Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 05:3 (Summer 1991)
Article: Biblical Feminism: A Christian Response To Sexism
Author: Gretchen Gaebelein Hull

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PP 5:3 (Summer 1991) p. 1

Biblical Feminism:
A Christian Response To Sexism

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull is a member of the CBE Board, and is author of Equal to Serve (available torn Ox CBE Book Service). This article first appeared in the ESA Advocate. October 1990.

Actor Alan Alda once described a feminist as someone who likes women. Even such a simple description implies me basic aim of the women’s movement: that women be accepted as full and equal human beings.

A more precise definition terms feminism “the theory of me political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” with the secondary meaning being “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1974).

The feminist movement is not new—nor is its connection with biblical principles. The first U.S. women’s rights convention, held in 1848 In Seneca Falls, New York, was an outgrowth of both the religious revivalist and abolitionist movements. Many of these women had a renewed desire to study Scripture and were quick to see the parallels between slavery and female subordination.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist movements also proliferated abroad, most notably In England, and there has been an International Women’s Day every March since 1910.

Feminism has secured important benefits In the Western world, such as equal educational opportunities for women, better health care (including prenatal and maternal care), women’s suffrage, more equitable job opportunities, and many other gains U.S. women often take for granted. Yet the social, medical, and educational needs of poverty-level women still come last on society’s agenda. Too often women are reduced to objects by the burgeoning pornography industry and escalating media violence against women. Many Christians remain sadly Ignorant of the appalling statistics on wife abuse, incest, and rape and are unaware of the feminization of poverty right here in the United States of America.

Globally, conditions for women remain bleak. Consider this brief sampling of misogynist practices: In some Asian countries, women are bought and sold, and can be treated as domestic animals, in India, brides with insufficient dowries can be burned to death to free the husband to marry a more affluent wife, in many African countries, women suffer painful ritual genital mutilation, in various Muslim countries, women are denied education in order that they may be more easily exploited economically. Worldwide, women grow most of the food supply but have little say in how the food is distributed and are themselves the last to be fed.

This discrimination against women is an unconscious ...

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