Full Rights Of Sons, Preface

The Full Rights of Sons Preface: My Story, 1965 - 1990. (The following is taken from a presentation I made to the 1990 women‟s convention of my denomination. The theme for that convention was “The Women Of Our Church: 18901990.” I examined the last quarter century using my own experience to tell the story. I share it with you now as an introduction to the pages that follow.)

In 1965 I was twenty years old, a junior at Geneva, a small Christian college in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Wore skirts almost all the time, certainly always to class or a meal. It was required. Shorts were forbidden everywhere except in the gym. A good trench coat was a necessity for “skirting” the issue. I had to be in the dorm by 10pm. This was a lot of freedom compared to the freshmen who had to be in by 9pm. But there were no rules at all for the boys‟ dorms. That was a puzzle we had discussed numerous times at home. My parents said it was based on the theory that if you kept the girls under control, the boys would behave. That didn‟t quite make sense, curtailing the girls‟ freedom so the boys would behave. Perhaps this inequity seemed strange to me because no one in my family ever led me to think I was inferior in any way because I was a girl. Oh, I had my share of disagreements with my siblings, but because we were all girls, gender never came into it. We had to think of other ways to insult each other. There were four girls in our family. I remember my father took occasional ribbing about his lack of a son, but his responses always made me feel good. He would chuckle along with the kidding, but in the end he made it clear that he felt very blessed rather than deprived. In 1965 I was majoring in biology and education. I don‟t remember really thinking very hard about career choices. There was teacher and there was nurse. Now that seems like a limited selection. But rather than limiting, I think my family pushed these occupations because they were highly respected professions. My parents were adamant that a woman should have a profession, so she could support herself if necessary. My grandmother had been widowed at a very young age and always worked to support herself and her family, without benefit of a college education. So my mother went to college and so did her daughters. I thought some about becoming a doctor. But I knew I didn‟t have the will for it. I wanted to get married and I realized I probably couldn‟t do both. My high school had no girls‟ sports whatsoever. In 1965 intramural co-ed volleyball was just beginning at Geneva. The girls were always very carefully selection for these co-ed teams. It helped if you had a boyfriend on a team. The rule was that a girl had to hit the ball before it went back over the net. It was a great step forward for women in the national pastime of Christian youth groups everywhere - volleyball. My reflections on volleyball at that time include countless memories culled from many camps and youth activities. First there was the line-up. It was always carefully choreographed.

“Hey, there are two girls together on the back line. Get a guy in there.” You could usually estimate your worth as a volleyball player from the line-up. It was always inversely proportional to how good the guys were on either side of you. I can still feel the claustrophobia of the front row. The net right in front of me and two boys, usually taller, on either side who both went up in unison meeting as an archway over my head as any ball approached. Perhaps you remember too. You‟re on the second or third row, the ball is coming your way, large hands fly in your face amid much shouting. Even larger bodies sail through your peripheral vision toward you. The ball is saved. Or perhaps the ball drops through this heap of humanity with you at the bottom. As you all untangle and rise someone coaches you, “Don‟t be afraid of the ball. It won‟t hurt you.” After graduating from Geneva in 1967 I attended the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in preparation for going to Nicosia, Cyprus to teach at a mission school. A pastor came to the seminary as a special speaker. In an informal session he talked of his congregation‟s ministry to single women who lived together while being discipled by other more mature women. As a part of the program the pastor, or an elder, inspected each apartment weekly to see that things were kept in an orderly fashion. It was explained that since these women had no husbands as yet, they needed someone to act in that capacity to be sure they were doing what they should. I found this truly shocking. I wanted to raise my hand and ask if these stand-in husbands would also promise to love, honor and cherish these women for a lifetime, or was authority the only thing husbands really did? I was furious. I was scandalized. I was amazed at the assumption that a woman needed a man to validate her work, her being. Now perhaps this pastor would have said I misunderstood, but never-the-less he was definitely saying that every woman needed a man to help her run her life and keep her straight. Happily, I did not hear much more of this discipleship system. However, this was my introduction to what I now consider to be the great backlash against women in my own denomination and throughout the larger Christian community. For a number of years there were many Bible studies about the meaning of womanhood. I was encouraged to read the books and attend the groups. Everyone wanted to tell me how to be the good little woman, not a good Christian teacher, not a good Christian biologist, not a good Christian citizen, not even a good church member, just a good little women. I grew very tired of the issue. I didn‟t want all my Christianity summed up in my sex. Maybe hemlines were the real problem. Or maybe they were just a weather vane caught in the storm. As the feminist movement grew louder and more demanding the hems went up. I remember hearing some young men tell a group of high school girls they couldn‟t wear their skirts so short because it drove the boys crazy. Short skirts made boys think impure thoughts and drove them mad with desire. It was thrilling to hear we girls were so desirable and powerful, yet infuriating that again women were being made responsible for the thoughts and actions of men. Perhaps we should have thought more about modesty. Maybe short skirts really did drive men crazy, because as the hemlines went up the rhetoric in the church about women being submissive to the authority of men escalated too. This was new to me since I had grown up in a church with a long history of high respect for the position and status of women. This high respect for women predated modern feminism by hundreds of years. Instead, feminism was an outgrowth of Christianity and the freeing power of the gospel. History shows us that every expansion of position and responsibility for women throughout the ages has grown

Preface: My Story, 1965-1990

out of the truth of the gospel, and a maturing Christian faith. ...That women are humanity, not property; monogamy; fidelity for both women and men in marriage, education; property rights; and political voice. In non Christian-influenced societies these things either still do not exist, or have been implemented in imitation of cultures under Christian influence. The roots of modern feminism can be traced to the great Christian reforming movements of the 19th century which included the abolition of slavery, temperance, free public education for all, and equal suffrage for all, including women and minorities. Today‟s secular feminists, because many are still in unbelief, have driven this movement to wrong, self-serving and destructive ends, as will happen with any good idea apart from God. My own experience reflected the church‟s confusion. I was taught to read. I led youth group meetings of both boys and girls from the age of six. I became a Bible school helper at age twelve. I was an officer of the church youth camp. I went to Leadership Training School and served on missions projects. I attended college. When I attended the seminary I was required to take a class in learning how to preach. While my male classmates gave sermons in class, I fulfilled the same assignment by giving „talks‟. When the men had student preaching before the faculty and student body, I did „chapel devotionals.‟ But to someone uninformed about these crucial labeling distinctions, the presentations looked very similar. I have written Bible study curriculums, participated in church ministries, and even served on a national church board. How could this happen? How could this happen if I really was only to be silent, always under the authority of a man or men? I believe I, a girl, was pushed, urged, encouraged to learn, do, contribute, and participate in the church because the experience of our church community, both men and women, has been one of wonderful reconciliation in Christ. The men of the church really do love their women, their sisters, wives and daughters. They really do respect us as individuals, created in God‟s image and fellow-heirs with them in the Kingdom of God. They want us to develop our talents for the Lord. They want the church to benefit from our work, our insight, our gifts. I don‟t think the backlash grew out of a desire to keep us women in our place or to put us down. I believe it grew out of a commitment to orthodoxy, the dilemma of trying to make sense out of what appear to be the confusing, sometimes contradictory teachings of Scripture concerning women, and a great fear of liberalism in the church and feminism in the world. After finishing my preparation at the seminary I went to the island of Cyprus to teach. There I saw another culture, one where women were relegated to a lower position than I had experienced. Teenaged girls argued that abstinence from sex would indeed harm and injure young men. Boys needed to use the services of a prostitute for their education and well-being. The girls could not believe I knew of any young men over the age of fifteen who were still virgins. These girls thought I was naive. I thought they were brainwashed. The men of Cyprus had done a great job. Their freedom and promiscuity were accepted and even encouraged while the Cypriot women were not allowed to go out alone, without a father, brother or husband. The glimpses I caught of the place of women in the Islamic world were even more disheartening. I quickly realized the position of women could be far worse than the one of dignity and respect I had always taken for granted. I was married in 1969. Now I had a man by my side. I liked it. The companionship, the

Preface: My Story, 1965-1990

passion, the invigorating discussions, the intensity of day-in day-out relating pushed me to new strength of thought and action in every part of my life. Much as I had upheld the high place and purpose of singleness, I now cherished the new wholeness I felt in marriage. Certainly no one can talk about significant changes in women‟s lives without mentioning the pill. Our modern technology gave the secular feminists the hope that even our biology could be equal to men‟s, meaning sex without consequences or responsibility. What had seemed to be a freedom only for men, now became possible for women too. So free sex became a feminine right as well as a masculine reality. The godless self-centeredness of secular feminism began to show its true colors. But there were problems with the pill. It was not the miracle cure feminists had hoped for. Ron and I thought we would give ourselves eight years before starting a family. As it was we made it barely two. There were problems with the pill. And so what became a new joy and source of fulfillment for Ron and me, became another stumblingblock to our secular sisters. Thus the right to abortion, a true horror of darkness and death, became a feminist crusade. Today the Christian community responds with a constant witness that there can be freedom and wholeness, but includes responsibility, it always brings life, and it comes only from God through the gospel of Jesus. The birth of our first child issued me into a new era, one that I have truly found as fulfilling and satisfying as I had always been taught it would be, motherhood. No place has the life of a woman been more dramatically affected than through the developments of modern medicine for childbirth. One hundred years ago I would have died bearing my first child. It is hard to imagine the thoughts and feelings of women through the ages as they anticipated childbirth compared to our thought today. Physical threats to our well-being are usually at the bottom of our worry list now. We should diligently thank God for his grace through the reconciling nature of Christ‟s work in this partial healing of the dark consequences of Eve‟s eating the forbidden fruit. What was merely a concern for a few hours at our eldest‟s birth, would have been the last moments of my life in another age. As my husband says, we‟ve had babies about every way possible. #1) Emergency Csection. #2) In a screaming, drugged panic. #3) A very disciplined and controlled team effort at natural childbirth. #4) Adoption, and the long and often frustrating labor of bureaucratic red tape that precedes it. #5) Easy as falling off a log. Even fun. In fact, when our last was born it crossed my mind that I shouldn‟t quit now, I was just beginning to get the hang of it. But then Ron reminded me that the twenty year labor sets in after birth. My mother says it‟s more like a sixty year labor. Happily, breast-feeding was back in vogue. Neither I nor my children could have survived bottles, sterilizing, and formula. Perhaps nothing has made me as thankful for the fearful and wonderful way God made me. Certainly caring for babies has become easier. It seems that not another piece of baby paraphernalia could possibly be invented. Can you imagine caring for a baby without even such a simple thin as plastic pants. Not I. Yet that‟s what our mothers had to cope with. Dress-up clothes went out and permanent press came in. Second-hand stores became acceptable, shortcutting the energy and expense of dressing children. Disposable diapers were expensive, but so convenient, and back then we didn‟t even worry about environmental impact. However, I soon learned that the improvement of elasticized lags was a definite must. Eventually, the perpetual slobbery blob of spit-up on my shoulder disappeared. The

Preface: My Story, 1965-1990

predominate goal of physical survival gave way to character formation. My confidence that I knew all the parenting answers began to dwindle with the metamorphoses of babies into individual people. I didn‟t go back to work until our eldest child was about fourteen. When I was at home most of the women in our church were at home too. Now it seems that we are all at work. There are so few at home now it is difficult to get a good morning Bible Study-Fellowship group going. Even those still at home are often doing day care in addition to caring for their own children. It seems to be a given that all of us will go to work, at least after our children are in school. Most of us who go to work say we wouldn‟t do it if we didn‟t need the money. But need is sometimes a vague thing. The expectations others have for us, the opportunity, the desire to do meaningful, challenging work all play a part in why and when we choose to go to work. Yet defining meaningful and challenging is not easy, and finding a job that fits the definition is not always possible; or if you find it, it may not pay. That‟s the kind of job I found. I teach at the Christian school my children attend. I am thankful for meaningful and challenging work that still allows me so much involvement in my children‟s lives. But it‟s not easy. When we do begin work outside the home, the inner conflicts of divided loyalties and demands of home and job set up a conflict which in never completely resolved. Cottage industries and in-home offices are solutions for many women and men. Home schooling is another trend which gives women a reason to stay home and have tremendous input into their children‟s lives while saving the cost of Christian education. They can stay home and still not be „just housewives.‟ The continual struggle to resolve this conflict between our work at home and our work in the world will be one of the great challenges of the 90s. As I have reviewed my life in the context of my feminine gender, I feel it has generally been one of tremendous privilege, especially when measured against the status of most women throughout history and throughout the world. I am very thankful for a father and a husband who, through God‟s grace, have always treated me with utmost respect, never lording it over me or ruling over me in any way. Their liberation, the freedom from the tyranny of the curse they have experienced through the reconciling nature of Christ‟s work, has become my liberation also. I am thankful for the church where I have found identity and fulfillment, where I can serve and contribute. I am thankful for a long history of Godly men and women struggling each day with the demands of the gospel which has brought me to this lofty position. And certainly I am thankful for my place in Christ which makes me an heir to the Kingdom of God, a fellowheir with Christ-Jesus himself. I have been given the ministry of reconciliation, the challenge of working to bring all things into submission to God through Christ. No greater responsibility or privilege can be imagined. Recently, several denominations have decided to open all church courts and offices to women. If greater equality and responsibility is at some future time universally recognized for women in the church, I pray that I will be ready. If it does not come I pray that, as in all cases of dealing with the consequences of sin, I will not allow it to become a stumblingblock to my faith. Rather I know that in this life not all brokenness will be healed, not all things will be reconciled, not all that has been promised will be received. I need to remember that I am not the first to

Preface: My Story, 1965-1990

experience less than all that God has promised (Hebrews 11:39-12:7). The essence of the Christian life is to continue walking by faith anyway. One day in April, 1968 was a great day of freedom for me. I blew-dried my hair and haven‟t set it since. I have learned, though it is often disheartening to see how imperfectly, that true liberation in Christ frees me from the need and the demand to be pretty, the perverse need for approval. Because of Christ‟s saving power I can now go to him for that approval. I am worthy because he paid a great price for me. This is freedom through truth. I love to watch girls play volleyball at youth camp now. They are so good. And I notice their play is highly respected on the court. Rarely are their balls hogged. My parents are having their 50th wedding anniversary reception this coming Friday. In discussing plans for the evening it was suggested that the granddaughters could take people‟s plates when they‟ve finished and pass additional punch. One of the granddaughters immediately asked, “What‟s the matter with the grandsons? Are their arms broken?” To which a grandson gave quick response, “No, it‟s just that no one wants to debase our superiority with lowly women‟s work.” Regardless of what happens with the women‟s issue, whether it brings discussion ad nauseam or no discussion at all, whether our liberation becomes more or less, I pray that the Spirit will continually conform me more and more to the image of Jesus, that his attitude will be my attitude (Philippians 2:3-10). July, 1990 Lawrence, Kansas

I tried to get out of giving that speech. But I put off giving my answer so long that in the end I couldn‟t say no. Besides, it was a friend who was asking. You know how that is. So I began to put down my thoughts. They came quickly and easily. After my presentation I was amazed that so many other women seemed to identify with what I had thought of as just my experiences. Looking back I can only say that it was God‟s leading in my life, one more step, one of many. But these many steps have brought me to sharing my thoughts with you today. Someone once asked, “Where do you get the nerve?” The first moment of clarity which remains in my memory came at White Lake Covenanter Camp in about 1959. We were instructed to memorize this verse: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (II Timothy 1:7 KJV) But under it all has been the firm conviction of my heart that the following Scripture is true, true for me. It is my experience.

Preface: My Story, 1965-1990

...because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, „Abba, Father,‟ The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God‟s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:14-17, Galatians 4:4-7) God‟s Spirit continually confirms with my spirit that I am a son of God. That‟s where the nerve comes from. January, 1993 Larnaca, Cyprus

© K.E. Stegall 1993

Read on… Chapter 1: The Interpretation of Scripture: Finding Our Way

Chapter I - The Interpretation Of Scripture: Finding Our Way