Partnership on the Path Away From Patriarchy
A Feature Review of
Confronting Sexism in the Church: How We Got Here and What We Can Do About It
Heather Matthews
Paperback: IVP, 2024
Buy Now: [ BookShop ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ] [ Audible ]
Reviewed by Sandra Glahn
News of scandal has rocked the church in America lately, especially in the south. In a New York Times article about it, Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, likens the failures of evangelical male leaders to “the unbuckling of the Bible belt.” The disasters have brought commentators addressing sanctuaries, chapels, and social media with advice for solving “the problem.” Many have once again invoked the Billy Graham rule—a code of conduct that calls every male Christian leader never to be alone with any woman other than his wife. The rule gets its name from the evangelist who created it to help men in his profession avoid sexual temptation. But the avoidance approach troubles Heather Matthews. She wrote about it in her new book, Confronting Sexism in the Church, saying, “Women often must assume the responsibility for removing sexual temptation from men rather than insisting that men manage their own sexuality and sexual impulses” (101).
It would seem if male plumbers, TV repair men, and physicians manage to be alone with female clients, surely pastors could do so, too. Rather than seeing the root cause as women seducing men, Scot McKnight, a seminary professor and pastor emeritus, sees systemic sexism as the problem. Women, in fact, he sees as part of the solution. In his foreword to the book he writes, “Women experience moments in the system differently. Women can point out what men who formed the system find invisible” (xi). And author Heather Matthews, he says, is one such woman.
Matthews certainly has the credentials to address the subject. She holds a doctorate from Fuller Seminary, manages a doctoral program at Wheaton College, has served as a pastor and church planter, led a nonprofit, and slogged through the trenches as a global ministry worker. She has lived in enough evangelical spaces to know that even organizations platforming women can be rife with sexism. In her book she pairs her experience with hard data to argue that the church has a sexism problem and sometimes even justifies it on biblical grounds.
She starts with a definition: “From a faith perspective sexism is any belief or practice that diminishes women’s identity as fully and equally created in God’s image and restricts women on the basis of their sex from actualizing their full identity by using their gifts and abilities in the church, in the home, and in the world” (3). This she follows with a biblical theology of antisexism and a survey of sexism in the church from its beginnings. Patriarchy started early, and restrictions on menstruating women in worship and Augustine’s teaching that women are primarily sexual and irrational didn’t help. Aristotle influenced great thinkers, whose ideas became embedded in the church’s belief and practice.
ADVERTISEMENT:
But the news has not been all bad. The church has also had a thread of antisexism. At times, people have championed Blandina, Felicitas, Perpetua, Thecla, Agatha, Agnus, Hilda of Whitby, Julian of Norwich, Christian de Pizan, Hildegard of Bingen, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Fell Fox, and scores of others. Yet now these women remain largely unknown in Protestant circles.
And sadly, the data on porn, politics, and power leads Matthews to conclude, “Women are viewed not only as temptations who could damage male purity, but also as the antidote to men’s uncontrollable sexual desire. Many evangelicals … assume men cannot control their sexual desires, so women must be responsible instead” (99). This dynamic is compounded by pornography that “perpetuates and worsens the power differential between men and women” which “plays out in everyday interactions” (105). Yet for women to speak out is risky. So “the powerful get away with harassment and abuse” (107). It seems our churches have been guarding the front door against feminism while leaving the back door open to misogyny.
What can we do about it? Having made a solid case for the need to confront sexism, Matthews advises readers to begin with relationships, where most of the problems happen. Finding health requires having hard conversations, telling stories, speaking up, and taking risks. Moving from the personal to confronting sexism in Christian leadership, Matthews offers advice that’s worth the price of the book. And not surprisingly, the fight requires male allies. Women and men must collaborate to mentor, include, affirm, model, ensure a critical mass of women, and give credit where it’s due. And if love for their sisters is not enough to motivate men to help, data on benefits of shared leadership should do so. Partnering leads to improved organizational outcomes, innovation, decision-making, and participant involvement (153).
Matthews ends with advice on confronting systemic cultural sexism, which intersects with other categories of oppression, such as race, class, age, and ability. Advocacy involves fighting porn, which “monetizes child rapes, human trafficking, nonconsensual violence against women and other racist and misogynist content” (182), supporting women in one’s community, and getting involved in global women’s issues, such as addressing the need for microloans.
If the target reader for Confronting Sexism in the Church is someone who already sees the need and wants to effect change, Matthews’s work is a great resource—well-researched, approachable, and full of actionable steps. But I wouldn’t hand a copy to most Christians identifying as complementarian, as the frequent disparaging of complementarianism would evoke resistance. The comp-camp is wide enough to include both someone who tells Beth Moore to “go home” and one who would hire women to teach men in a seminary. Better to address the specific behavior without the labels.
Matthews’s work looks at theology. It shows how the church got here. And it provides steps to help readers “do justice.” In Christ, Matthews argues, women are set free to be all God created them to be. And so are men. Women may not be damsels in distress, but neither are men helpless. As Sharifa Stevens observed in her Substack recently, “I don’t know what happened on that threshing floor, but Boaz saw a foreign woman (Ruth) gleaning in his fields and protected her—in a time where exploitation and rape was often the fate of foreign women…. Even when he was a lil tipsy, he was honorable.”
Sandra Glahn
Sandra Glahn is professor of Media, Arts & Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary and the president of the Evangelical Press Association. Her most recent book is Nobody’s Mother: Aretemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament. You can find her online at www.sandraglahn.com
 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
Understanding Christian Nationalism [A Reading Guide] |
 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall for Christian Readers!
|
 Hilarious One-Star Customer Reviews of Bibles |
![Michael J. Kruger - Bully Pulpit [Review]](https://englewoodreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Bully-Pulpit-130x130.jpeg "Michael J. Kruger - Bully Pulpit [Review]")
