International Women's Day

WARNING: Curse word ahead

Today is International Women’s Day. I’ve spent the last month making edits and additions to stories about my experiences as a woman growing up in a conservative church and home, so this topic is fresh in my mind. Yesterday, I discovered an inflammatory video of a Baptist preacher instructing women on what their husbands expect from them. Year after year, when these misogynistic messages are discovered anew, I am shocked and angry. Frankly, I’m SO tired of saying “It's (insert year here), and the church is STILL feeding us this bullshit.” Since the #metoo movement began a few years ago, more and more women are taking a stand and calling people out. The church is not immune from this trend.

Church, you are losing your women. In a society striving for equality, the more you push messages that marginalize women, you will continue to loose us. It took this horrible video, posted by a woman in that congregation, going viral for the church to pressure this pastor into taking a leave of absence to “receive counseling”. THIS is the aspect that angers us women the most. If millions of people hadn’t seen the video, how much longer would this church have let him continue to tell women that Godly wives don’t “let themselves go” by gaining weight and wearing sweatpants with flip flops? How many men in that church would keep giving their OK on these kinds of sermons from this pastor because they also believe that their women should strive to be “trophy wives”, or at least aim for the “participation trophy?” All the things I’ve put in quotation marks are words the man actually said, by the way. I refuse to share the video, but it shouldn’t be hard for you to find. 

Women in the church, me included, have been psychologically damaged by the purity movement, that shamed and devalued women if they had premarital sex. Women have felt like second-class citizens when our daughters are told they can only speak up at church if they’re in a basement with an all-female audience. Women have had to shoulder enormous guilt if they don’t strive to be mothers (or can’t be mothers) because “That’s what the Bible commands of all women!” Women have been pressured to live up to the Proverbs 31 woman, because it is God’s ideal woman. Women have been told their physical needs pale in comparison to those of their husbands, who need sex constantly because God made them that way. Women have endured years of physical abuse from the hands of their husbands when the church tells them to stick with it, because they don’t have scriptural grounds for divorce.

Women are SO TIRED. Church, you MUST do better. For those people that plan to come at me with scripture that backs up your belief of keeping women silent, trust me, as a Church of Christ elder’s daughter, I HAVE HEARD THEM ALL. I will not hear them today, so save your breath. 

Next time I post, I will hopefully have some much happier thoughts to share. I just needed to get this stuff out of my head. 

Melissa, out.