This morning, I logged onto CNN's website and saw the following article (which I'm sure is probably headline news on CNN's cable channels as well):
Church of Christ Pastor Slain
The following passage from the article, in particular, caught my eye:
"They were a nice family," said former Mayor Jimmy Whittington, who said he worked with the minister collecting donations for hurricane victims last year. "They just blended in."
Ash said he never saw any conflict in the family.
"He seemed like he was real happy here, and we were happy with him," Ash said. "He preached the Bible. He didn't make his opinions known on what was popular or what was politically right. He just preached the Bible."
"Hmm," I said to myself. "Isn't this the same denomination that espouses strict female submission in the home?"
I remembered a story a friend of mine told me recently about going to a local Church of Christ congregation in Fort Worth. She said that she was not even allowed to pray in the Sunday School class she attended--instead, a young man sitting next to her was asked to pray for her. She described the experience to me as a very humiliating and shocking ordeal, and said she never attended that church again.
Given what she said and what others have said to me about the Church of Christ, I wanted to find out for myself what their doctrine regarding women was--so I looked up their directory of doctrinal beliefs (see link below):
Common Church of Christ Stances on Women
As you can see on opening this directory, three of the six sermons listed concern only the role of women as mothers. There is no mention of women having jobs or careers outside of the home, as if the possibility of a woman serving as a professional, an artist, or in any other capacity unrelated to the terms "wife" and "mother" is beyond the denominational leadership's imagination.
The following quotation, from the sermon "The Priceless Woman," is instructive:
The subjective, submissive role of women in the home and church has never lent itself to public accolades or front-page recognition. It is unfortunate that we forget the many references Paul makes to our equality of value in Christ where "there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
The very nature of a woman's glory is in her quiet spirit, so that their husbands "may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold her chaste conversation coupled with fear" (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Notice the terms "subjective, submissive role" and "quiet spirit"--they are very important here. The Church of Christ ascribes to the notion, derived from a passage out of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, that women are not allowed to speak in the church. This means that women cannot speak in congregational assemblies, and cannot counter or challenge their (male) preachers, husbands, or fathers when it comes to matters of spiritual importance. Thus, the words "quiet" and "submissive" (which appear several times in this particular text) are key to a complete and accurate understanding of long-held Church of Christ beliefs.
The April 4, 2005 sermon entitled (predictably) "Genesis 3:20-21" contains the following "disclaimer":
Before this time the woman was simply "ishah" (woman), but now she is given a name by her husband. We should consider that she was not given a name with which to remember her folly in the Garden, or a name to remind her of the sentence she was under (the pain in childbearing and the subjection to her husband), rather she was given a name corresponding to her honorable position as mother of all living. It seems to me to be a queenly name. From the beginning a man's wife was to be cherished and not demeaned or bought and sold like cattle as was done in the ancient world and is so often done to this very day.
The preacher of this sermon fails to take into consideration that not only was this passage written by people who assumed that women were property (to be bought or sold like cattle), but the preacher himself, in effect, is doing the very same thing by restricting the woman's place and function in this world only to that of parent and womb. It is a classic rhetorical move, dating back centuries and even millennia (after all, why would someone who exploits others admit to it?).
However, the Church of Christ makes it clear in their doctrinal stance (as represented in the above sermons) that they do not view women as self-sufficient individuals with their own dreams, desires, and spiritualities. Instead, the signficance of women, in their eyes, seems to be directly proportional to their ability to serve as wombs, as housekeepers, and as guardians and caretakers. This is, on its face, an unbelievably oppressive point of view, to the point of spiritual and emotional abuse. It is not surprising, therefore, that a woman married to a pastor in that denomination would find an extreme measure acceptable in securing her release from a life of constant fear, torment, and frustrated desires and ambitions.
I know, I'm supposed to be at sympathy with the pastor and not with the woman suspected of killing him, but really . . . think about it with me for a moment, will you? A woman does not suddenly (overnight) go from being a nice, quiet, dutiful housewife to shooting her husband in the back, taking his kids, and driving 400 miles before being discovered by state police without some prior antecedent--it simply does not happen. There had to be something deeply disturbing in her family life, or in her church life, to prompt a woman whose reputation was so spotless to commit a crime so bizarre and so brutal in its exercise. There had to be a major degree of emotional, spiritual, and perhaps physical abuse for her to even think of doing something like that--and remember, she did take the kids with her, rather than abandoning them.
Perhaps it was the strict religious atmosphere in which she had lived, breathed, and slept for so long--perhaps it was something more.
At the very least, however, I think that her church environment, given its beliefs and stances regarding women, did not serve to alleviate whwtever was going on.
The following passage from the article, in particular, caught my eye:
"They were a nice family," said former Mayor Jimmy Whittington, who said he worked with the minister collecting donations for hurricane victims last year. "They just blended in."
Ash said he never saw any conflict in the family.
"He seemed like he was real happy here, and we were happy with him," Ash said. "He preached the Bible. He didn't make his opinions known on what was popular or what was politically right. He just preached the Bible."
"Hmm," I said to myself. "Isn't this the same denomination that espouses strict female submission in the home?"
I remembered a story a friend of mine told me recently about going to a local Church of Christ congregation in Fort Worth. She said that she was not even allowed to pray in the Sunday School class she attended--instead, a young man sitting next to her was asked to pray for her. She described the experience to me as a very humiliating and shocking ordeal, and said she never attended that church again.
Given what she said and what others have said to me about the Church of Christ, I wanted to find out for myself what their doctrine regarding women was--so I looked up their directory of doctrinal beliefs (see link below):
As you can see on opening this directory, three of the six sermons listed concern only the role of women as mothers. There is no mention of women having jobs or careers outside of the home, as if the possibility of a woman serving as a professional, an artist, or in any other capacity unrelated to the terms "wife" and "mother" is beyond the denominational leadership's imagination.
The following quotation, from the sermon "The Priceless Woman," is instructive:
The subjective, submissive role of women in the home and church has never lent itself to public accolades or front-page recognition. It is unfortunate that we forget the many references Paul makes to our equality of value in Christ where "there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
The very nature of a woman's glory is in her quiet spirit, so that their husbands "may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold her chaste conversation coupled with fear" (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Notice the terms "subjective, submissive role" and "quiet spirit"--they are very important here. The Church of Christ ascribes to the notion, derived from a passage out of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, that women are not allowed to speak in the church. This means that women cannot speak in congregational assemblies, and cannot counter or challenge their (male) preachers, husbands, or fathers when it comes to matters of spiritual importance. Thus, the words "quiet" and "submissive" (which appear several times in this particular text) are key to a complete and accurate understanding of long-held Church of Christ beliefs.
The April 4, 2005 sermon entitled (predictably) "Genesis 3:20-21" contains the following "disclaimer":
Before this time the woman was simply "ishah" (woman), but now she is given a name by her husband. We should consider that she was not given a name with which to remember her folly in the Garden, or a name to remind her of the sentence she was under (the pain in childbearing and the subjection to her husband), rather she was given a name corresponding to her honorable position as mother of all living. It seems to me to be a queenly name. From the beginning a man's wife was to be cherished and not demeaned or bought and sold like cattle as was done in the ancient world and is so often done to this very day.
The preacher of this sermon fails to take into consideration that not only was this passage written by people who assumed that women were property (to be bought or sold like cattle), but the preacher himself, in effect, is doing the very same thing by restricting the woman's place and function in this world only to that of parent and womb. It is a classic rhetorical move, dating back centuries and even millennia (after all, why would someone who exploits others admit to it?).
However, the Church of Christ makes it clear in their doctrinal stance (as represented in the above sermons) that they do not view women as self-sufficient individuals with their own dreams, desires, and spiritualities. Instead, the signficance of women, in their eyes, seems to be directly proportional to their ability to serve as wombs, as housekeepers, and as guardians and caretakers. This is, on its face, an unbelievably oppressive point of view, to the point of spiritual and emotional abuse. It is not surprising, therefore, that a woman married to a pastor in that denomination would find an extreme measure acceptable in securing her release from a life of constant fear, torment, and frustrated desires and ambitions.
I know, I'm supposed to be at sympathy with the pastor and not with the woman suspected of killing him, but really . . . think about it with me for a moment, will you? A woman does not suddenly (overnight) go from being a nice, quiet, dutiful housewife to shooting her husband in the back, taking his kids, and driving 400 miles before being discovered by state police without some prior antecedent--it simply does not happen. There had to be something deeply disturbing in her family life, or in her church life, to prompt a woman whose reputation was so spotless to commit a crime so bizarre and so brutal in its exercise. There had to be a major degree of emotional, spiritual, and perhaps physical abuse for her to even think of doing something like that--and remember, she did take the kids with her, rather than abandoning them.
Perhaps it was the strict religious atmosphere in which she had lived, breathed, and slept for so long--perhaps it was something more.
At the very least, however, I think that her church environment, given its beliefs and stances regarding women, did not serve to alleviate whwtever was going on.
posted by Brian Bly at 6:49 AM
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