Valerie, thank you so much for your kind support. SoS refers to Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). I think that SoS is like a mountain top in the Bible, the most encouraging of books. We enter its misty other-worldliness to find a Shepherd-king who desires us and to whom we belong.
I am so sorry, Jen, for the abuse that you faced. Your experience sounds very similar to mine, and even though three years has passed, I still grieve. It is a long, hard road, and I am so sorry that you have had to travel it. To tell you the truth, I am still bewildered. In the end, this was my conclusion --- "I can't live in their heads (their thoughts concerning me)." In other words, I cannot adapt myself to the leaders' understanding of half the church. Leaving is made worse because you are made to feel as if you are rejecting Christ, when in reality you are rejecting the bent teaching of mere men. May God comfort your soul and bring you rest in the knowledge of his love for you.
Hello, I am wondering if this Reformed view of gender is ever preached about on Sunday mornings? Do pastors confess to this view, or is it kept quiet, hidden, secretive? Is it discussed openly? Thank you
Hi, Jen. I think that it is caught more than taught in the local church. Calvin's understanding of gender was Aristotelian. He thought that general revelation (creation) teaches us what women are by nature. This implies her demoted rank and the necessity that she be ruled. That is straight out of Aristotle's Generation of Animals and Nicomachean Ethics. Women are misbegotten, malformed, inferior, and thus it is a moral obligation that men rule them. You can see in church history that the understanding of women as weak physically, intellectually, and emotionally passed from Greek culture, to Roman culture, to the Roman Medieval Church and the Scholastics, and right into the Reformed Church. The Reformers never reformed the church's understanding of our differences as male and female. Then the Reformers' unreformed anthropology passed into the American church via Scottish immigration (John Knox's Presbyterian Church) and became a prominent feature of Old School Presbyterianism. Women are excluded from thinking spaces and assigned a non-public or domestic "role." All that to say, it is there in the background of every confession, every catechism, and every conservative commentary. If you want to see it clearly, look at the commentaries of the Reformers on 1 Timothy 2:11-15, or 1 Cor. 11:1-17, or 1 Cor. 14:34, or 1 Peter 3:1-7. If you want to see it all in one place, you could read Zachary Garris's "Honor Thy Fathers." Garris, a PCA pastor who advocates the subordination of women in all spheres and her public silence, and who also calls Christianity a masculine religion, traces the voices and influence, and then calls us to return to our Presbyterian and Reformed fathers. His book is helpful because it lays out the history. Seminarians in conservative Reformed spaces are trained in the *atmosphere* of this understanding of gender. I think that I was only assigned one book written by a woman in the eight years I was in seminary (two graduate degrees), and it was not a theological book. So, in the church, this understanding of women is the culture and it is reinforced and impressed from the top by the seminary-trained pastor. It is part of the warp and woof. If you are new to the denomination and this thinking, and you are not listening for it, you may not hear it right away or clearly. So, for example, at the time we left the PCA, the pastor was preaching through Ruth. He saw Ruth as a desperate woman who needed a husband. I mentioned to him that Ruth never mentions her vulnerability, but rather she goes from strength to strength in the book until the end. In the final chapter, the women of Bethlehem declare to Naomi that Ruth is better to her than seven sons. The book portrays Ruth's *strength and glory* in delivering Naomi from despair to hope, but he couldn't (wouldn't?) see it. To give even respectful feedback to the pastor as a woman is problematic because of all the things I mentioned above. If you speak, if you give another angle, if you offer gentle pushback, if you suggest, if you draw attention to the prevailing understanding of women in the church, then you are marked as "disrupting the peace and purity of the church." In the end, I was told to be quiet and not offer my thoughts. It is my understanding that in the PCA, women cannot bring change because of how women are viewed. It really is a catch 22.
Thank you, Jen, for seeing and caring so deeply about abuse. I am so sorry for all that you experienced and are still experiencing as a result of the sin against you, compounded by neglect from those who should be busy healing souls, not damaging them. Part of my journey has led me to distance myself from the formal tradition and yet speak to its poor understanding of women from the outside in the ways God leads me. When I study and write, God feeds my soul with the thesis as I speak against the antithesis I find in the Reformed tradition. God will lead you. Patience doesn’t necessarily mean silence. Patience for me means focusing on the hope set before me, that there is a day coming when the culture of heaven will be my forever home. I am longing for that, even as I work for the church here to mirror the church there.
I'm looking forward to this, so glad you started a Substack Anna!
So happy to find your sub-stack!
What does your reference (SoS1) mean?
Valerie, thank you so much for your kind support. SoS refers to Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). I think that SoS is like a mountain top in the Bible, the most encouraging of books. We enter its misty other-worldliness to find a Shepherd-king who desires us and to whom we belong.
Anna, so excited that you’ve started a Substack! I look forward to reading and learning from you.
I am so sorry, Jen, for the abuse that you faced. Your experience sounds very similar to mine, and even though three years has passed, I still grieve. It is a long, hard road, and I am so sorry that you have had to travel it. To tell you the truth, I am still bewildered. In the end, this was my conclusion --- "I can't live in their heads (their thoughts concerning me)." In other words, I cannot adapt myself to the leaders' understanding of half the church. Leaving is made worse because you are made to feel as if you are rejecting Christ, when in reality you are rejecting the bent teaching of mere men. May God comfort your soul and bring you rest in the knowledge of his love for you.
Hello, I am wondering if this Reformed view of gender is ever preached about on Sunday mornings? Do pastors confess to this view, or is it kept quiet, hidden, secretive? Is it discussed openly? Thank you
Hi, Jen. I think that it is caught more than taught in the local church. Calvin's understanding of gender was Aristotelian. He thought that general revelation (creation) teaches us what women are by nature. This implies her demoted rank and the necessity that she be ruled. That is straight out of Aristotle's Generation of Animals and Nicomachean Ethics. Women are misbegotten, malformed, inferior, and thus it is a moral obligation that men rule them. You can see in church history that the understanding of women as weak physically, intellectually, and emotionally passed from Greek culture, to Roman culture, to the Roman Medieval Church and the Scholastics, and right into the Reformed Church. The Reformers never reformed the church's understanding of our differences as male and female. Then the Reformers' unreformed anthropology passed into the American church via Scottish immigration (John Knox's Presbyterian Church) and became a prominent feature of Old School Presbyterianism. Women are excluded from thinking spaces and assigned a non-public or domestic "role." All that to say, it is there in the background of every confession, every catechism, and every conservative commentary. If you want to see it clearly, look at the commentaries of the Reformers on 1 Timothy 2:11-15, or 1 Cor. 11:1-17, or 1 Cor. 14:34, or 1 Peter 3:1-7. If you want to see it all in one place, you could read Zachary Garris's "Honor Thy Fathers." Garris, a PCA pastor who advocates the subordination of women in all spheres and her public silence, and who also calls Christianity a masculine religion, traces the voices and influence, and then calls us to return to our Presbyterian and Reformed fathers. His book is helpful because it lays out the history. Seminarians in conservative Reformed spaces are trained in the *atmosphere* of this understanding of gender. I think that I was only assigned one book written by a woman in the eight years I was in seminary (two graduate degrees), and it was not a theological book. So, in the church, this understanding of women is the culture and it is reinforced and impressed from the top by the seminary-trained pastor. It is part of the warp and woof. If you are new to the denomination and this thinking, and you are not listening for it, you may not hear it right away or clearly. So, for example, at the time we left the PCA, the pastor was preaching through Ruth. He saw Ruth as a desperate woman who needed a husband. I mentioned to him that Ruth never mentions her vulnerability, but rather she goes from strength to strength in the book until the end. In the final chapter, the women of Bethlehem declare to Naomi that Ruth is better to her than seven sons. The book portrays Ruth's *strength and glory* in delivering Naomi from despair to hope, but he couldn't (wouldn't?) see it. To give even respectful feedback to the pastor as a woman is problematic because of all the things I mentioned above. If you speak, if you give another angle, if you offer gentle pushback, if you suggest, if you draw attention to the prevailing understanding of women in the church, then you are marked as "disrupting the peace and purity of the church." In the end, I was told to be quiet and not offer my thoughts. It is my understanding that in the PCA, women cannot bring change because of how women are viewed. It really is a catch 22.
Thank you, Jen, for seeing and caring so deeply about abuse. I am so sorry for all that you experienced and are still experiencing as a result of the sin against you, compounded by neglect from those who should be busy healing souls, not damaging them. Part of my journey has led me to distance myself from the formal tradition and yet speak to its poor understanding of women from the outside in the ways God leads me. When I study and write, God feeds my soul with the thesis as I speak against the antithesis I find in the Reformed tradition. God will lead you. Patience doesn’t necessarily mean silence. Patience for me means focusing on the hope set before me, that there is a day coming when the culture of heaven will be my forever home. I am longing for that, even as I work for the church here to mirror the church there.
Thank you Anna for your kind responses. Thank you for caring.