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Review of Christel Manning, God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with FeminismNew Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999
Download a printer-friendly version in In this carefully done ethnographic study, religion professor Christel Manning offers an intriguing picture of the lives and beliefs of women in conservative religious traditions today. Manning surveys and assesses responses to feminist social values and the secular feminist movement by women in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, a charismatic evangelical church, and a Catholic parish with a fairly large conservative constituency. She finds that religiously conservative women are not all alike; different religious traditions produce different responses to the issues and tensions in their lives and communities. Manning also finds that these women share many concerns with women in general (e.g., balancing work and family, ensuring good child care, winning cultural respect for motherhood, discomfort with certain aspects of the feminist movement), and that they have accepted and appropriated many feminist values (e.g., vocational choice for women, equal opportunity and equal pay in the workplace, equal opportunity for political leadership and other positions of authority). However, religiously conservative women’s appropriation of feminist values is highly selective and individualized when it comes to their negotiation of roles, responsibilities, and authority in the home, and it is nearly suspended altogether in their views of women’s place in the church or synagogue. 
Southern Baptists and the Subordination of Women
Download a printer-friendly version in The Southern Baptist declaration that the subordination of women is an essential Christian belief is but another sad chapter in the history of biblical misinterpretation and illogic in the church. Thinking they must protect the flock from the egregious errors of secular feminism, the denomination has fallen into the equal and opposite error of asserting a hierarchy of male authority. Their certainty that this is what the Bible “clearly” teaches is ill-founded. As a Puritan divine once said, “There may yet be more truth to break forth from God’s Word.” Continue reading "Southern Baptists and the Subordination of Women"
Sexuality, Spirituality and Feminist Religion
Download a printer-friendly version in For many evangelicals, there is only one sort of feminism—the sort that rejects the authority of the Bible and replaces it with a religion that is devised by women and for women. This attitude is not entirely without basis; for the kind of religious feminism that has received the most publicity and recognition does reject biblical authority. In fact, it seems that most people on both the conservative and liberal sides of the theological spectrum are, at best, only faintly aware of a truly evangelical feminism that is grounded in a view of Scripture as authoritative in its entirety. Continue reading "Sexuality, Spirituality and Feminist Religion"
Women, Religion and the Culture War
Download a printer-friendly version in At its yearly convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America passed a statement opposing abortion, pornography, homosexuality—and female pastors. For Southern Baptist leaders, these issues hang together. They assume that on their side of the culture war, Christians must oppose these practices as a piece. It is only the liberal, secular, or religiously compromised people on the other side who think differently. The press has also tended to present the issue in these polarized terms. Continue reading "Women, Religion and the Culture War"
Women Keep Promises, Too!
Download a printer-friendly version in Or, the Christian Life is for Both Men and WomenPeople both within and without the church have been expressing amazement over the rapid growth of Promise Keepers, the Christian men’s movement that was founded by Bill McCartney in 1990, and which drew a little over one million participants in 22 cities in 1996. Men involved in this movement are finding the inspiration to live righteously as honest and loving husbands, fathers and friends. They are learning to take responsibility for their families, to be faithful to their wives, to care for their children, to avoid pornography, to be involved and responsible members of their churches and communities, and to regard people of other races as their equals. In all of this, Promise Keepers offers a bracing antidote to the poison of male irresponsibility that evidently has become pandemic in American society. What can one say in response, but what everyone seems to have said already, namely, that PK is doing a vitally good work in the lives of many people in the church today? Continue reading "Women Keep Promises, Too!"
Complementarianism—What’s in a Name?
Download a printer-friendly version in The meaning of “complementarian”—a term invented fairly recently by some who oppose biblical equality—is not exactly self-evident. To illustrate: After my husband, Doug, had expressed concern to one of his students that the new pastor of a local church might restrict women’s ministry, the student returned to Doug with what he thought would be received as good news: the pastor was a complementarian. Doug then had to explain that although it sounds quite moderate, this term actually designates a position that is quite restrictive of women. Later, I mentioned to a friend that this pastor referred to himself as a complementarian. “What’s that?” was his similarly bemused response. Continue reading "Complementarianism—What’s in a Name?"
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