Rebalancing the Canoe

LIFE group has been a very interesting experience for me this year.  The reason for this is that my current LIFE group is made up of mostly guys.  I come from a very “feminine” background in that both my siblings are girls and my mother plays a very influential role in my life.  To add to that, up until this point I had been leading all-women’s groups back in Ann Arbor for quite some time.  Therefore, coming from a background of interacting closely with a lot of women to leading this year’s LIFE group has indeed been eye-opening.

Essentially, what this experience has taught me is that I can learn a great deal from men.  First, I am learning to utilize reason and exercise clear judgement instead of allowing the intensity of my emotions to take over.  Second, I am learning to communicate exactly what I mean instead of depending on nonverbal cues to get my message across.  Third, I am learning how to have thicker skin.  By this I mean that I often tend to read into all the communication that is taking place, whether direct or indirect, verbal or nonverbal, real or abstract.  As a result, I tend to tiptoe around the truth that if arrived at by a more direct route, could prove to be quite refreshing.

The final lesson, which I think men can’t really teach women, but nonetheless is crucial for Christian women to learn, is that if we as Christian women cannot respect the unique design in which God created men, we are doing them a tremendous disservice.  More specifically, the kind of evangelical culture that has been shaped and promoted by our culture has resulted in a feminized version of Christianity.  In her book, “My Brother’s Keeper” Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen provides a sociological perspective on the feminization of Evangelical church culture:

Religion was largely removed from the public domain because it too was seen as representing self-denial, emotionality and a world of faith rather than facts.  The result, not surprisingly, is that religion came to be seen as a feminine, not a masculine, pursuit.  Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, white protestant churches more and more became enclaves for women’s activities, and the masculinity of churchgoing men in general, and pastors in particular, came to be somewhat culturally suspect.

What the author is suggesting, is that as men’s roles and self-concept became more and more tied to the public sector and their and their capacity to provide for their families through their professions outside the home, women became more and more tied to their role as primary manager of the private domain or the hearth.  At the same time, there was a growing schism between sacred and secular and eventually, religion became associated with the private domain.  As main proponents of the private domain, women in essence began to shape church culture.  Add to this, the different waves of the women’s movements which attempted to balance out the gender inequality rampant in the public domain.  I agree readily, that this is not a bad thing.  I believe that hegemony of any kind should be held under strict accountability because “absolutely power corrupts absolutely.”  However, if the movement to restore gender equality has become tied with the politics of sexism and in its most extreme form, misandry (hatred of males), then we need to seriously consider what it’s going to take to rebalance the canoe.  The sad fact is that we as Christian women have brought in aspects of this perspective into biblical community.

I need to ask myself whether I am playing a healthy role in raising godly men in our church.  Granted that men do need to take up their mantle and begin to take steps in learning how to lead and take responsibility as servant-leaders.  I also need to understand how my strength or my capacity to harness my personal power affects the capacity for men to step up to the plate.  In other words, am I emasculating in anyway or on the flip side am I smothering?  Difficult questions to be sure and I can’t help wondering whether I do indeed have some sort of responsibility as a woman to reorder any feminized aspects of church culture.

So what can we do as women to play a part in the rebalancing of the canoe?  Consider how we use our words to benefit or harm our Christian brothers.  More specifically, when we cut down or criticize a guy in public, we are attacking not only their personhood but we are shaming them in front of others as well.  As women, let’s use our language and our God-given gifts and talents to support and inspire the brothers in our lives to lead.  Whether it is by providing support, by encouraging or by allowing them to lead, we can and should take steps to allow our fellowship to be more and more glorifying to God.