the Empathy List #169: “Silence, rib!"
The casual and institutional misogyny of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Hello friends, Liz here.
This week the Southern Baptist Convention met and voted to ban its denomination’s women from preaching or even teaching the Bible (from a stage? in Sunday schools? at home? Who knows!). They already kick out any church that offers a woman a whiff of a leadership position, which means this is a new low. By this measure, they have made women’s words, thoughts, opinions about the Bible irrelevant to their teaching, and they have officially formalized their misogyny.
(Here’s their take on Al Mohler’s suggested amendment to SBC “policy,” and here’s a less biased take.)
Also this week, I published a spicy post to social media about this very issue and received one of the strangest insults in the history of the Internet.
First, the post:
Listen, Jesus and I talked about this after this post went fairly viral, and I did admit that yes, I had poked the hornet’s nest because yes, I sometimes enjoy poking the hornet’s nest.*
[*To my own husband’s dismay, BTW! He tries so hard to protect me from the Internet Jerks, and it is truly not possible when you’re a woman like me who likes to speak up. So when I admitted that the hornets were assembling becase I maybe sorta poked them with a large and pointy stick, he just rolled his eyes. He’s very good for me.]
The fact is, it is oh, so easy to offend a male Christian misogynist who finds your very existence as a woman who is probably-smarter-than-him and definitely-more-successful-than-him deeply offensive to his sense of theological superiority.
Sometimes it is also a little teeny bit fun to watch these men squirm in the presence of one of these unicorn women whom they cannot control.
(BTW, I do not mean to aggrandize myself, because if you are reading this post, you either ARE one of these unicorn women or you are married to one.)
The reponse to the post:
Anyway, not very many social media posts go viral, and I expected mine to make the normal (nonviral) rounds amongst my own progressive kind. But it did not.
If you want to see the mess, head to my Facebook page, where currently the post has 792 likes, 859 comments, and nearly 70K views.
Aaaand it turns out the species of Southern Baptist male on the Internet does not like to be mocked and has zero sense of humor. Also they hate curses. (I’m not actually surprised by any of this. See above.)
You can imagine the comments. You know these men, I have no doubt, or at least men like this. I would guess that some of your family members might find themselves in the scrum because, if you’re reading ME, you and I come from these men and women. The SBC once ruled the world, or at least, American evangelicalism. They are my people.
One comment stood out though: “Silence, rib!”
[Note: I have since deleted the comment and blocked him, and I’m kicking myself for not having screenshotted the offending comment.]
Anyway, I clicked on this man’s profile: Jacob [not his real name] was from central Ohio. He was White, probably around my age, probably middle class with a clutch of kids and a smiley White wife. He’s probably an elder in his church. And his casual misogyny (in public!) honestly shocked me.
“Silence, rib!” is a sick, deep cut burn.
And since I wrote an entire book about Genesis, I am especially primed to understand its absurdity.
These men believe that womankind comes from a singular solitary rib taken from the first man’s own body by the hand of God. (Some people think the Hebrew word for “rib” referred to another part of the body entirely, one less boney, but no less likely to turn to bone under the right circumstances… cause, ew, men wrote the Bible.) Our origin, in other words, is them. We come from man, from his own body, and so we belong to him, just as his body does.
These men read God’s words of commissioning to both partners—to be fruitful and multiply, to care and tend for the Garden and the Earth—as a call only to Adam. Eve’s only role is her husband, and the Garden, the Earth, and herself are Adam’s.
The only problem is that the Garden is God’s. The Earth is God’s. Adam is God’s, and so is Eve. Under their own domineering worldview, these men cannot see how their self-aggrandizement puts them in the place of God.
“Silence, rib!” is a hilarious insult and a devastating theology.
When I imagine hearing those words to my face, I shrink, I rage, I weep. Because the casual misogyny that makes an image bearer of God an object of man is a theology of hatred.
I hope we do not grow callused to hatred in all its forms, my friends.
While the Southern Baptists may believe that evil is a woman—teaching, preaching, expounding upon the very Blessed words of God found in the Bible, the sacred story—I am here to tell you that evil is the hatred applied to those same women who are only trying to offer words of life to a hungry audience.
Evil makes her sit in the corner, silent and under the authoritarian, abusive control of the men around her. Evil refuses the free gifts the Spirit of God gave to man’s equal partner by birthright and by the generosity of God. Evil demeans the work of God anywhere and through any means. And Evil hides the ongoing abuse of the people of God amongst their supposed shepherds.
I don’t want us to be naiive. In a denomination plagued by abuse allegations (and actual abuse CONVICTIONS), we should see this for what it is: an attempt to hide the sin of abusive SBC leaders using a method of distraction so cruel that we cannot ignore it. It is the same method used by our government to bury the Epstein Files. And that, my friends, is the true evil.
The only good news here is that the SBC is shrinking. And I am praying for its collapse.
To the faithful SBC women who have continued to watch their beloved church implode: I want you to know that I stand with you. And I believe that Jesus does, too.
Thanks for reading, pals.
Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant
P.S. I’m on vacay with my husband this week, so it may be that your comments go unanswered for a bit. ;-)
Also I wrote this post on Sunday, which means that probably the comments have continued to go crazy, so only engage on FB if you’re there to block! It’s not worth arguing with these dudes, I promise.