Dr. Abigail Favale is an outstanding writer and she focuses her sparkling prose intensely on the issues of feminism and the gender paradigm. Dr. Favale is also a fellow Bruin: she earned her B.A. in Philosophy from Geoge Fox University only to return many years later to teach in the Humanities Department. A conversion from a conservative Evangelical upbringing to Roman Catholicism catapulted her to the University of Notre Dame where she currently teaches and writes.<\/p>\n
She begins her 2022 book, The Genesis of Gender<\/em>, with a re-telling of her journey. This proved worthwhile because the academic and spiritual odyssey she has traveled sheds light on how she arrived at her strong opinions of the feminist movement and the Christian faith. Her undergraduate college experience transformed her into a feisty feminist, \u201cI wanted to construct a new Christianity, fully purged of sexism\u201d (p. 22). Then graduate school sealed the deal\u2014although doubts started creeping in as she finished her Ph.D. studies at St. Andrews in Scotland. Her story is an interesting one and it held my attention. Chapter two and three were extremely helpful to me because she does a great job of explaining the historical arc of Feminism and how we ended up where we are today. There are many streams that feed into the Feminist movement: philosophical, political, religious–and she skillfully navigates everyone one of them. As one of the uninitiated, I was thankful for the history lesson.<\/p>\n She won me over early with her interpretation of Genesis one and two: the creation story, man and women, God and his children who bear his image. She says, \u201cThis is the true purpose of the human being: to become a reciprocal gift,<\/em> to give love and receive it in turn\u201d (p. 42). This is no angry feminist devoid of self-acceptance, resenting her church upbringing, and raising a clenched fist towards God. She has come a long way in her journey and by the end of the book she shares her faith with a beauty and depth (and clarity of expression) that can only be attributed to Christ working faithfully\u2014and patiently\u2014in her life.<\/p>\n Chapter four focusing on sex, birth control, and the women\u2019s body. It is a powerful polemic against casual sex that has happened, in part, due to the revolution of birth control. Says Favale: \u201cSex is not just a bodily activity, but a union of whole persons\u201d (p. 109). The dignity of both men and woman, along with the virtue of restraint, should not be pushed aside, but rather kept front in center so we do not become \u201cpawns of our own appetites\u201d (p. 105).<\/p>\n Chapter five discusses the biological plane of sex at great length in hopes to counter postmodern myths that have hurt woman. She ends the chapter by saying, \u201cEach body is an icon of Christ; each body is a sacrament, revealing to us the sacred and unrepeatable mystery of the person\u201d (p. 139).<\/p>\n Chapter six digs into what the idea of gender means to gender paradigm followers and what gender means from a Christian perspective. In short, Favale says, \u201cIn a nutshell, we are deeply confused about what it means to be a body\u201d (p. 141). She\u2019s patient and empathetic to the confused teen or twenty-something who thinks she might be a lesbian or contemplating transition. She sketches out their motivations and desires thoughtfully. But then she counters their assumptions and arguments with her own thoughtful insights and her arguments always seem to be an invitation to think deeper about these\u2014and to leave room for God and faith. Invite God into your struggles and don\u2019t push him aside. Chapter seven builds on chapter six and takes a hard look at the stakes involved in these choices. \u201cHere is a difficult truth: we are living in an era when our young women are increasingly deciding they would be better off as a man\u201d (p. 169). Favale emphatically states that we can not be identified separately from our bodies. Our bodies and our souls are intertwined and personhood consists of both–and both should be celebrated as sacrament. She explains how this truth is at odds with the current gender paradigm. Supporters of gender paradigm are too quick to divorce themselves from their bodies, or want to alter it in order to make themselves acceptable or to live out their \u201ctrue selves.\u201d Favale says that is a lie: \u201cThe lie\u2014I have to force my body to reveal my true self<\/em>\u2014supplants the truth: the body I am is always already revealing my personhood<\/em>\u201d (p. 199). Favale affirms all women\u2019s bodies because they are created by God and they are good.<\/p>\n The last chapter is entitled Wholeness<\/em> and Favale brings together all her ideas under the umbrella of faith and a God who has revealed himself in Christ. She affirms, \u201cI believe that Christianity holds the truth about human sexuality, and I\u2019ve structured my life around that truth\u201d (p. 201).<\/p>\n Favale\u2019s book is unique in the codex of literature we\u2019ve read so far in this program. This history she traces has passing similarity to Bebbington\u2019s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain<\/em> due to the succinct tracing of the historical arc and how we arrived at the place where we are today. Shelby Stele\u2019s offering, Shame<\/em>, talks about the depth of polarization in our country and there are echoes of this dynamic with Favale. But the book that has the most similarities is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self<\/em> by Carl Trueman. \u201cModern culture is obsessed with identity,\u201d says Trueman\u2014and the same can be said with thinkers in the Feminist and gender paradigm movements. As Simone de Beauvoir famously said, \u201cOne is not born, but rather, becomes a woman.\u201d An individual becomes a woman by choosing her own identity and living that identity out without consideration to what God has to say about the matter. An individual is their own creator and that is the essence of the modern self<\/em>. Favale insists we should leave room for God’s opinion of who we are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Abigail Favale is an outstanding writer and she focuses her sparkling prose intensely on the issues of feminism and the gender paradigm. Dr. Favale is also a fellow Bruin: she earned her B.A. in Philosophy from Geoge Fox University only to return many years later to teach in the Humanities Department. A conversion from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"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":[2543],"class_list":["post-30491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-favale","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30491","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\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30646,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30491\/revisions\/30646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}