The feminist revolution considered in the light of biblical teaching
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:12
For years, feminists have been laboring diligently to remove what once were traditional distinctions between masculinity and femininity. Women have been encouraged to wear men’s clothing, assume more masculine roles and show more masculine traits, while traditionally masculine roles and virtues have been disparaged and denied as much as possible.
Now, however, that once common barriers have been removed, we see a trend in the opposite direction, where more men are adopting feminine identities. This is most evident in men’s participation in women’s sports – and there has been no outcry from the feminist community about this. This is because they are more concerned about the abolition of traditional roles than they are about the actual well-being of women in the real world. To have to admit that there are in fact innate and permanent differences between men and women calls their whole project into question. Hence, they do not care if women are physically injured, or deprived of scholarships, honors and opportunities. Ordinary human considerations are always irrelevant to devotees of false and inhuman ideologies.
Is the attempted abolition of conventional gender distinctions normal? Is it right? Or is it a false philosophy of the lost world that is contrary to human flourishing, contrary to human happiness and authentic social interactions, and contrary to the laws of God as well?
Some years ago I found a small Christian publisher who was willing to publish a book of mine first called Contra Feminism, but later changed to Against Feminism: The Worldly Movement of Women’s Liberation in the Light of Scripture (Athanatos, 2012).
That book was not an attempt to prove that God existed; neither did it try to show that the Bible really was written by men under the direct inspiration of God to give us a real understanding of God and his nature. It was written for people who already believed in those two propositions, and it was from that vantage point that I asserted that the feminist policies of unisex and role reversal were false and harmful philosophies of the world that Bible-believing Christians should reject.
The publisher informed me in advance that it would be my responsibility to promote the book. I did not do much in this area, apart from maybe mailing out a few copies, and the book went nowhere.
This was not a disappointment to me; it was what I had expected. I had had some experience in various fundamentalist and evangelical churches, and assumed from the outset that most people in those circles would have no interest in what I had to say. Plus, I had other interests, and was satisfied merely to have completed the book and brought it out. It was more of a personal project than anything else.
Over the years, the publisher moved into different parts of the vineyard, and I recently decided to republish the book myself. So, I made it available through Draft2Digital, a self-publishing platform I can strongly recommend to someone who is interested in that sort of thing.
My original intention was to post some of its content on Substack; however, it is currently available through various distributors, one of whom does not like to market books containing material that is also available online. So, I will not quote portions of it verbatim, but will do some creative summarizing.
Recently I have noticed a few articles on Substack asserting that relations between the sexes are not in a healthy state in the USA today. Some of this has to do with the transgender mania obviously. When men can dominate in women’s sports or even obtrude themselves into women’s locker rooms, merely because they self-identify as women (for whatever reason), many people find it easier to recognize that the removal of gender barriers has not been a constructive development. Maybe we really do need to reaffirm some distinctions between men and women after all.
Apart from the transgender mania – which I consider to be intellectually on the same plane as belief in the supremacy of the blonde, blue-eyed Aryan master race – there is also a deep sense of things going wrong in other areas. Why are boys now so disadvantaged academically? Have we created an educational system that is biased against them? And why this hatred of and contempt for white males? Is it not ironic that the more men cater to the feminist movement the more they are despised?
And what about the emergence of women’s superiority? What shall we say to those who assert that males are to blame for most of the problems in the world, and that therefore they should be subjugated, domesticated and tamed, while women assume more and more authority?
Is it not clear that both masculinity and femininity are being lost, and that we are the worse for it?
Let’s step back and try to get the big picture. First of all, allow me to make the obvious statement that the feminist revolution has been exactly that – a revolution. It has not been carried out by women fighting and dying on the barricades, because many men have accepted it and encouraged it. As a result, over time, sweeping changes in every area of society have been carried out under the banners of unisex, role reversal, and the elimination of traditional distinctives and barriers that have been common all over the world for thousands of years.
The churches have also been greatly affected by these changes, and clear biblical teachings have been swept under the rug, ignored, forgotten, or cleverly explained away with theological sophistries, to the detriment of the churches’ witness for Christ.
What have the fruits of all of these changes been? Feminism really took off in the 1960s, although its roots of course go back much farther than that. And are we now as a nation stronger, happier, and saner than we were sixty years ago? Are our streets safer? Is our government more efficient, and more responsive to the will of the people? Is our public educational system more effective and our economy stronger?
There are many factors behind all of the changes that have taken place since I was in high school in the 1960s, some of them very subtle and complex, and I am not so foolish as to blame it all on one or two simple causes. Neither am I trying to turn the clock back, which is an impossibility. I do want to examine the Feminist movement more closely, though, since it has played a significant part in making us the nation that we are today.
Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruits, that a good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Has the women’s liberation movement born good fruits? Many will say that it has. They will applaud many changes that have taken place in recent years. But what does the Bible say? This question should be of relevance to Christians – at least to those Christians who say they believe in the Bible and see it as our guide for faith and practice (but there are many people with the name of Christian today who consider biblical teachings to be relevant only insofar as they do not contradict the present spirit of the age).
In the next two or three weeks – I am not sure how much time to spend on this – I would like to look briefly at a history of the modern feminist movement, from its first stirrings in the French Revolution to its establishment in Victorian England, and then on into the twentieth century.
I would also like to look at the role of women in ancient Greece and Rome – again briefly, in a couple of pages – and then (more extensively) at women in the Old and New Testament eras.
Then it will be necessary to examine in depth some specific biblical teachings about similarities and distinctions between men and women. I will assert that those verses do not merely express the culture of Paul’s day, but that they are equally valid for us. Human nature has not changed since the apostolic era, and our failure as Christians to give heed to the word of the Lord has not only damaged the cause of Christ and weakened our churches and our witness. It has also damaged us individually on a deep spiritual level. If we do not follow biblical teachings in our own homes and churches, why should the world take any of our truth claims seriously?
Some years ago I read a book by a popular evangelical writer. In one chapter, he wrote about one of his friends, a pastor of a church who was married, with children. This pastor confessed to the author that he was a homosexual. The writer said that this took him completely by surprise, that he had never once thought that this individual might have had such an orientation.
As a Christian, he tried to reason from the Bible with his friend, and showed him some relevant verses. The Old Testament verses were brushed off by the man – who was, after all, a pastor. He argued that there were many things in the Old Testament that had no relevance to Christians, and strictures on homosexuality were among them. When it came to New Testament verses, his response was, that Paul said women should be silent in church; that they should have a covering of some sort on their head when they prophesied or prayed; that women should not have positions of leadership in the church or teach men; and that wives should be obedient to their husbands. These were, however, verses that no one paid any attention to these days, and that Paul’s attitudes on homosexuality were (he claimed) of equal relevance.
The author confessed in his narrative that he had no answer to this. In the same essay he related that he later visited some homosexual churches, expressed sympathy for them, and said it was too bad that we Christians were too hung up on sexuality.
A little leaven does indeed leaven a whole loaf.
Before looking into some of the points I mentioned earlier, before discussing history and various Bible verses, it is necessary to begin at the beginning and ask a key question: “What is the meaning of life?”
Why are we here on earth? If everything is just the result of some cosmic accident, and we are all nothing but little biological and chemical machines; if human consciousness is only some sort of phosphorescent scum floating on top of a bottomless quagmire of meaninglessness; if all of our hopes, feelings, dreams, fears, desires and emotional needs are nothing but the result of bio-chemical reactions in the brain, and if we have no immortal souls that live after death – then we have to approach any and all questions of masculinity and femininity from one vantage point.
If, on the other hand, all of the wonders of nature – including our masculine and feminine human bodies – and if all of the splendors of the cosmos, the laws of science, and the intricacies of space, time and being did not come into being by accident; if, in fact, they are the deliberate creations of a spiritual being of infinite power and wisdom – then we have to approach any and all questions of masculinity and femininity from a different vantage point.
It is from that different vantage point - one held by a distinct minority of people today - that I intend to analyze the feminist revolution.
As I said earlier of my book, the purpose of this essay is not to prove the existence of God, or to argue in defense of the Bible. My purpose is to exhort Christians who say they believe in the Bible to pay more attention to what the Bible says about these matters. We should certainly not be so deeply conformed to the world as to ignore or explain away any and all biblical teachings that do not conform to our present culture. Neither should we accept modern American social practices as the standard of reality and normality against which out of date biblical standards should be evaluated.
Nevertheless, I would like to state my belief, in one paragraph only, that in my view the belief in an accidental, blind and meaningless creation is a false and a socially destructive one. We humans and this world we live in, as well as the cosmos that our world is situated in, were all created by God. This means that we have been created for a purpose – and the nature of that purpose is not to be found in false philosophies of the world.
If a tree is known by its fruits, what are the fruits of the feminist revolution?
One of them is the current transgender mania. That sexual gender is merely a social construct having nothing to do with biological realities is a false and destructive idea that is currently having such bizarre manifestations that even people who have no interest in God or in divine laws are beginning to see that we have gone too far.
Then there is abortion. Dozens of millions of little babies have been casually disposed of because of the belief that a woman finds her real happiness in life by trying to pretend she is a man. What used to be considered a precious gift is now despised as a burden, an oppression, a hindrance, an obstacle to finding real meaning and fulfilment in life – and all of those lost millions who will never grow up to be plumbers, doctors, workers, mothers have left a real void.
What if the millions of illegal aliens now coming into the country are the direct result of the judgment of God? What if God in his wisdom has decreed that we don’t want our own children, so this is what we get instead?
Another fruit of the feminist revolution is the breakdown of the traditional family. Children need a mother and a father, and the beliefs that conventional marriages can be lightly and easily terminated, or that they can be dispensed with altogether, have seriously undermined one of the most basic units of society. This is one of the many reasons for the increasing social illnesses we see manifested around us with gathering intensity.
Yet another fruit is gender confusion. When generations of children are brought up to believe that there are no essential differences between men and women, and when they see this supposed truth worked out daily in the real world all around them in their formative years, why is it surprising that now more and more people are assailed by doubts about who and what they are supposed to be when it comes to issues of gender? Even those who do not go to the extremes of transgenderism can still be plagued by deep doubts, dissatisfactions and insecurities that prevent them from being at peace with themselves on the vital question of gender identity.
There is one other fruit I would like to mention, and that is sexual immorality. God created and designed the human body, and he did not intend this body to be used as a sexual plaything. God’s law is that the process of human reproduction should take place in the context of a man and a woman, one male and one female, in a committed lifetime relationship. This is the context within which we can best flourish as individuals, as parents and as children, and while there can be unhappy marriages and failed marriages due to human sinfulness, the ideal should not be cast aside as being of no value. Neither, having once been cast aside, should it be replaced by a feeling of total contempt for or indifference to the concept of marital union that God himself has ordained.
This is not to say that I blame the sexual revolution and the casting off of traditional mores solely on feminism. There are other factors behind this, including even more fundamentally the denial of God and the assertion of human life as an accident in an impersonal universe devoid of any higher moral laws. But secular feminism has made the sexual emancipation of women one of its cardinal principles, to the extent that “freedom for women” is now understood to include freedom from traditional and conventional moral laws of any sort.
I say all of these things by way of general introduction. Next week I would like to look more specifically at some historical questions pertaining to the emergence of modern feminism in the modern era, as well as its absence in the ancient world. And feminism is very much a modern phenomenon, one that could not and did not flourish in earlier, more difficult societies.
A lot of the problems feminism has wrought was seeded by the Suffragists, I wrote about it a little https://open.substack.com/pub/zoomersojourner/p/slippin-down-the-slippery-slope?r=1z0b3w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I took inspiration from RL Dabney whose piece on Women’s rights is a must read https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2016/5/22/womens-rights-women