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First, let me apologize for the length of this blog.  However, I felt it necessary to convey the process of thought behind my conclusions as this is an admittedly controversial topic and will, no doubt, anger some of my readers.  While such a result is not the writer’s intention, it will likely prove unavoidable.  Nonetheless, here it goes.

From the founding of our nation until about the mid-nineteenth century, American women were regarded by society, if not strictly by law, as the property of first their fathers and then their husbands.  Business and politics were an exclusively male domain where women did not dare to tread.  “Educated” women attended finishing schools where they were trained how to be “proper” ladies and the teaching of the three R’s was curtailed, if not abandoned altogether.  The female sphere of influence was confined to the domestic arena and she governed there only at the sufferance of her husband.  Women were discouraged from entertaining ”opinions,” particularly those contrary to their male guardians.  If they did so, they certainly never expressed them publicly.  Any woman who dared to do so risked being labeled as “unsexed” and the resultant social ostracization.  Furthermore, women forced by poverty or divorce to work outside the home were, at best, pitied, at worst, judged to be possessed of questionable morals.  Regrettably, there was little or no protection under the law for such women and they often suffered abuse.

About the 1850′s, the feminist movement arose to bring necessary awareness and change to our society, a century-long struggle too complex and diverse for me to repeat here.  Suffice it to say, what resulted was women’s suffrage, equal treatment under the law and a society where women were no longer perceived as secondary human beings.  (As an aside, feminism, like other nineteeth century reform movements i.e. abolitionism and temperance, found its genesis in the Second Great Awakening – the great revival movement that swept through America in the early 1800′s.)  The point of all this preamble is to demonstrate that the initial purpose of feminism was to elevate the status of women to a social and legal status with men.  So far, so good.

However, by the 1960′s most of the initial battles had been won, particularly on the legal front,  and a change of purpose began to occur within the feminist movement.  The new goal was no longer equality, but dominance.  And the method was role reversal.  Males were encouraged to explore their “feminine side,” to become passive and nurturing while females were prompted to be aggressive, competitive and even combative.  To quote a current feminist leader, “We’re feminists, we’re fierce, and we’re in your face!”  In the minds of late twentieth and early twenty-first century feminists, marriage and motherhood were passe, or worse, the subtly oppressive weapons of a misogynistic patriachy.  Career became foremost and family secondary as women sought fulfillment exclusively in professionalism rather than in family.  Divorce rates sored.  Promiscuity became rampant with the advent of ”the pill” and the accompanying “sexual revolution” as women threw off “repressive Victorian mores” and “took control” of their bodies.  The result: endemic teenage pregnancy, STD epidemics, the destruction of the nuclear family and a society where lawyers and psychologists grow fat feeding off the collective refuse.

What was the church’s reaction to all this?  Today, Christians seemed to have become polarized into one of two camps.  The liberal wing that has embraced post-modern feminism as “progressive” and “liberating” and the conservative wing that has adopted a reactionary approach demanding women return to their roots, so to speak.  Fundamentalists, in rare agreement with post-modern feminists, have concluded that the old “barefoot and pregnant” cliche is a biblical model requiring all “good” Christian women to stay home, have babies, and then raise and home school said babies.  In their view, no compromise is allowed.  Another group, somewhat less intransigent, encourages their daughters to attend college and pursue a career (lest they fail to find husbands and remain perpetual burdens to their parents) only to abandon that career upon marriage in order to stay home, have babies…you get the point.  Again, no other valid alternatives are offered.  Personally, I don’t know how either group explains Priscilla, who was both married and a tent maker by trade (Acts 18:1-3), which, in first century Corinth, was a fairly lucrative occupation, Corinth being a crossroads city with a thriving marketplace.  I suppose Aquila failed to provide her with babies to raise and home school.  Query: did the consquent precedent lead to the moral degradation for which the Corinthian church is famous?  Once more, I digress.

Now, here is where I am really going to get into trouble.  For, this single Christian male, who feels a call to be married and is a member of a church of the “less intransigent” model, finds himself in a predicament.  Most of the single Christian women he knows are educated professionals, not an altogether distressing situation for a man who finds intelligence an attractive atribute in a female.  However, these women, while vocalizing a desire for marriage (which is subtly required of them by church leadership) act in an altogether disparate manner i.e. they remain distant, disinterested, unavailable, and, dare I say it, cold.  Such contradictory behavior cannot help but make one wonder if these ladies have been unduly influenced by the post-modern feminist and fundamentalist view of the marriage state and are secretly avoiding becoming “enslaved?”

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