8. Standing Against Cultural Misogyny: Assessing Ethnic Differences
standing against cultural misogyny
When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music.
KAREN BLIXEN, OUT OF AFRICA
Only ever so dimly did I catch the rhythm of Africa. And it was Kenya that captured my heart. Beginning in the 1980s, I had the good fortune of enrolling in cross-cultural courses in Kijabe. Actually, I was the teacher, though being a student was my goal. For each of four summers, I taught two courses at Moffat Bible College.
During that time, I learned far more than I taught my students. I credit that in part to my gender. In a short time, I was able to elicit students’ opinions on various subjects—more so than seasoned professors. African students, at least back then, were often hesitant to offer an opinion that differed from that of the professor, particularly if the professor was a white male missionary. But challenging a woman was far less threatening. And if she was egging them on with controversial views, they couldn’t resist the challenge. I might look back and regret that they did not accord me the same honor they accorded my male counterparts, but I don’t—and I have no regrets.
A missionary who had previously taught at the school told me I should not expect class interaction. He advised me to be prepared to lecture for the entire session. I panicked. That simply is not my style. What was I going to do? And then came that first class. I can still picture the classroom. The eighteen students stared wide-eyed, not knowing how to act with this white American lady standing in front of them. It was a first for both of us. The course was church history, and I started slowly but soon was asking questions that related to their own experience and culture. Had they experienced persecution or known people persecuted for their faith? The lecture related to the second-century bishop Polycarp, burned at the stake for refusing to deny his faith. Soon we were dealing with church councils. What about African church councils? I wanted to know. I hadn’t flown eight thousand miles just to listen to my own voice.
The class quickly livened up, especially as a Kikuyu or Kalenjin student might be arguing a point of Kenyan church history with a student from another tribe. And oh how often we all broke into laughter and into clucking, as they so endearingly did. I pushed and prodded. In fact, in this course and my other courses, we got into some very controversial topics. What about the ordination of women? So opposed were they to some of my ideas that they began ganging up on me. What fun! They were thinking aloud about certain issues for the first time, and I was having the time of my life.
That they argued strongly against women’s ordination in class was not a sufficient rebuttal for certain students. They were determined to aim their guns, not just at me, but at anyone I may have influenced in the whole school. And, of course, word of my positions on such issues had quickly spread.
On my last evening before flying home to Grand Rapids, the students put on an all-school program, singing all my favorite Swahili gospel songs and ending with a skit. One of my male students dressed in drag as a woman preacher—and not just that, but as a very pregnant woman preacher. Sure, she could preach and even win converts, as he adeptly demonstrated, but could she perform a baptism? Here was the crux of the matter. When she waddles down into the imaginary river to lower the hulking male convert into the water for baptism, she falls in and struggles with all her might to regain her footing, as well as her composure. The baptism is thwarted. To the howls of laughter, the case had been closed. A woman cannot be ordained to the ministry.
If I had the space, I would tell dozens of stories about my wonderful days in Kenya when I learned firsthand how different one culture is from another—and how different even one tribe is from another. I learned quickly how proper behavior in one culture can be seen as entirely inappropriate in another.
I was shocked, however, by how easily some of my male students defended wife beating—though, they insisted, only if the wives deserved it. But before I pronounce a blanket condemnation on Kenyan culture for wife beating (and the defense of it), it is important to acknowledge that they had their own means of dealing with such abuse. My students were quick to counter my strong opposition to any form of violence. They insisted that such discipline was not hurtful and that when the husband stepped over the line, the wife had a powerful recourse. She would tell her family, and her father and her brothers would go to her husband’s family and the matter would be settled. The husband would not dare to hit her again.
We might roll our eyes at such justice, but when it worked effectively, it may have been more efficient and effective than the American justice system was back in the 1980s when I was being beaten. Such family justice is cultural. It could rarely work in a typical Western culture where a young couple lives behind closed doors at a great distance from either side of the family. And Americans are secretive. A father would be the last person a young wife would likely tell about the abuse she was suffering.
One of the most memorable lessons on American attitudes toward privacy came years later when John and I were teaching a course at Saints Bible Institute in the Italian village of San Lorenzo. Sam Spatola, the founder and president, is warm and friendly, always eager to answer questions and show visitors around town. As we were out strolling the streets together one evening, he pointed out new construction and how difficult it was for the wealthy homeowner to put a large addition on his house without bumping into the houses on all sides of him, packed as they all were in less than an acre of land. Then he made an unrelated comment about this same man and pointed to a tract of land he owned a block away, separate from the village proper. I asked why the man didn’t simply build a new house in that very lovely, tree-lined setting. Sam, genuinely confused by my question, said what he thought should have been obvious: The man wanted to live in the village right next to everyone else.
Not in America. We don’t want to live right next to everyone else. If we’re rich, we purchase a large tract of land and build our big house at the end of a long paved driveway, trees shrouding us from potentially nosey neighbors.
Our worldviews, typically formed in a particular culture or subculture, function like a pair of glasses, and we often assume our way of seeing is the right way. But my cultural individualism is not the norm for others around the world. Nor is it true of biblical culture from beginning to end. Individualism rarely comes to the fore. Indeed, we can learn a lot about culture and cultural norms from Scripture.
The apostle Paul, more than any other biblical figure, is conscious of cultural considerations. He is, first and foremost, a missionary, and he travels far beyond his hometown of Tarsus, itself hardly a back-water, monocultural city. In fact, Tarsus boasted a large port and was one of the busiest trading centers on the Mediterranean Sea. If there was a missionary or missiologist today who surpassed Paul in the theory and practice of cross-cultural contextualization, I’m sure she would be too embarrassed to claim as much. He stands alone. When he was ministering to people who believed and behaved differently, he mirrored them, as he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthian church:
To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law . . . so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law . . . To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
1 CORINTHIANS 9:20 –22
Paul put his principles into practice when he was in Athens. Here he is in the midst of scoffers, particularly Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. He might have stood on a soapbox and simply preached Jesus. Instead, here in Athens, he became an Athenian and lectured where these very philosophers presented their own views. The episode is captured in Acts 17:22–23:
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Paul preached to the onlookers and ended his sermon by quoting familiar pagan poetry: “ ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’ ” (Acts 17:28). He was very conscious of not offending people and thus being a stumbling block to the gospel. In fact, many of his proscriptions regarding gender fall into this very category. Would Paul, if he were headquartered in Grand Rapids, be concerned about hair length today? Would he be upset that a prominent preacher wears his hair long? Would he even take notice that the wife of a leading complementarian wears her hair short and stylish? Hardly. Yet he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians about this very matter, no doubt due to cultural considerations: “Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering” (1 Corinthians 11:14–15).
We easily pick and choose which verses are written in stone to be rigidly followed forever and which are culturally conditioned. Chapter 2 of Paul’s first letter to Timothy is a case in point and much debated. Here Paul mentions many things that appear to be as culturally conditioned as hair length: Men are to “lift up holy hands” when they pray. Women are to “dress modestly,” strictly avoiding “elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes.” Women are to “learn in quietness and full submission” and are not permitted to “assume authority over a man.” Paul ends the passage by saying that “women will be saved through childbearing.”
The first thing we note is that Paul seems far more concerned about the propriety of women in this first-century faith community than he is about the propriety of men. Right there is a dead giveaway. First-century Palestine, where the Christian faith was born, had far more restrictive rules for women’s public and private behavior than for men’s. Paul goes along with those cultural mores so as to avoid causing an offense to the gospel, while at the same time endorsing women in ministry. Regarding hair, jewelry, and clothes, his concern may have been partly related to the sins of every era: pride and materialism. That women learn in quietness and not exercise authority over men was part and parcel of first-century propriety.
That women will be saved through childbearing is a statement that almost every Bible commentator seeks to explain, though never in my mind to any degree of satisfaction. When I come to that verse, I leave Paul to his own rumination, and skip on by.
The most controversial cultural issue that Paul confronted head-on was circumcision. For Jews, the matter was nonnegotiable. It was the bedrock sign—more than that, a covenant—of being a chosen people, a required rite since God spoke the very word to Abraham. There was no room for compromise. Paul, himself circumcised, was a missionary to the Gentiles, and his insistence that circumcision was not necessary to become part of the new covenant squared with his contextualizing methods.
“If Paul had simply affirmed cultural distinctives and viewed them as points of contact for inculturating the gospel, his approach to culture would have been quite straightforward,” writes Dean Flemming. But “Paul believes that God has done something radically new in Christ that signals an end to the old order of things . . . He calls the Galatians to perceive the world in a radically different way from the default setting of their culture.”1 Here, Flemming references Paul in Galatians 3:28:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither slave nor free,
nor is there male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
These twenty-four words (in the NIV) form what Paul Jewett termed the “Magna Carta of Humanity.” Theologian and biblical scholar Klyne Snodgrass captured the significance even more forcefully, calling this “the most socially explosive statement in the New Testament.”2
Paul has a two-pronged focus regarding cultural considerations. While emphasizing contextualization in mission outreach, he at the same time boldly proclaims that Christians must perceive the world in a radically different way from the default setting of their culture. A default setting throughout history and infiltrating every culture has been the demeaning of women. Demeaning leads to degrading, degrading to revulsion, and revulsion to hatred (or misogyny). I became aware of such cultural hatred after I first arrived at the large mission outpost of Kijabe, Kenya, in 1985. Fifty-five years earlier, a terrible atrocity had been committed right there in that mission setting. Dana Robert succinctly sums up the violent episode:
In early 1930, sixty-four-year-old single missionary Hulda Stumpf was forcibly “circumcised” and murdered in her home at the central mission station of Kijabe, Kenya. A trained stenographer, she had served the mission for twenty-four years. She had worked with girls and taken care of much of the business correspondence at the Kijabe Station. Irascible, hard of hearing, and living alone, she had taken one of the firmest stands against female circumcision in the Kijabe Girls’ school.3
The term now used for this widely practiced cultural rite is “female genital mutilation” (FGM), and Hulda was outraged by the practice. A business school graduate, she was more than a nice lady who could take dictation and write shorthand. In fact, before joining the Africa Inland Mission, she taught at the Indiana Business College. Although she was marginalized by her single-woman status, she was determined to speak her mind on the matter of mutilating girls—girls in the very school where she taught. But her stance was controversial. Girls, without this horrendous rite, were regarded as outcasts and unmarriageable. But Hulda was fully aware of the pain and permanent injury that the “ceremony” entailed, described in detail in a memorandum distributed by the Church of Scotland Mission only one year before she was murdered:
Female circumcision, as it exists among the Kikuyu, is an operation which varies in severity, some sections of the tribe practicing a more drastic form than others. It involves the removal of not only the clitoris, but also the labia minora and half the labia majora, together with the surrounding tissue, resulting in the permanent mutilation affecting the woman’s natural functions of maturation, menstruation, and parturition, with disastrous results not only to the birth rate, but also to the physique and vitality of the tribe.4
Hulda Stumpf was certainly not the first missionary to take a stand against this practice. In fact, in 1914, the Africa Inland Mission clearly stated its strong opposition. But as a single woman, she was seen by certain Kikuyu tribal leaders as a threat to their way of life. So it was, then, that on January 3, 1930, she was strangled in her own tiny house. The inquest into her death also concluded: “Medical evidence shows that Miss Stumpf was circumcised in brutal manner and died under the operation.”5
I learned while I was teaching in Kenya how prevalent the practice still was. Although some have argued that it is a legitimate African rite, it is important to point out that a critical motivation for this man-made rite is to prevent girls from having sex before marriage. Being “sewed up,” however, does not prevent rape. And for the married woman, the mutilation removes pleasure from sexual intercourse. It is a demeaning and degrading and often hateful act—though carried out by a tribal woman practitioner.
Years ago when I was teaching a women’s ministries course at Trinity, I was called into the academic dean’s office. One of my students had complained to him that she had become ill—had gotten sick to her stomach and almost fainted—as a result of an ABC 20/20 episode on FGM that I had shown in class. The dean wanted to hear what I had to say. I was guilty as charged. My point was not to have students leave class but to wake them up to atrocities against women in the name of cultural norms.
Although the documentary focused on Africa, it also showed how FGM had become an issue in America. Since then, the crisis has grown. A federal law in 1996, followed up by laws in many states, made the practice illegal. But according to reporter Nina Strochlic, “New numbers show that these measures have done little to stanch the skyrocketing rate at which girls are subjected to this cruel form of circumcision on our shores.” In 1997, the first year that statistics were available, some “168,000 girls and women were at risk or had undergone FGM.” The latest figures, as reported on February 4, 2015, show there were “around 507,000 girls living in the U.S. who are either at risk of being cut or who have already been cut. That’s more than triple the figure from the very first nationwide count.”6
It is easy to point a finger at African culture, though in the case of FGM, the finger-pointing is warranted wherever such a violent act against girls and women is committed. But American culture has also spawned its own unique forms of degrading women, and it is not necessary to search nineteenth-century archives to find them. One such degradation relates to popular music, particularly rap and hip-hop.
But before I launch into a condemnation of the often-misogynist lyrics glorifying violence against women, I call to my readers’ attention the backlash that Tipper Gore (wife of vice president Al Gore) confronted when she spoke out on the issue. She was accused of calling for censorship, even though her 1990 Washington Post editorial was very modest in its plea for the music industry to put labels on albums that were not appropriate for children. More than that, she was accused of being an old white lady (only forty-two at the time) who was interfering in a matter she knew nothing about.
In light of that, my words obviously mean nothing among those who are involved in this “lyrical misogyny.” But others do have a platform, including President Barack Obama, who prerecorded a message for the 2015 Grammy Awards. Clover Hope later recounted his public service announcement: “President Barack Obama interrupted the predictably boring Grammy Awards tonight to spread an important message on rape and domestic violence. Amidst the standard awards show proceedings, it made for a jarringly real moment.” She then quoted from his speech:
Tonight, we celebrate artists whose music message helps shape our culture and together, we can change our culture for the better by ending violence against women and girls. Right now, nearly one in five women in America has been a victim of rape or attempted rape. And more than one in four women has experienced some form of domestic violence. It’s not okay. And it has to stop. Artists have a unique power to change minds and attitudes and get us thinking and talking about what matters. And all of us, in our own lives, have the power to set an example.7
Apart from reading some of these lyrics filled with obscene and vicious threats against women, I know very little about this subject, and my voice counts for even less. But the president’s message, followed that night by the testimony of an abuse survivor and the singing of Katy Perry, does count for a lot. Katy’s song “By the Grace of God” encourages abused women to “put one foot in front of the other” to look into “the mirror” and not “let love take me out that way.” A black president and a superstar singer have voices that are far more difficult to mock than Tipper Gore’s and my own. We can only hope that all forms of media will take the message to heart and, step-by-step, help to turn the industry around.
Unlike female genital mutilation, misogynistic lyrics are not in themselves physical violence against women. One relates to a long-standing practice—or rite—carried out in patriarchal societies, the other a contemporary fad or “rite of passage” protected by the Bill of Rights. While it is critical that we recognize cultural differences, we must at the same time condemn misogyny wherever it is found, whether in cruel cultural traditions or in contemporary trends in pop culture.
Indeed, one does not have to go to Africa or become embedded in the rap music industry to encounter the culture of misogyny. From the ancient Greek and Asian societies to medieval Catholicism and Enlightenment Europe, we find strands of misogyny in every facet of life. And that culture of misogyny is alive and well today. I felt its ever-present oppression in my previous marriage. In fact, one of my journal entries speaks directly to this issue.
September 8, 1986
This morning I turned on Donahue, and the subject was misogyny. A book by Dr. Susan Forward, Men Who Hate Women, was being discussed, and [my husband] seemed to fit all the characteristics—charming and personable in public, but demanding complete control in the home. I almost think he is an extreme case.
I sometimes asked my ex-husband, “Why do you hate me so much?” He would say he didn’t hate me but would add that my lack of submission made him respond in hateful ways. Justification enough. And it was not just me. He appeared to hate women in general. He would make gender slurs about groups of women, as well as about certain individuals. If he happened to disagree with a woman on any particular matter, he would hiss that she was a feminist. They might have been very traditional in their views on gender, but they were strong women who happened to rub him the wrong way.
Misogyny. Men who hate women. This culture of hatred is found among religious and nonreligious alike. But what is truly astounding is that it is not infrequently seen among those who demand that women be subject to men, basing that obligation on Ephesians 5. What stands out in the passage is that husbands are directed to love their wives, just as Christ loved the church. We must be cautious about throwing the term around too casually, but at the same time we shouldn’t be afraid of the word misogynist. How do we know if a man truly is one? “I love the pretty girls,” he says. So we assume he can’t be a misogynist. But “loving the pretty girls” might be a telltale sign of misogyny. Control is a key. Whether it’s African mutilation rites or rap music or marital abuse, the demand to domineer is always present. Yet hatred of women is not easily detectable. Indeed, there is a fine line between male domination and misogyny. And the term misogynist that refers to one individual should not be used apart from the phrase culture of misogyny—a culture that rears its ugly head even in Scripture.
So now for the critical question: Was the apostle Paul a misogynist? This is the title of a 2015 Christian Post column by Richard Land, a Southern Baptist and the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary. He begins with these words: “In the modern world many people rather casually assume, or assert, that the Apostle Paul was a misogynist based upon his teachings concerning the differing roles of men and women in the church and in marriage in the early church.”8 Actually, Land’s charge is somewhat overdrawn. But the issue is worthy of consideration.
Critics of Paul, including Pearl S. Buck, presumed he hated women. In reflecting on her mother and on her domineering father, Buck wrote, “Since those days when I saw all her nature dimmed I have hated Saint Paul with all my heart and so must all true women hate him, I think, because of what he has done in the past to women . . . proud free-born women, yet damned by their very womanhood.”9
I find it almost incomprehensible how anyone who has ever actually read the writings of Paul, as Pearl Buck did, could argue that he damned women for their very womanhood—that he was a misogynist. There is nothing in his writings that suggests he hated or wanted to control women. If Paul were around today, I am convinced he would be the last person to write a book or lecture at a podium calling for the restriction of women in ministry or marriage.
And Pearl Buck, of all people—misinterpreting his position on matters that are culturally conditioned. She was a missionary herself and a remarkably keen observer of China. Didn’t she recognize how Paul walked a tightrope between cultures? Didn’t she realize that what appeared to be restrictions on women were in many cases opening doors and actually paving the way for them to work side by side with him in ministry? Indeed, Pearl Buck wrote one of the most perceptive books I know on cultural understandings of China. Years ago while traveling alone, I listened to the unabridged version of her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Good Earth and came away marveling at her insights.
But I stand against her in her assessment of Paul. He repeatedly praised his female coworkers for their faithful service. He surely did not hate women.
Men Who Hate Women is a title designed to grab readers’ attention (and it does not assume there are not women who hate men). Rarely, however, have I encountered a man I would label as a misogynist, though I know such an attitude can be disguised. The greater concern ought to be the misogyny that seeps into the very fabric of culture. Those most susceptible are those, like my ex-husband, who place severe restrictions on women. Indeed, the demand for subjection opens the door to hatred—hatred aimed at the one who stands against that demand. Alongside such hatred of women is an attitude that sees women as lesser. It is an attitude that prefers the company of other men.
My husband, John, is just the opposite. He does not need to stand in a stadium and shout, “I love women!” (as Ann Romney did at the 2012 Republican convention). It’s simply part of his makeup, whether he is watching the evening news or in the midst of a group of women at church. It’s not something that in any way draws attention. Rather, it is wrapped up in his character. And wasn’t Jesus that way? Dorothy Sayers’s oft-quoted description of Jesus says it all:
Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the
Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a
man like this Man—there never has been such another.
A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never
flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch
jokes about them, never treated them either as “The
women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”;
who rebuked without querulousness and praised without
condescension; who took their questions and arguments
seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them,
never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for
being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy
male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them
and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no
sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows
its pungency from female perversity; nobody could
possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that
there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.10