Grid Blog to Dismantle Patriarchy
I live in a city where a mega church pastor repeatedly instructs his young congregation to see women as subservient to men…
I practice a religion where systemic dysfunction keeps many women from being who they were truly meant to be….
I dwell on a globe where women and girls are systematically raped and murdered in order to allow the violent and the powerful to be more violent and more powerful…
“If I had a hammer, I would smash patriarchy.” – Maybe in my blog, I’ve found it.
What about you? Where do you live? What do you practice? Do you have a hammer?
March 8th is International Women’s Day. Let’s make it the day we raise our voices, the day we use our hammers to dismantle patriarchy and build something that looks more like kingdom. Furthermore, let’s do it with intelligence, wit, wisdom, and grace – but also without mincing words hiding our emotions, or sugar coating our realities.
Join us is in an intentionally mixed-gender gridblog conversation around patriarchy and how to eliminate it.
1) Post It! use your voice by posting on March 8th.
(If you are in Seattle I would encourage you to post about your experience as a woman in a city where voices like Mark Driscoll at the Mars Hill Church have so much influence — especially over young women and men. Although, all justice realted topics around women and gender equity are welcome.)
2) Name It! For consistency, please title your post: Grid Blog for Int’l Women’s Day: add your subtitle here
3) Illustrate It! With the attached .gif from Sam Brown at explodingdog.com
4) Register It! By sending your link to urbanabbess@monkfish-abbey.org. Rachelle will consolidate all the links into one earth shattering list. Please send links by noon on the 8th.
5) Pass is on! Send this to a blogging pal or post the invite on your blog.
Thank you, in the words of the Indigo Girls, for getting out of bed with your hammer and your nail.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Shalom,
Rachelle
How about also declaring Mark Driscoll insane on that day?
I don’t understand why Mark shouldn’t enjoy the same freedom you desire? Aren’t you being a bit fascist? Isn’t this America? How would you like it if someone mounted a campaign against you? I’m not suprised that a white woman would complain against how white men behave and then go forth with the same presumption.
International Women’s Day
I am very inspired by this post on Rachelle’s blog. Hope it inspires you too.
I live in a city where a mega church pastor repeatedly instructs his young congregation to see women as subservient to men…
I practice a religion where systemic…
I am a seminarian writing my thesis on emerging/gent church issues - I’ve been quite appalled at how a movement that has such progressive/liberating potential is managing to be so repressive. “Barefoot and pregnant” isn’t any better just because you have PowerPoint presentations…
How do you feel about the idea of “realm” rather than “kingdom” - I mean, if we’re smashing the patriarchy, we might as well go all the way. But that’s just me.
I really appreciate your voice in this movement - when I try to find female leaders in my research, yours is one of the only names that consistently comes up.
Here I go again proving I’m just not smart enough for the blogshere…
I like the idea of women being all that they are truly meant to be. Of course I like that idea for men and children also. But for now I can focus on the point that our culture has subjected women to less than what God intended. And that if there is any institute that should be leading the move toward freedom, it should be the church.
My concern is that you talked about a pastor instructing that women are subservient to men. I would like not to be so fast to sign up for that charge. I don’t know who you are referring to and I would want to validate the charge.
Apparently one commenter took you to mean this is Mark Driscoll. Is that who you intended to accuse? It might be helpful to post some material supporting your accusation.
Grid Blog for Int’l Women’s Day
Rachelle, who I first met, where her community hangs out in Seattle, and have bumped into a few times since, has started this grid blog.
Hi Rachelle, I have linked ot this on my site. I hope this post doesn’t get hi-jacked into an anti vs. pro Mark Driscoll comments match by people visiting. Let’s raise our voices and blogs together for the 8th March, and the issue you have so helpfully raised. Thanks, Jason.
I think it would be wise to leave personal attacks out of it…but I think the spirit behind this is cool.
Y’all are going to have to give me few days to respond to individual comments. We’re in suddenly in a bit of a crisis here at the Mee-Chapman house and I need to turn my attention to famillial needs.
Suffice it to say that I feel one should work to grow justice and equity whereever it is lacking — even if it means addressing specific issues of injustice in one’s specifc locale. That doesn’t make it personal, just local.
I will be posting about Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church and the influence that institution and it’s leaders has on women’s issues in my city (which are significant.) I haven’t gone into details yet because I’m saving that stuff for my March 8th post.
This shouldn’t and isn’t just about Mars Hill Church, however. The issue is much much larger than one person or one institution so I hope that bloggers will address a wide span of gender equity issues (including how treating one gender inequitably also damages the life/spirit of the otehr gender).
Always in Search of Shalom,
Rachelle
I hope this isn’t a ploy to piggyback on someone elses high profile for advancing one’s own visibility.
Monie Love
I appreciate your intent and understand where you’re coming from. However, I think it is always a bad idea to single people out and attack them personally or even attack their ministry or their words. An issue can be addressed without stooping to that level
“I practice a religion where systemic dysfunction keeps many women from being who they are…”
If you’d like my advice… renounce that religion. Religion is a man made construct anyways. Faith, not religion, originates with God. And watch out for phrases like “keeps many women” - it suggests powerlessness and victimhood. Much hard work was done by women (and men) through the centuries to get humanity to where it was today. The people (men and women) who were salt and light were not “kept” by anyone but God.
Speak boldly and carry a big stick (yes, I know I got that wrong) - you need fear no man nor woman, only God.
Blog and challenge others yes, not as a victim, but as salt and light.
Hey, I thought I was the only one who picked up on that male dominance thing from you-know-who’s website.
Or perhaps I am the only male to have done so?
Preach it, sister!
Good plan - I’ve linked the idea here.
I was so enthusiastic about the patriarchy thing that I have already posted my first big thoughts about the subject of dominance in general.
I have also linked to the Grid Blog for Int’l Women’s Day at http://yeredherringe.blogspot.com/.
Hi Rachelle,
This is a really great idea, I’m really impressed with what you’ve come up with and the way you’ve put it together. However I really want to say something about the anti-MH comments which others like Makeesha have disagreed with.
I think that if you want this to be a global movement, you need to give it a global perspective. Individuals can and will blog on local issues (as you already plan to), but issues have with pastors who influence the youth in Seattle are very localised. To someone like myself from NZ, I have no idea who the parties you mention are, and the only thing acheived by the disparaging remarks is to give your truly wonderful initiative a sour edge.
I plan to blog on the day, and join your grid, but I’d like to ask if you would raise the tone of this post by taking the personal attacks out. This post is being emailed,linked and trackbacked all over the world, and I think it’s important that it is seen as being an unbiased inspiration to do something wonderful, rather than a personal vendetta.
Janine
Janine and others,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments about the call for a gridblog on International Women’s Day. I’ve really appreciated the mind-stretching suggestions and comments people have made, especially in regards to the appropriateness of discussing a local or personal occurance of injustice towards women.
In my humble opinion, there is a vast difference between a personal attack and a local, specific action. A personal attack is full of spite, designed to harm and cause pain to an individual, and often directed at private (i.e. not public) portions of the person’s life. Discusssing a local or specific instance of injustice and supression however, can address the fall-out of a given set of actions in a specific locality, and is not synonymous with a personal attack.
Justice work requires us to think and act both globally and locally. This is why a call for a gridblog was issued — so that writers worldwide can expose each others to a broad span of issues, needs, and causes. Not to mention, it is an excellent opportunity for us to tell our personal, specific stories! I’m sure we can all agree that story is central to helping us connect with something that is otherwise an impersonal “issue.” I’m excited to read the many ways that bloggers will address gender and justice on March 8th — both in broad general terms and ideals, and in specific localized thoughts and actions. I feel confident that smart, wise people can do both of these things without sinking into verbal violence.
Much Shalom!
Rachelle
I posted this at another blog. Then noticed the link to this one, and I thought it might be helpful here. Not starting a fight. I know this is not about a debate, but, I feel compelled to make clear that Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church teaches that neither men nor women follow behind but that they walk through life side by side with different roles to play in the relationship. The best way I can find to illustrate this is that for the husband and wife to do somthing you need 2 votes to pass. When somthing does pass the man leads the execution and both share in the work. When there is a problem the responsibility for that problem falls on the man as he is/was the executive of the bright idea. Boys flee responsibility, men don’t.
The condition of women the world over on average is deplorable. I think that the real answer to this problem is teaching men to care, because until that happens, women will always be suffereing and always be fighting. Thats what we do at Mars Hill, teach the men to care enough to step up and put a stop to such atrocities that the “boys” of the world commit.
I would love to talk about this. email me if you want.
aaron,
i have to say, that as a woman (and just one woman voicing my own personal reaction) it does not feel “caring” to me to be dis-allowed from carrying the responsiblity of my life choices, or to be disallowed from using my leadership gifts in my marriage or elsewhere. i think the intention of the complementarian model you are describing in good — however, in actually practice it is hurtful because is hems in a woman’s abilities to a very constrained place. it also communicates that a woman is unable to execute her own “bright ideas “or to handle the responsiblity of their fall out. this message of “let me handle this” is very damaging to women.
i hear your good heart Aaron, and i wish you much shalom.
r
Rachelle,
I guess I feel somewhat concerned by your approach. Male domination of and violence towards women is bad. Patriarchy (depending on how you want to define it) is bad. However, it seems as though you want to attack Mark Driscoll as being a misogynist for an issue that may, for him, be biblical fidelity.
I feel as though you are trying to make a cultural attack on a theological issue. (I know it is a cultural issue as well, but speaking of what a pastor teaches about the bible in a church would more appropriately be put in the theological realm.) If the world is designed by God as a place where, within the family and the church, men are to be the primary leaders, trying to shift the culture in a direction that feels better will be no more helpful to women or men. It might make one group feel better about themselves but it will be a false sense of security, as what they feel better about may be an inherent lie. That all to say please don’t slander someone because of their biblical interpretation without doing the necessary work of trying to help them come to better theological conclusions and understanding where they truly stand in their beliefs.
Blessings,
Todd
Rachelle,
I blundered when I commented on this last in that I left out Jesus. A big factor to what I said above is that if the man behaves in an unchristlike manner then he has forfited his headship.
The principle scripture taught at MH with the above interpretaion (also that love is an action not a self gratifying feeling) is the following from Ephesians 5:
“22Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.[a] 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body. 31″Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
I understand that some will take this as Paul’s teaching and is not divinely inspired scripture, depending on their view of Paul. But having come from a household that is feminist I do not find the teaching at MH to be as negative as it seems to get portrayed.
Peace.