Crawling over the wreckage - part 2

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 09 October 2007 20:16:35

Piece of wreckage number 2
"It's a male dominated institution"

Um, interesting one. If we look at the statistics we'll see it's actually a female dominated institution in many ways which is why churches put so much effort into trying to get blokes into church.

Now at this point I know the response will be to wheel out the theory relating to them being patriarchal institutions who use male dominated language and give a false gender consciousness. The evidence comes from a range of sources from within and without the church and uses a variety of images and language.

Amongst othersMary Daly represents the most radical edge and Daphne Hampson another side.

However, there are other perspectives to be looked at. Firstly there are the Christian feminist approaches you'll find reading people like Fran Porter and Elaine Storkey and then the types of books which simply reflect on a collection of Christian women's experiences like Is God Good for Women by Michele Guinness or Encouraging Women which is a collection by a range of people.

What you get through reading these things is a real picture that at certain times and in certain places the church has been a male dominated institution, but women have contributed / do contribute much more than we like to admit.

Also for women of a certain age and background it has been possible to grow up thinking, rightly that women and men were completely equal in the church. So how did I think this when up until I hit 18 my experience of the person up the front had always been of a bloke preaching?

Well I've always been in churches where the diaconate have been mixed and women have been given full opportunities to get involved & during my late teens / early twenties I was in a church where the associate minister was female. I have to admit it wasn't until I was hit my 30's and was sharing an office with someone from a slightly different Baptist background that I discovered some churches didn't even have women deacons. To put it simply I've always seen able women being given opportunities.

So maybe some corners of the church aren't great for women, but not the corners I've spent my life hiding in. They may have had their problems and issues, but that hasn't generally been one of them. So it looks like I have to keep combing the wreckage to try and find the answers.