Dorothy Day, the Nurse

When World War I rolled around, Dorothy Day struggled with the same dilemma that so many pacifists struggle with: how much service is too much service? Is non-combat service of any kind in the military permissible? Perhaps only non-combat service outside of war zones or in traditionally charitable roles like medical facilities? Must pacifists be removed from the military altogether? Can they be in non-military service that directly abets the making of war? And on and on the questions go. They seem less urgent now that the draft seems like only a remote possibility politically, and in Day's age she was aided (as she would be today) by the fact that she was a woman. Nevertheless, she felt compelled in a time of crisis to render aid to the countless people suffering directly or indirectly from the war effort but needed an ethically defensible means to do it. Her solution was to become a nurse at a municipal hospital in New York.

Never one for self-aggrandizement, her reflections on her time as a nurse admit her frustrations, her disgust, and her doubts about the work she was doing. Most importantly, she adopted the attitude that the care she was giving was not primarily an act of giving but an act of learning in which she came away the recipient of more than she had offered:

From the first, in addition to bed-making and care of the ward, we were given nursing to do, straight nursing, which delights every woman’s heart…My first patient was an old Canadian woman, ninety-four years old. Granny objected to being bathed, saying that she had bathed the day before and that at her time of life she did not see why she had to be pestered with soap and water the way she was. Argument was useless, so she began to fight with the nurses, clawing at them and screaming and sitting in the middle of her bed like a whimpering monkey.

“Let us help you,” one of the other nurses said soothingly. “Can’t you see that we want to take care of you because we love you?”

“Love be damned,” the little old lady cried, “I want my wig.” And she began to cry and whimper again…

“She has been crying for her wig since she came in,” the other nurse said. “We let her have her teeth, but she wants her wig. I don’t see why they don’t let her have it.”

…She had sympathy and understanding and realized that the little old lady needed more than soap and water and clean bed linen. She needed more than to be loved. She wanted to be respected as a person, and for that she needed to have her wishes respected. She needed such appurtenances as her wig. I remember we compromised with a cap and so pleased her.

The result was a better understanding of service, one that neatly parallels Paul's message in Romans:

One thing I was sure of, and that was that these fellow workers and I were performing an act of worship. I felt that it was necessary for man to worship, that he was most truly himself when engaged in the act.

Complementarianism: Will To Power

The following is part of an ongoing response to Roger E. Olson’s critique of extreme complementarianism. For the origin and nature of these posts, see Complementarianism: A Defense from a Nobody.
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I suppose there is very little to offend in my previous thoughts about the theoretical value of understanding men and women as different but equal. After all, even Dr. Olson admits that to one degree or another this is a universally recognized truth. What was controversial, and will be addressed at greater length here, is the suggestion that those difference cannot be neatly compartmentalized into the incidences of anatomy. There are, to put it crudely, substantial economic distinctions between males and females that cannot be reduced into prescriptions about whether God intended semen to come out of your or go into you. It is a tragic inevitability that more time should need to be spent on this latter fact than on the former, since the truth that God is a God who delights in constructive difference ought to be (and in my experience is) the focal point of complementarian thought. I regret that by focusing on the secondary, pragmatic aspects of complementarianism I legitimize, in a sense, Olson's complaint that for complementarians the "emphasis is not on males and females complementing each other but on females being submissive to males." Yet it should be recognized that this criticism is self-propagating. After all, if egalitarians and complementarians disagreed about value and function rather than on women in the pulpit then the conversation would be dominated by the former issue and the latter would be ignored. It is out of polemical necessity more than anything else that the debate has been translated from the core issues into mere accidents. Insofar as complementarians through repetitive arguments and microscopic focus on application forget to stress the essential truths of what is a more comprehensive anthropology, that shortcoming is ours as humans not a flaw in the truths which we feel compelled to express.

With that said, the other shoe is ready to drop. I believe that wives should submit to their husbands and that women should not exercise authority over men in the congregation. These do not encapsulate my complementarian beliefs, but they are nevertheless an undeniable product of them. From here, there are countless directions I could go. I might attempt to counter Olson's assertion that only unabashed and "never really consistently" literalism can produce complementarian readings of Scripture by pointing out how theologically dangerous it is to excise under the guise of "cultural particularity" commands which are rooted in creation and yoked with soteriology. I could talk about the countless other social norms which Jesus and Paul were willing (even eager) to transgress and contrast it with their marked reluctance to do so with certain features of gender economics. I could trace the full and rich biblical picture of complementarian gender relations as they are depicted as fruitful and righteous throughout Scripture, demonstrating a marked consistency between Old and New Covenant gender economics. But I won't, in large part because my point here is not to prove complementarianism. It is to demonstrate that there can be and are complementarians whose interests lie beyond (and even exclude) the end of subjugating women, to correct Olson's egregious characterization that in complementarianism "adult women have pretty much the same role as children vis-à-vis adult men."

Ultimately, I think the concern most egalitarians express (by which, I of course mean the revulsion most egalitarians feel) regarding complementarianism is born out of a capitulation to modern ideas of rights, authority, and power. In essence, there is a suggestion that unless women are given authority, they are somehow devalued. Unless they are presented with a full compliment of rights, they are second-class citizens. Unless they have power, they are helpless and destined for abuse (a specter Olson proves all to eager to conjure). In short, it is hard not to be left with the impression that, whether consciously or unconsciously, many egalitarians have bought into the anthropology of a post-nietzschean West which glorifies the will to power. If women are fully human they must have the opportunity to pursue their ambition to seize the highest clerical offices, command the most powerful pulpits, vie for control in their marriages, and to become the Übermensch (rather than, as in Nietzsche, simply to birth the Übermensch).

Egalitarians, I imagine, would balk at that depiction of their beliefs and particularly its marriage to so dark a figure as Nietzsche. (Though, for my part, I find it less offensive a picture than that of complementarians as domineering patriarchs seeking eagerly to have paternal authority over all 3.5 billion women in the world.) Certainly, I am open to the idea that the above has at least as much rhetorical flourish as it does substance. Egalitarians would surely not debate, however, that there motivating impulse is equal rights, rich as that term is with savory left-wing utopian connotations. The problem arises, however, in that I don't believe in rights. I don't believe we have them, and I certainly don't think it is expressive of the Christian ethos to pursue them for ourselves. The quest for power, authority, and rights--which I will from here on collapse into the concept of authority, since it is primarily the right to have authority and the power derived from it on which the debate centers--is found nowhere in the Gospel. Instead, all authority is derived from God and given, qualified as it is, as a gift from Him. It is not a right to be seized but a commission to be accepted.

Instead, the Gospel is a narrative of submission and self-sacrifice. Jesus Christ, to whom all authority had been given, is the prime example of this. Consider the way he exercised his authority throughout his ministry. It was not in dictatorial commands to his disciples (male or female). It was not in domination over them. Instead, he assumed the role of a servant: feeding the hungry, encouraging the downtrodden, forgiving the sinner, and washing the feet of his disciples. The same ethos will carry into the earliest church. Though we occasionally see Paul making appeals to his authority (acknowledging always its derivative nature), the overwhelming example given by the apostles is one of unqualified service and the exhortation for Christians to do the same. Christ foreshadows and Paul recalls the cross as the central image of power, ironically redefined by the Gospel, for the whole Christian system. It is in dying the Christ ultimately defeats death and in our participation in that self-sacrificial act that Christians ultimately free themselves from it. Christian virtue is defined by and emulates this core self-sacrificial act. It does not strive after positions of power; it deliberately eschews them, allowing Christ to become a new kind of king. If our understanding of authority--its scope and function--were genuinely cruciform, then the Bible could place women in a perpetual and inviolable state of servitude and, far from making their position lamentable, it would glorify them in so doing.

Of course, it doesn't and no self-respecting complementarian thinks that it does. The biblical picture of gender economics is one of mutual self-sacrifice and voluntary submission, because the virtues embodied in the cross are by no means exclusive to one sex. The most complete and wonderful picture is in the much maligned household codes in Ephesians, which gives two interrelated commands: wives submit to your husbands (as the church submits to Christ) and husbands sacrifice yourself for your wife (as Christ sacrificed himself for the church). It is important first to note that all submission and self-sacrifice is related directly back to Christ as the exemplar. It is not the Christ came and made himself a servant because he was less than those he came to serve. He humbled himself in spite of his superiority. Moreover, Christ did not sacrifice himself as it suited him and to the degree it suited him but completely and in ways which most profoundly effected him. What is depicted in the relationship between Christ and the church is not the degree of authority which is being conferred upon husbands but the nature of the relationship. What is being prescribed for wives and husbands is, in its essence, a common disposition toward one another. After all, Christians are exhorted to submission (the same kind of submission that wives are specifically enjoined to choose) to all other Christians in the verse immediately prior. The image is of a husband who empties himself in the act of sacrifice for his wife so that there is nothing in him that self-centered. He acts purely in love for his wife. The wife, in turn, empties herself in the act of submission to her husband so that there is nothing in her that is self-centered. She acts purely in love for her husband. The beauty here--and the implicit critique of systems which are overly concerned with assigning rights--is that the focus and the blessing here is not on who has authority but on who is the greater servant to his or her spouse.

There is no domination in this. No women being treated as children relative to men. There is no concern for authority at all, and the obsession with who is "in charge" is a contemporary battle being waged because we have forgotten that self-sacrifice is a Christian virtue and equal rights a secular one. I do not believe that women should be in the pulpit. I don't pretend to understand why, entirely, Scripture indicates that, but I can see fairly clearly that it does. Certainly, I can imagine a comprehensive Christian theory of gender which validates that viewpoint without creating a value disparity between the sexes. Ultimately, if there is some person (of either gender) out there who is indignant over his or her inability to rise through the ecclesiastical ranks of power, my concern is not with whether or not the individuals rights are being protected but with whether or not that person (and our church culture as a whole) has a firm enough grasp on the central tenets of the Christian ethos. We certainly ought to stand up for what is right and there are battles worth waging. It is my belief, however, that more pernicious than the threat of patriarchy--which I contend our culture has put aside in all its darkest forms--is that of self-motivated ambition and the undeserved sense of entitlement. Without putting too much rhetorical weight on it, I dare say that rather than lamenting the prospect of women being treated like children we ought to all rejoice at the idea that we may humble ourselves and become like children so as to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Wives Who Have Sex with their Husbands Spark Controversy

The Obedient Wives Club, a conservative Islamic group in Malaysia, has made a radical connection between happy marriages and sexual willingness that has militant feminists, frigid atheists, and sexual extortionists in a tizzy.

I realize that the above sentence is quite obviously latent with bias and more than subtly reveals my stance, if not on the issue itself, at least on the response it has received globally. But how else can you react when such sage wisdom as "happiness starts in the bedroom" that has been whispered from mother to daughter on wedding days throughout centuries is represented like this to the world:

It turns out, the secret to a happy union is to let your husband have sex with you whenever he wants. If your marriage is sad or fraught with strife, simply f*** your way out. How novel. And if you refuse, you are literally causing war to happen...Men are the stronger sex, unless a woman makes them act in a bad way. The only way to assure that a man will not, say, get mad and invade Poland one day, is to make sure you're giving him whatever he wants. Like a two year old.

I would like to read what the group actually believes in their own words, but unfortunately I do not read Malay. As it stands, the rest of the English-speaking world and I are forced to try to reconstruct what is actually being said from sources that are less than comprehensive (not to mention less than sympathetic). Consequently, I am reluctant to pretend to speak on behalf of the position advocated by the Obedient Wives Club. It is, however, frustrating to see something which seems so obvious and, for that matter, consonant with the Christian religion maligned so superficially. (Interestingly, several of the article I am reading which trash this idea gladly admit that it is prevalent in American and Christian society as well.)

What is interesting in this, as in many displays of feminist outrage, is the outright hypocrisy of it. The Obedient Wives Club is a club for women, started and run by women. No one is trying to compel women to join or to abide by these principles. These women are exercising the freedom that so many feminists claim that they are trying to achieve for women. Of course, what is really meant is not freedom to accept the view of yourself and your gender that you have concluded accords with reality. What is really won is the freedom to be coerced into an image of "liberated" gender or to be ridiculed and marginalized for holding antiquated and dangerous beliefs. The Washington Post article linked above notes that politicians are dismissing the group as "medieval." Another source calls it slavery. The Malay Mail has an article subtitled: "Obedient Wives' mission 'narrow-minded', 'degrading.'" Still another article from the same source says the views of the group are tantamount to advocating rape and is shamed that it is women promoting this view:

If a wife doesn’t want sex and it is forced upon her, isn’t that rape by law? If a wife doesn’t want to engage in certain “whore-like” sex situations, isn’t that forced sex?

I put it that the club which has the gall to typecast a good wife as one who is a good sex worker to her husband is promoting predatory sex.

Sadly, it is women who are behind this rapacious move to prey on innocent wives.

How can a wife who chooses to be sexually available to her husband be raped during the act of consensual sex? It seems entirely beyond all these outrage commentators that a woman's sexual disposition toward her own husband is entirely her choice. In fact, that very position seems to be the kind of thing you would expect these controversialists to advocate. It galls them, however, that a woman might willingly elect to submit herself to her husband, even and especially sexually.

Never mind, of course, that the fundamental premise behind the group's message is sound. A husband who finds himself sexually gratified at home is less likely to seek sexual gratification elsewhere. This does not, as so many have accused, necessarily shift culpability for infidelity and divorce onto the wife. This misconception comes from an inability, when it suits people's agendas, to separate culpability from causality (a subject which I will treat at greater length soon). If a husband is a lecher, that is no one's fault but his own. In marriage, however, the "modern woman" (and for that matter, the modern man) would do well to realize that if you test anyone's fidelity you are inviting a disappointing result. The best kind of husband will always resist temptation, but at the same time the best kind of wife will always try to minimize the temptations her husband encounters. My wife trusts me, but she still wouldn't send me into a strip club to ask for directions.

From a Christian perspective, it is important to remember that the virtue of submission and sexual availability are biblical concepts. Paul encourages sexual openness, if you will, without regard to gender because he realized in the first century what people are scandalized by in the twenty-first century: sexual activity encourages sexual fidelity. The idea of domestic submission is even more pervasive, appearing in multiple letters by multiple authors. We can debate the meaning of submission (and it deserves attention), but it is critical to remember two facts which I suspect are beyond dispute. First, the locus of control is always in the hands of the submitting party. The wife is always encouraged to submit; the husband is never told to compel submission. Submission in the biblical picture is the supreme act of freedom, the willful act of self-sacrifice that typifies the highest form of love. It is this fact which throws light on the not-so-subtle hypocrisy of outraged feminists who want to "liberate" women into a no less rigid gender structure than the one they are "rescued" from. Second, whatever we may conclude about the actual ethical implications of "submission" in a marriage, service is a profound Christian virtue. It is depicted throughout the New Testament in acts which range from the giving of a meager sum of money to the death of Christ on the cross. We sing "make me a servant" and read about Jesus washing the disciples feet, but when it comes to our rights we are unwilling to put those principles into action.

I do not know anything about the Obedient Wives Club except what I can read in the rather slanted reporting of the media, but I can say as a Christian that I do not feel any sense of outrage that women have freely elected to follow the conviction that their faith commends domestic submission. I am certainly not at all bothered by the suggestion that a wife who will sexually gratify her husband is less likely to have a husband that strays. Marriages would be better with a lot less rights and a lot more service. Women who can stand up for their convictions in the face of worldwide rebuke deserve the praise of feminists not their scorn.