Writing so much this summer has me thinking about the first time I took my writing outside of the classroom. I presented a paper at the national ETS meeting.
My dad, who was super proud of me, couldn’t understand much of what I studied since Hebrew was like Greek to him. (That was his favorite “joke.”) But, he knew presenting at ETS was important. And since this paper did not rely on a lot of Hebrew text or technical language, he could understand the gist of it. Being the very proud father that he was, he asked if he could share a copy with his pastor. I agreed.
The paper (which was later published in BibSac) was on the narrative structure of the cycles in Judges. In short it concluded that the narrator’s focus was on communicating God’s grace in the cycles, not on communicating repentance. That the narrator was not focused on whether the Israelties repented (it’s never clearly stated & ch 10 is complex) but there are hints that they may not have. My paper only discussed the structural and narratival focus, it did not wade into a theological discussion of repentance.
The week after giving it to his pastor, he asked his pastor what he thought. My dad expected a response that would affirm his daughter. Instead, this pastor looked my dad in the eyes and said…
- “Your daughter is teaching easy-believism.
- If she had written this paper for a Criswell College class, she would have been kicked out of the school.
- She is just writing outlandish things because she is a woman trying to make a name for herself.”
A PASTOR said this to a PROUD FATHER in his congregation.
A pastor said THESE LIES to a proud father in his congregation.
There are no words to describe how hurt and devastated my dad was. He told me this story a week after it happened, and the hurt was still etched deeply on his face.
I don’t think my dad had ever been hurt by a pastor. Let alone, hurt so deeply.
(My mom was not present for the pastor’s words. And her face was not etched with hurt – her’s was etched with anger. [I kinda wish she had been there when the pastor said these words… the story might have a different ending!] She had never liked or trusted that pastor. But my dad always defaulted to respecting and trusting pastors. [A bit too much, to be honest.])
The following conversation with my dad was difficult. In part because I had to explain easy-believism and then try to figure out how the pastor read that into my paper. But even more so because I could see how hurt my dad was. I’m used to being hurt by the Church…my dad wasn’t. And now it felt like the Church had found a new way to hurt me – by hurting my dad because of me.
My dad knew that I was solid theologically, and he couldn’t comprehend why his pastor would say those things.
I could.
The problem wasn’t my words. It was my gender. I’ve learned that if a critique brings up the person’s gender in a derogatory way, there’s a very good chance the critique is not coming from faithful interaction with the content witten. This tends to come from those whose complementrian theology leaves them scared and/or intimidated of women entering and living in spaces they have deemed as “men only.” Instead of interacting with respect and grace to the content, they respond from a place of fear and intimidation of the gender. (To be clear, this is not representative of all complementarians.) I have encountered this in the Church and in Christian academia. Thankfully, though, most of the people I’ve interacted with in academia have been extremely supportive. Sadly, the same has only been true for maybe half the church leadership at my previous churches.
In contrast to that pastor, even though my dad grew up in a moderate complementarian culture, he always supported me as I pursued things and did things that weren’t exactly kosher with that theology. As does my mom. Even though they inherited a moderate complementarian theology, they never limited me with it. (A rare blessing that I am very thankful for.)
Thankfully, I’m the type of person who uses comments like that pastor’s to fuel my drive to research and write more. If those who think my gender prohibits me from doing what I do can only respond to my research and writing with lies (I don’t hold to easy believism), make up ridiculous consequences (Criswell wouldn’t kick a student out for writing that paper), slander my gender and motives, and have no valid critique of the content, then I must be doing something right.
Sometimes when I’m writing I think of that pastor (who, by the way, is now a used car salesman) and start typing with renewed energy.
JoAnna Hoyt 