The battle for Evangelical boobs
With #DearBrian, a religion is at civil war over cleavage
On February 7th, a pastor named Brian Sauvé tweeted that God wants women to stop posting photos of their breasts to social media.
The tweet “broke Twitter,” as they say, seen some 30 million times, with about as many replies. It was covered in world newspapers. American Evangelicals were again battling over God’s views on cleavage.
Women — Christian or not — posted replies.
The defiant hashtag #DearBrian sprang to life. Directed to Sauvé, the tweets often included vulgar talk and semi-clothed photos.
The women making replies were often triggered and emotional—re-living trauma associated with weight loss, birthing, and religious control.
There were efforts to engage Sauvé theologically, with many women offering a different reading of the Bible:
“God made women’s bodies. Titties and all. If you have a problem staring, I believe Jesus told men like you to gouge your eyes out. Problem solved.”
It was a Battle of the Sexes — Evangelical style.
The insults were flying fast and furious. Sauvé’s personal appearance came in for a lot of scrutiny:
“Why is it always the butt ugly men who feel they need to publicly police women?”
I’m not sure I’d see Sauvé as ‘butt ugly’. But as attractiveness is personal power, he was being told he is powerless—by people flustered by his tweet.
Was #DearBrian the #MeToo of Evangelical sex shaming?
Sheila Gregoire, the sex teacher, wanted to think so, tweeting out a barnburner of a sermon:
“We’ve been blamed for men’s sin, made to feel invisible. From now on, when men say these things, we will know, ‘that is not a safe man.’”
In situations like this, Beth Moore, the queen of Evangelical social media, would be expected to have a sprightly reply, but she seemed off her game. She posted a reply to Sauvé, then deleted it.
She tried again, next positioning herself as a Bible teacher. In context, this is edgy enough, since Evangelical women are widely held to not be able even to speak in church. But as she points out, this wasn’t church. This is Twitter — the new space where the ‘people of God’ can speak to each other.
She offered that the key Bible term in play, the word “modest,” had been misunderstood.
What it meant, she tweeted, is “self-exhibition.”
So God hates that?
Sauvé was pleased to have drawn out the famous Beth Moore.
As he tweeted updates, he called her a “dangerous false teacher.” Many Christian men in his comments were pleased to see his success.
But Moore had more to say. In a new take, she profiled Sauvé as a generic Christian man, with all the mental problems associated with the role. She tweets:
“I’m not a fan of immodesty. What I am is simply completely creeped out by hyper fundamentalist dudes objectifying women and telling women in detail how not to dress in pictures so that we unrighteous crudes don’t make these righteous dudes stumble.”
She shifted suddenly into her story of leaving the Evangelical world and becoming Anglican—a subject she has not acknowledged publicly, except now for this:
“As some of you try to spread around how much I have changed, please keep this in view: my faith in Jesus & my love for Scripture haven’t changed 1 iota. My faith in hyperfundamentalist men has. I’ve seen what I cannot unsee in the last 5 yrs. I just simply no longer believe you.”
But is Sauvé ‘hyperfundamentalist’?
Though a pastor of a small church in Ogden, Utah, in his early 30s, his larger interest seems to be launching himself as a Christian CCM artist. He has several self-produced albums and a Patreon account.
A biography at his church’s website reports he has “a Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies.” Such a degree would indicate a liberal arts education with some emphasis on the Bible, as typically given by a Christian college.
But he did not go to seminary. He has no training to be a pastor.
Where did Sauvé go to school? He doesn’t say. I find the local newspaper of Ogden, Utah quoting him in a feature story in 2010, calling him a “WSU philosophy major and aspiring musician.”
He studied philosophy at a state school?
If that is true, then his reference to his education is deceptive. He has no Christian education.
It appears that he founded a non-denominational Evangelical church, and set himself up as a pastor. Was it a concert venue? He keeps up a career as a professional musician. His tagline is that he is “creating music for the new Christendom.”
Other than his famous tweet, he’s obscure.
I looked again at the tweet that brought religious sex-shaming back into the minds of millions. Was it an ad for his music?
And they were making it all up.
This is the part that, when I was growing up Evangelical, I would not have understood. For all the enormous effort to regulate the display of women’s mammaries, the Bible has nothing to say about that subject.
No Old Testament law calls for women to conceal their breasts. Even Jewish communities that heavily promote female concealment acknowledge it is “not mentioned in the Bible.”
In the Bible, actually, female breasts are presented as highly beautiful, as in the Song of Songs, a dialogue between lovers:
“Your breasts are perfect;
they are twin deer
feeding among lilies.”
God is known in reference to women’s breasts.
The divine name ‘El Shaddai’, means “the breasted one.” The breasts are clearly seen as a sacred image.
The New Testament, like the Old Testament, has no interest in concealing women’s bodies. The rare comment that Jesus makes about ‘clothes’, in Matthew 6:25, is to not “worry” about them.
And does Christianity only apply to Western women? Many women in traditional cultures throughout the world go bare-breasted. Is God attacking these people for living less clothed?
Evangelicals know of such women, but ignore them because they’re women of color. The religion—willfully racist—thinks of white, middle-class America as the basic reference point for the Bible.
They erase the many times women’s breasts are seen in the Bible.
As one example: Early Christians did baptisms fully naked, so when Lydia is baptized in Acts 16:15, her breasts are visible.
Even Christian art has often included images of Mary nursing baby Jesus, with her breast portrayed.
The Evangelical case that God wants breasts concealed is a single word used once in the Bible.
In 1 Timothy 2:9, the apostle Paul instructs that:
“…women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing…”
Christian men like to pretend this sets the terms for female fashion, as for them, the Bible is little more than a manual for how women are to be styled, presented, and made to ‘submit’.
But the Greek word aidós, translated ‘modest’, is not a word that refers to the public display of female bodies. “It literally means reverence, awe, or respect,” notes Christine Mitchell Havelock.
It’s a religious word.
But the context of 1 Timothy 2:9, as Bible scholars have documented for decades, is clearly a religious context.
If expecting this verse to be the apostle’s fashion advice, as we get into the details of the passage we find ourselves in an unexpected context: a struggle between early Christians and the devotees of the goddess Artemis.
The words of the verse, like an unusual word translated ‘braided’, were found in references to the priestesses of the temple to Artemis in Ephesus. These women had elaborate costumery known by these keywords:
“…braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing…”
The cult of Artemis was a big problem for early Christians.
That’s the story of Acts in chapter 19. In a letter to Timothy—in Ephesus—Paul adds advice for Christian women doing religious outreach: Don’t dress like devotees of Artemis.
Rather, Paul says, be clothed with awe.
We can read about the details in studies like Rick Strelan’s Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus, or Gary G. Hoag’s Wealth in Ancient Ephesus and the First Letter to Timothy — available for free on Scribd.
But Evangelicals only like the Bible they wrote.
It’s not logic. It’s religion.
As I read the #DearBrian episode, I see another goofy drama about cultural anxiety over female apparel. Women are ever torn between two poles: sexualizing for male fantasy, concealing to quell male jealousy.
And men use “God” to enforce their sexual interests. It’s the magic of being a Christian man—and a dynamic that leaves a lot of room for fraud. Along came an ex-philosopher singer-songwriter whose music hadn’t made it.
Brian Sauvé tried religion. And a star was born. 🔶
