what it is is beautiful (part two)

Yesterday this article arrived in my inbox. It's about a newly-published biblical commentary that is "by women and for women" and seeks "to counter a prevailing view of women’s equality in the church and home." One of the editors, Rhonda Kelley (wife of a Southern Baptist seminary president) says that "in many situations our women students have been raised by mothers who were a product of the feminist movement, and so even their Christian mothers didn’t fully understand what it meant to be biblical women and they were rebelling with the world." (!)

The other editor, Dorothy Patterson (wife of another Southern Baptist seminary president) says that in the book of Esther there is "a section on beauty treatments and what Esther went through and the archeological evidence that shows exactly what that is, and you find our first excursus on submission. Most people don’t think about submission as being a topic in the book of Esther, but it is clearly in the text. I think our readers will find it interesting to see how you take the Old Testament roots for something that is very heavily discussed in the New Testament."

First of all...both editors need an editor.

Second of all...WTF?!?

Rachel Held Evans points out here (in a critique of another recently published book - ugh) that calling Esther a story of submission "fails massively to understand the context of that story." Good Goddess, I do not want Esther to be raised up as a model text on marriage. She was forcibly taken from her home to live in seclusion in a harem and eventually married her husband after he slept with a gazillion women and picked her as the best at sex and make-up. Then she risked death by illegally requesting an audience with her husband in order to challenge his genocidal order to exterminate the Hebrew people. Yeah...what a model of submission and marriage.

Frankly, I don't think there are any models of marriage in the Bible that I want to follow. Most biblical marriages are, thankfully, far removed from us (polygamy, women as property, stoning for adultery, rape). And in the New Testament we hear next-to-nothing about specific marital relationships (for instance, did Mary and Joseph have a good marriage? Who knows!? It must've been a weird one). Yes, Paul goes on a bit about women submitting, but as far as I know, Paul was never married (and if he was at one time, his wife doesn't seem to be around for all that letter-writing). Paul, anyway, is a mixed bag, because he also refers to women being equal (Galatians), women being apostles (Junia), women teaching men (Timothy...though I know complementarians would tell me Timothy was a boy when his mother and grandmother taught him faith, but that's a silly argument - boys become men and what they learn in boyhood is as or more important than what they learn as men - we know about childhood development these days), and mutual submission (Corinthians).
 
But I digress, as NONE of this is what I intended to be blogging about. Though womanhood was, marriage and biblical interpretation were not. I was just so freakin' annoyed angry, I guess I had to spew it out!
 
Thankfully, my daughter will likely never (or rarely) hear someone tell her she needs to submit to her husband (or any man) because he's a man. Thankfully, my daughter will likely never have a man tell her he won't work with her because she's a woman (as happened to my chemist mother). Thankfully, my daughter will likely never be told certain occupations (even pastor) are unavailable to her because she's a woman (well, except for football, and I make a declaration right here that My Son Shall Not Play Football, either). Thankfully, we know there is another way, and that feminism is not "rebelling with the world."
 
What it is is beautiful.
 
(to be continued...again)