Women have made great strides when it comes to achieving political and social equality in America, though at times this is difficult to perceive given how far short America has fallen from genuine equality. One of the areas where women still have the farthest to go is in America's churches: Christianity, as practiced in America, continues to treat women as inferior human beings.

In Who Shall Lead Them? The Future of Ministry in America, Larry A. Witham writes:

Some male preachers have assured women that motherhood is more influential, for “training in the salvation of her children is mighty and decisive; the influence of the minister over his hundreds is slight.” Yet M. Madeline Southard, who organized the American Association of Women Ministers, was not mollified by such praise for the fairer sex.

“Men were not disturbed when women washed the world’s dirty clothes and scrubbed dirty office floors,” she said in 1921. Only when women sought careers did “they became fearful of what would happen to their children and their femininity.”

Women working outside the home has never been the problem for religious and cultural conservatives — at least not when we’re talking about poor women and women of color. Such women have commonly held outside jobs in order to feed their families without religious or cultural conservatives expressing concern about how their children would be raised or what might happen to their femininity. Of course, those women were performing menial jobs which those same conservatives appreciated not having to do themselves.

Complaints only began in earnest when white, middle-class women tried to enter the workforce — and, perhaps more importantly, attempted to gain access to the same careers traditionally monopolized by those same religious and cultural conservatives. This is not to say that there are no valid questions being raised by conservatives or that they may not sincerely believe that are defending important values.

The overwhelming convenience of when they choose to mount a defense, however, undermines their arguments and strongly suggests that, at the very least, there are unconscious motives and agendas at work here. An honest conservative will have to admit that it isn’t consistent to object to white woman trying to become priests or politicians without also raising the exact same objections to black and Latino women working as maids or waitresses. It’s nothing short of misogyny to think that it’s OK for women to clean floors, but not OK for them to lead churches or communities.

Since the early 1980s, secular feminists have written widely about an organized “backlash” as women compete with men for professional positions or college admissions. Church feminists have argued likewise. They point to cycles of “backlash” every time women clergy entered clerical turf, usually when economic forces and women’s rights movements coincided (such as the 1880s, 1920S, and 1950S).

As feminist church writer Paula D. Nesbitt argues, “For women clergy, the good news that backlash movements offer is that women have made sufficient cultural and organizational strides in challenging the prevailing norms that they are perceived as a significant force to fend off.”

It’s curious, but nevertheless quite true, that increased resistance to and complaints about women is probably a sign that they are, in fact, making genuine progress. Change is always difficult, especially fundamental changes like the increased equality of women in a society where they are traditionally treated as inferiors. Critics of feminism may cite such backlash as an indication that women are overreaching; the truth, however, is that such backlash is an indication that women are only just scratching the surface and should keep pushing.

Some day, perhaps, the backlash may be a sign of overreaching — but we aren’t anywhere close to that stage yet.

 

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