Is it just another US thing?

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 21 November 2005 09:08:19

Interesting article on gender in Christianity Today . For me as a British woman in a culture which has sorted out far more of the problems and is generally post-feminist I find the US analysis facinating.

Firstly the article illustrates that in the US the culture is v.different, and feminist perspectives within the US evangelical community take radical feminism much more seriously than I would guess most people in the UK would. Also it shows that the US evangelical society is, in someways, a far more patriarchal society than the UK. However, I know through my conversations with others that it is not such an open and shut case in this country as we would like to think, rather in many cases our opinions on this, as with most religious matters are just kept more privatised and we tend to work far more on the middle ground being put forward in the article, (which interestingly quotes Elaine Storkey, an UK evangelical Christian Feminist who can be far more closely associated with the liberal feminist perspective which is dominant within our culture).

Reading the article also puts the discussions and debates I came across at the Baptist World Congress last July far more into context. The more I realise about the differences which exist between the US and the UK the more I realise that whilst we may take on aspects of US evangelicalism there is infact much for them to learn from the UK. We have a rich culture and heritage of our own which, whilst containing some aspects relating to colonialism particularly we should not be proud of, is generally something we should explore and own, rather than allowing our culture and history to be forgotten as we become entranced by the latest programme or paperback from across the pond.