The marginalization of evangelical feminism

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2004 by Sally K. Gallagher

By the mid-1980s, gender essentialist and evangelical feminist positions were institutionalized in two ideologically committed evangelical organizations. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), founded in 1987, positioned itself as the defender of biblical orthodoxy against the cultural relativism and gender androgyny they saw as implicit in the methods and outcomes advocated by evangelical feminists (http://www.cbmw.com). In 1986, the Evangelical Women's Caucus finally split over a resolution supporting lesbianism and gay rights (Neff 1988; Spring 1986). Led by Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Professor, Catherine Clark Kroeger, dissenting members founded Christians for Biblical Equality (http://www.cbeinternational.org). The Evangelical Women's Caucus (EWC) was shortly thereafter renamed the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (EEWC) in an effort to better reflect its broadening mission. Since then, both of these organizations have continued to press for a reframing of gender as neither hierarchy nor androgynous sameness, but as partnerships of uniquely gifted individuals created as male and female in the image of God. They remain tiny, however, compared to other national women's organizations. In 2001, the EEWC had a membership of about 300; Christians for Biblical Equality is somewhat larger--with a membership of approximately 2,000 and a mailing list of several thousand more. The EEWC publishes a quarterly newsletter. CBE publishes a quarterly journal, Priscilla Papers, as well as a quarterly magazine, Mutuality, that address organizational goals of promoting egalitarian scholarship (according to a recent CBE survey, sixty-eight percent of its members have attended graduate school and twenty percent have received PhDs) and popularizing its message.

The Pragmatic Turn: Evangelical Family Literature, 1980-2000

Since the 1980s, evangelical rhetoric on gender and family has taken a decidedly pragmatic turn. In response to increases in women's employment, both conservative and gender egalitarian publications have employed the language of partnership to describe family life, and dichotomous ideas of gender difference have begun to give way to a wider acceptable range of gendered experience, particularly for men (Bartkowski 2004). Paralleling developments in feminist theory, evangelical feminists began to question the usefulness of theorizing gender along a "difference equals hierarchy" and "androgyny equals equality" continuum. Some, like Kari Torjensen Malcolm (1982), psychologists Kaye Cook (Cook and Lee 1992) and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (1990, 1993) urged evangelicals to focus less on difference and rights, and more on the practical outcome in terms of "stewardship" and "mutual service."

    A Christian feminist ... is a person of either sex who sees women
    and men as equally saved, equally Spirit-filled and equally sent.
    ... this does not imply that there are no differences between men
    and women. The notion of justice between the sexes does not have to
    mean that men and women must always do exactly the same things in
    exactly the same way. ... It is not God's intention that men turn
    dominion into domination, nor that women turn sociability into
    social enmeshment, but that both image God by being responsible
    stewards of creation and mutual servants of each other. (Van Leeuwen
    1990:36, 69).