Women in Theological Studies: Some Honest Questions

I'm a little nervous about writing this...but, darn it, it's been bugging me. I've been sitting on this post for several days, thinking how best to articulate it.

It isn't something I've encountered face-to-face, but in the corners of the internet I frequent, I've occasionally run into an attitude that's something like this: A woman doesn't need to pursue an advanced degree in Theology in order to teach children and other women.

I can't tell if this is somewhat misogynistic, simply an ill-considered remark, or if it may have a grain of truth.

It seems there are two issues here.

First, if my primary calling is going to be in the home, with children, why go through all this higher education? It's an awful lot of time and energy spent that could well turn out to have been wasted. But, it seems to me that, if you go down this route, it isn't too long before you hit the question, "Why should a woman bother to be educated at all?" Even if you concede that a basic liberal arts education helps make her a well-rounded human being (and I am very much a proponent of reading/learning for its own sake, degrees or no), it takes for granted that she will never be called to exercise gifts outside of the domestic setting. (Or that, far more practically, circumstances may force her to help support her family financially, whether that is her preference or not.) Presumably, even if she puts her career on hold while her children are small (something I would be nothing but grateful to have the opportunity to do), she will not need to devote most of her waking hours to them for the rest of her life. There may be other vocations alongside of or joined to her work in the home.

Second, the issue of theological education.

Lately, I've felt like I go to bat for my tradition every day in my graduate department, and sometimes feel a bit kicked around for belonging to that tradition. And I talk all the time about wanting my scholarship to be devoted to the service of the church and in submission to it. So, I've assumed that when push comes to shove, when I'm on the job market, my denomination/etc. will have my back. But occasionally I wonder if there is really a place for me, as someone who will never be ordained, to have a call to teach theological subjects. I wonder if, even if no one is ever hostile to my training, even nothing but admiring, they'll admit that there is no natural place for a woman with my resume within the tradition. And maybe there isn't. And maybe that's right.

Maybe theological teaching, even on the undergraduate level, is best left to the ordained officers of the church. I can see how there may be a case for this. If I sought jobs in institutions closer to my own confession, my guess is (I don't know for sure) that this is what I would run into. If I'm open to working at a more broadly evangelical institution, like my husband's alma mater (and I see that as a good, live option...except, would I be subject to the discipline and accountability of the church in any concrete way in that scenario? another question...), then it might be less of an issue. As far as what I can do on the local church and denominational level throughout my career, though, will it have to be mostly circumscribed to women's ministry? (And please know that I am not knocking women's ministry. It's just not a world that is familiar to me -- though that's changing -- much less something I am trained for. I'm not even all that interested in studying "women's issues" in my graduate research!)

In short, the question I am asking is: Is there really a place for conservative/traditional/confessional women in theological academia? I am a product of environments where this was not an issue, and I chose to sink years of training into this path without imagining that a scenario would come up where that would be called into question. Now that I am in a position where I can foresee it being an issue, even if only in isolated circumstances, I am struggling with how to think about it.

Maybe it's entitlement and pride talking. I am quite aware of entitlement as one of my pitfalls; the attitude that, just because I've worked hard for something, means I "deserve" the kind of position and sphere of influence I've envisioned for myself. I don't think that's a correct attitude with which to approach any service to the church. So if what I end up doing looks quite different from being on faculty at a Christian college, I want to be gladly open to that. (I mean, heck, these particular issues aside, there is no guarantee that I will end up doing the kind of work I envision. Zero. There are few jobs and MANY gifted young scholars who are more accomplished than me.) Besides, as I have said before, what I am most excited about doing is writing...and that's not contingent upon my being hired anywhere.

I really do believe in God's sovereign plan, that when he put me on this path (long before I imagined I'd end up Reformed!), there was a specific reason. (And I don't think I've made flagrant errors in discernment by doing what I'm doing.) And I believe that what we do for Him isn't wasted. Even if we never have results that look successful by worldly standards, it won't have been wasted. Ultimately, it's all for His glory, not mine.

I don't think that venting about such things on the internet is necessarily the most fruitful way to seek answers. So I'm open to carrying on this discussion "off-blog," in fact hopeful that will be the case. In the meantime, I hope it's clear that these thoughts are offered in humility. I write this not as a challenge, but a sincere (if slightly anxious) inquiry. I honestly can't imagine a part of the church I could more joyfully, unreservedly be a part of.

Amish

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Amish. I think it had a lot to do with the clothes--I loved the dresses and headcoverings (I still think the traditional caps are pretty). It also had to do with Little House on the Prairie and my ardent conviction that I had been born about 120 years past my time.

When I got older, high school and maybe a bit into college, I developed an interest in actual Anabaptist theology and wondered if the answer to my denominational confusion perhaps lay in the Mennonite church. I never pursued that, however, and eventually realized that this was just another form of the same romantic view of the Amish and "plain" lifestyle I'd had as a kid.

Even though I'm now happy not to be Amish, I was intrigued to stumble across this blog in the past week. What's as interesting as the author's Amish background is the narrative arc, rather unusual for a blog. You can't jump straight to the story of how she and her husband eventually left the Amish community,  no matter how impatient you are to find out why. (I suppose one could, but the post titles don't always make it obvious what she's going to talk about; and each time I've tried to skip to "the meaty stuff," I've felt mildly rebuked...!) Most entries recount some memory of her upbringing, roughly chronological but not rigidly so. While she occasionally does posts responding to direct questions about the Amish, I think that to truly appreciate the blog, it's best to start at the beginning and gradually work your way forward. Which is what I've been doing, a little bit at a time, over the past few evenings.

Anyway, I share the link because I figured some of my friends might be interested. Needless to say, it's a departure from the somewhat haphazard, distractible way I usually read the internet! It helps that she's a good writer. Though she clearly had reasons for leaving her childhood faith, she writes so warmly of her upbringing, without idealizing it.

Theology Thursday: Dwelling in Christ's Wounds

I had the notion that, once a week or so, I might share a quotation from something I've been reading-- something that's especially touched my heart as well as my mind. I'm sure I won't be at all consistent about this, and that, on the weeks I do manage to post something, half the time it will not actually be Thursday! At any rate, I'll keep you guessing. :-)

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This week, I've been reading some of the sermons of Samuel Rutherford (1600ish-1661), a Scottish Presbyterian minister. If you are not familiar with Rutherford's writings, you should be! But I'll leave you to Google if you are so inclined. For now, an excerpt from his 1630 sermon, "Christ and the Dove's Heavenly Salutations," preached at the little parish of Anwoth, in the southwest of Scotland.

Rutherford is preaching on Song of Solomon 2:14: "O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely."
Allegorically, he interprets the dove as the church (us), and the clefts of the rock as the wounds of Christ, in which we dwell by faith:

God has made holes and windows in Christ that his Doves may flee into, and make their nest in his Heart. O Dear and Precious Dwelling; The Lodging cost us nothing, yet we are desired to dwell in it. Now what is Christ's Petition? Cause Me to hear thy Voice. It's ordinary for man to beg from God, for we be but his beggars; but it is a miracle to see God beg at man; yet here is the Potter begging from the clay; the Saviour seeking from sinners. [What does he ask?] It must be some Great Thing; it is even a sight of his Bride; He is even saying to her, "My dear Spouse, be kind to Me, let me see thy Face; be not [bashful] and wavering; be plain with me, your Husband; tell me all your mind in Prayer, I delight to hear your lisping and hisping and speaking to me in Prayer." Ye may see all the wooing comes on Christ's side of it; she cannot hold up her face, or let one love-blink on Christ, but as He commands her, and wakens her up...

Have you ever thought of yourself as dwelling in Jesus' heart? Or that he passionately delights to look on you and hear your prayers? Rutherford portrays Christ as being the one who "woos" us, who longs for us and pursues us, before we have the ability to cling to Him, or even lift our eyes to Him.

academic growing pains

It's been awhile since I've written anything on here, I know. It's not because things haven't been happening, but because I can't think of too many different ways to say, "This semester is really difficult and I want it to be over." Especially ways that don't sound like bitterness and whining.

While I couldn't have imagined saying it even last year, I am tired of coursework. Syllabi no longer excite me as they did for so many semesters of my academic life. Rather than possibility, they've come to represent long lists of obligations, imposed by someone else, that will require me to expend energy in multiple directions instead of settling down to one or two big tasks. This semester I'm learning that not every professor understands what realistic demands look like. Others are more merciful, actually suspending class for a month so that you can devote the additional hours to producing a publishable paper. For the latter type, I'm quite grateful. Either way, I am looking forward to being out from under such direct guidance.

I also look forward to not having to show up for seminars each week. Nothing else drains me quite like struggling to articulate things to contribute to discussion, fighting for opportunities to actually say them, and then the letdown when I haven't been well understood. Sometimes the atmosphere is truly collegial, and I have gotten better at navigating these things, but often it's a pain, with more anxiety poured into it than turns out to have been remotely worth it. I also find myself disagreeing with one or two of my professors more than usual, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but produces its own form of angst that I haven't enjoyed putting up with on a weekly basis.

I'm not as unhappy as this probably makes it sound. (Though I do have at least one meltdown each week. Especially Sundays; Sundays are bad.) I'm just coming to the realization that I have to write approximately 60 pages in a little more than a month, which would feel impossible enough if two of my classes weren't asking for additional work in the meantime. And it's not the writing I dread; it's figuring out what any of these papers are actually about that's the hard part. Not to mention reading 20+ books by April, well enough that I can pass an examination on them, so that I can be officially liberated from the coursework phase of my program. But I probably won't have the luxury of panicking about that until Christmas break...

the class Calvinist: a historian's (?) dilemma.

In my (too many) years in higher education, I haven't yet been in an environment where I felt completely at home in the school's mainstream. I've already talked about that on this blog, with reference to Yale. I think it's somewhat true at my current school, too. But what I'm particularly thinking of is my Reformation class. I think part of the weirdness is that it is a history class, in the history department, so people are not necessarily asking theological questions all the time. I'm not sure how to negotiate that difference.

But, today, when we were discussing parts of Richard Baxter's A Christian Directory of Practical Divinity (a great text, by the way), I found the drift of the conversation really odd. Baxter was an English Puritan pastor, and in this work, he's advising pastors on how to care for church members who suffer from a "melancholic" personality. It's quite interesting reading. But the argument that got raised in class was, "Well, no wonder Protestants got depressed. Catholics can do something about their salvation, but when you're Protestant, it's all about your faith." There seemed to be a consensus that Protestantism (at least in the early generations of Reformers) is sort of gloomily introspective and subjective whereas Catholicism is concrete and active and good for the less theologically inclined common people.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that I go to a Catholic university. Especially in the history department, one's personal affiliation doesn't get brought into discussion so much. But I still felt the pressure of being (as far as I know) the class's only Presbyterian, or at least known to my classmates as someone who's working on Reformed topics in my research. Obviously, I disagree with that sweeping assessment of Protestantism. One of the chief joys of my faith is that it is not purely subjective. It's not about my ability to believe in Christ, but about Him, and the means of grace given through Word and sacrament. And yes, there is a subjective aspect to my reception of those things. How could there not be? And why must that be bad? Ultimately, I know that it's not about me (or at least, that's the thing I am struggling to learn!).

I'm not making this post a Catholic versus Protestant thing, understand. I'm just thinking about the weirdness of my position -- like, to what degree is it appropriate for me to try to "defend" my faith in this particular context? Do I need to? The discussion was not, at least on the surface, about the theological validity of one position over the other. To be honest, my instinct is to try to let these things roll off my back because it isn't a context where apologetics feel appropriate (and I am bad at apologetics anyway. I can tell you about my faith, but if you expect tidy, well-thought-out argumentation, you'll be pretty disappointed; it isn't my gift). I don't think I have to feel offended or defensive.

Sometimes, it does get to me, I admit. More in a tiring way than an angering one. I dislike being forever on the defensive, and I don't think it's a very healthy posture. Sometimes, though, I wish I felt less like an odd,  half-mythical critter being studied as a historical curiosity, and more like a person who actually believes the stuff.

Don't get the impression that it's a hostile environment, because it isn't. And I bet I'd be surprised to learn who else feels that way, if from a slightly different standpoint. (And let's be honest, there's likely no learning environment that is fully "safe" in this way...)

My Husband!

I just wanted to express a few words of appreciation for my wonderful husband this evening, as well as to give a promised update on some of his recent doings.

• As of about a month ago, he is working part-time as an IT coordinator at our church. He seems to enjoy the position a great deal, as it's giving him a chance to develop his computer skills, work in an enjoyable environment, and balance out his schedule with something besides academia. I'm really proud of him -- and also very thankful this opportunity opened up at a point when we were hardly expecting it.
• He is also taking the initial steps towards ordained ministry. There's still a lot that's up in the air about this, since he's not taking the traditional route that most ministers-in-training take. But I've seen him (and us, as a household) kind of growing in this direction over the past few years, so I'm excited for whatever the Lord may have for us in this area. I can really see him being a wonderful pastor as well as a professor!
• He just turned 29. We had a quiet birthday celebration at home, per his request, though my main gift for him was very exciting... as it was a book titled Paradigms in Polity: Classic Readings in Reformed and Presbyterian Church Government, that should tell you something about our life!

He's really an amazing support for me. He knows how to help me talk through and prioritize when I'm feeling overwhelmed by school obligations, and he makes me feel loved no matter what. It's difficult to imagine how I would get through this without him. But whatever ends up happening career-wise for either of us, I'm happy we'll be navigating it together.

Mary, marriage, and being Protestant...beginnings of thoughts.

I don't have any great insights here, but I've lately had a couple different occasions to think about Protestant women in history and what it means to be a Protestant woman today. And I'm using "Protestant" advisedly versus, say, "evangelical" or just "Christian."

For one, my husband recently participated in a men's retreat that focused on the masculinity of Jesus and in what ways it's applicable to Christian men today. I am not very familiar with the world of women's ministry, I admit. But much of what I've come across under the category of "biblical womanhood" takes Paul as the starting-point, and while that's good, I wonder if there are books out there, or if there've been retreats/conferences, that focus on women in the New Testament and how they are models for us (or not)? Specifically Mary. It seems one does hear a lot about Mary and Martha of Bethany, but I'm having a harder time calling to mind materials that focus on our Lord's mother. And actually, I think it would be very interesting to look at the figure of Mary from a particularly Protestant perspective, and how she might speak to our lives of faith. I don't doubt there is much that could be said (and perhaps has been). Like I said, I'm not familiar enough to know.

Of course, it's a little different because, well, no woman in Scripture lived her life without sin. But whether we're women or men, we have Christ to look to for that...

I won't say I don't have more questions about it all. This gender stuff does get complicated.

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Speaking of, in seminar today, we were discussing Luther's writings on marriage and early modern views of gender more broadly construed. This is not my major period of study, but the recent "scholarly consensus" seems to be that the Protestant Reformation was a raw deal for the ladies. That is, the Reformers took away devotion to Mary and other female saints, and they got rid of convents, where women could exercise certain degrees of autonomy and leadership and had the choice not to marry and bear children. By contrast, the domestic household and Protestant churches offered relatively few options and leadership roles for women. Needless to say, I have some...quibbles with this thesis. Most of them, I suspect, wouldn't tend to be taken very seriously. And, as I said, this is not the era I primarily study, and I don't have the energy to do a big project on women in the early generations of Reformers. But it almost makes me wish I did.