Home > Work > The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
41 " He argues that an orderly family structure in which wives submit only “to their own husbands” and fathers serve as a “visible sign of responsibility” makes life better for everyone.12 "
― Beth Allison Barr , The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
42 " My modern students balk at how Babylonian law allowed husbands to drown their wives for alleged adultery, but my students are also living in the state of Texas in which women make up 94 percent of the victims in domestic partner murder-suicides — not to mention the United States in which almost 25 percent of women have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner. "
43 " In her groundbreaking article, "The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in Afro-American Biblical Interpretation," Martin asks a provocative question: "How can black male preachers and theologians use a liberated hermeneutic while preaching and theologizing about slaves, but a literalist hermeneutic with reference to women?" I would like to ask the same question of white preachers and theologians. "
44 " Even though Dorothy Patterson had earned a master of theology (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary), a doctorate in ministry (Luther Rice Seminary), and a doctorate in theology (University of South Africa), she always introduced herself publicly as a wife and mother. "She was in her words, 'primarily a wife, mother, and homemaker,' with grandmother added in years to come," writes Flowers. "
45 " The heritage of Protestantism for women was deeply ambiguous," writes Roper. While it could have affirmed women’s spiritual equality with men, the Reformation instead ushered in a "renewed patriarchalism" that placed married women firmly under the headship of their husbands. "
46 " The Reformation world elevated marriage as the ideal state for women, and evangelicals, who identify strongly with the Reformation legacy, … have done the same — to the detriment of not only single women and working women but also married women. "
47 " Reformation theology should have set women free, but it didn’t. "
48 " The Reformation ushered in a theology about ecclesiastical leadership that, ironically, made evangelical women's rooms smaller. "
49 " The early modern world argued for women's exclusion on the basis of an emerging gender theology that emphasized differences between men and women rather than their spiritual sameness and on the basis of an expanded understanding of Pauline prescriptions and household codes. "
50 " While Paul's writings about women were known consistently throughout church history, it wasn't until the Reformation era that they began to be used systematically to keep women out of leadership roles. "
51 " The early modern English Bible was translated in a context that politically, legally, economically, and socially obscured women behind the identities of their husbands and fathers. "
52 " The emphasis on masculine language continued throughout English bibles until Zondervan's attempt to restore gender-inclusive language to the text. From this perspective, gender-inclusive language isn't distorting Scripture. Gender-inclusive language is restoring Scripture from the influence of certain English Bible translations. "
53 " The English Bible translated more than Hebrew text; it also translated early modern English ideas about marriage into biblical text, as well as a "falsely universal language" that excluded women. "
54 " I kept telling myself that no church was perfect. And that the best way to change a system was by working from within it. So I stayed in the system and I stayed silent. "
55 " The early twentieth-century emphasis on inerrancy went hand in hand with a wide-ranging attempt to build up the authority of male preachers at the expense of women. "