#37: Gender Pt. 2: Where the Gospel Meets Womanhood

#37: Gender Pt. 2: Where the Gospel Meets Womanhood

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

RACHEL SZABO: So Hannah Shultz was just 20 years old when she decided to take her first class at the local seminary.

HANNAH SHULTZ: And so I just walked on to campus and was walking into my first class. I was really early, super newbie, bright and shiny.

RACHEL SZABO: Totally like excited, first day of school vibes going on. And so she gets to her classroom, but because she’s early, there’s just one other student in the room so far — and it’s a man. And he’s sitting in one of the chairs reading a book.

HANNAH SHULTZ: And I’m naturally more introverted, but I decided that I was gonna go be friendly and approach him and introduce myself.

RACHEL SZABO: So Hannah takes a seat a couple chairs away, y’know, so she’s not too creepy or, like, overly friendly.

HANNAH SHULTZ: And stuck my hand out and said, ‘Hi, I’m Hannah. Nice to meet you.’ And he looks up from his book, looks over, gives me side-eye, and goes, ‘I’m married,’ and then goes back to his book.

JESSE EUBANKS: That is crazy.

RACHEL SZABO: Like rude.

JAMIE IVEY: You guys, I cannot even believe that that’s what he just said. I’m listening and I’m thinking he’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, nice to meet you.’ Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for Hannah!

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, that is a reasonable response, Jamie. That’s what a typical person should do, like somebody introduces them and, you know, you respond to them.

JAMIE IVEY: Yes, but respond by saying, ‘Hi, my name is Dawn,’ not ‘I’m married.’

JESSE EUBANKS: It makes me so mad hearing this. This is not okay.

RACHEL SZABO: Well, and the thing that I find troubling about it — basically he’s communicating, ‘Oh, you’re a woman. Your only purpose is to be a spouse. I don’t need you. Therefore, go away.’

JAMIE IVEY: Oh, so sad.

HANNAH SHULTZ: So I just was standing there, just open-mouthed like, ‘What did I just get myself into?’

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, unfortunately, like, that is not an uncommon story. I’ve got a friend. She was nine months pregnant — nine months pregnant — and she had an emergency. She was at a seminary and she was like, ‘I need a ride somewhere,’ and she went door-to-door and no man would give her a ride because they were like, ‘I can’t be alone in a car with a woman.’ I’m like, ‘She is nine months pregnant. What do you think this floozy’s gonna do? Throw herself at you?’ (laughter) 

JAMIE IVEY: I also have a friend in seminary who had a similar experience as Hannah, and she still talks about it today and how hard it was for her to sit in that class and have a man say things like that to her.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s ridiculous.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and the sad thing is that Hannah had multiple experiences like this.

HANNAH SHULTZ: Y’know, I think we can talk good game about our theology, but the way that we practice it as far as it relates to gender is so distorted.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social action and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode is where the gospel meets womanhood. So this is actually the second installment of our three-part series on gender. If you haven’t listened to the first one, I encourage you to go back and take a listen because it’s gonna lay some groundwork for you as to where we’re headed. 

RACHEL SZABO: So today’s episode is actually in partnership with The Happy Hour with Jamie Ivey, and so we have with us today to talk about womanhood, Jamie Ivey. Hey, Jamie.

JAMIE IVEY: You guys, thanks for having me. Your shows were my favorite, so this is an honor.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, well thanks, Jamie. Now, I think that we should clarify what this episode is actually not going to be about. We aren’t going to get into the debate of ‘Can women be pastors? What should and shouldn’t women do within the church?’ That’s a separate discussion for another day. 

RACHEL SZABO: Right. What we’re focusing on today is — what does the Bible say about being a woman? And how has the church and society shaped our views of womanhood? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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RACHEL SZABO: Okay Jesse, so you got to ask me this question in the last episode about manhood. So I’m gonna ask you this time — what do you think makes someone a woman?

JESSE EUBANKS: I do think about somebody that creates space for other people, tends to be more emotionally integrated as a person, tends to be better at multitasking than a man does, uh, can have children, and does have a vagina.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so again, what we did was we went out and asked folks, y’know — what do you think makes a woman a woman?

CLIPS FROM STREET INTERVIEWS: We do not define our life by ‘a man does this or a woman does that’… Someone with two X chromosomes… Womanhood, I think that it means independence, just being yourself… A person made in the image of God… Anyone was born having a female organ is a female… Whatever you wanna identify is, whatever you want, like I don’t think there’s like — you have to — there’s labels on stuff…

JAMIE IVEY: We got a wide range of people saying what they thought a woman was. I find that very interesting.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so just like with manhood, defining womanhood — it can be tricky and confusing sometimes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I agree, but I would also argue that the Bible actually gives us a pretty solid jumping off point for defining womanhood.

In the first chapter of Genesis, we see God creates human as two genders — male and female. But then, in chapter two, we get more of the inside story. So God has made the man, Adam, and placed him to work in a garden. Throughout the creation story, God has been calling everything good — but suddenly that changes. In verse 18, we read, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and that’s when God creates woman.

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. And Adam’s response is one of pure elation. I mean he finally has a companion, an ally, a co-laborer in the work God has given. 

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, this is one of the church’s fundamental teachings about women — that they are helpers. The other teaching is that women are life-givers or nurturers, and we get this from later in Genesis when Adam calls the woman Eve, saying that she’ll be the mother of all living. So from right here in Genesis, we get two big definitions of what it means to be a woman —  a helper and a life-giver.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so let’s talk about both of those. So first — the helper, and I’ve heard that before, y’know, that the woman is ‘the helper.’ Honestly the first thing that comes to mind when I hear that is, like, the movie The Help with Viola Davis about, like, black women as maids in the ‘60s. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So you’re saying, like, you don’t see it as a positive term?

RACHEL SZABO: Not really. It sounds very, like, servant-ish. Like less than.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, Jamie, is it similar for you, like what do you think of when you hear women called ‘helpers’?

JAMIE IVEY: Very similar. It makes me feel almost like a second-class, like not the number one but the number two and I don’t really get to have a voice. I’m just the help.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and I can understand that. I think that if it was reversed and men were referred to as ‘helpers’ the way that our culture thinks about those things, I wouldn’t necessarily appreciate that either.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I think for a lot of women, y’know, it’s similar. This term of ‘helper’ — it’s not viewed in necessarily a positive light. 

WENDY ALSUP: It seemed very much like the dishes, the meals, changing diapers, so I didn’t really know what to do with that term ‘helper.’

RACHEL SZABO: So this is Wendy Alsup. At the time, she was married, she was a math teacher at the community college, and, y’know, for her, when she was growing up, she actually didn’t see any problems with gender.

WENDY ALSUP: It wasn’t explicitly addressed when I was growing up, but my dad only had daughters, no sons. But my dad’s own posture toward his daughters I think set us up for a confident independence. 

RACHEL SZABO: So Wendy was confident in being a woman, and she thought others should be confident in her too. But eventually that view of herself changed, and it changed in a negative way. And the thing that ended up changing her attitude wasn’t some secular message or wacko idea — it was the church. So once Wendy grew up, she got married, and then she and her husband began attending a new church together, a church they really admired for the church’s emphasis on mission, their passion to reach people with the gospel. And naturally, Wendy wanted to be a part of that mission.

WENDY ALSUP: And I volunteered in the church. At that point I had my master’s degree in education and fairly experienced Christian and so I volunteered and tell them my list of criteria and they said, ‘Well, okay. We need someone to pull chairs from the downstairs of the sanctuary up to the upstairs.’ And it was kind of humbling, but that’s what I did for a little while, like, okay. 

RACHEL SZABO: Y’know, it’s probably tempting to try to read between the lines right here, but this actually really didn’t have anything to do with her gender. Y’know, some folks wanna be like, ‘See! She’s a woman, and she’s being oppressed because they’re making her pull up chairs instead of letting her do, like, real opportunities.’ But literally that was the thing the church needed help with at the time. And eventually, y’know, Wendy was given other ways to serve.

WENDY ALSUP: And then I ended up doing this. I was a math teacher at the community college. They put me in charge of writing down the bank deposits for tithes.

RACHEL SZABO: And then in doing that, she worked closely with two deacons in the church.

WENDY ALSUP: We got to know each other, and then over time in our conversations, they eventually suggested me for the position of women’s theology and training.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh okay, so like they want her to teach theology to women?

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, and from what I can tell in this story, I mean it sounds like so far so good. I think this is great what Wendy’s doing. I thought you said the church impacted her view of womanhood in a negative way?

RACHEL SZABO: Right. So it didn’t happen overnight. So Wendy actually spent six years at this church. And as she sat under the preaching, spent time with those in leadership, immersed herself in that community, she began to notice that that view she had of herself when she was younger — y’know, confident, secure — it was starting to slowly fade away.

WENDY ALSUP: If you looked at it on a continuum of how you view your own voice, in that period my view of my own voice dipped. So even though I was elevated to speak to many, many women — and there were several elders I think really valued my voice as well — overall, I was suspicious of my voice.

JESSE EUBANKS: Why does she say that? Like what happened that caused that?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay. So in Genesis, y’know, Adam and Eve sin. God curses each of them specifically and individually. And this church had interpreted the curse placed on the woman to mean that basically women are now not to be trusted. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh.

WENDY ALSUP: I had become convinced that my root problem was that I wanted to manipulate. I thought, ‘Wow, I am a manipulator. Like, I didn’t think I was trying to manipulate, but surely I am trying to manipulate, even though I don’t feel like that’s why I’m doing this.’ I didn’t trust myself to speak up. 

RACHEL SZABO: So basically what Wendy was being told here was that, as a woman, she helped by shutting up. That’s what it meant. If you’re a helper, you helped by being quiet.

JAMIE IVEY: This is all so sad for me, for Wendy as well. And honestly I’m grateful that I’m sitting here listening going, ‘Man, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that.’

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so like being in this church, Wendy is starting to, like, slowly distrust herself, distrust her womanhood. But then, here’s where things go even more off the rails — is that there was another way that this church told Wendy she needed to be a helper as a woman. And it was not with her voice — it was with her body. 

WENDY ALSUP: The other one was teaching on sexuality, a whispered undertone of pressure.

RACHEL SZABO: So there was this sort of unspoken expectation that you needed to look like basically a knock-out woman, like you are a help to your husband basically by being sexy and satisfying him physically.

WENDY ALSUP: Sometimes it was explicit. More often it was implicit, and that really harmed a lot of women too. 

RACHEL SZABO: I mean, as Wendy was talking about this, I couldn’t help but think about our episode on the adult entertainment industry, where women said the only value they saw in themselves was in their body. And like this was a message that was being communicated within the church. Here’s the other thing too — this isn’t some small-town church in the middle of nowhere, like this is a big, well-known, influential church. Like if I told you the name of this church, you and probably all of our listeners will have heard of it. So this is a teaching that’s influencing many people.

JAMIE IVEY: You know, Rachel, I thought about that same episode that you guys did about the adult entertainment industry. And another thing, you guys talked about a Venn diagram in the manhood episode, that there’s this circle for manhood and a circle for womanhood and how, in a right view of gender, a lot of those circles will overlap. But then there are parts that are distinct. And I think this is one of the sad differences — is that when we talk about womanhood, we will inevitably have to talk about some level of mistreatment. And unfortunately, that sometimes has to do with sex and our bodies. That’s just a part of the historical narrative for women that just isn’t there as much for men. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Like we were able to talk about manhood independently.

RACHEL SZABO: Right, but it’s impossible to talk about womanhood without referencing men in some form or fashion.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah.

JAMIE IVEY: So crazy.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, here’s what I think. Rachel, there was a point in the last episode where Leandro and I started talking and you were like, ‘You know what? Let me just let you guys have your bro time.’ I think you guys are talking about some really important things, and I think it may better serve people to allow you all just to talk without me interjecting so much. So I’m actually going to sit back, and I just wanna listen. I’ll rejoin you guys at the end.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh, okay, like I did in the other episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: I’ll be back later.

JAMIE IVEY: You guys, hearing Wendy’s story, even just these parts of it — I’ve talked to so many women who will definitely be able to relate to what Wendy’s saying, especially the part about feeling like they can’t speak up or maybe not even that they can’t, but they honestly just don’t want to. I wish so much that I could come in here and say that Wendy’s experience is unique, you guys, we don’t have anything to worry about. But sadly, it is not unique.

LISA BEVERE: You know, I went to a church that was very clear — ‘Women were the last to be created, first to sin. Therefore, they need to be silent.’

RACHEL SZABO: Coming up — What happens when a woman speaks up? We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

RACHEL SZABO: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Rachel Szabo.

JAMIE IVEY: And I’m Jamie Ivey. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets womanhood. 

RACHEL SZABO: So we’ve seen that God created women to be helpers, but that within the church, this gender identity can become really distorted. 

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, a common manifestation being that women are to be silent and submissive, and if you try to break out of this box, you’re gonna face some consequences for it — which is what happened to my friend Lisa Bevere. 

CLIP (LISA BEVERE): Yeah, I’m so thrilled to be back with you.

CLIP (JAMIE IVEY): I know, welcome back to The Happy Hour.

JAMIE IVEY: So actually I had Lisa on my show this past November, and I’d like to play a clip for you, a part of that conversation, because it captures so well some of the things that we’re talking about today. So at one point Lisa told me this story about her and her husband John.

LISA BEVERE: Well John was a youth pastor, and he had such a heart and realized that he did not have the totality of speaking into these young women’s hearts. And so he’s always been like, ‘Lisa, I want you to do this with me.’ I’m like, ‘Nope, I’m not a package deal. I’m a one-eyed wife. I don’t have to get up in front of people. I’m afraid.’ And so he was going to be going on a missions trip out of the country, and he said the Holy Spirit told him that I was supposed to speak. Well I argued quite a bit, did not want to pray about it, ‘cause I was afraid the Holy Spirit might say I had to.

RACHEL SZABO: Hang on for a second. So I know that this is a common narrative for women in the church, like, to be afraid to speak. But, like, why is that? Like, where does this idea or this teaching come from?

JAMIE IVEY: You know, Rachel, there’s these verses in First Corinthians a lot of people use for this, about the women keeping silent in churches. And again, so much context around these verses, but I think that’s where a lot of churches get this from. But, you know what, her husband, John — he actually saw Lisa as a helper like we’ve been talking about, and he wanted her to speak at one of the teaching sessions on this mission trip in order to connect with all the young ladies. 

LISA BEVERE: John thought it would be really cute to announce that there was a special guest speaker, his favorite guest speaker — even though I’d never really spoken — anyways, he should have just said ‘my favorite person.’ But anyway, all these people came that didn’t even normally come to hear this special guest speaker. I’m sitting in the back of the room, which would have been normal for me.

JAMIE IVEY: So her husband, he eventually announces that it’s actually his wife Lisa who’s gonna be speaking. And before she can even get up and get to the microphone, people start reacting.

LISA BEVERE: I’m not even lying. Half the room leaves. They pick up their metal chairs. They close them shut, very noisy, throw them into the metal chairs stacking place, walk past me, giving me dirty looks. And it wasn’t just the men. It was women too. And they were saying things like, ‘I’m not gonna let a woman speak.’ So I got up there, and Jamie, I think I just read Scripture because I was so afraid of being unscriptural. I read Scripture. I was sweating. The whole time in my brain I’m hearing all those favorite Scriptures used against women — ‘I suffer a woman not to preach or teach or have authority over a man.’ It was awful.

JAMIE IVEY: So Lisa got through her message, she went back to her room, and tried to go to sleep. She’s thinking, ‘I’m just gonna sleep this off. It’s all gonna be behind me tomorrow.’ But as she’s trying to fall asleep, something terrifying happens. 

LISA BEVERE: Put on my pajamas, got into bed, and I heard this pound pound pound on my window. And apparently some men felt like that was the godly approach to intimidate a woman, to say, ‘We will not allow you to speak to us, and so we’re gonna scare the bejeebies out of you.’ I remember I was in the dark and I froze.

JAMIE IVEY: But her husband John, he wasn’t back yet. So Lisa called the police, just like all of us would. The police came. They made sure everything was safe. 

LISA BEVERE: And when my husband came home, Jamie, I told him the whole story. And I expected John to say, ‘Wow, Lisa, I’m so sorry I put you in that uncomfortable place. I’m so sorry that that is the way you were treated. I’m so sorry our college and career group who knows me and respects me would disrespect you.’ But he didn’t do that, Jamie. He said, ‘Lisa, I’m sorry. I can’t let you quit because there’s so many young women watching you.’

JAMIE IVEY: You know, the first time she told me that Rachel, I just wanted to clap for John. I was so proud of him for cheering on his wife that way.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I think what’s happening here is her husband realizes that if Lisa doesn’t step into her womanhood, that will impact the people around her. And the truth is that the views that we have about our gender — it impacts our relationships. So, y’know, why should we be concerned with what it means to be a woman? It’s because there are relational consequences to that. In fact, for Wendy, she and her husband — they eventually got a divorce. There were relational consequences. And I’m not saying that it was because of Wendy’s failure to be a woman that they got a divorce, but what I am saying is that our gender — it’s relational. 

WENDY ALSUP: And I really regret not using my voice more in my own marriage. I was, um, suspicious of my own voice, and I wish I had used it earlier. Now, I don’t think my husband had been discipled to hear my voice, so probably if I had used it earlier, our marriage would have ended earlier. It definitely affected the confidence I did not have in how to navigate conflict with him.

RACHEL SZABO: Now I do wanna be clear — y’know, Wendy doesn’t blame the divorce on the church and its teachings about women, but she did say that it certainly was not helpful and did not give her the proper tools she needed to navigate that situation.

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, I think we can see this in other areas in church of all kinds of relationships between men and women. I mean I think about, y’know, singles trying to navigate, ‘how do we relate to each other?’ And I think this teaching affects that so much.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, like, I’m thinking back to Hannah’s story that we heard at the very beginning and just, y’know, how skewed womanhood and the way that people relate to women has become. So one narrative that the church has given us about what it means to be a woman is that — as helpers — we are to be quiet, we are add-ons, we’re scenery, we’re the hood ornaments on the car. But there’s actually another narrative that affects our view as women that I wanna look at as well because we can actually take this to the other extreme and we see ourselves as independent, self-sufficient, ‘no one tells me what to do, I live by my own rules.’ And that’s actually what happened to a woman named Courtney Reissig.

COURTNEY REISSIG: As I grew into my adolescent teenage years and then college years was I started to see this — ‘If you’re a strong woman, the place for you is feminism. Like there is no other option.’

RACHEL SZABO: So at the time Courtney would not have necessarily called herself a feminist, but in hindsight she realizes that that’s how she was operating.

COURTNEY REISSIG: I would judge the girls in college. It was just so judgmental of people who I felt like had lack of ambition. They just wanted to get married. And I thought, ‘Well, can’t you dream of something bigger than that?’ And, and that’s just the feminist ideology, that marriage is like the death sentence to your life as you know it.

RACHEL SZABO: And even in just like really small things, Courtney wanted to assert her own independence.

COURTNEY REISSIG: And I really struggled with, if a guy wanted to hold the door open for me, I was like, ‘I don’t need you to hold the door open for me. I can do it myself.’ 

RACHEL SZABO: And at the time, Courtney saw her attitude as godly — or at least more godly than the other women who were around her. 

COURTNEY REISSIG: I really scoffed at some of the ways that I saw women trying to be more traditional. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m gonna go on the mission field or I’m gonna go into ministry and I’m going to do something really important for the Lord, and you can like give your life up and waste your college degree.’ And I wouldn’t have said it in those harsh terms, but I really thought it in my head. 

RACHEL SZABO: And, y’know, looking back now, Courtney can see how it wasn’t the Bible that was influencing her view of herself, but it was feminist ideology. 

COURTNEY REISSIG: In our generation, we don’t really realize how feminism has influenced everything and it’s kind of the air we breathe.

JAMIE IVEY: Y’know, I think we also should be pretty thoughtful here because feminism can mean different things to different people. 

RACHEL SZABO: Right, okay, so a very basic definition of feminism is recognizing the equality and full humanity of women and men. And I think as Christians we would say, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ So, yeah, not all feminist influence is necessarily bad or wrong. But what I’m talking about here and what Courtney is getting at is more of the trajectory of the feminist movement in the United States. So, actually what I think might be helpful is to do a quick history of modern feminism in our country. So, to date, the feminism movement has come in three waves, so let’s look at those three waves. The first wave happened around the late 19th and early 20th century. So the main thing that happened was concerning a woman’s right to vote, and actually a lot of Christians were very involved in this movement. 

JAMIE IVEY: I love the first movement because women deserve the right to vote, obviously. We love this. Okay, what’s the second wave?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, the second wave of feminism started in the 1960s, and a big part of this was the push for equality in the workforce. So during this time you see things like the Equal Pay Act put into effect. But there was another aspect of this wave of feminism, and it had to do with sexual stereotypes — that women wanted to be seen not just as their boobs, but also as their brain. And so within this wave, you start to see the discussion of reproductive rights emerge, as well as rethinking terms of roles and importance in the nuclear family.

JAMIE IVEY: You know, Rachel, this is actually what I think of when I think of feminism — this wave that, y’know, women have not only just boobs, but we also have brains. So, what’s the third wave?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so third wave feminism, which began in the 1990s, brings us to some of what we kinda see today, that gender is fluid, sexuality is fluid, no one can tell a woman what she can or can’t do. And a big way that this plays out is actually in wielding sex as power. So not only should women be equal to men in their societal rights, not only should women be equal to men in their work — they should also be equal to men in their sex life. Here’s Courtney.

COURTNEY REISSIG: It was this whole, like, ‘I can have sex like a man has sex. No consequences. There’s no, no attachment.’ I mean, I remember thinking, like, ‘If I get pregnant, I’ll just get the morning after pill.’ Like it was just no problem.

JAMIE IVEY: So I see the first wave, awesome — women voting, great. The second wave, I see a lot of great things as well. I start to see some negative things come in. But I gotta be honest with you, Rachel, this third wave makes me a little bit uncomfortable for how this actually helps us as women.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, absolutely, like, now did good things come out of the feminist movement? Yes. But if we think again about that Venn diagram of manhood and womanhood, the circles used to be too far apart, and so some of feminism helped bring those circles closer to where they should be. However, as feminism has continued, we’ve now gotten to a point where society would like to see the circles just completely overlap and there’s no distinctions. 

COURTNEY REISSIG: Equality equals sameness, which is kind of a feminist ideology of, ‘If you’re equal, you must be the same and there must be no distinctions.’ So I think that’s the really devastating consequence of third wave feminism — is that it creates such a level of confusion of how we’re supposed to actually live.

JAMIE IVEY: I think it’s this third wave of feminism that we talked about that brings about the other aspect of womanhood that we mentioned at the beginning, which is that women are life-givers. Y’know, and there are some narratives within the pro-choice movement who would say that women don’t have to embrace this aspect of their gender if they don’t want to. It’s like what Courtney was saying when she said she can have sex like a man with no reprecussions of bringing forth new life because of what the pro-choice narratives are saying — that a man can have sex, and if a baby is made, it doesn’t affect his body like it would a woman’s. And so I think that society has sadly undermined this particular aspect of womanhood.

RACHEL SZABO: Right. So when it comes to being helpers and life-givers, society likes to push against that. But in the church, we often take this to the other extreme. So helping means you do whatever the men around you say to do, and life-giving means you have children — so if you’re single or you’re experiencing infertility or you’re married and you’re choosing not to have kids, that somehow you are less of a woman. And we would say that is not true at all. 

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, I agree. I mean there’s this idea that, y’know, a woman’s highest calling is to be a mom and a wife, but I have plenty of women who are chasing Jesus faithfully and they’re neither of those.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean honestly Jamie, that is my life, like you just described me. So like I am single and I don’t have any kids, but I don’t think that that makes me any less of a woman than, say, some of my friends who are married and do have kids.

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, I hear you, and I think that that’s one of the areas that we’re seeing the church has failed. And just, as another woman to another woman, I want to encourage you and say that you are fully woman and able to be used by God.

RACHEL SZABO: Thanks. So we just went through a history of modern feminism in the United States, and a lot of folks might hear that and come away with a very negative view of feminism. But I do wanna make a distinction, and that is that there are things that the feminist movements have gotten right. And those are things that the Bible affirms — that women are strong, that women are capable. And while there are many churches where we don’t see this strength and capability on display, one place we do see it is in the African American community.

KATASHA ROSS: I can think of, like, for me, with my mom growing up — there were five of us, and my stepdad was in the military.

RACHEL SZABO: So this is Katasha Ross. She is African American, and she is a Christian. And for some African American women, womanhood isn’t about, ‘Let’s sit down and discuss our privileges over tea.’ It’s about necessity and survival — and that’s something that Katasha saw her own mom display whenever her stepdad was gone for the military.

KATASHA ROSS: He was deployed, and then she worked a lot, night shift, three to 11, stuff like that. And so we all understood that her love and care for us was her going to work and doing those things to make sure that we had, you know, food and that we could do the other things that we needed to get done. I wasn’t ever thinking and I don’t think she was ever thinking, like, ‘Am I being feminine or not?’ It was just, like, ‘This is my role right now.’

RACHEL SZABO: And so of course, y’know, for Katasha, she had this idea of what being a woman meant by looking at her mom, but then she saw women in her church — and they behaved differently.

KATASHA ROSS: I had seen how my mom was living and like working and like doing all these things. But then I also saw women at church, and women at church always seemed like so put together, really kind, never really speaking their minds on certain things, and really good moms are able to just like be with their kids all the time and they’re like really sweet. And so I just kind of in my mind thought subconsciously, like, ‘I don’t fit this mold.’

RACHEL SZABO: The mold being that of a white evangelical woman. Because the truth is our culture and our background — they impact the way that we view gender. So for instance, y’know, in Wendy Alsup’s story, she did not feel heard or respected at church or at home. But in the African American community, like, that attitude doesn’t fly.

KATASHA ROSS: When I think of my mom — my mom’s like 5’5, right. And my older brother — he is like 6’3, and he’s like a bus. He’s huge, but like he would never cross her. He would never just try to pull one over on her because there’s that level of respect there, and I would say it’s like respect of her position as a mother, but also like as a woman, like you just don’t do that. 

RACHEL SZABO: In fact, I think the evangelical church could learn a lot about womanhood from the black community. And I’m not saying that all black women are all strong all the time. But for many, their experiences have just built a level of resiliency. 

KATASHA ROSS: I think just within black culture, like, women are strong. You know, like, not to cross (laughs), not to cross a black woman. And I think the media has taken that and like run with it in negative ways, perpetuating this, like, angry black woman stereotype. But it’s more of, like, ‘Because I care so fiercely for the people that I love, I’m not gonna let you, like, take advantage of them. I’m not going to be taken advantage of.’

RACHEL SZABO: In fact, the waves of feminism really attracted many African American women because they resonated with the message of speaking up and stepping out. 

JAMIE IVEY: You know, Rachel, another thing that this makes me think of is this kind of conversation, argument, whatever you wanna call it, about a woman’s role as a helpmate to be in the home with the children. It’s a very privileged idea that a woman would be able to do that. For many people in many communities, they just don’t have that option. So what I’m seeing here is we’ve basically got two ditches on either side of this road of womanhood. One is that, as a woman, you just gotta be timid, tight-lipped, and tame like a fragile piece of china for display only.

RACHEL SZABO: Sure, and then the other being that, y’know, as a woman, I can say whatever I want, whenever I want, no boundaries, no restrictions, y’know, ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’

JAMIE IVEY: Right, and neither of which I think is actually a biblical perspective of womanhood. So the question seems to be is — how do we get back to a biblical understanding of our gender?

RACHEL SZABO: Well, that’s a good question — and is actually something that Wendy Alsup was about to discover.

WENDY ALSUP: Oh my goodness. It was like a, I don’t know, like I just unwrapped this big present and out popped the most beautiful thing in all the world.

RACHEL SZABO: Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL 

RACHEL SZABO: Welcome back to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Rachel Szabo.

JAMIE IVEY: And I’m Jamie Ivey. Today — where the gospel meets womanhood. So far we’ve looked at distortions from the church and from society. But what’s a biblical view of womanhood?

RACHEL SZABO: So, do you remember Wendy Alsup? She’s the woman who her dad had raised her to be really confident, but then her church, y’know, slowly choked that out of her.

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, the one who started stacking chairs and then worked with the finances and then was teaching theology, that Wendy? 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, that’s her. So, the church that she was going to, y’know, it has since dissolved, but that didn’t mean that its influences on Wendy’s view of womanhood had. And in fact, she left that church with a very sour taste for womanhood and the Bible, but she believed the error, y’know, it just couldn’t be on the Bible’s part.

WENDY ALSUP: That’s why I’ve thought a lot about whether the Bible is good for women.

RACHEL SZABO: So she did a lot of studying and researching, looking at what the Bible actually had to say to and about women, and the thing she came across that changed her outlook was actually all the way back in Genesis 2, when God calls the woman that he’s making a ‘helper.’ And in studying that, Wendy discovered that ‘helper’ — or ‘Ezer’ in the Hebrew — is actually a name given to God himself throughout Scripture.

WENDY ALSUP: And it just — oh my goodness. It was like a, I don’t know, like I just unwrapped this big present and out popped the most beautiful thing in all the world to meditate on, and it was just so transformative. Oh my goodness, it was transformative. I mean I just can’t say enough about how different it was to understand that God is our helper.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so in Genesis 2, when God says he’s making a helper, that Hebrew word is ‘Ezer’ and that’s E-Z-E-R. And this word shows up 21 times in the Old Testament, and 16 of those 21 times it’s used in reference to God acting as a helper for his people.

WENDY ALSUP: I love Deuteronomy 33 — ‘Blessed are you, O Israel. Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper — your Ezer — and your glorious sword. Your enemies will cower before you, and you will trample down their high places.’

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean I even think about, like, Psalm 33, like, ‘We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help — our ezer — and shield.’

JAMIE IVEY: Yeah, my favorite is Psalm 121. It says, ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ It’s that same word.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I mean in some cases, there’s even a sense of, like, fierceness to it. So, like in the book of Hosea, God says, ‘You are destroyed, O Israel, because you were against me, against your helper.’ There’s like this sense of strength or battle to this term. Like it’s not like, ‘Let me serve you tea and cookies.’ 

JAMIE IVEY: Right.

RACHEL SZABO: It’s like, ‘Here come the reinforcements.’

JAMIE IVEY: It’s so great. I was like Wendy, Rachel, when I first discovered this word used throughout Scripture. It was eye-opening for me.

WENDY ALSUP: It’s, um, a more robust, noble help. It’s a rescue help. I mean, it’s more than folding socks, y’know. It’s the hand up out of the well, you know. You’ve fallen, you’re in duress, you are broken on the side of the road. It’s a noble, strong help. 

JAMIE IVEY: I mean think about all the women we have as examples in Scripture. We’ve got Deborah, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, plus so many more.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so some translations use the phrase ‘necessary ally’ when they’re translating this word ‘helper.’ So in other words, it’s like, you’re not getting the job done without having this person on your side. 

JAMIE IVEY: I mean I love this so much because it elevates women to what we were created to be — equal to men. But we don’t replace men. Both genders are absolutely necessary in accomplishing all of God’s purposes.

WENDY ALSUP: Actually the Bible literally sets us up for the right path where God says, ‘Let us make man in our image. Male and female, he created them.’ You have what you need, that’s it.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I love this too because with this there’s so much room and freedom for defining what being a helper or life-giver is, like this can look so many different ways. For some people, it can look like folding socks and doing the laundry, and that is the way that you help. For other people, it can look like something you do in your neighborhood or in your community or even within your church. 

WENDY ALSUP: My pastor comes to me regularly for help, and it’s not just help for passing a woman’s application to some sermon. I help him in strong ways. Sometimes he’ll send me a sermon and ask me what I think about it. We work a lot together. It’s beautiful. It’s how it’s supposed to be. I don’t manipulate him. I don’t want control of the church. I’m helping him in the ways he needs it. 

RACHEL SZABO: So Wendy actually wrote all her findings in a book, and it’s called Is the Bible Good for Women? And her answer is a definite yes.

JAMIE IVEY: Y’know, there’s also another form that this can take, and I think it’s so crucial in helping younger women learn what it means to step into their womanhood. This is something my friend Lisa Bevere is very passionate about. 

LISA BEVERE: When I got saved, Jamie, I was just like, ‘I don’t know how to do marriage. I don’t know how to do motherhood. I don’t even like women.’ So that’s a problem. When you are a woman, I kind of hate myself. What does that look like? And for the first eight years of my marriage, Jamie, I kept watching for a woman to notice me, watching for a woman to come alongside and say, ‘Baby girl, I see you struggling, but you know, like, I want to help you.’ But that woman didn’t happen for me.

JAMIE IVEY: And today, because Lisa didn’t have that for herself, she spends so much of her time today teaching women how to do life with one another, how to learn from one another.

LISA BEVERE: And I think right now we have a gap. The older women think that the younger women do not want what’s on their life, and the younger women think that the older women are too busy golfing, they’re retired, getting facelifts, or whatever’s going on in their life. They don’t have time for that younger generation. And there’s this gap. And Jamie, when I looked up the meaning of the word ‘gap,’ uh, it’s not a store. It’s actually a breach in a wall or a military barrier that leaves both sides in an assailable position. So the older women are at risk of losing their purpose, and then the younger women are at risk of not having the benefit of learning what we learned the hard way.

JAMIE IVEY: Right. 

LISA BEVERE: And so that’s why Titus says the older women must — not like, ‘Hey, if you feel like it, if you feel worthy, if you have a doctorate degree’ — must teach and train the younger women.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, y’know, and even for Courtney, y’know, as she dug deeper into what the Bible actually says about womanhood and as she talked with and learned from other women, she saw that her view of feminism was actually keeping her from living out her womanhood.

COURTNEY REISSIG: I think the biggest thing that is hurting us as Christians in the West regarding womanhood and femininity is that we are not nuanced enough. We are not providing women with a robust understanding of what it means to follow God as a Christian. The Bible tells us that we are all equally saved if we trust in Christ, regardless of gender, regardless of socioeconomic background, regardless of ethnicity. We’re saved by the blood of Jesus, and the command to Christians in the New Testament is the same — to go and make disciples of all nations, to know God through his word — and being a godly woman is fruit of being a Christian. It is not the point of being a Christian. As you grow in your love for God through his word, you will be a godly woman. 

RACHEL SZABO: And, y’know, especially when it comes to being life-givers, Courtney would now say that that is part of being a woman, but that it also doesn’t just mean physically being life-givers.

COURTNEY REISSIG: The Great Commission is a new cultural mandate — ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you.’ And that’s not gender-specific — it’s to all believers. And so a Christian woman, regardless of where she is in her life, whether she’s married or single, whether she has children or does not have children, she is part of this Great Commission mandate to be a life-giver, and by being a life-giver by making more disciples. Having children is a form of disciple-making, but it’s not the only form of disciple-making.

RACHEL SZABO: And actually today, Courtney, who back in college wanted to live so independent and push against anything quote unquote traditional, she’s now married and has kids and the way that she lives out her womanhood — it looks nothing like her college self would have imagined.

COURTNEY REISSIG: And now in hindsight, I’ve been married almost 11 years. I’m basically a stay-at-home mom. I do work outside the home, but I am basically a stay-at-home mom. So in some ways I’m doing the very thing that I thought I was giving my entire life up for. There’s no one model of womanhood necessarily, like so it doesn’t matter what your interests are like — if you like sports or you don’t like sports, if you like decorating your house or you don’t like decorating your house. Like those have nothing to do with what it means to be a godly woman.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so Jesse, you’ve been kind of sitting back and listening to us talk about womanhood. I’m curious what your thoughts are. Do you have any reactions to any of this?

JESSE EUBANKS: I just think you guys have so many messages pulling you in so many different directions. It just seems so disorienting, like you’re hearing like, ‘be docile and quiet, take care of your home, and bring children into the world,’ but you’re also hearing like, ‘have the perfect body and make sure that you’re always appealing to the men around you,’ and then you’ve also got like, ‘go out and be mega-competent in the workforce.’ Like there are just so many messages pulling women in so many different directions. And yeah, it just makes me sympathize with your all’s dilemmas.

JAMIE IVEY: I mean there are so many competing ideas. You’re so right, Jesse. Welcome to our world. Um, but of course, we have a really great example of what true womanhood is — and it’s from Jesus. He’s the great example for all of us, but more in particular it’s the way Jesus treats women. Y’know, Jesus restores us in our womanhood by empowering us and actually needing us in his work. We see this all throughout the New Testament.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, you’re right. You know, during the time that Jesus was on earth, women were so devalued in that society that a woman’s opinion didn’t even hold up in court, like they weren’t trusted. But then Jesus comes along, and he changes that. Actually this is something that Katasha and I talked about.

KATASHA ROSS: Those different encounters, y’know, that Jesus has with women ‘cause I’ve been walking through the book of Luke. And the way that he sees them in their womanhood, it just — I can’t get over it. (laughs) There’s so many stories of him seeing women where they were and healing them or like having conversations with them.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so in talking about this, Katasha actually read me this quote that she found in a book by a woman named Vickie Kraft. And so Vickie actually passed away in 2015 at the age of 87, but she spent her time teaching and mentoring women. And she said this.

KATASHA ROSS: ‘Jesus never spoke condescendingly to women, never made derogatory jokes about women, and never exploited women. Moreover, women did not deny, betray, or desert him. They were last at the cross and first to the tomb, and after the resurrection, he appeared first to a woman, Mary Magdalene.’

RACHEL SZABO: Y’know, earlier we heard a teaching that women were the last to be created and the first to sin and therefore we can’t be trusted — but this shows how Jesus restores us to right womanhood. So instead of being last to be created, first to sin — in Jesus, women remained with him at his crucifixion even after the disciples deserted him, and women were the first to discover the reality of the resurrection. We are trusted. We’re necessary. And so only in Jesus can we be the women that we were created to be.

JAMIE IVEY: I love this quote as well because when we look at Scripture we don’t see the 2020, y’know, American evangelical culture aspects. In Scripture we can actually see that God has good news for both genders — for men and women. And some of our cultural norms — they don’t stand up with Scripture. And so when we look at how Jesus needed women, he spoke to women, he valued women, he never condescended women — he needed women as well on his mission like you said Rachel, and that is beautiful and it is an encouragement to all of us as we live out our true womanhood.

RACHEL SZBAO: Yeah, so I think that the good news is this. Y’know, regardless of what type of woman you are — if you’re loud or you’re soft-spoken, if you like rom-coms or you like action movies, if you like dresses or you like to wear cargo pants, if you’re single, you’re married, you’re struggling with infertility, you’re juggling life as a mom — like whoever you are, Jesus has restored your womanhood. In Jesus, you are a complete woman. So the question is — how can you step into that and bring help and life to the world around you?

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RACHEL SZABO: For even more resources on womanhood — including books by Wendy Alsup, Lisa Bevere, and Courtney Reissig — or to hear past episodes of this podcast, visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/LTNpodcast.

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RACHEL SZABO: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode — Hannah Shultz, Wendy Alsup, Lisa Bevere, Courtney Reissig, and Katasha Ross. 

JAMIE IVEY: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: Our co-host today is Jamie Ivey. Jamie, thanks so much for joining us today.

JAMIE IVEY: Thanks guys.

RACHEL SZABO: If you haven’t already, make sure to check out Jamie’s show, The Happy Hour with Jamie Ivey. She’s always having great conversations with such a diverse range of people, and you can find her show at jamieivey.com.

JAMIE IVEY: Our media assistant and audio engineer is Anna Tran. 

RACHEL SZABO: And our media director and producer is me — Rachel Szabo. Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX.

JAMIE IVEY: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org.

RACHEL SZABO: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’