Gospel Coalition, STOP YOUR BULLYING!!!

RIGHT NOW!
I MEAN IT!
(to my regular readers. sorry for all this shouting. but this one really did tick me off.)

Look, dudes (at the gospel coalition). I realize that you believe that you represent the pinnacle of all that is true and right having to do with American Christianity and Christianity in general. But I'm afraid the elevated position that you see yourselves in has deluded you and made you stupid and boorish, dumb beasts, bulls in China shops that believe they are justified in their tramping, shaming, silencing, and dismissing woman who are addressing the very real concerns and injustices that they have experienced at the hands of abusive 'Christian' systems.

You guys just better back off of these wounded women. Not because I have any power to make you hurt for it. I have none. But I'm kind of concerned about what the One who IS in the position to take you to task for your bullying. What will He do to you if you don't back off from perpetuating spiritual abuse in His name?

Elizabeth Esther and other women charged and condemned by bully Gospel Coalition

Lies (some) Men Believe About Women

As I gear up for my trip out west, I have little time to put my thoughts down on this blog.
But I still get on line from time to time and come across some really good stuff.
A lot of what is going on in my blog roll is good, although I have one sad note.
My friend Charis, who comments as Gem here, is closing down her blog, "A Wife's Submission". Her thoughts on these things will be sorely missed. But as happens from time to time, we have to move on. And that is what she's has to do.

Also, I often visit Sierra's blog via Lewis's blog roll. She comes at dealing with fundamentalism from a different angle. Her post today touches on things I believe deal with what we talk about here. One of those things is the structures set up by men concerning women that have little to do with what women really think or the real reasons women do things. I could go on and explain, but Sierra at "The Unspoken Words" does a much better job. So if you have time, hop over and give her blog a view.

http://nonprophetmessage.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/hatred-and-modesty/

Yearning For Freedom Part 2

Last week we looked at how certain present day men dealt with the desire to be right with God while at the same time, control their women, through religion. This week I want to touch briefly on some contemporaries of the Puritans who considered freedom as the right for all, including women.

The Quakers spearheaded the abolition movement and were among the first supporters of women's suffrage movement. The man who founded the Quakers was George Fox. He lived in the 1600s. Back in that day men disputed over whether or not women even had souls. One group held that women didn't have souls anymore that a goose did. Fox responds with the scripture where Mary the mother of Jesus proclaimed that her soul magnified the Lord. (Luke 1:46,47) http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/radical_quaker_women.php

The Quaker movement allowed women a lot of freedom, even to the point of letting them be ministers. The Quakers were also severely hated by the Puritans.

http://www.she-died-twice.co.uk/quakers-in-england.htm

George Fox and the Quakers were more tolerant of freedom among women and slaves than the Puritans and were more interested in personal relationships with God. Where the Puritans were overly structured, the Quakers represented a more freeing version of Christianity, but not selectively so like the present day Only-Men-Can-Be-Wild-At-Heart bunch.

I'm Not Alone/Order vs Chaos

I guess others on Blogger are also dealing with this paragraph crunching monster. I've had several suggestions and am going to try one today.

One of the overviews of the Order vs Chaos thinking within the church that I want to look at is the Puritan view. The Puritans and other like groups are rigid and structured and lean heavily on the need for order and light. They shun any disorder and unorthodox creativity as devious and dangerous. The witch trials would be and extreme example.

There is a reason the term Puritanical was coined. This way of thinking is so rigid and so oppressive that people wilted under it until they could handle it no more, then they rebelled, either internally or externally. Those that rebel are looked upon as evil, dark.

The order and structure becomes the god and is cemented as God's divine order.
Women are particularly feared in these systems by the men in charge because women often approach things differently. And instead of being given space for this, the men of these systems are threatened by this because it doesn't line up with their view of God's order. So anything different than the rigid structure is viewed as apostate. Any form of freedom, even freedom inspired by the Holy Spirit, is squashed.

I heard the story of a Mennonite woman who began to seek God and find freedom in her own home. She did nothing out of order concerning her sect, she just started getting happy in the Spirit and in the knowledge of Jesus. After a while the elders of the church became uncomfortable and went to the woman's husband and ordered him to bring his wife back into submission.

The good news to this story was that it was too late. The husband could see that what his wife was pursuing was of God and in fact had benefited from this freedom himself. He left that Mennonite church and took his family to one that was experiencing a revival.

Here is a post on No Longer Quivering about a gal who suffered from a marriage to a mentally unstable, rigid-structure thinker. The paragraph I'd like people to note is tenth from the bottom (believe me, it was easier to count that way).
[Also note that the husband in this story, with all his rigid structuring upon structure was really hiding a dark secret that he ultimately would not be able to hide or defeat with all his complicated structures.]

http://nolongerquivering.com/2011/03/25/justice-is-no-lady-chapter-5-in-pursuit-of-biblical-theology/