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Christian Network

The United States has been in the midst of an ongoing sexual revolution for well over 30 years now. Traditional gender roles have been and continue to be turned on their heads. What would have been unthinkable functions for either men or woman two generations ago are becoming acceptable to Americans today. An example in the case of woman is their utilization in front line combat units in the U.S. Military. Gulf Wars I and II saw the first female P.O.W’s, a circumstance that is still unsettling for at least some Americans of both genders. Meanwhile the 1990’s saw the advent of the "Stay-At-Home Father". In this scenario the mother becomes the sole breadwinner for the family while her husband takes over primary responsibility for raising young children. In both these cases initial discomfort seems to be heading for eventual acceptance.

For most conservative Christians these shifts in sexual roles are disturbing to say the least. They are also confusing because it is difficult to find as many black and white directives in Scripture as some Christians might like to think are present. Many believers, for instance, would immediately claim biblical authority for keeping woman out of fighting military battalions but the fact is that the Old Testament Judge Deborah once jointly led an entire army of Israelites to victory against Sisera. In fact the enemy king in that battle was himself killed by Ja’el, also a woman (Judges 4:1-24.) As for the female gender staying at home while the men leave each day to work for the family’s sustenance the Old Testament again has Israelite woman out in the fields bringing in the harvest. Ruth, for instance, does this more than once in the Book that bears her name. Another example of someone who is not exactly "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" is the praiseworthy wife of Proverbs 31 who is clearly involved in commercial trade for the benefit of her household.

Yet their remains a gut feeling among believers of both sexes that something has gone awry in this area. For instance some woman, both Christian and otherwise, who have climbed the business ladder by embracing the traditionally masculine aggressive approach to corporate ambition have found that in reaching the top of that ladder they have lost something. It is difficult to live out the nurturing aspect of the feminine heart when you are plotting the next power grab in your Fortune 500 company. It is hard to move in the gentleness and compassion of that heart when you have learned to take on the worst aspects of masculinity along with the best.

Men, meanwhile, are having a hard time figuring out just what they are supposed to be in contemporary American society. Are they to defend the "traditional" role of breadwinner, protector and leader of the home or should they try to "get in touch with their feminine side"? Should they intentionally accept not only female leadership in once male-dominated fields but actually seek to do that which was once the preserve of woman? Many men are simply confused and some of the stranger excesses of the secular men’s movements, such as the Iron John "Drum-Banging in the Woods" men’s retreats, are a direct outgrowth of that confusion.

In America probably the most prominent Christian response to this among men has been the vaunted Promise Keepers movement. For several years in the 1990’s tens of thousands of male believers gathered in huge stadium events to try to reclaim some sort of biblical masculinity. While many men who attended have fond memories of the awesome sound of 30,000 men lifting their voices to God, in what surely were the biggest choirs in history, few would say that the male gender’s increasingly nebulous place in the larger society was addressed in any kind of enduring way. It seems that returning to some perceived utopian time "when men were men and woman were woman" just didn’t happen.

Around the same time Christian woman formed parallel organizations to Promise Keepers and held their own large-scale events. The theme here seemed to be reclaiming some sort of scriptural femininity but, like their male counterparts, the spin-off movement did not result in some kind of paradigm shift in reverse. A huge return to "home and hearth" did not ensue.

The truth of the matter is that only radical cultural separatists within the conservative Christian camp have any hope of returning to the gender roles of a fifty or a hundred years ago and the question needs to be asked as to whether that is even God’s will for us. As stated earlier the Bible does not necessarily reflect either the stratified Victorian view of gender functions at the turn of the last century or, for that matter, the happy suburban housewife myth of the pre-"Feminine Mystique" Eisenhower years either. Instead it remains silent on many of the questions our contemporary society is beginning to wrestle with in dealing with the confusion wrought by the role-shifting aspects of the Sexual Revolution.

Perhaps this is one of the gray areas in which God does not provide us with an easy black and white answer from His word. Maybe God’s desire is for us to call on His Spirit to help guide us through the complexities of today’s changes in Gender roles. Could it be that He sees both good and bad in what is happening today? Might it be possible that the Creator of the sexes wants us to use the discernment He gives us to take a balanced path through the extremes of this era’s "gender wars"? These are questions worth asking as we endeavor to seek God’s will for our lives as woman and men.