I have tried not to let the treatment of women get to me. I’ve fought injustice on the one hand while teaching female-wallflower-living on the other. I’ve worked to increase the opportunities available to women and then turned around and told them (and myself) that the church doesn’t offer those opportunities.
I can’t do it anymore.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
The stories I’ve read as ancient history… stories about wives being beaten by husbands and daughters either abandoned or used as sex toys… these stories are still today’s news in places like Bolivia. The fear is palpable in their communities. The women hang back, eyes down, bodies curled up in defensive posture. They have no grasp of their value as humans and bearers of the image of God.
But here’s the ugly part… the truth that we want to bury. Abuse and discrimination against women are today’s news in the United States and other first-world countries, too. We just cloak the dehumanization we do behind caricatures of religion, paternalism, and the good-ol-boy culture. We paint the abuse and control of women in terms of God’s plan for them and pile on the guilt when women fail to call it beautiful. (A word about men, if I may? We are guilty of dehumanizing them as well when we paint all men as potential rapists and abusers. Please don’t misunderstand me as saying all men, or even most men, are scum.)
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
Today women are bought and sold as property to be used and discarded. Today women are valued solely on their ability to produce children. Today women are told they are acceptable only when they make themselves invisible – unseen and unheard.
But while I’ve seen first-hand the fear in the eyes of women and girls in Bolivia, I’ve also seen first-hand the possibilities when a community embraces the values and teachings of Jesus.
Gherson is the manager of the Viloma ADP (area development project), and he is also a pastor in the community. After welcoming us to the World Vision offices in Viloma, he described the challenges faced by the community in Viloma.
“Bolivia is a very chauvinist country,” he said. “We have a lot of family violence, discrimination against women, and lack of opportunities for women. We have mostly male pastors, but here in Viloma, we have a real privilege — a female pastor. And she is going to give the devotional today.” It was matter-of-fact, casual.
I heard a man, a conservative pastor, put the lack of female pastors into the same category as chauvinism and violence against women.
I am just going to say it. Why did I have to go to Bolivia to hear this?
Janet spoke in quiet but confident tones as she gave the devotional – “Eyes That See.” She talked about Elijah, his servant, and the invisible army of God surrounding the enemy army. She said, “Today we can pray just like Elijah that God open our eyes to see what God wants us to see. We can go out and face the troubles in our community like the prophet – quiet, confident, unafraid.”
And that’s what World Vision does. While the treatment of women and children in Bolivia is awful, the Bolivian Christians I’ve met are far ahead of us when it comes to women’s empowerment.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
When World Vision comes into a community, they train all children, both boys and girls. And Bolivian Christians make sure that girls learn to speak publicly and get practice teaching the Bible to their peers.
They educate both men AND women, training them in business and agriculture, equipping them with skills they can use to better feed, clothe, and care for their families. They seek mother-friendly business opportunities for women with children so they can work, earn an income, and still care for their children.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
They provide marriage classes and counseling to couples who desire a healthier relationship. They teach how to live as true Christians in their homes in front of their kids so that their lives teach the Truth about God.
I’m so proud of my Bolivian brothers and sisters in Christ today.
[To read posts from our team members, check out World Vision's Bolivia blog.]
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, brilliant post! Thanks for sharing this. I was privileged to go on a charity/blogging partnership trip to Brazil earlier this year and like you I was so impressed by the commitment to women’s empowerment I saw there. It made me think a lot about how things are back home (for me that’s the UK) and how I think society has become almost too complacent about these things. It’s awesome that Bolivian Christians have such a positive attitude towards raising up women. Sometimes it seems that all we hear about is chauvinism and gender inequality in the church, despite societies like the US and UK being so privileged.
This is an AMAZING post. I have always kind of kept quiet about how I thought women are oppressed in the USA even the christian world. Sharing this post was my first step to breaking that silence.
Sharing this post on facebook. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this!
wow. what a beautiful, 180 degrees perspective changing post. Wow. Thank you.
Joy…thank you. I wish I had more words, but I don’t. Just…thank you.
Funny how God works…I was just in conversation with someone about this very issue and how it affects our communities here in North America…and how there is so little done and said about it. Thank you for your words, insight, and providing another “you’re on the right track” affirmation for me!! My fight against this has had a slow and very personal start…but the fight is on…
This is the experience I’ve had with my brothers and sisters from Africa. The women are empowered in their communities due to Christianity, not smothered. Why is it that in luxurious communities like ours, Christianity becomes oppressive. Interestingly enough, I’ve recognized that in the poorer areas of the USA, like southern Appalachia, Christianity is a freedom to women there. There’s a dissertation here somewhere.
The discrimination and oppression against women is most definitely vile and unjust. But I don’t see women as not being pastors/elders as oppression.
I definitely understand how people struggle with the idea of submission and gender roles, especially if they’ve been in (or seen) relationships or churches where women were maligned and treated as second-class. I firmly believe that all of God’s children hold the same value in his sight.
I see submission as a beautiful thing and I hold my view not because someone told me it was the right way (I can’t even recall hearing submission preached & I’ve grown-up in Southern Baptist churches my whole life), but because when I come to the Bible that’s how I see it and it makes sense to me.
Maybe I’ve just been blessed to be in churches where women are encouraged to be who God made them. They see submission as a beautiful thing, but this doesn’t hinder them from being who God made them to be.
They’re strong, powerful women in the kingdom–they lead worship, teach Sunday school classes, direct children’s ministries, feed the homeless, minister to women in prison, lead prayer ministries, and more. Maybe because I’ve had this example of a woman’s role (a, I’ll just say it, complementarian view) that I don’t see women not being pastors/elders as oppressive.
But I wonder…do people think I’m a chauvinist, squelching the rights of women, or somehow less evolved in my faith, because I think this way?
Hi Jessica!
I know and love many who share your views of men and women. I consider myself to be an egalitarian complementarian — I see all through the Bible God giving everyone different strengths and talents and telling us to work together so that your strengths complement my weaknesses and vice-versa.
But the problem is that God has gifted some women to lead and guide and teach and preach. Why would God do that if there was no place for them to exercise those gifts? I’ll be honest — I’ve spent my entire life in churches that teach women must not lead or preach men, and I’ve mourned my entire life that I was born a woman because I seem to have traits that are more acceptable in men and the exercise of which isn’t allowed by a woman. If God made me who I am and if God tells me to use the gifts and talents I have, what am I to do with that?
Do I think you are a chauvinist? No. I looked up the definition just be sure:
1. aggressive or fanatical patriotism; jingoism.
2. enthusiastic devotion to a cause
3. smug irrational belief in the superiority of one’s own race, party, sex, etc: male chauvinism
I’m pretty sure that you have to be male to be a male chauvinist.
That said, I know that complementarians will say “We believe women are equal to men so we aren’t chauvinist.” But I have tried and I cannot understand how people can justify saying that women are equal to men and then turn around and deny them certain rights and privileges given to men simply based on their gender.
I too have struggled with this…and it is because of this “you can minister in every way possible as equals except this one” attitude that has me often times feeling like I may never realize my full potential as the woman God has gifted me to be. And yet I KNOW God has plans for me…he has given me a gift for words, for thought, for speaking in front of others. He wouldn’t give us those gifts if he didn’t intend for us to use them…it would be like us as parents giving presents to our kids and then saying “you can look but you can’t play with them”…how cruel!
I wish the church in North America would stop trying to dictate how God intends to use people and just let God do his job!! And let women use their gifts and talents as GOD leads them to use them….not as what is deemed acceptable.
Joy –
To me, it’s not based on gender, but on God’s word. Now depending on how one approaches the Bible that could not be the same for them.
I think women are gifted by God and should follow His leading. But I do believe that gender is God’s idea and it’s not irrelevant.
I see the roles of man and woman played out in the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. They are equal, they are both God and yet they have different roles…they operate differently. And I see men and women as the same (from creation to Eph 5).
But in the end, this is what it comes to for me:
I am the creature, not the Creator. His mind is far above my own…I can’t pretend to know it in all its complexities. I may be right, I may be wrong…I just want to seek Him first and it’s my conviction that the Bible teaches a complementarian view.
I know we’re not going to come to the same conclusion and I’m not trying to convince you. I just hope that I’ll still be welcome and respected here even though I don’t see through the same lenses.
It’s not fun to realize people may think less of me just because I don’t see things they way they do.
Oh Jessica, that makes my heart hurt. This is a place for everyone. I know I speak for Nish and everyone else when I say that. I hope you and anyone else who ever disagrees with something that appears here at Deeper Story NEVER feel unwelcome. I love how you express your convictions on this, and how you manage to state them clearly, gently, and without condemning those who disagree. I don’t think I did as well as you did in this area, otherwise you wouldn’t worry about being unwelcome. I will try to do better.
I know it is difficult to feel like you’re the only one, or one of just a few, who hold certain convictions. That is my situation in many of my local circles. I hope that we have created and will be able to maintain a space here in which everyone can share their convictions freely and be heard, understood, and accepted for who they are and who they worship, even when the forms vary.
I practice submission. I have submitted to God and God has called me to be a Pastor. I am unable to escape it and believe me, I’ve tried! Thanks for this article. We all have our place in the kingdom of God and we need to fight for everyone’s right to embrace the path that God is calling them to.
One of the things that has struck me in faith is how as Christians we tend to embrace Paul’s teachings over Jesus’ example. Jesus taught women. He embraced them and shared the faith with them. He didn’t follow the societal rules and broke free from convention. If more of us lived that way I wonder what kind of difference we could make in this world.
Thank you so much for sharing this story. I grew up in Colombia, S.A., and spent the last 8 years teaching men and women at a Biblical Seminary.
When I came to the US two years ago, I was shocked by the way that the church views women. There is still so much exclusion in the name of submission.
I think that submission is definitely a biblical mandate, mutual submission. The problem is when churches start getting very specific about what submission should look like. In my marriage, my husband is the one who has encouraged me to preach, teach, lead and study. And he really had to push me because I’d grown up with the “silent woman in the nursery” mentality. And that mentality almost screwed up my marriage.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this.