This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Raised as a white boy in conservative, Alabama, it seemed to me that most folks in my hometown looked suspiciously upon anyone who might endorse the label of feminist. It seemed to threaten all that was good and true about the home, the Christian tradition, and the joys of masculinity and femininity. We would not quite have known what to do with someone who would say something like this.
I came to realize that feminism is actually a really important value for Christians. It's not opposed to Christianity, as I had been more or less taught growing up.
That's my colleague and occasional podcast co-host Lauren Smelser White. Lauren was also raised in Alabama, also grew up suspicious of feminism.
It was after I started realizing that this is not actually a dangerous, evil kind of pursuit, but it actually coheres with what God is calling us into as human beings.
So in this episode of Tokens, Dr. Lauren White gives us a crash course in feminism, its history, some of its key constructs, and what is perhaps, to some, a surprising vision.
There's lots of different types of men and there's lots of different types of women that can all fit into this amazing picture of what it means to be human before God.
Welcome. Our interview in just a moment.
In part one of our interview with Lauren, who's done a great deal of academic research on feminism, she will give us a crash course on key terms, as well as sketch out the so-called four waves of feminism.
Grateful today to be here with my colleague Lauren Smelser White. Welcome back, Lauren.
Thank you, Lee.
It's always good to have you here with us.
It's great to be here.
We introduced you to our listening audience, several episodes ago, but just as a reminder to folks, Lauren is my colleague, a theologian PhD in systematic theology from Vanderbilt University. Lauren and I've been colleagues now a couple of years, and friends for longer than that, and have gotten to talk a lot about the sorts of things we wanted to talk about today. But welcome. How are you?
I'm doing great. I'm just happy to be out of the house right now. Yeah.
[Laughs] Yes. We're taping here in the midst of, still, a pandemic era where people are starting to lighten up a little bit to get out of the house, but still quite a bizarre time in that regard.
Properly distanced, of course.
Properly distanced. Yes, indeed. So, the subtitle of our podcast is “public theology, human flourishing, and the good life.” With Lauren, I was quite interested in talking a bit about Christian feminism. And obviously feminism conversations have a great deal to do with descriptions of human flourishing, or the inhibition of human flourishing, and the nature of our shared good life and common life together. So Lauren, how does someone like you... raised in just about every possible conservative context, right? Socially, politically, religiously conservative Christian context, and yet you've come to consider yourself a feminist. So how, how does that happen to a woman?
Well, it doesn't happen quickly, and you know, it's fun to think back on little hints of a kind of feministy inclination. When I was a kid, my dad had this farmland, and he would always take my brothers to go work with him on Saturdays. And I was usually told or advised to stay home with my mom and do housework. And I never felt like that was fair, ‘cause I wanted to be outside. I enjoyed that more. And so they would allow me to come along and I would work really hard to prove that I could do all that the boys could do. You know, I hear a lot of other women talk about the pain they felt at church. For example, when they were told that they couldn't do what the boys could do. I never felt much of that growing up. I sort of accepted it. I just thought it was the way things were. And I do have some memory of thinking I was just as smart as the boys, and feeling if I ever thought there was any implication otherwise, I would get kind of angry at that. But it wasn't really until after I finished my undergraduate experience at Harding university that I ended up in Abilene, Texas. I was in grad school at ACU, and I was at a church where it was the first time I had seen women leading worship in any capacity.
So you're 22 years of age.
That's right. And it first angered me a bit, ‘cause I thought it was wrong. And I thought, How are all these smart, good people doing this? And what are they thinking? But what I noticed was, oh, well, things aren't falling apart. The worship service isn't just going off the rails. And it created this sense of... I even felt a kind of attraction to it, you know, I thought, This is kind of cool. And I remember talking to a English professor of mine at the time.
And you were studying English literature at the right?
Right. Yeah. I was working on an MA in American Lit, essentially, but I talked to a professor of mine after church one evening, and we were chatting about this, and I said, “I just don't understand how this congregation got to this place. You know, what are they doing with all the parts of scripture that say that this isn't right?” And he said, “Well, have you ever studied the issue yourself?” And I said, “Well, no,” and he said, “Well, go study it, and then we'll talk about it.” That was the first invitation to even think about that in a new way that I'd had. That started this process for me of a journey in revisiting, rethinking, asking questions. And I found that I - you know, eventually, again, eventually; it took a while - found myself in a position where not only did I think of myself as an egalitarian in terms of worship and, you know, men and women's capacity to lead. But I came to realize that feminism is actually a really important value for Christians. It's not opposed to Christianity, as I had been more or less taught growing up.
I remember growing up in Alabama, and there was a sort of sense of: feminism was fundamentally opposed to basic Christian convictions. And as well, I remember these sorts of ways in which it would be dismissed. So out of hand. You know, the feminists wanted to do away with separated bathrooms, even, you know? I don't know if you ever heard that growing up.
I did not.
I know, it's a bizarre sort of thing, you know, but I guess it just played off of fear in order to dismiss it. But did you experience that sort of dismissal much?
Absolutely. I mean, the only time I'd ever heard, you know, even the word “feminist” brought up, it was usually in a kind of - you know, the term “femenazi,” for example, I'm sure you've heard that - that sort of idea of this angry woman who's coming after all of your traditions and your gender norms that are rooted in scripture, and she's going to destroy society by taking the woman out of the home and destroy the family unit. And that was kind of the only idea I really had of a feminist. And again, that wasn't one that was overtly taught to me. It was just this kind of subtle way that that kind of woman was presented. And I remember very clearly a friend of mine who went to University of Alabama telling me that she had a professor who asked them on day one of class, “How many of you consider yourselves feminists?” And very few of them raised their hands. And he said, “Actually, you should all consider yourself feminist, because all a feminist is is someone who cares about equal opportunity for men and women.” And that kind of blew her mind, and it kind of blew mine. And so I had already sort of thought there was this possibility that made me open to that kind of reading and dipping into that kind of literature. But now I look back and I think, I almost forget what it was like to think that.
Yeah. So with that sort of progress or process of evolution in your thinking and convictions, in what ways has this been liberating to you?
You know, the most outstanding piece of it was that I... you might say it offered an opportunity for me to weave together a kind of private and public life, in the sense that, even though I didn't feel much resentment or anger about the limitations that were placed upon me as a woman growing up in a conservative, you know, Evangelical church setting, the desires and talents I had never fit very well with the prototype of what a woman was supposed to be good at, you know? So my example is always that I'm not a very good cook, so if I'm supposed to be good at providing meals and homemaking, that puts me at a kind of disadvantage, but I really always loved, you know, kind of philosophical-ish talks and conversations. And I loved... I could sit... I'd be the last one to leave the church building if there was that kind of discussion going on. And so I never knew what to do with that. I remember someone saying, “Well, you can teach women, you know, you could be a teacher of women someday.” But I remember thinking, That's kind of an odd thing to aspire to, because what qualifications do I have to do that? You know? And so it was after I started realizing there's this whole world of thought about, you know, that this is not actually a dangerous, evil kind of pursuit, but it actually coheres with what God is calling us into as human beings, that it just opened this door into this world of possibility for me in ways of, oh, I can pursue theological education, I can actually become a teacher and feel like there's something to do with that interest that I had.
So the sort of liberation, not of freedom from constraint, necessarily - but there were certain constraints, I suppose, that you were set free from - but, more constructively, a freedom towards being the kind of person you felt or suspected that you were kind of created to be?
I like that way of formulating it, because I look back and see constraints that I wouldn't have necessarily narrated that way at the time. But it certainly was a freedom for more, you know? It opened this whole world of possibility.
So what about costs though? In what ways has this been costly to you, perhaps?
That's an important piece to hold alongside the joys and the gifts of the liberation, so to speak... because, especially when your community is such that you're rewarded for toeing the party line, you wouldn't raise your hand to say, “I'm a feminist.” When you make that transition and say, “Yes, I am a feminist,” or, “Yes, I do think these things matter tremendously,” or, “No, I don't think that every woman has to follow the same kind of formula that's laid out for us,” there are social costs that come along with that. There are, you know... you think about a kind of rift in the family web or something, you know. There's a kind of family structure in place in your church community. So I know I've heard a lot of women say they experience a kind of homelessness because of that. And I can empathize with that a bit, that I've never felt overtly persecuted or pushed out the door. But once I made that transition, I remember feeling very odd or kind of like an odd ball, like there was no place for me in a very different way than I had felt before when I had just some of those interests or inklings, but hadn't really pursued them.
Hm. Well, let's step back just a minute and get a crash course on feminism, for those who might not have read much in this area. So tell us, for example, the difference between the terms “gender” and “sex.”
Yeah. That's a really important kind of foundation for understanding feminist theory. So the idea is basically that we're all born into a situation in which sex may be a given - of course there are some, you might say, radical theorists who question that as well - but most everyone, especially at the outset, you know, of the movement, agrees that sex is a given. We all have certain chromosomes. There are male, female. Kind of a binary in place in that regard. But gender is constructed on top of that in social ways, socializing us into certain ways of being a man or a woman. And that that's always a kind of social project, that that's not ever actually just a sort of natural essence, but it parades as if it is.
So the sub-biological realities, for example, would be an example of sex or nature, and then a girl's wearing pink is an example of the gendered that which we are nurtured into.
Yes. And that's a helpful example, along with the women wearing heels, because there was a time when - I think it's something like in the 1700s - pink was a fashionable color for men in England to wear, for example, and we all know that men back then wore heels and long curly wigs.
No, we don't all know that.
[Laughs] And so, you know, you only have to look at a few paintings to see this is the case. And so it's interesting when we think about these sorts of what we take to be the height of femininity - long hair, heels, you know, wearing a pink dress - all of those things are actually constructed on top of what it means to have the biological equipment of a woman, so to speak.
Yeah, I mean, it's just fascinating to me. Internally, I'm processing this, and I'm thinking of course - flashing back to those pictures - I know that that's true. Maybe not the pink part, but even the heels part. I do know that that's true because of seeing the pictures, but it still, like, strikes me as no, no, no, no, that can't be. [Laughs]
Imagine yourself in some, you know, knee-high boots with some heels. I mean, those guys really rocked those back then.
What other examples of things that we're socialized into along gender lines that have changed significantly through the years?
Another one, of course... you know, it's easy to think about the clothes that we wear. That's a really kind of obvious example. You know, of course, most every woman I know wears pants and doesn't think anything about it. But you know, even at the congregation where Lee and I attend, there are people there who remember when the first woman came to church on a Wednesday night in pants. Have you heard them talk about this?
Yeah. I have heard that story.
So codes of modesty, for example. There's construction happening there. But there's also a kind of lower, you know, level, and this is where it can get into some of the stuff that can get kind of icky, where expectations that are gender-constructed around what it means to be a male or female. You know, women are expected to be weaker. Men are expected to be stronger, and that can play itself out, not just in terms of physical prowess, but in terms of intellectual ability or a kind of moral seriousness. And so there's this whole interesting history, for example, in the way - in terms of Victorian England - women were considered the kind of angel of the household, you know? There's that whole trope. So the woman is considered morally superior, in a sense, to the man. But at the same time, there are all these arguments being written about how she is not capable of doing the kind of work that a man - only a man - can do to lead in the church setting. So although morally superior, she's also weaker in a subset and then needs guidance. So kind of childlike in that way.
Right. Another term that's related to this: gender essentialism.
Yeah. So gender essentialism is really the kind of... you might say it's the kind of assumption that none of this is constructed, that all of this belongs to the essence of what it means to be a man or a woman. So it's a sort of blindness to the construction.
A rejection of the dichotomy between sex and gender.
That's right. That's right. It's a total blindness to that possibility. When you talk about gender essentialism, you're saying, for example, “The essence of a woman is that she must be led by a man in every respect.” Well, that's where we find ourselves in many church circles, that people will make that kind of gender essentialist claim.
Internalized sexism?
Same sort of thing. It sits very close to gender essentialism. My favorite example of this that I've seen in the past five to 10 years is, I believe it was a dove commercial that was called “Run Like a Girl.” There are these young girls who looked to be, you know, seven, eight. And when someone says, “Run like a girl,” they give it all they've got, and they're running, they're pumping their arms and their legs, and they're just... you know, it's really precious and beautiful. And then you have adolescent women, young women, and they say, “Run like a girl.” And what do you think they do? They start flailing around and acting like idiots.
Yeah. Mocking themselves.
That's right. And it is tragic, because you think, How did that little girl, so full of confidence and verve, you know, wind up in this position where she thinks something about being a girl is this kind of weakness and this kind of silliness and this kind of... and so that's a kind of good, helpful example of internalized sexism. And it's where we make presumptions about what men and women are capable of. So the same thing happens against men. There's a kind of assumption that every man does blank or, you know, an easy example of that is, boys should not be emotional. So if a man shows emotion of any sort, you know, publicly, then his strength is questioned. And by the way, that happens to women as well. But when we internalize that, it's that we are no longer capable of taking a step back from it and questioning it.
But in reaction to that, and pushing back against that by feminism, feminism has its own history, right? And there there's so many different types of feminism. Tell us briefly how some of the different feminisms have arisen.
Yeah, you have, essentially, what are called the four waves of feminism. So the first wave is just the kind of straightforward women's rights to vote, for example. You know, you can kind of think of these prototypes of each of the waves.
A hundred years ago in Tennessee, they [became] the 37th or 38th state to ratify the amendments so women can vote. That's coming up just in August of this year, here in Tennessee.
Yeah, that's right. So those women were on the kind of front lines of what we think of as first wave feminism, which is just making the argument that women are to be thought of as having equal capacities to men in terms of reasoning, moral decision making, responsibility.
And this was no small thing. I mean, I think that there were riots in the street about this right?
Yeah. It was a pretty long and hard won battle.
Yeah. And many women very angry with the women that were pushing for it.
That's right. And it's helpful to remember this because it's easy, at least for me sometimes, to think that the pushback I get from other women is indicative of: I'm doing something wrong, maybe. And it's helpful to think about those moments. It's easy for me to look back and say, “Well, of course women should get to vote.” It's easy for most all of us to think that, and yet at the time it was not clear. It was not clear at all. People thought it was one step towards destroying the stability of the home. And you know, a lot of people probably in my grandparents' generation still questioned the goodness of it, you know. Should women really be... should women have the vote?
Second phase?
Second wave of feminism. The kind of motto for that was “The personal is political.” And so instead of just having the right to vote or hold property or initiate a divorce or whatever it was that this first wave of feminists were fighting for, in the second wave, people are attending more to the kind of everyday ways in which there are gender norms that are pressed upon women that are restrictive. So people are saying, I shouldn't have to wear a girdle. This restricts my ability to work well, you know, alongside a man. So it's those kinds of... it's like all kinds of questions along those lines. And, you know, fashions are changing quickly and people are questioning, What does it mean for a woman to work outside the home? And all of that's happening.
I mean, one of the things that's striking to me about those conversations is that you're looking at truly a social system that's propping all of these things up, right? It's not one particular thing. Like the first phase had these very clear, concrete social limitations, like voting, but then it's a move towards looking at all the mini, multifaceted ways that these constructs are pressed upon women through social practices.
Yeah. I mean, you think about them, kind of. And that lasts a long time. I mean, this goes into, like, Mad Men era, you know, you might think of it that way, where women are... they found new freedoms, but with those new freedoms come new questions about precisely what you were just naming, which is, the whole social structure itself is set up in such a way that it's not an easy transition. Just because we won the vote doesn't mean we can move into the workplace without any problem, right? And so there's a lot of work being done around women's rights, you know, kind of on a more personal level. And then by the time you get to third wave, this is more... some people call this the kind of almost like a post-feminist era, where we've won all the, kind of, what you might think of as classic feminist battles, you know, and now we're moving into new fronts, new questions about, well, How do women help or hinder this movement? How are women complicit in their own, you know, repression and suppression?
And is the third wave also where they begin to ask the question and realize, well, look, we fought for all of this stuff, but what some of us were fighting for was to get to act like men? And we don't necessarily want to act like men, right?
That's right. The ideal there of being able to be like men is really held in question. And also during this time, some really important work is being done around what we could call intersectionality - it has been called that; is called that - which is the question of multiple points of identity, that there isn't really... I mean, we've done all this work questioning, What is the essence of a woman? And saying, “Well, there's no essence. It's constructed.” And yet, what a lot of feminists are realizing is that the way feminist discourse itself has been propped up is really in light of certain privileged women's experience. And so there's this whole host of women speaking out saying, “Look, this is like mostly an upper-middle class white woman's experience that's being narrated.” And so, for example, fighting so hard for the freedom to be in the workplace. That's a privileged woman's problem. There are all kinds of women of lower socioeconomic status who are working because they have to, and they're working for those women. You know, if you think about, they're tending their children and cooking their meals and they're working in factories. So the question of experience becomes really important during this third wave of feminism. And that become the thread that's pulled out most distinctly, I would say. And the fourth wave, which is, you know - now it's again kind of asking about new horizons - all of those questions about whose experience counts is, you know, that's kind of impressed to almost like a kind of breaking point. People are holding a light up to their particular experiences in new ways, but all these new kind of types of feminism are rearing their heads to the point where it might be more true for us to say feminisms. But yeah, that main question of identity, and that's still remained the same throughout. What does it mean to have the experience that's labeled that of a woman?
How does critical theory fit into all this?
Critical theory is essentially just holding all of this up: race, gender, sexual identity. These are the kind of heavy hitters, right? But all of these are being analyzed. I think critical theory begins with critical race theory, if I'm correct about that, but it's all analyzing the way this gets constructed, like you have the patriarchy, or the kind of white-dominated society speaks for and about people on the margins in such a way that it's difficult for those people to have a voice. And so critical theory is looking for ways of holding a light to that and enabling people on the margins to speak and find their own voice, you know? So it's all that question of, Can those people really speak, and what will it take for us to do so?
Which relates to the so-called feminist hermeneutic of suspicion, right?
So the hermeneutic of suspicion is that, as important as it is to read charitably... for instance, you know, we can think about reading scripture. So there are a lot of feminists that say that we have a responsibility not only to read charitably, but also suspiciously, because if we're not being careful, the ways we're reading scripture could be used to perpetuate our role that is in a kind of subordinate role to men. So we have to read suspiciously with that in mind. We can't just naively think. We can't be Pollyanna-ish, right? That's the real crime, is if you become a Pollyanna who says, “Everything's fine. We've reached the promised land, and, you know, all is good. All is at peace.” Most people in these critical theory camps would say, “You're not paying attention, because this kind of power is not easily let go of, and there's still so much work to be done.”
Yeah. That the power is still always there, and if you're not seeing it, you're just not - as you said - you're not paying attention. You're not smart enough to catch it.
Or you don't have the tools. So there's a lot of talk about that. Like what does it mean to educate people so that they have the tools to recognize that they're being attacked?
Yeah. So classic consciousness raising: you're seeing what's going on in the world, you're seeing what's going on to you, against you, and seeing what's happening. Yeah.
That's right.
You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. We're most grateful to have you joining us. Please go over and leave us one of those five star reviews on Apple podcasts and subscribe there or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Remember you can find out links, photos, books, and related videos from our extensive YouTube channel, all at tokensshow.com/podcast. You're listening to our interview with Dr. Lauren Smelser White. Coming up, we talk about the liberation and the tediousness of political correctness, challenges from both conservatives and liberals, and how or whether Christianity may be a threat to feminism. Part two in just a moment.
You're listening to Tokens and our interview with Dr. Lauren Smelser White, giving us a crash course in Christian feminism.
So how does this then work for you with regard to doing Christian theology? In what way is there a tension? In what way is there consistency?
First of all, when I finally found my way into thinking about... you know, I realized that I read the Bible in a way that perhaps wasn't actually consistent with the way it ought to be read. And I came to that conviction very much before I considered myself a feminist, per se, which has been helpful because it doesn't feel to me, like I put the cart before the horse there, right? In terms of my Christian commitments, I feel like I go back to that experience and think it was studying the text of the scriptures that led me into this conviction that God has created men and women as image bearers in such a way that we have equal capacity for all kinds of work in the kingdom, all kinds of roles in society. And so once I realized - I had read a few feminist theologians and gender theorists and found all of it fascinating, but wasn't quite sure how to hold it all together or what to do with it with my own interests. Once I realized that there are these really intriguing ways of looking at, kind of, resourcing gender theory and feminist discourse in relation to these really important threads in the Christian tradition… so for example, you know, a kind of good starting point is Galatians 3:28. “There's no longer male nor female.” Of course that's in terms of a kind of status or standing before God, you know, that there's no longer a slave nor free, Jew nor Greek. But what that meant to me, once I had read that literature, was very much enriched, because I realized this means there's this whole range of potential for me in terms of what I might do as a member of the body of the church, as a member of the family of God, so to speak, and in ways that it helped me to think about that and to recognize the ways that that can be shut down even within the church itself, which is supposed to be helping with my liberation. But also these kinds of interesting ways of reading Christ himself: for example, the man of sorrows. You know, he demonstrates vulnerability throughout his life. Well, that deconstructs a male essentialist norm, you know.
Because of the compassion and the empathy, is that what you're pointing to?
That's right, and the images we have of him weeping, or his anxiety in the garden, for example. I mean, all of these show us this picture of a very vulnerable... you know, there's this emotive aspect of his spiritual life that we cannot get around, and it doesn't fit at all with the macho man, right? You know, it's that kind of discourse or theory that's helped me see that portrait of Jesus in a way that's really liberative.
So what do you say to people who respond, and they hear that, and they said, “Look, you're just trying to castrate men?”
And it's funny, you know, I'm smiling as you're asking that, but then I think this is actually a comment that people make, you know? And what I always want to say is there's kind of two different ways, very rough ways, of coming at this, even within kind of secular gender discourse, right? There's the kind of turning over the tables, I'm angry at the system, screw the system, I'm going to burn it down. And then there's also this more subtle approach that says the system in place is sort of something that it's impossible to overturn. We don't even know what we're trying to do by trying to do that. But what we know we can do is we can live into it differently. So we can look for places where difference is possible, and we can perform our gender a bit differently in such a way that opens up new realms of possibility, new ranges of activity. And so what I always want to say to the guy who fits the macho man stereotype is, “There's nothing wrong with you. Just like, there's nothing wrong with the woman that fits the fem stereotype.” Right? But what I want, what I think I believe is true to the vision of the kingdom of God, where there's this whole range of possibility, is that there's lots of different types of men and there's lots of different types of women that can all fit into this amazing picture of what it means to be human before God.
Yeah. That's well said. So, you got to feminism, actually, through reading the Bible.
That's right. Which is surprising. You know, if there are any feminists listening to this right now who have been studying this longer or thinking about it longer, you may have taken a similar route that I did, but a lot of people do not. A lot of people are introduced to feminist thinking and it brings them back to scripture with a kind of suspicious hermaneutic, and they take that route. But for me, I was lucky, I guess, in the sense that I didn't have to take that route. And the reason I say I was lucky is because it's created a kind of a sense of trust in me. The big critique I often hear there is, “Oh, well, you're pressing... when you're thinking about women's liberation, you're just bringing in this kind of cultural project and projecting it onto scripture.” And I often think, Well, that wasn't the case for me, you know? So that helps me feel some confidence on that point.
That instead one might see that the sort of gender essentialism or insisting upon macho men and women in the kitchen is instead imposing its cultural agenda on scripture.
Precisely.
Yeah. So talk a little bit more, then, about how you might narrate the difference between the so-called secular feminism and a so-called Christian feminism.
The main point of difference - and this is very roughly construed - but the main point of difference, as I see it, is the kind of orienting telos, so to speak, of the discourse itself and the aim of the project. So the most compelling Christian feminisms I have read - projects that I've read - are always asking, What does it look like for us, as people who are committed to a suffering savior, the idea that in losing ourselves, we find ourselves, and the notion that we are responsible for submitting our wills to God, opening ourselves to God's direction, mutual submission being a value that Christians profess as at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Christ… all of those issues don't sit easily with feminist discourse. Submission, direction…
Right, because those could be seen as you just not having been sufficiently... had your consciousness raised to see the way the powers are oppressing.
And rightly so. There's a lot of concern about the ways those kinds of values have been pressed upon women in such a way that has repressed them. It has held them down. So for example, we all know that in Christian tradition, women have been more responsible for submission than men have, in the sense that we all are supposed to submit, but for whatever reason - it's basically the way we've read scripture and the way we've organized society - women are submitting more than men. And so a lot of feminist types are just ready to be done with the whole Christian project because of that. They see it as kind of inherently patriarchal, like, to the root.
At a minimum it's underwriting that project.
That's right. They don't see a fruitful way for saying there's some value in self-emptying and submission. Whereas I've read, you know, I've read people who say, “Actually, there are ways. There are creative ways and actually faithful ways - really more faithful than if we just say women have to submit more than men - that, when we think about what it means for all of us to follow the vulnerable Christ, for example, that what it means to be, for example, submissive to God is different than what it means for me to be submissive to a man, or another or another human - full stop, you know - and that there's actually a kind of empowering process in opening my will to God, to God's direction, because that's not the same thing as my opening my will to direction to my husband's... you know, what he wants for me. And then, even the call to mutuality and submission looks different when you think of what it means to enter into a reciprocal relationship with each other. So mutual submission - even in relation to fellow humans - the call to mutuality is key there. It's not just that I'm going to submit and not have an opinion and not assert my will in any sense. It's that the hope or the telos there is a kind of dynamic interrelationship where we get to enjoy companionship with one another in ways that we couldn't have when the macho man was the norm, and the woman in the kitchen.
Yeah. I do think that even in contexts where there's a desire to honor women's gifts and egalitarianism, there is still just a sort of awareness that you have to bring into the room that I simply do not have to bring into the room. I don't have to pay any attention to that, whereas that's something that you have to... that's an additional layer of... I mean, communication is hard enough and teaching is hard enough, but then when you add that extra layer of considerations that you're having to deal with, you know, that's certainly an extra layer of labor to tend to.
Every semester something comes up about gender roles. The question about, well, How are we supposed to read these passages in scripture that indicate that women are to be silent and should not be teaching? And every time we start to go there with the conversation, I'm doing my best to present it to them in a way that I think they can hear. I'm very aware of how the fact that I am a woman could discredit everything I'm saying to someone who thinks, Yeah, of course you're going to think that. You're a woman and this is your job. You have this interest in this working out. And so they don't know me, and they don't know my whole process that I just told you about how I actually had to be convinced myself, you know?
Yeah. So talk a bit about how in... this is seen even in some - you know, I'm thinking, for example, of one of Tom Wright's articles about women in the New Testament - he makes the argument for egalitarianism, but he's insisting that that doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to gender differences. That there are in fact gender differences, and that the point is not to bulldoze those or to act as if they're not there, that there still is a certain sort of navigation required between men and women. Do you think that's a fair way to put it?
I think I know the argument you're talking about.
For those of you listening, we'll stick it in the episode notes.
That's good. Yeah, but that's a helpful argument he makes, where essentially, the way I understand that is, you know, there's this pressure early on in the Christian communities. There are women who might be getting the idea that, in becoming Christians, because there is a liberative thread there - I mean, they're being educated, they're being elevated in terms of status - there are other cultural movements that are kind of, you know, kind of proto-religious movements at the time - Gnosticism, kind of early Gnosticism - that are, I mean, kind of at the heart of that. It's that women cease to be women and become men in a sense of their status and their dignity. And you can hear... there's a case to be made, certainly it seems, that what Paul is doing is saying, “Embrace what it means to be male and female before God, rather than denigrating what it means to be female.” So embrace the signs that you are a female. You don't have to hide your femininity. I think that is a fascinating way to come at it, because I think, for example, about what women think about when we get up to lead in front of a classroom. So I've heard a lot of women talk about how one advantage of wearing clerical robes, if you're of that tradition, is that it hides your anatomy. You know, you can hide the fact that you're a woman. But this is something that all women know. We have to think about - and few men really have to think about - is what I wear when I get up to teach in a theology class. I'm very aware that I have to be responsible, you know? And just even that framing of that, it sounds as if there's this responsibility that I bear, right? And, and in a sense, I would say, because I think of myself as a member of a community, that there is a responsibility I bear. I also think that the young men bear a responsibility to me, you know, and the way they interact with other women. So anyway, I say all that to say, I think we can learn a lot from that into embracing what it means to be... the difference between us and our embodiment. And that has a whole host of possibilities for the way we think about what that means to embrace difference, rather than moving towards sameness, you know?
Yeah. Talk a bit about, you know, that sense of difference with regard to men and women, going back to the issue of authority, say, in a classroom setting or as a colleague, and the sort of having to navigate the fear that one would be typed as the angry feminist.
Ah, yeah. That's a delicate one, because that is another one of those things I think all women know intuitively. Like if I start to talk about that, I'd see a lot of heads nodding, if I were talking to women who try to do the kind of work I do. It's one of those discernment issues that's always ongoing. Like, when is it okay to play my cards on a certain issue, you know? And you want to save your cards and play them at the right time. Otherwise you might just sound like the kind of person who's always whining and complaining. Now, Lee and I are good enough friends that he gets to hear some of that on the side, because he's so good as to ask me, and I'll unload on him. Sometimes I'm like, “Well, such and such kind of made me mad because dah dah dah dah.” But it's helpful to have those friends that you can process with on the side, because it does make sense to kind of save your cards to play when there is something that really strikes you as a problem. And something else I always say in Christian circles when this comes up: you know, a lot of ministers who are men who are moving towards a more egalitarian position and are trying to think about ways to start this work in their congregations… they'll ask me, “What could we do? What are good action steps? What are good practices?” And I almost always say, “Invite women to talk.” And I just mentioned that with you, even just jokingly, but it helps that you will come ask me how I'm doing. I know there are other colleagues I have here that are great about that. And that's so helpful because it just lifts the burden a little bit, of that, Should I, or should I not mention this? And even in general, I mean, studies say that when a man is allowed commanding voice in a meeting, he's seen as strong. When a woman does, she's seen as bossy. That is the kind of catch 22 a lot of women are navigating. We want to be assertive. We want to ask for what we need. We want to say, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot about X, Y, and Z.” And yet we also know there's a cost that comes with that. And so we often feel ourselves caught a little bit in this kind of space of, you know, wanting to be collegial, but not wanting to be nice to the point of being doormats. And I think we just have to navigate that in ways that men don't always have to even think about.
You've narrated some of the ways and challenges it looks like to live in this space in an open, friendly, yet traditional context. What do you think are some of the challenges in navigating this in a so-called more liberal or open or more, perhaps, forthrightly militant feminist context?
I have learned a tremendous amount from women that some people might call militant feminists. I've learned a lot from those people, and so I owe them a great debt in many respects. And I just remember them questioning certain assumptions that I had. I remember making a comment about how I had no desire to preach, but this particular woman said, “You may have a responsibility to do that. In your community, you may have to do that.” You know? And that kind of stood out to me as, like, wow. I mean, and I felt that she was being a little pushy at the moment, but those kinds of corrections can kind of open you up to new ways of thinking over time. So instead of saying, “I'm going to the girl's bathroom,” you know, they'd say, “Don't, you mean women's?” And I would think, Good grief, you know? You can't get away with anything. But then I thought, Well, it is interesting. Why do we call women girls longer than we call men boys? And there's something to that. There's a kind of infantilizing of women that happens even as they're older that's an important thing to pay attention to. So I appreciate all of that.
So often I hear people mock political correctness, and it seems to me that there's two things in my mind that are at play with that. Or maybe three. One is that to mock political correctness from a so-called right-wing perspective misses the fact that the right wing also has its own political correctness; they just don't use that term. Right?
There's a different set of rules there that everyone's like...
They still have their rules about what's politically correct. They just don't use the term: this is politically incorrect.
Right? I feel you. Yeah.
That's one thing that I'd like to note. And two is that the political correctness, at the same time, does become a way to highlight the manner in which language, to use an academic term, reifies things, right? It makes real certain realities. And language matters. The way we talk about things matters. And we all know that, whether we're willing to admit it or not. We all know that language matters, because we're all always choosing what words we think will or will not help accomplish something. If we're introspective at all, it seems like we're always being mindful of that, right?
Yeah, that's right. You know, I have family members that like to make dumb blonde jokes to me when I have a spaced out moment and I forget my keys. They'll make a dumb blonde joke, and I often think, You know, this is probably not the right moment to challenge this. But then I've gotten a little more confident about saying, “Now, hang on. That's not quite fair.” You know? Like, what do I have to do to prove to you people that I'm not dumb, you know? And so, yeah. It just alerts you to the manners, really. You're talking about manners, good manners, and that should feel familiar, like a familiar value to all people who care about dignity.
Right. Then the third thing I guess I would say about it is that it does seem like there certainly are occasions in which - again, and I would say it's both on the right and the left - there are occasions in which the obsession with political correctness becomes so overbearing, and it can destroy community or relationships.
Absolutely. And it feels like it becomes more important than the relationship itself, and that we are dancing around and saying all the right things. But you know, so much of what it means to learn and grow - and this was the thing that I felt a bit bothered by consistently in my interactions with some of the people that were so adamant about these things - was that I felt myself fumbling often to, you know, feel like I was not going to make a misstep, rather than, you know, these people seeing me, and growing and living and being with me, and helping me. There's this sense that I was already supposed to know all of this stuff. And so I would be reprimanded, and my hand would be slapped if I said the wrong thing. And I thought, well, How was I supposed to know that? I didn't know that was off limits, you know? And so there's this sense of... it can sort of shut down the possibility of a real relationship there.
Yeah. Which requires a lot of patience, and it requires a lot of trust that people will stick with a relationship and allow space for people to make stumbles.
That's right. And that requires a commitment to a community and to being together in community, rather than a commitment to only being with people who already think the way I do.
Yeah. That reminds me of a recent podcast episode with Brian McLaren, who was telling a story about representing, kind of, left-wing Evangelicalism. And he was up at Yale Divinity School at an interfaith gathering, and he was talking to these Muslim scholars, and they said, “We actually like talking to Evangelicals better than Protestant liberals.” And he said he was surprised by that. And he said, “Well, tell me what you mean by that.” And they said, “Well, Evangelicals will just tell us that we're going to hell, but then we can get on with it and have a really good conversation that's honest and open. But the Protestant liberals stumble all over themselves to be so sensitive not to offend us that then we, in turn, feel like we have to walk on eggshells in conversation with them.” And so it is this sort of... How could our good attempts at being sensitive actually undercut the possibility for more openness? It's a fascinating sort of possibility there.
That's right. And I think the other challenge to it is... you know, I work here at Lipscomb. I'm often asked by people who aren't here who work in more liberal settings, you know - again, kind of roughly construed - they'll say, “Oh my goodness, what's it like working with all those men?” You know? And I consistently say, “Look, these are the nicest colleagues I could have, really. I mean, I'm not saying that everyone's all well-informed on gender theory. But everyone is hospitable. Everyone is happy that I'm here. Everyone makes an effort to be friendly.” And that goes so far in terms of real relationships and real... you know, and then there's also the question there of building trust. I actually feel that I have a kind of real friendship with my colleagues, that if I went to them and said, “There is a problem here in terms of the way we're relating across lines of gender difference,” that I think they would listen to me closely, you know? I have that confidence. But I often feel this pressure to be angry from people who think that I'm missing something. It goes back to that critical theory piece. I'm probably missing something if I'm not mad, you know? And again, it's not that there aren't things to be fixed.
You get mad.
I do get mad. And there are things that can be better, you know? But I don't know what to do sometimes with that impulse that, you know, we need to have a problem to fix. That feels to me a little problematic in and of itself.
Yeah. Last question. This is something we've talked about a bit, but just to put more of a point on it: the ways in which identity politics can trump the project of being Christian.
Fundamentally, what Christianity is about is about following Christ, and it's about laying down my own life and, at the foot of the cross, being willing to go into the world in that posture, because I believe that I will find my life in the resurrection of Christ and the movement of God in the world. And that is a different kind of discursive invitation. It's even a different kind of practical invitation, in certain respects, than the invitation that comes packaged with critical theory, in terms of asserting rights, asserting power, taking back what has been stolen. I don't think that there has to be some sort of false disjunction there. I do hope that what I'm expressing here doesn't sound like I think, Never the Twain shall meet. You know?
There are areas of overlap.
Absolutely. And there are ways in which, you know, even just the conversation we've been having highlights that you need people who have the kind of tools that come with the critical theory kit to help people see what they've been blinded to.
Yeah. Because it is true that the so-called Christian story has been the tool for oppression in its own way, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think without some of the tools that I've learned through kind of secular feminist discourse... without some of those tools, I wouldn't have been able to turn to an ecclesial setting with a kind of confidence that I'm not going to get taken advantage of, so to speak. That I feel a real sense of the importance - of my and other women and other, you know, fringe populations in terms of power - to speak into the life of the way that the body is organized. I feel a real sense of responsibility to advocate for the dignity, and the equal dignity, in terms of potential, for doing that kind of leadership work, for example. And I don't feel shy about that. And I feel like that is right at the heart part of the gospel. And I've found tools for doing that work in those secular discourses. That being said, this comes down to, you know, kind of, What is the acid test for your commitment, right? So in some ways that's an eschatological ideal, right? In other ways, we're always pursuing some sort of eschatological ideal. I would say people who are driven by critical theory are as well, in a sense. And if nothing else, I feel this sense of what, you know, so many people have that are Christian leaders, is they look for the common humanity piece, right? And if you're not compelled by this motivation to love and to see the image of God and the other, it's very easy to see the other as your enemy. And it's hard work to see the person who has been, you know, kind of holding you back as, you know, your brother. And yet that's the call, and that's a difficult one. But I think there is real liberation in that that is not to be found elsewhere.
Yeah. That's beautifully said, and it's a wonderful place to end. We've been talking to Dr. Lauren Smelser White, professor of theology. And I'm grateful to have her as my colleague, grateful for your friendship, and grateful for you, Lauren.
Thank you, Lee. I'm grateful for you and grateful to be here.
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