Most people consider the words “evangelical” and “feminist” to be contradictory. But for the 40 people who attended Pamela Cochran’s discussion in Center Hall 216 on Tuesday, the two streams of American culture may have gravitated closer to each other.
Cochran is Associate Director of the Center on Religion and Democracy and lecturer in religious studies at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book, Evangelical Feminism, traces the complex journey of modern Christian feminist thought in America. On Tuesday she explained how, in the
midst of the cultural revolutions of the ’60s and ’70s and the evangelical backlash of the ’80s and ’90s, an alternative feminism emerged that offered Christian women a way to be feminist but still hold moral values in line with their faith.
Cochran opened her lecture by recounting the series of events surrounding the International Bible Society’s(IBS) 1997 decision to publish and distribute the New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition, of the Bible. The NIVI was gender-inclusive, meaning that it consistently utilized gender neutral language when biblical words or context allowed for it.
This move prompted an influential group of Christian leaders, publications, and organizations to mount a forceful opposition. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family pulled its children’s bible texts that included the gender-neutral language from bookshelves. The conservative World Magazine led a push against the IBS’s attempt to augment the translation of the bible. Ultimately, they were successful in preventing the NIVI’s distribution in the United States and issued guidelines on biblical translation.
In 2001 IBS released Today’s New International Version of the New Testament with a number of translation changes, including gender-inclusion. Although only about 30% of the changes relate to gender, this is the only area that has met opposition. Cochran posed several questions: Why has the IBS been pressed on these issues of gender by the Evangelical Community? Why is the Evangelical community so concerned about the dynamics of gender roles?
This focus of Cochran’s book and discussion was just that. She provided the context through which to inspect the issue. She traced the evangelical movement’s history through the 1960s and 1970s when moral, sexual, and political revolutions in America were seen by some as destroying the fabric of the stability represented by the 1950s’ strong, church-going families. She explained that the Evangelical response to this was an attempt to address these contemporary problems. Women’s role in society became a symbol of that end.
The NIV is very popular with Evangelicals. Therefore, attempts by the IBS to augment this specific portion of the bible were viewed as attempts to undermine evangelical efforts to wage their cultural battle for the future of society.
Some evangelical feminists argued that the basis of some of the modern beliefs about gender roles are inaccurate. One common example cited by Cochran was Paul’s writing to Timothy about prohibiting women to teach that it was an age in which women weren’t educated and could be misled easily by false prophets. They argued that Paul was not prohibiting increased female roles in church and society for all places and all time.
The Evangelical Women’s Caucus developed an active wing that took on gender issues, introducing and passing a resolution to recognize the lesbian minority in the Evangelical congregation. To further split the differing factions of the Evangelical community, the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus (EEWC) and Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) were formed. Eventually, the EEWC became associated with mainstream feminism and the CBE became the alternative voice for evangelicals who want to maintain their moral values. And all of these dynamics are intricately connected to the cultural and religious revolution and reaction of the second half of the twentieth century.
“Like secular culture in the 60s and 70s, American evangelicals in the 80s and 90s struggled to make sense of the new modern more pluralist society in which they found themselves,” said Cochran. “Central to their struggle was the question of authority: who or what determines the rules by which Americans should live in social harmony. In coming to terms with the question of women, their bodies and roles became…primary symbol[s] for who would have the power to maintain or change societal values.”
The reaction of women caught in this struggle who wanted an alternative to options presented by secularists led to the paradoxical idea known as Evangelical Feminism.