Last spring I went to a conference called “The Red Tent” at Eastern
Mennonite University in Virginia. It was a really great experience in
which Mennonites gathered to celebrate women, worship, theology, and
the arts. It was open to both male and female participants, but all of
the speakers and artists were women. What I would like to share about
is why I am sad when I think about the conference.
I think it’s
really good that women get together to talk about “women’s” issues, but
that’s not what this conference was about. It was simply women being
given a safe place do gender-neutral things. I am sad, because women
needed to have a special conference like this to teach, discuss
theology, preach, and so forth. I am sad that only a handful of
men-mostly college students or husbands of speakers-attended. And I am
sad that I was so shocked to discover so late in my life that women can
be wise theologians and preachers.
Our problem is not that we need more safe places for women to be active
and to be who they are created to be. The problem is our culture’s view
toward women and their talents. We have submitted to cultural
structures in which human beings are placed on their appropriate level
on a hierarchy. The problem is that we judge each other according to
gender, income, mental competency, deeming certain people more valuable
than others.
My dream is similar to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, for all believers to
be one as God is one. There are three persons in the Trinity, each
different and equal, but one God. Another example of this oneness is in
a marriage, where two people become one but remain two separate
persons. We don’t need to segregate because we’re different. God
created each human being in His image-including men, women, children,
the young, the old, the sick, and the healthy. God’s plan is for all of
us to live as one. I don’t want to have to go to a special place to be
given a voice and treated as an equal, and neither should anybody else.
So what is the Church’s responsibility? First of all, we don’t need to
do the liberating. Jesus died so everybody could be set free and the
walls between us could be torn down. “There is neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”
(Galatians 3:28). But this is obviously not the way it is everywhere in
the world.
So, second, we need to repent for putting up walls, for judging the
worth of God’s creation, for submitting to our culture’s faulty
hierarchy, and for committing structural sins. Everybody should be free
now and can be, but we’ve messed up. We must admit our wrongdoings and
ask God for reconstruction. We are all guilty of these things,
including those who have been marginalized. And it won’t change enough
if an individual or an individual church changes their thoughts and
ways. This is not an individual issue or sin but a structural one.
Third, once we have asked God for forgiveness, we must be careful not
to expect the previously oppressed people groups to “snap out of it”
immediately and begin to live totally free. We must encourage them,
teach them, and give them time to gain back their God-given confidence.
Healing doesn’t happen overnight.
Finally, we must not be surprised any more to see everyone being
treated equally and walking in freedom. We should be excited to see
women teaching intelligently or people with disabilities ministering at
church or little children giving prophetic words. This is what God
wants for his people. This is what unity is all about.