{"id":20940,"date":"2019-01-23T23:46:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T07:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20940"},"modified":"2019-01-23T23:46:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T07:46:15","slug":"kill-the-angel-in-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/kill-the-angel-in-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Kill The Angel in the House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As you can imagine, I zeroed in on the chapter entitled \u201cEvangelicals and Gender\u201d, authored by Sarah C. Williams, in this week\u2019s book, Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History & Culture in Regional Perspective<\/em>, edited by Donald M. Lewis and Richard P. Pierard. It was validating to read about the impact evangelicalism has had on our current gender issues and how history has been slow \u201cto recognize the complex but formative interactions between evangelical beliefs and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity. It is unquestionably the case that evangelicalism had a vast impact on the intricate fabric of social relationships between men and women.\u201d[1]<\/a> It has been disturbing to discover in my research how much damage has been done in this area due to the strong social influence of the church and early evangelical beliefs. Everything from the \u201cstained glass ceiling\u201d[2]<\/a> for women to the prescribed gender roles found in countless churches across America, we are suffering the immense consequences of these destructive beliefs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Williams organized her chapter into sections based on five underlying assumptions. She states, \u201cIt is my contention that five underlying assumptions have shaped mainstream historiographical interpretations of the relationship between gender and evangelicalism. Each of these assumptions, for differing reasons and to varying degrees, inhibit and distort our understanding of the range and depth of evangelical influence on historical structures of thought and patterns of life.\u201d[3]<\/a> The five assumptions she outlines are:<\/p>\n

Assumption One: Who Is in Charge?<\/p>\n

Assumption Two: It\u2019s All About Women<\/p>\n

Assumption Three: The Separation of Male and Female Spheres<\/p>\n

Assumption Four: Hegemonic Evangelicalism<\/p>\n

Assumption Five: The Correlation Between Social and Political Conservatism<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under her first assumption of \u201cWho is in Charge?\u201d, she makes the following powerful statement: \u201cThe scholarly agenda was shaped by the assumption that Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, was and is unremittingly patriarchal. Evangelicalism is presented in the pages of such history books as a force that subordinated women to male domination in church and society. As a result, subjects such as female leadership in the church have become highly charged and adversarial, which often obscures the vital and creative interweaving of Christian spirituality and constitutive social ideals based on relations between as well as within the sexes. The word gender itself carries connotations of power, and early studies of this topic were concerned above all with the relative distribution of power between men and women within the structures of church leadership.\u201d[4]<\/a> This explains a great deal of the brainwashing and patriarchal traditions that have been perpetuated in our churches. It also reveals how inaccurately history can be portrayed to promote a particular ideal as well. Another historian, Callum Brown, advocates for the strong impact of the feminization of religion on the character and role of the modern church. He argues that \u201cin the Middle Ages and for much of the early modern period, female piety was understood in terms of the religious woman becoming male. Icons of female piety such as martyrs and ascetics were represented essentially in masculine forms, while femininity, menstruation and childbirth were all regarded as polluting and even dangerous to piety.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This highlights the destructive image the church has given women and how it has systematically marginalized them as being dangerous or unneeded. It also reveals the subordinate role they were expected the play and how they were to live in the shadow of their man. This idea continues to get unfolded by Brown when he argues \u201cthat in the wake of the evangelical revival Christianity was feminized and depictions of women as avaricious, greedy, lustful and sexually predatory gave way to the venerated female spirituality of the Victorian woman, depicted so graphically in Coventry Patmore\u2019s famous 1854 poem, \u201cThe Angel in the House.\u201d If women do indeed predominate in every area of religious life except in formal leadership, then it makes little sense to limit the scope of enquiry to officially designated institutional leaders, as if it is they who lead exclusively and they who necessarily carry the tone and emphasis of community life.\u201d[6]<\/a> Of course this caused me to do a little research on this \u201cAngel in the House\u201d poem to see how it really depicted women. Come to find out, it is a rather long poem published as a 184-page book inspired by Patmore\u2019s wife, Emily, and depicts her as the ideal submissive woman of the age. Unfortunately, this became the gold standard for women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The following is an excerpt I found that gives a sense of the poem’s content:<\/p>\n

Man must be pleased; but him to please
\nIs woman’s pleasure; down the gulf
\nOf his condoled necessities
\nShe casts her best, she flings herself.
\nHow often flings for nought, and yokes
\nHer heart to an icicle or whim,
\nWhose each impatient word provokes
\nAnother, not from her, but him;
\nWhile she, too gentle even to force
\nHis penitence by kind replies,
\nWaits by, expecting his remorse,
\nWith pardon in her pitying eyes;
\nAnd if he once, by shame oppress’d,
\nA comfortable word confers,
\nShe leans and weeps against his breast,
\nAnd seems to think the sin was hers;
\nOr any eye to see her charms,
\nAt any time, she’s still his wife,
\nDearly devoted to his arms;
\nShe loves with love that cannot tire;
\nAnd when, ah woe, she loves alone,
\nThrough passionate duty love springs higher,
\nAs grass grows taller round a stone.[7]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also thought it was interesting that the Brooklyn College professor\u2019s website where I found the summary of the poem had this quote: \u201cFor Virginia Woolf[8]<\/a>, the repressive ideal of women represented by the Angel in the House was still so potent that she wrote, in 1931, \u201cKilling the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.\u201d[9]<\/a> This is probably what many women would like to do to the many destructive narratives written about women in the evangelical church\u2026actually I would like to join them in killing this divisive and abusive treatment of our sisters in Christ.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1] Sarah C. Williams, \u201cEvangelicals and Gender,\u201d, in Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History & Culture in Regional Perspective<\/em>, eds. Donald M. Lewis, and Richard P. Pierard, (InterVarsity Press, Kindle Edition), 271.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [2] https:\/\/today.duke.edu\/2015\/12\/chavesstudy<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [3] Williams, \u201cEvangelicals and Gender,\u201d 271-272.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [4] Ibid., 272.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [5] Ibid., 273-274.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [6] Ibid., 274.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [7] http:\/\/academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu\/english\/melani\/novel_19c\/thackeray\/angel.html<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [8] Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Virginia_Woolf<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [9] http:\/\/academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu\/english\/melani\/novel_19c\/thackeray\/angel.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you can imagine, I zeroed in on the chapter entitled \u201cEvangelicals and Gender\u201d, authored by Sarah C. Williams, in this week\u2019s book, Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History & Culture in Regional Perspective, edited by Donald M. Lewis and Richard P. Pierard. It was validating to read about the impact evangelicalism has had on our current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,1122,620],"class_list":["post-20940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-global-evangelicalism","tag-lewis","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20942,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940\/revisions\/20942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}