race (see Luke 2:52).

In Greek there is one word for man, as a male, aner; and another word, anthropos, for a "human." Since in English we don't use the word "human" in normal discourse, when this word occurs for a single male, we translate it as "man." However, when this word occurs in the plural, we translate it as "people." So, in translating Greek, the plural of aner is translated as "men" and the plural of anthropos is translated as "people."

Let's look at these verses in the ESV,

and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 2 Tim. 2:2

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.” Eph. 4:8

And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. Mark 1:17

And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God Luke 12:8

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. John 1:4

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. Romans 5:18

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 1 Tim. 2:5

For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Hebreww 5:1

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:21

According to the preface of the ESV, these verses should have been translated using the word "people" in order to be literal, gender accurate and transparent to the Greek.

If the ESV used "men" instead of "people" in order to be traditional and to preserve euphony, then the translators had better say so. They would need to admit that the translation is not all that literal, not literal at all when it comes to gender, but traditional, conservative, and preserving the rhythm of the KJV.

What is so wrong with admitting this? Why do the translators claim for their translation something that is simply not true? It's a tissue of nonsense, a tangled web of half truths.

Why use a gender inclusive translation

Here is Daniel Kirk on the topic, HT Joel,

To the overall question, why require a gender-inclusive translation? My overall answer is this: to keep transforming the culture of the church until we actually believe (and therefore act like) that women and men are equal members of the body of Christ, equally addressed by the word of God, and equally empowered by the Spirit to serve in it (and therefore lead it).

My student asked specifically about requiring the now defunct TNIV and the NRSV that was sponsored by the World Council of Churches and has not been well received in evangelical circles.
This is a crucial question. In my estimation the reason that these gender inclusive translations have not caught on in evangelicalism is precisely because conservative churches are theologically opposed to gender equality. It is because they are guarding against the sort of transformation that I think needs to take place that they choose to preserve and further language of masculine hegemony. In resisting even gender-inclusive language for humanity, however (e.g., not allowing adelphoi to be translated “brothers and sisters,” but instead insisting on “brothers”), the English translation expresses an exclusivity that was not there in the Greek. This is a case where “more literal” is not equivalent to “more accurate.”

The final couple of questions from my student were along the lines of who cares? and why bother? Why not use “mankind” and “man” rather than human? In addition to what I’ve outlined above, the reason I care is that women who are learning to locate themselves, as women, in the world, need to be told and have reinforced from every angle that they do not have to become male (or approximate maleness) in order to fully realize their humanness, to become who God desires them to be as restored image-bearers of Christ.

The church has been shackled by the idea that maleness is ontologically superior to femaleness. This has ramifications for how the church thinks about Jesus and how it thinks about gender among us humans.

With respect to Jesus: the ESV gives some hints as to the necessity for certain people to hold onto Jesus’ maleness as a sine qua non of salvation. A translation that prides itself on rendering words consistently and accurately translates ἄνθρωποι as “people” in 1 Timothy 2:4, “…desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” With this desire for all people as the set-up, however, the ESV simply cannot bring itself to say that a human is a sufficient category for a savior. No, it has to be male: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men [!, ἄνθρωποι], the man [! ἄνθρωπος] Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

We need to embrace gender-neutral terminology for humanity so that we can start to disentangle ourselves from skewed notions about maleness and salvation. And if you think I’m just making up the idea that the maleness of Jesus is an essential part of conservative evangelical theology, then maybe you can drop a note to Paternoster Press and ask why, after printing Neil Williams’ new book The Maleness of Jesus, they canceled the contract and are refusing to distribute it.

Of course, as soon as being male is required to represent humanity before God, then being male is required to represent God before God’s people. The continuing deafness of the evangelical world to the biblical passages that give counter-testimony to 1 Timothy 3 from the early church is another lingering effect of gender-exclusive Bible translation. So long as we think that to be truly human is to be man, and so long as we think that a man must be the mediator between God and man, women will never be able to participate as full, co-equal partners.

So yes, I care. And as a man I think it’s more important for me to champion this cause than it is for women to champion it themselves. Because the call of the gospel isn’t to spend all our time getting worked up over our own rights, but to spend all our time getting worked up over how life can come to the other.

Thanks very much, Daniel.

Just overworked

I don't expect to be blogging much for the next few weeks, and I haven't blogged much this year. However, I am not sick or depressed, nor am I a mirthless sourpuss feminist - just overworked. While I am absent, I will post my staff pic to keep you company.

(Well, I am a feminist - just not mirthless!)

Clubbish

I read Ron Hendel's critique of the Society of Biblical Literature a few days ago. I have not attended SBL but I do follow its meetings with interest. I then read this response. I don't myself think that there should be any place at SBL for faith committments, as long as these include an attitude which subordinates, or denounces women, queers and any other natural class of human beings.

I particularly take exception to the ongoing critique of feminist and queer hermeneutics as being "clubbish." First, I have no doubt that some of it is unattractive. So here I wish to address what I have found to be "clubbish" among evangelicals, and why I would not go anywhere into any physical space where there is a danger of their attitudes about women being given voice.

I am acquainted with a very vocal and well-known SBL theologian of the evangelical leaning. I sat and listened to him lecture 200 young people on how the cause of contemporary divorce is that women will not accept their role. This was his interpretation of Gen. 3:16 and this view is widely held by evangelicals. He is an influential theologian.

I questioned him on this since I was in the process of divorcing because I had suffered ongoing violence, being controlled by being shut in my room, hit and sworn at, combined with having Bible verses used to condemn me to hell.

The theologian in question did have any interest in this situation, but he vociferously questioned my right to remarry. I had no interest in remarrying, I simply wanted to be safe.

I found his lecture, his commentary on Gen. and his response to a woman wanting a divorce for violence to be incrdibliy callous and yes even "clubbish." But he gets rave reviews by evangelicals for being so "reasonable" and open-minded.

Unless one has actually been beaten, as many women and queers have been, for reasons relating to being a woman or a queer, then I suggest that using the term "clubbish" for the hermenuetic of feminists and queeers is not appropriate.

The appeal of Christianity is that Christ actually experieced being beaten, he did not claim a privilege not open to women and queers.

However, Paul did claim a privilege not open to women, slaves, and non-Roman citizens. He asked, as a Roman citizen, not to be beaten.

That women have not had such a legal privilege until recently, that they may experience this for much of their life, that being beaten can be just a normal consequence of being a woman, is still to fresh in my mind.

Perhaps feminists and queers are clubbish, but [some] evangelical Christians are callous to the most outrageous suffering in their midst and should clean out their own stables first. I firmly believe that any space where people are free to express their faith commitments, in such a way as to denigrate even the tiniest bit, women, homosexuals, or those of another religion or race, is not an appropriate place for academic exchange.

Paul and Thecla

James McGrath links to a post about Paul and Thecla. There is an interesting tradition that Thecla's eyes and hands were erased because they were a sign of her authority.

Bart Ehrman (if I remember correctly) shares a photo of the same fresco in one of his books, and points out that Thecla's "teaching hand" has been deliberately defaced (as have her eyes), by someone who found this depiction of her authority threatening. Crossan and Reed also make this point.

hilarious

I don't usually laugh out loud at America pronunciation. I try to muffle my mirth if I can. Of course, I expect to be the source of a little mirth myself. But listen to this. HT Nick.

Huguenot

Huguenot

I had never heard the first one before, but I am of Huguenot stock myself so I am familiar with the first rendition in the second link. Give me a call and hear how I pronounce it! is there anyone out there with the Oxford pronunciation?

Because it matters

This blog, by Danni Moss, was one of the first blogs that I read in the Christian blogosphere. I just read today that the author has died of cancer. I am so grateful for her blog, and I hope that her influence will remain. Its a long journey out of violence as a way of life.

Not a slam dunk

There has been a discussion on Cheryl's blog, where a commenter is very sure that kephale, meaning "head," as in the object on top of your neck, is a slam dunk for "authority". He perhaps thinks this because he has read this entry.

"Definition
the head, both of men and often of animals. Since the loss of the head destroys life, this word is used in the phrases relating to capital and extreme punishment.
metaph. anything supreme, chief, prominent
of persons, master lord: of a husband in relation to his wife
of Christ: the Lord of the husband and of the Church
of things: the corner stone"

However, if you were to look in a dictionary of classical Greek, i.e. English-Greek dictionary: a vocabulary of the Attic language by S. C. Woodhouse, you would not see either kephale or authenteo, as equivalents for the English word "authority."

One may argue that this is because Hellenistic Greek was just that different. In fact, the main difference in the lexicons is that one dictionary is theologically motivated and the other is not. Lexicons of classical Greek routinely include meanings from Hellenistic Greek.

Kephale was not a Greek term for "master" or "lord" occuring in any context other than interpretations of verses in the New Testament itself. There is no outside confirmation of this use, except that the word kephale was used for Jephthah. This is an unusual use of the word in the Septuagint, and is rarely discussed. I would be interested in discussing why, of all leaders in the Greek Old Testament, only Jephthah was called kephale.

This is an interesting topic for discussion - but not a slam dunk. Someone needs to mention to me one other person besides Jephthah, outside of the New Testament (but preceding or at the same time as the NT) who was ever called the kephale of a person or group that he or she was in authority over.

Passionately outspoken for Christian feminism

I have been reading too many critiques of feminism in the Christian blogosphere recently, as if it were to blame for anything one doesn't like. The premise seems to be that we have only had _______ since women have been declared equal under the law. Now fill in the blank with the economic crisis, earthquakes and oil spills. I would like to take credit for modern dentistry myself, but I forget how it is a consequence of feminism. Not that explanations are usually required.

According to Mary Kassian, a prominent Canadian Christian author and anti-feminist, "pornography, and rape and homosexuality and sexual perversion were uncommon and rarely encountered" in the 1960's, preceding the expansion of feminism. I personally thought all these vices were alive and well in Sodom and Gomorrah, where feminism doesn't seem to have had much traction.

In a blog comment on this post, Mary Kassian declares,

I think feminism and Christianity are incompatible. Feminism can’t be “redeemed.” If you’re interested in finding out more about the history and philosophy of feminism, I suggest you read my book, “The Feminist Mistake.”

However, Alex, a brave commenter and Christian woman, responds to Mary Kassian at length and with passion about the proper attitude of Christian women towards feminism. Here is one of her later comments,

We must remember that we owe a lot of our freedom today to the feminist of the past. The fact that you can write a book without using a male alias, the fact the we can get ‘equal pay for equal work’, the fact the rape is illegal in marriage, the fact the a women’s testimony is not worth less than a mans and many more freedoms have been won. Truly if you want to see the effects of feminism, look to the places without it. In places like Asia and Africa were girls are married of young, sometimes 13 year old to 50 year old men, were women are treated as the property of the father to be bought and sold, were women have babies so young that they suffer from fistulas, were women are worth less than a man, so much so that a Christian women’s testimony in court is worth a quarter that of a man’s and were 6 billion babies girls have been killed simply because they were female.

In times gone past a woman’s testimony was so unreliable they had to be tortured to prove it because they ‘made up things’, in times gone past women older than 13 without husbands were considered old hags, in times gone past women were thought not to have souls, which was only begrudgingly over turned by the church who decided they ‘may’ have souls.

Surly we must look and thank our predecessors for the fact that we are not thought of as less than a man. Sure they made mistakes but so many freedoms we enjoy today are due to their brave fighting, their protests, imprisonments and pain for our freedom.
We must thank them by going forward to free women throughout the world from violence, humiliation and destruction.

Say what you like about feminism but first look to the sufferings of women around the world and think of how we can improve their living standards, improve their treatment to more than house slaves or cattle, improve their pregnancies so that they don’t die in birth or get pressured to abort babies girls. Say what you like about Western feminism but look to the women and girls of the developing world and help them. What they need are basic human rights and to be treated better than cattle. In the west this was achieved by brave men and women fighting for recognition. It was called Feminism. What will we do for people in the developing world?

We mustn’t lose sight of what it means to be a Christian woman, but part of what it means to be a Christian woman is to love and serve other women around the world. Call this movement what you like, Christian women fighting for and caring about other women around the world, in the past it was called Feminism, today who knows what we will name it but it must happen!

The problem with simply slamming feminism is that it draws attention away from our responsibility to women around the world who still need these rights; still need this love and care.

And may I add that there are still many women on this continent who need this love and care. As women, we need to care equally for both other men and women. But that is the premise of feminism, that women need to be cared for equally and as equals.

I am sorry that Mary Kassian cannot say thank you to the first Christian women who went to university, paving the way for her.