THE FEMINIZATION OF THE CHURCH----PART ONE

I'm going to address an issue with an adapted post from a few years back. It will take two posts to say all I which to say about the feminization of the church.


The "feminization" of the Church is a much discussed topic today. David Murrow has written a very popular book entitled "Why Men Hate Going To Church" and Christianity Today reported that an earlier book by Leon Podles, a Senior Editor at Touchstone Magazine, entitled "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity," has been featured by the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. 


You can see the subject is taken quite seriously in many quarters today. The CT report stated that some groups are seeking to remedy the problem with attempts at increasing female clergy and even producing gender-neutral bibles and hymns of all things.  


Well, is the Church being "feminized?" If so, has this resulted in men having little to do with Church life as many people claim? Like most issues, there is no simple or easy answer to those questions. That said, I have a perspective that I hope will help our thinking on this matter. 


But I first have to say that, in discussing subjects such as this, definitions are everything.


I remember witnessing to a teenager one time years ago. I recall asking him a simple question. [At least it was simple to me.]  I asked, "Have you ever been saved?" [Coded language of my generation you understand.] His answer was "oh yes." I was SO pleased. I then asked him to tell me about it. His response was, "I was going under the third time in a river and my brother pulled me out." [He was dead serious...excuse the pun.] 


Needless to say a few definitions were in order for him to understand what I was talking about and I promptly delivered them with a wonderful result of comprehension when those definitions were properly understood. I'm thinking definitions may be as much the problem in our questions on the "feminization" of the Church today as they were to that boy years ago.


For example, if by "feminization" is meant that you will find more women involved in Church life when gathered than you do men, I would have to agree. But I don't know that that is a problem. It seems to me that's been true of the church all along. Even in the NT the women were involved with the person of Jesus in many more ways than were men at times. The tomb situation, the Cross moment, the teaching and washing of Jesus feet are all illustrations of that fact. [Not many men mentioned in those moments.]

That, however, could be more a testimony to the courage of women as a gender and their ability to face the prospect of pain than anything else. Following Jesus often brought pain [and still may in many quarters] and women have shown their endurance ability for pain quite well in child bearing. Men will never experience that, for obvious reasons, and will, if wise, concede the point that women may be stronger than are men where pain is concerned. [That's just a thought.]


Some might mean by the "feminization of the Church" that men, as a gender, are less likely to be involved where relationships are concerned or small groups are being created because men don't talk  or show emotions/feelings as much as do women. But, if that's what is meant, I'm wondering if that might not be an unhealthy generalization based on a false premise. [Perhaps even as my own generalization in the preceding paragraph about pain might be taken as an unproven one also.]


I must say, I've always been suspicious of categorizing men and women with certain assumed gender characteristics as if they were absolutes anyway. You've heard it said of women that they love to shop but men hunt. The difference? Women "look and look and love the looking." With men it is.."I see..I shoot..[buy] I go home." At the risk of destroying any perceptions about Mary and me, [those who know us well know this to be true] Mary is the one who sees..shoots..[and would rather see and shoot [buy] off the Internet] and goes home. I, on the other hand, love to look and look whether I buy or not.. be it cars.. clothes..or garage sales. So, I'm thinking gender characterizations may not be helpful when speaking to this kind of question about the church either.

Then there is the thought that by "feminization" of the Church is meant a diluting of the message of Christ into an easy believism. In other words, the message of commitment and sacrifice is lost and a "feel good" message is being presented and accepted in our day and that turns men off. This is sometimes identified as "psycho-babble" which is a Siamese twin to "feminization" in the minds of many. The assumption here is that women will fall for "easy believism," [as evidenced, I guess, by Eve's proneness to deception] but men don't and most likely won't. They need an "Onward Christian Soldiers' message because that's the male mentality. 

But I would like to ask someone, if this is a fact, why the meetings of the TV preachers, many of whom I believe have diluted the message, are being attended by multitudes of people which, if my TV shows a correct picture, includes tons of MEN in those meetings. Where, of all things, there is the raising of hands, the shedding tears, the closing of eyes, and a singing of "loving Jesus with everything in me." Am I to assume those guys are ONLY "girly men" and no real men are present at all? [I'm being factitious here.]

I think it is part of our fallen nature and the flesh to be drawn to the big, sometimes easy, sometimes feel good, gatherings where a person may not be called upon to give a whole lot in terms of sacrifice. [Not that all those gatherings are that.] I do see a lot of "easy believism" happening all over in Church life today, but it isn't just the women doing it. I think MOST OF US may be falling into that trap in the present day if we cared to examine closely. 

We COULD get men together, if we want to, by emphasizing real "manly things" like hunting, fishing, [though I know women who love those things and men who don't] and singing triumphant songs with soldier lyrics, but we could still wind up with a big, sometimes easy, sometimes feel good gathering, that doesn't cost us a whole lot in terms of a sacrificial kind of thing at all. We will have just changed the content of the gathering.


The REAL problem with this "feminization of the Church" thing is perhaps far beyond any one of these ideas mentioned so far. What is the real problem? I think we have no genuine, satisfactory, biblical idea of what the Church and her life really is about, so we see something that appears to attract women and repel men and call it the Church and assume we've "feminized" the Church. 


I think it may be that were we to "masculinize" [made up word] the Church, we wouldn't solved our real problem either. So, again, what is our problem? One more time_____


I don't think we adequately__biblically__ understand in our day__what the Church really is.


What do I mean? Next time we'll see.


Paul B.