Why Trust the Bible? (Revised and updated) by AMY ORR-EWING

Author:AMY ORR-EWING [ORR-EWING, AMY]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781789741667
Publisher: IVP
Published: 2020-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

7

Isn’t the Bible sexist?

Today, there is a widespread belief that the Bible is some kind of powerful patriarchal conspiracy that has been used to oppress women. As a female theologian, I find that the following question frequently comes up: ‘How can you, as a woman, promote such a sexist book? The church has tried to keep women down!’ Even as I have been writing this chapter, I have had two such conversations with women outside of any religious faith, for whom this question looms large. Sexism is alive and well in the culture, and it seems that many see the Bible as culpable.

Yet Christians claim to be motivated to pursue justice for everyone by what they read in the Bible about the value of every human life. Christian conceptions of what it really means to be human are rooted in the idea that all human beings are made in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity. Genesis 1:27 says, ‘So God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them’ (emphasis added). Male and female – there it is – right at the beginning of the Bible: a vision of equality and sacredness for men and women, who together are the image-bearers of the Creator.

The Bible is not proposing a survival of the fittest world view, in which the domination or elimination of the weak by the strong is accepted. After all, we could ask ourselves a bigger question today: why not be sexist? Why not dominate and subjugate other human beings if that is convenient or beneficial to me? We will all have different reasons, but the Bible’s answer to that question is to speak of all human life having a transcendent source. Male and female, all humanity, carry the divine image, so it matters at a fundamental level how people are treated.

In this context, for women today in our culture, that message of essential dignity and humanity is powerful and countercultural. As we consider in this chapter whether the Bible is sexist or not, we will also need to consider the contemporary situation for women in societies around the world – the contexts within which the question arises.

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