Arguing the Affirmative: JOHN THE ATHEIST
Arguing the Negative: RANDAL THE CHRISTIAN
John’s Opening Statement
As I said earlier, a religion should be judged based on how it treats the defenseless. Women have largely been defenseless in a male-dominated society stemming in the West from what we find in the Bible. Given the cruelty toward women that we see there and acted out in history, all civilized people should reject Christianity as nothing but a religion created in a barbaric, sexist era. While there are a few positive female role models and pro-women statements in the Bible, overall it is anti-women. These texts need to be explained, not explained away.
A man was created first, not a woman, so Paul argued that men alone are created in the image of God (1 Cor. 11:3–9). The woman was merely created to be a man’s helper (Gen. 2:18–24). Women are considered the easily deceived weaker sex who can mislead men just as Eve misled Adam (1 Cor. 11:3; 1 Pet. 3:7). That’s why God said men will rule (or domineer) over them (Gen. 3:16). That’s why Paul told women to keep silent in his churches (1 Cor. 14:34–35; see also 1 Tim. 2:11–14). That’s also why women are to be subject to their husbands “in everything” (Eph. 5:24).
In fact, as biblical scholar Michael Coogan argues, “Husbands and fathers had virtually absolute control over their wives and daughters.”[26] Sarah called her husband “lord” (Gen. 18:12) and “obeyed” him (1 Pet. 3:6; see vv. 1–6). These things reflect the status of a wife, writes Coogan, for “she was under her husband’s rule, she was his property.”[27] The woman’s value as property was considered just below a man’s house but above his servants, who were in turn above his oxen and donkeys, since that’s the descending order of value mentioned in the tenth commandment (Exod. 20:17). Biblical scholar Drorah O’Donnell Setel informs us there were no words for marriage, wife, or husband in the legal texts of the Old Testament: “The terms commonly translated as such mean ‘taking’ in the sense of taking possession of something.”[28]
Fathers could sell their daughters as slaves if they wanted to (Exod. 21:7–11). Coogan tells us that for “a woman marriage was not all that different from being sold as a slave wife” anyway, since brides were always bought with a price, some of them after being seduced (Exod. 22:16–17) or even raped (Deut. 22:28–29).[29] With divine approval, virgins could be captured as sex slaves from the spoils of war (Num. 31:17–18) or simply stolen from others (Judg. 21:10–23).
Biblical scholar Carol L. Meyers informs us that “the Bible as a whole is androcentric, or male-centered, in its subject matter, its authority, and its perspectives.”[30] It was a society in which women were excluded from positions of value and authority, and the various commandments show no female concerns at all.
The really horrific stuff is how Yahweh treated his unfaithful wife, Israel. Biblical scholar Susanne Scholz informs us, “God turns out to be a rapist.”[31] His wife is described as whoring after other lovers, so in return Yahweh sexually violates her and says she is to be blamed for her punishment. Biblical scholar J. Cheryl Exum translates Isaiah 3:17 like this: “The Lord will make bald the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will bare their cunts.”[32] In Jeremiah 13:22–26 Yahweh announces the rape of Jerusalem, and then he does this with “the obscene practice of exposing women by drawing their legs over their heads in order to uncover their vulvas completely.”[33]
Yahweh punished his unfaithful wives like this, both Samaria and Jerusalem. (Yes, Yahweh was a polygamist!) The prophets Hosea (chapter 2), Jeremiah (chapter 13), and Ezekiel (chapters 16 and 23) tell us about their punishment. Yahweh’s unfaithful wives were stripped bare before a mob, mutilated, and killed. In the prophetic mind these punishments were allegories using the husband and wife relationship, of course. But they must have had a meaning for the people to whom they were spoken; otherwise it wouldn’t make good sense to use them. Then comes a warning from Yahweh himself that he did this so “that all women may be instructed not to act promiscuously as you did” (Ezek. 23:48).[34] Men in that era surely used these texts to justify their own sexual punishments since Yahweh did these same kinds of things.
What a wonderful life women had in the Bible. Not!
Randal’s Opening Statement
It was June 1, 1843, when Isabella Baumfree first heard the Spirit’s call on her life. Shortly thereafter she changed her name to “Sojourner Truth,” became a Methodist, and began to campaign actively for abolition and women’s rights. Less than a decade later Sojourner dictated her story to her friend Olive Gilbert. The resulting Narrative of Sojourner Truth includes this riveting description of her encounter with Jesus:
“Who are you?” she exclaimed, as the vision brightened into a form distinct, beaming with the beauty of holiness, and radiant with love. She then said, audibly addressing the mysterious visitant—“I know you, and I don’t know you.” Meaning, “You seem perfectly familiar; I feel that you not only love me, but that you always have loved me—yet I know you not—I cannot call you by name.” When she said, “I know you,” the subject of the vision remained distinct and quiet. When she said, “I don’t know you,” it moved restlessly about, like agitated waters. So while she repeated, without intermission, “I know you, I know you,” that the vision might remain—“Who are you?” was the cry of her heart, and her whole soul was in one deep prayer that this heavenly personage might be revealed to her, and remain with her. At length, after bending both soul and body with the intensity of this desire, till breath and strength seemed failing, and she could maintain her position no longer, an answer came to her, saying distinctly, “It is Jesus.” “Yes,” she responded, “it is Jesus.”[35]
From this amazing experience, Sojourner went on to become one of the greatest activists for women’s rights in history. She spoke with missionary zeal about the equality of the genders and races, guided and emboldened by the divine call upon her life.[36]
Apparently John thinks Sojourner was wrong. He thinks Jesus didn’t care about women and that Sojourner didn’t understand the faith she professed half as well as John does. But why think this? Is it such a surprise that Sojourner was called by the same Jesus who bucked social convention by teaching women (Luke 10:38–42) and receiving support from them (Luke 8:1–3)? Who expressed maternal care for Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks (Matt. 23:37; cf. Ps. 91:4)? Who, though hanging on the cross, showed concern for the well-being of his mother (John 19:26–27)? Who reserved his first post-resurrection appearance for his female disciple Mary (John 20:14–18)? Is it a surprise that she was called in the same Spirit who poured out his gifts on all people without discrimination (Acts 2:17–18)? Is it a surprise that she was called with the same church that elevated women by placing them in prominent roles in ministry (Acts 18:18, 26; 21:9; Rom. 16:7; 1 Cor. 16:19)? Is it a surprise that she was called to minister to the same two genders that share equality in the image of God (Gen. 1:27)?
In 1851 Sojourner delivered her great “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech (though she did so in the Dutch accent she learned from her slave masters and not the Southern drawl of the popular imagination). The speech, as recorded by Frances Gage, begins as follows:
Dat man over dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place. . . . And ar’n’t I a woman?[37]
There can be little doubt that Sojourner did not need the aid of any man to help her into carriages or over ditches. But she certainly did hope they would treat her, her life, her works, and her understanding of her faith with respect. It is here that one cannot help but note the sad irony in John’s bold assertions. While he may respect her life’s works, he wants us to believe that she didn’t understand her faith and that it had no connection with those works. So ultimately we must choose. Shall we listen to John, the atheist, as he seeks to instruct the former slave in the faith she professed? Or shall we trust the former slave turned abolitionist, preacher, and women’s rights activist, she whose voice rings down from history providing an indignant answer to John’s provocative charges: “And ar’n’t I a woman?”
John’s Rebuttal
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were the atheist leaders of the early women’s rights movement. Together with Christians like Sojourner Truth they changed the world for the better based on the moral intuitions that Randal and I share that Yahweh and the biblical writers emphatically did not share. There is a running joke among skeptics that sometime in the future when homosexuality and animals rights are fully embraced by Christians (something already in process), they will argue that Christianity was the catalyst for these social changes, just as they now falsely argue their faith was the catalyst for the origins of science, the abolition of slavery, and women’s rights. It’s only a matter of time, but it’s utter bunk.
Morality evolves. Period. As it does, Christians reread the Bible and look inside for the minority voices to support what they have come to accept on other grounds. They simply turn a deaf ear to the majority voices, something I call cherry-picking. Do Christians really think that a God who could threaten to kill off all the Israelites for disobedience could not have enforced a decent, civilized attitude toward women? Their delusion is probably never seen more than here.
Randal’s Rebuttal
John piles up a long list of biblical texts in an attempt to establish that Sojourner could not have been called. “These texts” he declares, “need to be explained, not explained away.” They can be explained in two ways.
To begin with, on a closer reading many texts present no problem. Consider John’s complaint that man was created first in Genesis. Does this diminish women? Well does it diminish human beings that they are created after fish and birds? On the contrary, the more significant created beings are set later in the narrative. If anything, the status of woman as final creation elevates her. As for the reference to the woman as man’s helper (ezer), that isn’t so bad once you realize God is also described as our helper (Ps. 33:20).
But are there other biblical texts that represent androcentric or even misogynistic perspectives? To the extent that such texts do exist, we are within our rights to read them in light of the deeper themes of equality and redemption from creation to the ministry of Jesus and the Spirit that guided Sojourner throughout her life.
John’s Closing Statement
Probably the main reason I have set myself against the Christian faith is because of how it denigrates women. And it is pure hubris for a nonbiblical scholar like Randal to dispute what most biblical scholars have concluded about this issue. He’s sneaking his own foreign, moral intuitions into the texts.
Randal’s Closing Statement
John charges me with “cherry-picking” the Bible even as he ignores the most pertinent biblical texts on the image of God and the community of redemption. That’s ironic, but not half as ironic as his absolutist, stentorian denunciation of patriarchy combined with his milquetoast confession that “morality evolves.”