Charles Bartlett - 10 July 2009 01:26 PM

Sam Keyes - 10 July 2009 12:54 PM

(snip)Anyway, Charles, I can agree with you in deploring the way that the culture attacks families, and particularly fathers.  But…  I sense in your comments (am I wrong about this?) that for you anything women do outside of the home can be construed as an attack on the traditional family.  If that is so, I do not think that this “traditional family” is a Christian one.

(snip)
Dear Sam,
What a woman does outside the home? By that I guess you mean her husband or father’s covering? If she is outside the covering (protection, care, and counsel of the man), then she must be either a widow or living beyond the roof/support of her family. I believe the latter ought to be unusual, but where a woman is not living with her family or husband, she may either find shelter by her own guile or in the church. Living by her wits I believe betrays the idea that men have a role to defend women. We let women go into the world and suffer harm, and we are no longer ‘shining knights’ or ‘gentlemen’. I think the biblical principal of covering—be it by father, brother, or even male cousin, lends to men being natural protectors and benefactors of women. We should be loving concerned and protective of them.

Charles, please explain some more what you mean by this! My parents are both still living, but I haven’t lived under their roof for over twenty years now. I do not make my way by guile, nor am I being supported (financially) by my parish. There are more than just those two alternatives.

Where I draw a line, along with GK Chesterton, is where women no longer have the support of their families or husbands, and enter the workplace in such a way as to make men and women competitively at odds. This, combined with birth control, really compromises the otherwise noble sensibility of men into a trashy ‘survival of the fittest’ where neither sex look out for one another’s reputation or material good, but treat each other as competitive rivals, rewarded by merit not design—or just as bad, mutual self-interest. The bottom line: a sacramental covenant (the truth of marriage) is exchanged for a revolutionary, individualistic, Godless political-economy and lifestyle.

Do you see a way to eliminate competition for employment between men and women, other than barring women from the workplace altogether? I hope very much that isn’t what you have in mind. I have a number of bad habits that I’ve never been able to shake, like eating regularly and sleeping indoors, and without my paycheck I would have to quit them all cold turkey. 

Karen

I re-inserted Sam’s comment for clarity KEY

Dear Karen,

Not being under your “parents roof” is also how I understand the never-married state of the woman as her “own head”. The difference between the present day circumstance of many never-married, independent women vs. what I believe to be the example of scripture is the independent, unattached life is the norm whereas in scripture it is something that may happen but is uncommon. In fact, it’s more than a norm. It’s sadly an expectation and valorized. By “guile” I meant the woman not being protected by men; thus, having to fend as an individual against the world, “me vs. everyone”, “fight or die”, “screw you”, etc. That’s pretty sad when a woman must/chooses to live this way. It’s a commentary on our society not unlike sons/daughters who abandon their old folks, leaving them alone to pursue their own interests.

At this point I think it would require something really (counter) revolutionary… But let’s say this: When the Church falls so does the Nation. Everything we see is derivative of the same problem: The Church failing to uphold biblical/canonical discipline and standards. The Church does mission, but not at the sacrifice of the Gospel or Law (God’s Word). Nor at the expense of the marks of the Church. The Church does mission but for the glory of Chist—not scandal or mockery. And the people of God are a bride, prepared for the second coming of Christ, made pure and sanctified. The body is to be made holy, “our bodies and soul are not our own, they are Christ’s”. The Church Body is kept holy by the Keys. What kind of catechism is going on in the church? What kind of self-examination is happening at the Table/altar? Where has the place of confession/counseling gone? Does the Pastor know what’s going on in his flock? Is the Pastor engaged, doing home visits? Does he convict sin by the Word so the soul is terrified and is driven to the every-ready mercy of Christ? Do the Holy Orders of the Church set a Godly and Holy example for us to follow? Is there a standard which even the Primate or majority party must submit/be governed by? 

I don’t believe in solving one problem by creating ten more. I think women need real options and encouragement/teaching in order to desire marriage. Most women and men have no idea what marriage entails or it’s ultimate purpose. They do not know it exists to glorify God, build the Church, and sanctify children. They need real examples in the home where male leadership (sic., their fathers), piety, and involvement exists. Parents need to be involved with their children at a young age to assist in building vocations, cultivating friends, and life skills so a child is prepared for a proper spouse. And we need to especially restore the importance of celibacy until marriage, and this partly includes knowing who is our ‘first’, eternal Love; and remaining leal to Him regardless of state of life or circumstance. If we can’t keep our God’s Love, then how can we keep any maritial love? Anyway, this all starts in the church and then moves outward as the deaconate and presbytery work together, forming a ‘complete society’ under the single rule of the Word. All this flows out of the Gospel, God’s sovereignty, and hopelessness of sin.

Charles Bartlett - 11 July 2009 09:56 AM

Dear Karen,

Not being under your “parents roof” is also how I understand the never-married state of the woman as her “own head”. The difference between the present day circumstance of many never-married, independent women vs. what I believe to be the example of scripture is the independent, unattached life is the norm whereas in scripture it is something that may happen but is uncommon. In fact, it’s more than a norm. It’s sadly an expectation and valorized. By “guile” I meant the woman not being protected by men; thus, having to fend as an individual against the world, “me vs. everyone”, “fight or die”, “screw you”, etc. That’s pretty sad when a woman must/chooses to live this way. It’s a commentary on our society not unlike sons/daughters who abandon their old folks, leaving them alone to pursue their own interests.

At this point I think it would require something really (counter) revolutionary… But let’s say this: When the Church falls so does the Nation. Everything we see is derivative of the same problem: The Church failing to uphold biblical/canonical discipline and standards. The Church does mission, but not at the sacrifice of the Gospel or Law (God’s Word). Nor at the expense of the marks of the Church. The Church does mission but for the glory of Chist—not scandal or mockery. And the people of God are a bride, prepared for the second coming of Christ, made pure and sanctified. The body is to be made holy, “our bodies and soul are not our own, they are Christ’s”. The Body is kept holy by the Keys. What kind of catechism is going on in the church? What kind of self-examination is happening at the Table/altar? Where has the place of confession/counseling gone? Does the Pastor know what’s going on in his flock? Is the Pastor engaged, doing home visits? Does he convict sin by the Word so the soul is terrified and is driven to the every-ready mercy of Christ? Do the Holy Orders of the Church set a Godly and Holy example for us to follow? Is there a standard which even the Primate or majority party must submit/be governed by? 

I don’t believe in solving one problem by creating ten more. I think women need real options and encouragement/teaching in order to desire marriage. Most women and men have no idea what marriage entails or it’s ultimate purpose. They do not know it exists to glorify God, build the Church, and sanctify children. They need real examples in the home where male leadership (sic., their fathers), piety, and involvement exists. Parents need to be involved with their children at a young age to assist in building vocations, cultivating friends, and life skills so a child is prepared for a proper spouse. And we need to especially restore the importance of celibacy until marriage, and this partly includes knowing who is our ‘first’, eternal Love; and remaining leal to Him regardless of state of life or circumstance. If we can’t keep our God’s Love, then how can we keep any maritial love? Anyway, this all starts in the church and then moves outward as the deaconate and presbytery work together, forming a ‘complete society’ under the single rule of the Word.

Hi Charles,
Maybe I live in a somewhat sheltered world as a government employee, but for me there hasn’t been any of the dog-eat-dog struggle you describe involved either in getting hired or in staying employed. There was competition for the job in the sense that to get hired initially, I had to pass the same exam and interview as the male applicants, but after that, keeping my job was a matter of showing up and doing my work competently, not “fight or die” competition. I worked for a few years in private industry before I became a city employee, and I don’t recall that there was any of that sort of thing in the three or four small firms I worked for as a landscape architect. Things may be different and more competitive in large corporations. On the whole I agree with your last two paragraphs, but I am just not seeing an incompatibility between the Church properly being the Church as you describe, and what you’ve written about women in the workplace. If sometimes the workplace involves cut-throat competition, is a “fight or die, screw you” attitude, and the actions that are likely to arise out of it, any more appropriate for Christian men than for Christian women? I don’t think so. Is it possible for women, and men, to be present in the workplace while living lives of progressive sanctification, presenting ourselves to Christ as a living sacrifice, doing our work as though working for Him? IMO, yes it is, and that is what those of us who aren’t financially independent need to be doing.

My few attempts at starting my own business have not been succeessful, but the Bible does depict a woman excelling in the world of business. The “Good Wife” in the book of Proverbs manages what sounds like a combination of production and manufacturing. She buys a field, decides what to plant in it, and does so with the “fruit of her hands”. (Is that her earnings from her past business ventures?) She makes and sells clothing. She manages an unspecified number of employees to produce all the food and clothing for her household as well as the goods she sells, from spinning the yarn to manufacture, finishing and wholesaling of the product. I think she is making a go of it, too—I believe both scarlet and purple were expensive dyes in those days, so the fact that not just she but her whole household are wearing them suggests that her business is flourishing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of what is sometimes called “social entrepreneurism”. That’s the practice of starting and running a business in which all or part of the intended profit is social good: creating jobs and/or making money to be donated to a charity of interest to the business owner. Today we might call this woman a social entrepreneur. She’s able to pay good wages (i.e. the scarlet clothing, warm coats for cold weather), and give to charity in addition to creating an ample income for her family and freeing up her husband to become influential in the city. (He “sits among the elders” in the gates—as I understand it, the city gate is where the “movers and shakers” of that culture hung out.) Her employees are described as “maidens”. Maybe she went out of her way to hire women who had for whatever reason never married, so they wouldn’t be forced to live by guile as you call it, or maybe “maidens” just means female servants…I don’t know. I do know that in this passage the Bible describes these women working and earning, as either employer or employee, without a whiff of criticism from either the woman’s family or the Bible author, who says that her husband and children think highly of her, and he (the author) considers her to be praiseworthy, a “woman who fears the Lord”. Granted, the Good Wife isn’t unattached, but not all women who are unattached deliberately sought out that state; they may have been widowed, abandoned by their husbands, or simply never gotten married. (As a female baby boomer, and specifically a college educated female baby boomer, I was more likely than women of other times to remain unmarried due simply to demographics.) A widow, or a spinster, or a single mom could do the same kind of social entrepreneurism, if she had or acquired the relevant skills. If she did, couldn’t we think of her as a praiseworthy woman who fears the Lord, just as much as her married counterpart? And in the New Testament, we see the convert Lydia from Thyatira, “a seller of purple goods”, which sounds like she might have been in the same business as the Good Wife. (to be continued)

(continued from # 78) Your use of the word “guile” gave me a completely different idea than what you describe above. I thought you meant living by beguiling people, i.e. either by attracting a man to support me as a “kept woman” or by scamming people out of their money. In the past I think it was unfortunately true that sometimes there were not many other options open to a solitary woman in need of an income. I’m glad that’s not what you meant, but I suppose that since I’m not under the immediate protection of an individual man, you would describe me also as living by guile. You have several times mentioned a duty of men to protect women. I think one of the biggest protections men can give women is to remove the barriers that in the past made it more difficult than it is nowadays for a woman to be financially self-supporting if she needs to be. Today, “we don’t take female students at this college”, “we don’t hire women”, “we don’t sell houses to women” and “we don’t make mortgage loans to women without a male co-signer”, are all illegal, and I think, given the times, most of those laws were probably passed by largely or completely male legislatures. A huge “thank you” to those men for protecting me by law from being discriminated against because of my sex.

You write in your last paragraph that encouragement/teaching is required to desire marriage. Is it your opinion that for Christians marriage is to be preferred to remaining single? I have heard this taught on a couple of occasions (but not in any variety of Anglican), even to the extent of its being suggested that there is something (unspecified) wrong with people who don’t marry. I don’t see things that way. The only people I can think of off the top of my head of whom the Bible says that they ought to marry are young widows. IMO marriage isn’t something that people should be steered toward if they weren’t heading in that direction anyway. I look at it more along the lines of 1 Cor 7—that either marriage or singleness are appropriate conditions for Christians; if you are going to marry here is how married Christians should live, and if you are going to remain single this is the way to do it.

Karen

Gosh, Karen.  Thank you for writing. I wish I could respond better. You may enjoy these books by Doug Wilson. Especially see the titles “her hand in marriage”, “federal husband”, “Fidelity”, amongst others: http://www.bookfinder.com/author/douglas-wilson/

Wilson is an excellent source for biblical family instruction. This is generally where I get my worldview on family matters. He also has a book on biblical courtship.

I suppose the notion of man protecting the woman comes from “the husband loving the bride like christ”. What does this fully imply? Didn’t Christ sacrifice himself, substitute himself, and suffer the penalty for His Bride? From this idea, comes much regarding patriarchy. For example, the man suffering in the world so His wife is spared. I think the example in proverbs is a wife who does good works (labors, industry, etc.) for the glory of her husband’s name and house, not herself per se. Though I imagine if a woman had no husband, then the glory would be for God, as in all things.

I don’t think you are doing anything wrong. And I believe in order for women to experience life differently, a a total reform in attitudes would have to occur, preconditionally. Today we make what was once “last resort” into “first choice”. By this irregularity I mean we opt to marry late, avoid marriage and families, have few children if any at all, pursue careers above all else, divorce when marriage becomes inconvenient, remarry thereby forgetting our first love, sleep around for years before committing, and generally putting oursleves and our needs before the good of God and others. I believe the career-oriented lifestyle is very infertile, consumer-centered, and two income-earners definately weaken and interfers with overall family well-being. There are other options. Often they are scary and require much trust in God. But people do it, and in the end they may ‘have’ less materially, but gain more emotionally and spiritually.

I think you and I agree on the unmarried state and life of celibacy/chastity. I have gotten a lot out of monastic/ascetic teaching which is very rich and encouraging.

Curious trends in culture? Do men and women even need each other any more (biologically)? How does this impact marriage as a sign of salvation? How does it impact knowledge of our God and His Promise? etc.
Death of the father: British scientists discover how to turn women’s bone marrow into sperm

Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute faith group, said the Newcastle project flies in the face of research showing that children do best when raised by a married mixed- sex couple.

“Children need male and female role models in their lives,” he added. “Yes, there are children raised by single parents through all sorts of circumstances, but when you are talking about deliberately creating children in that way, that is morally wrong.”

Debra Matthews, a U.S. bioethicist, said: “People want children and no one wants anyone else to tell them they can’t have them.”

An update of Britain’s ageing fertility laws is going through Parliament and is likely to allow the use of artificial sperm and eggs in IVF treatment - but only for heterosexual couples.

The Newcastle research also paves the way for a woman to grow her own sperm and use it to fertilise her natural eggs, creating a child to which she is both mother and father.

Similarly, a man could be both father and mother to a child created with his own sperm and a lab-grown egg. Such children would be at high risk of genetic abnormality.

Most of what Schmemann and Sam said including the reverent ‘I don’t know’ about the ministry of Anglican women priests. Protestants with their belief in a fallible church think they can change things closely related to essentials and even essentials themselves; Catholics don’t. What strikes me is what little pressure there is to do this in the Catholic world comes from a minority living in Protestant countries, which seems to confirm my reaction as an Anglo-Catholic young man when learning of WO: it’s like a flashing neon sign saying You’re wrong; we’re Protestants after all. Move along. Sorry but I don’t see it coming from the life and heart of the Catholic faith but from Protestantism so I play it safe and side with the first as it’s always been known. I trust my church will get it right and don’t worry about it too much any more.

Re: Mother Jane on the priest ‘getting out of the way’ when celebrating, quite right and who else thought of eastward-facing? (Which wasn’t her point but of course I’d think of that.)

I recently posted scriptural references that seem to speak to homosexuality at:
http://covenant-communion.net/index.php/forums/viewthread/969/.
I have tried looking for similar scriptural references that might pertain to ordination of women, but with little success. The closest I come to is:

1 Corinthians 14
34. women are to remain quiet in the assemblies, since they have no permission to speak: theirs is a subordinate part, as the Law itself says.
35. If there is anything they want to know, they should ask their husbands at home: it is shameful for a woman to speak in the assembly.

So….is that it?  I would appreciate anyone directing me to scriptures relevant to ordination of women. Thanks.

Also, ordination of women has made sense to me because women constitute one half of humanity.  I have not seen this referred to in this discussion.