We need the strengths of women just as much as we need the strengths of men. When women's strengths -- such as dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality -- aren't seen as necessary and valuable to the life of the church, and given freedom to be exercised -- the church suffers.
If men and women really are different, then the tendencies of women have an important "fleshing out" role to play in the life of the church. Our proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, hospitality aren't things to be afraid of and corralled into narrow limits, but important balancing factors to men's proclivities for confrontation, wall-building, aggression. I don't mind at all calls for the "masculinization": of the church - but people seem to forget in the mix that, just because the church needs a strong masculine element, this doesn't mean it doesn't need a strong feminine element as well. That the absence of "feminization" is just as much a problem as the absence of "masculinization." I have problems when "masculine" elements are associated with "good", and "feminine" with "bad." I have problems with it being fine and good for the life of the church when men are men -- but bad and damaging to the life of the church when women are women.
When our tendencies aren't valued, we have to become like men to get heard. And that's just not good for anyone.
It's much like John Henry Newman's view of education and reality. If we only get the ethicist's + chemist's perspectives on reality, we get a skewed and incomplete picture of the world. We need all disciplines and "ways of knowing" to contribute to the image. Likewise...if there really is a root difference between men and women, and if we only get the perspective of men on things, we've got a skewed and incomplete picture of reality. If men and women ARE truly different in how they approach and understand and value things in life -- and if those "ways of knowing" are indeed both necessary and important (equal, even?) -- if it is "not good that man should be alone" -- then kicking out (or treating as second-rate) what the women have to say on things gives us only a partial picture that will be eventually disastrous.
I just want my work to be seen as valuable and important, not dangerous. I want my proclivities for dialog, communication, bridge-building, and hospitality to be respected and valued as necessary aspects of the life of the church, in a necessary tension with more "masculine" proclivities. I damn well WANT to be a woman - but it's rather difficult when everything feminine and womanly is looked upon with suspicion as "unchristian" and "syncretic" and "weakening to the doctrine and life of the church." It's very difficult when, in one's life and theology, one has to act like a man to be seen as a true Christian, a defender of the faith, and "like Christ."
Of course we need aggression and defense and firm-standing and who knows what else. But give those free reign unchecked and unbalanced, an you'll have problems.
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