Misogyny in the Bible: a summary
Facing the misogyny of the Bible honestly: Part Eight
This is the last in my series, looking at the elephant in the room of misogyny in the Bible that people generally don’t talk about.
So there is our elephant. I did warn you. It’s not a nice elephant. The Bible is not a pleasant book to read if you don’t choose to ignore the blatant sexism and misogyny that screams from its pages.
Researching and writing the material in this series was an emotional experience. It’s not that I hadn’t known what’s in the Bible; it’s that I hadn’t sat down and confronted all of it at once. I was shocked by just how angry I felt. And how grief-stricken. For a while, I wasn’t great company.
At one point, I had a conversation about it all with a friend. Perhaps not a great idea to talk about the thing that was making me spitting mad while I was still feeling spitting mad. But there you go. I think he found my level of anger and indignation slightly alarming.
Predictably, he sent me a whole series of links to Christian blogs and articles, all explaining why, read properly, the Bible is not sexist at all.
As I flicked through the stuff he’d sent me, with quite a bit of head shaking and eye-rolling, I became aware that I was reading the stuff I had been using for years to explain why I believed that it’s wrong to use the Bible as an excuse for gender discrimination. And that my feminist reading of the Bible has actually prevented me from seeing the sexism in the Bible in all its inglorious technicolour.
Interestingly, it’s not the obviously difficult passages that have bothered me the most. It’s the complete lack of significant, authentic female voices. The cultural sexism that runs like a poisonous underground river through the whole library of the Bible, popping up now and again in toxic springs but colouring the whole thing. I am mourning the fact that the voices of women in biblical times have not been preserved for us.
We have lost their stories. We will never get to sing their songs or sit at their feet and hear their wisdom. This has been the lot for women through the centuries. It’s a tragedy that right now is breaking my heart.
My friend told me that it would all be fine if I read the Bible in the company of the Holy Spirit because then I would understand God’s loving intent. Imagine, he said, that your friend Jenny, in the course of a conversation, told you that you were foolish. If you didn’t know her well, if you couldn’t see the gleam in her eye, you might be hurt and offended. But if you knew she was kidding around, you wouldn’t be hurt, you’d enjoy the banter.
But that’s kind of my point. The “Jenny is nice, really” argument would work if there was the occasional bit of misogyny in the context of a text that was generally egalitarian. You can explain the odd incident, the occasional conversation. But if the insult is part of a consistent pattern of behaviour, it becomes harder to brush off. If Jenny ignores and belittles you every chance she gets and throws a petrol bomb through your front window every second Tuesday, it won’t be long before you stop giving her the benefit of the doubt.
If you’ve ever had friends tell you that they think Christianity is sexist and oppressive to women, and you’ve wondered how they could come to that conclusion, well, now you know. The truth is that almost every issue of gender-based violence, discrimination and injustice that still afflicts women around the globe can be found in the pages of scripture. Not roundly condemned but just there. As if this kind of thing is normal and to be expected.
And it is entirely appropriate to think that this is not OK. Grief and anger are appropriate responses. In fact, I don’t think we can be people of justice and hold the view that the way women are treated and ignored throughout the Bible can be justified. When I read the way women are treated and ignored throughout the Bible, I take it as a rallying cry to make sure we seek justice and don’t perpetuate those attitudes and that kind of behaviour.
So what do we do about the fact that all this stuff turns up in our holy book? The one that’s meant to bring us solace and guidance with our morning coffee? How do you read the Bible and stay sane?
This is what I am planning to explore next. Spoiler alert. I think you can.
But I would suggest there are some better and some worse ways of approaching this challenge. Of course, gender discrimination isn’t the only difficult thing we find in the Bible. There is also quite a bit of violence and genocide. Learning how to read the Bible intelligently will help us with those bits too.
If you’re interested in this series and would like to start at the beginning:
If you want to discover the beautiful, feminine imagery of God in the Bible, you might like to have a look at my previous series, which starts here:
If you enjoyed this, you might like my Loved Called Gifted podcast, available on most podcast platforms, or you can find it here.
I offer spiritual direction and coaching. The Loved Called Gifted course, available online and in person, will help you to discover your life calling. Discover these things and other bits and pieces on my website.
