A Short History of Feminism Pt. 1: A Project of Liberal Christianity

Over the last couple of months I've watched some good Ken Burns documentary films on my computer monitor through my Netflix account. I saw another one over this last weekend, this one about the 19th century women's movement led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. I had no ambition beyond entertainment and perhaps improving my understanding of history from watching it, but afterward it seemed there was blog material there that's right down my alley, though I'll probably need to do more research.

I'd known next to nothing about these women or their movement. It struck me as I watched that much of their thinking could be chalked up to Liberal Christianity, which was very big in the 19th century, but this wasn't discussed as such. Just about everybody was a "Christian" in some sense or other in America in those days, but there's no way to sort out the true believers from the nominal with the facts given --in fact, ALL the main actors in the movement seem to be merely nominal, and that may have been the case.

"Progressive" ideas of all sorts were in the air, Marx and Darwin contributing among others as the century wore on, and inventing your own religion, such as by rewriting the Bible to suit yourself, had some popularity since Jefferson himself had done it. Toward the end of the century Elizabeth Cady Stanton also rewrote the Bible to expunge what she considered to be unjust attitudes toward women. Earlier, she and her husband knew some of the "progressive" movers and shakers of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. For her own wedding ceremony in 1840, when she was twenty-five, she had the word "obey" removed from the vows, and she chose to keep her own first and last names rather than become "Mrs. Henry Stanton."

Her husband was an active abolitionist, had grown up in what sounds like an orthodox Presbyterian church, and for a time before he married he was considering becoming a minister. But it's happened quite frequently that someone becomes a minister who isn't a true believer, and his actual beliefs are not touched on -- in fact I learned these few facts about him from Wikipedia, not the film.

Some of the situation of women that Stanton and Anthony sought to correct seems unjust from a Christian point of view, not just a "progressive" point of view, but sorting it all out would take quite a bit of thought. Women couldn't own property for instance, nor have custody of their children if the marriage dissolved, and they were legally owned by their husbands, not treated as citizens in their own right. Their complete lack of legal and social status except through their husbands or fathers is quite shocking to think about from where we are now. Some of this injustice probably came from a misunderstanding of the Bible. Surely there was justice in some of the reforms sought; yet some of the reforms also have an anti-Christian flavor that is still with us and needs to be recognized.

The movement started out from an abolitionist base as they fought for the freedom and rights of slaves, and although that probably had some genuine Christian support it's hard to tell there too; certainly much of it was done by "progressives" and liberal/nominal Christians. Somebody should do a study of these distinctions some time (or perhaps it's been done but I haven't run across it). It's a shame for the true church if few genuine Christians worked for abolition -- or some of the women's rights for that matter.

Quite a motley list of desired rights and reforms developed as the women's movement got going, including temperance (which was regarded as necessary for protecting women from drunken husbands who abused their wives and squandered the family income), divorce reform, co-education, property rights for married women, equal pay for equal work, and "dress reform," as well as the right to vote, which was the most controversial on the list. The enemy was clearly the men of the society, who, according to Stanton in the speech she delivered at their first Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, had "systematically deprived women of their rights...." It was of course the men who ran the government and all the institutions of society who refused to give them a hearing, laughed at them and scorned their proposals as ridiculous.

Susan B. Anthony had a Baptist mother and a Quaker father, as well as a Quaker aunt who was a preacher. One of the biographers interviewed in the film says that it was her Quaker experience that gave her a perspective that was "so far beyond what other people had at the time." The Quaker treatment of women as equal even to the point of being able to be ministers was of course "progressive." "Progressive" meant that injustices and oppressions of many kinds were understood to be the doings of "ignorant" traditions from the past, including of course also the Bible which is clear that women aren't to be preachers, though that wasn't directly addressed in the film.

Susan B. Anthony wrote the following at some point, blurring different conceptions of the sexes together, conceptions both at least vaguely biblical and clearly unbiblical:

The old idea that man was made for himself and woman for him, that he is the oak, she the vine, he the head, she the heart, he the great conservator of wisdom, she of love, will be reverently laid aside with other long-since exploded philosophies of the ignorant past.

The society of the day treats women as inferior and incompetent and attributes its authority to the Bible, though the Bible does not teach that. The Bible does call the man the head of the woman, but in the sense of role and responsibility, not as a judgment of competence or capacity (Paul even goes out of his way to try to prevent such an idea in 1 Cor 11:3, 11 and 12) and it certainly doesn't add the sentimentalized nonsense about the woman being the "heart." Yet historically men (fallen unredeemed men mostly?) have misread the Bible to judge women as inferior, or they trivialize them sentimentally, and apparently that view held sway legally in the 19th century.

In such an atmosphere it's hard for a woman to accept being told she was made for the man, as the Bible so clearly says she was, men being so unjust and also such undesirables in so many ways. In fact one of Stanton's most effective speeches in my opinion was her indignant denunciation of the insult to women of the law that allowed silly boys and drunks and good-for-nothing rowdies the vote along with other rights that were denied to women.

Among the first participants in the women's movement was Lucretia Mott, another Quaker minister, as well as the very first officially ordained woman minister, Antionette Brown, a Congregationalist. "Religious equality for women" became another plank in the platform, and here is where the sought reforms clearly conflict with the Bible. Biblical standards are blurred with merely social requirements and all together are treated as the product of the "ignorant past." Later Antionette Brown herself takes a stand against divorce rights based on the Biblical teaching that marriage was ordained by God and therefore indissoluble, despite her own ordination's having already contradicted Biblical teaching. But Liberal Christianity seems to know how to make the Bible say whatever suits, being a "Christianity" that treats the Bible as just another man-made work from which you may pick and choose what you like and discard the rest as merely the backward thoughts of ignorant primitive people.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Not politics, not prayer, not seeking revival. We need light on our sins and repentance.

Some time ago I pretty much gave up on politics. I used to get involved, posted quite a bit on various political issues, especially the rise of Islam that we've seen even after they attacked us on 9/11. That in fact was one clue that events aren't making any sense, that things are out of control and no matter what we do to raise the alarm about dangers to the country the dangers seem to increase.

Finally it really came home to me in truth that it's all in God's hands. I mean, you "know that" but usually you don't REALLY know that so you go on looking for political solutions anyway, at least doing what you can to get the word out, until you REALLY know it. I was even saying the truth before the truth really came home to me: the reason the nation is in so much trouble, the reason nothing we do is working, the reason the forces of destruction keep on bulldozing their way over everything the country once stood for, is that God is judging us. You can't fight God. If God has set His face against us there simply are no political solutions.

So I became more focused on understanding all the ways the nation is under judgment. At first the obvious looms largest: abortion is a big one for instance, the push for "gay rights" another. But then you start wondering how legalized abortion happened anyway, how we got so far down this road to perdition. Oh you can identify causes here and there. Marxist influences loom large and they got very big in the 60s, and those of that mentality are now in power. But really, how could all that have happened so easily? Why have those who oppose it been so helpless to do anything about it? Now on top of Marxism we have Islam increasing in power. Terrible paradoxes.

But the fact that we are falling under leftist and anti-Christian influences means the church had already been effectively silenced. For that to happen at all means the country had already lost its Christian identity. Certainly God judges all nations, pagan and Christian, but "judgment begins at the house of God" and that now seems to me to be the place we should be putting all our attention. I think we have to face that it's the church that has let down the nation. All we seem to do as Christians is complain that the nation does what unbelieving nations are likely to do under the influence of fallen human nature. We complain about the legalization of abortion, we complain about the push to legitimize homosexuality, and so on. We complain and we do what we can to combat such legislation. But as I'm saying here, it isn't working. The church has no clout any more. Hatred of Christianity is getting very strong. "Hate speech" laws are closing in against us. The question is "Why?" Why is the church so powerless?

Sometimes I'll just figure that it's time Christians in the West experienced the kind of persecution Christians all over the world have experienced for millennia. And persecution is good for the church too. It sifts the wheat from the chaff like nothing else. And it strengthens true believers in the spiritual powers we need to make a difference in this world. And if we can't get any further than that in our understanding, at least that's some kind of progress in the right direction.

But we COULD be asking WHY it's happening this way, why we've lost our spiritual power in this world. We should stop blaming it on nonChristians. We should stop pursuing the hopeless route of politics, the life of the flesh, of the fallen human nature, and focus exclusively on God who is the source of everything we need to make a difference. Oh we pray too, of course, but something is just not right, our efforts are just not accomplishing anything. Our focus is wrong. We helplessly watch while more and more dangerous things come against our nation. We get Obama for instance. People seem to have lost their ability to judge things rightly altogether. The nation is acting like the mythical lemmings rushing to certain death.

So I've pulled back from all that in the last few months. My focus is now on trying to understand where the church has gone wrong. I keep finding various ways it has gone wrong that need correction before God might smile on us again, what Biblical principles we have been violating. I have to suppose I've only started to recognize just a small portion of what's been wrong, and keep seeking more light.

I sincerely believe that the fact that women stopped covering our heads some time back in the early 20th century is one reason God has turned His face from us. That's a violation of His Creation ordinance and an insult to Him.

I also have been coming to believe that the proliferation of Bibles based on untrustworthy Greek and Hebrew texts that came out of Liberalism and Rationalism of the 19th century has eroded our spiritual power. There are some hints that make me shudder to think about, that on a supernatural level the expunging of so much of God's word by heretics has actually erased names from our Book of Life.

I suspect that the decline in modest dress is also partially involved, which is why I've got a blog laid out to pursue that topic when I get around to it. And I still haven't got around to thinking through the topic of nonresistance, or Jesus' command not to resist evil, which the church has certainly violated even sometimes to the point of a near-idolatry of military force. Violence of any kind against enemies is utterly contrary to the Spirit of Christ, who told us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. We're to die to ourselves, and literally die if it comes to that, not kill or threaten anyone.

Where are the "rivers of living water" the Lord Jesus promised believers? I've also spent quite a bit of apparently futile time on seeking revival. We aren't going to get revival until we have reformation, until we recognize where the church has been going wrong and repent of it.

Leonard Ravenhill was a man of God who knew God's power, and yet he prayed and prayed and prayed for revival, and wrote books exhorting Christians to seek revival, as the greatest need of our time, but he died without seeing revival and we've seen no revival since his death either.

We aren't having revival because we haven't faced our sins yet. We haven't even identified them. We aren't even looking for them. I was disheartened to find out about Ravenhill how much support he gave to Billy Graham, Graham who is a notorious supporter of the Roman Church and devoted to a destructive ecumenicism. I was further disheartened to find out that he didn't definitely oppose the Bible versions although he did seem to believe the KJV is the best. A W Tozer also fell for the versions I believe. I think these things may be a clue to why Ravenhill died without seeing revival. Ravenhill and Tozer were great Christian men with a prophetic bent. If they could be deceived, what makes any of us think we can't be?

God will not bless His people if we have such sins in our midst. Even the best of our Christian preachers seem weak and ineffective these days, sometimes even defending people and ideas they should be confronting instead. We need to wake up and consider that yes indeed we CAN be deceived. We CAN be taken in by clever wolves among us. Who the wolves are is not all that easy to identify. We have to ASSUME that we have many things wrong and submit our beliefs to God's light a lot more often than we do so that He can lead us out of our error. THEN maybe we can hope to have revival. But I don't think we can hope it at all in our present state. A.W. Tozer said that if we did have revival in our present state -- he was writing over forty years ago and it's worse now -- it would be the worst possible thing because it would confirm us in a multitude of errors. He said it better than that but that was the basic idea. But really God won't give us revival anyway in our current state, which is a great blessing. There will be counterfeit revivals of course.

Oh Lord help us. Wake us up. Show us the paths out of our present darkness. Lead us to understanding and repentance and restore us to Your favor that we might overcome our paralysis and have the rivers of living water You promised us.

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I know this is just a long ramble, but I hope it's coherent enough. I suppose as usual I may come back and make changes after it's posted to clarify this or that, sorry for any confusion.

If You Really Want It, It's Going to Cost, Part 2

Besides sacrificial prayer and fasting and that sort of thing, the main way Christians need to die to self these days is to rethink some of their most fondly held beliefs.

In a sense that's what I've been doing for some years now, although I must admit that most of what I've had to change my mind about isn't anything I've held to with any particular fondness or zeal. Giving it up has been mostly a matter of learning and learning and learning rather than fighting my own prejudices. I salute anyone who takes up the fight against his/her own prejudices; that takes real courage and humility and dedication to the pursuit of truth.

So if you've been a staunch advocate of the Westcott and Hort-based modern Bible versions and are willing to reconsider the foundations of your advocacy, I praise the Lord for your willingness and wish you God speed. It would have to cost a great deal of personal pride at least, and possibly even friendships, to give up a strong attachment to your accumulated knowledge, and even to the seminary or the teachers you've been trusting about this.

If you've been a diehard supporter of the interpretation that the woman's head covering is her hair, or feminine dress, or something else, I applaud your willingness to reconsider that belief. I can imagine how much it would cost a woman who has spent her life cultivating her long hair in the sincere belief that it meets the Biblical requirement, to have to think she might have been wrong all that time.

I pray the Lord would wake up many, lead us to repentance and humble us deeply over our wrong allegiances, so that His church might yet rise up in these last days in the power we've been so desperately without for so long now, in the purity of a spotless garment, in a return to our First Love, in a deeper knowledge of God. Strengthen Your people in faith and truth and wisdom and courage in these last hours, Lord.

Blog changes: Bible versions getting its own blog

This is my "flagship" blog as it were, and it's collected material on many different subjects. That's fine until a topic starts threatening to take over the whole blog. I already started a separate blog for 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 on the woman's head covering because there's so much I'd like to gather in one place on that subject. I'm glad I did that because it keeps things a lot neater around here.

Now I'm thinking I really need to do the same for the Bible versions topic. By now I have some forty or fifty posts on that topic, however, so moving all that is not going to be an easy task. Maybe I won't move all of it but I'm going to start moving some and see how far I get.

My blogs have never been models of neatness and easy travel from one place to another and it's probably going to get a bit worse as I attempt this new project, with links here and there that don't go where they should and that sort of thing.

When I started all this I had in mind collecting links to blogs by many others on the same subjects, too, but that proved to be beyond me partly because it involves me in even more organizational problems, not to mention discussions over differences of opinion that I'm already having trouble keeping up with. I still hope to get to that.

Anyway, this is just to say a new blog about the Bible versions is my next project, and much of what is here I hope to transfer there.

Here's the new blog, The Great Bible Hoax.

SECOND THOUGHTS: I may be doing much less transferring than I expected to do, and mostly just linking back here, while I go on to post new information there.

If you really want it, It's going to cost

One thing I know: to have the power of God it's going to cost. Death. Dying to self that is. Seriously laying oneself on the altar rather than playing at it.

Read about the great revivals of the past -- or individuals who experienced great empowerment by God (think of Hudson Taylor for one of many) -- and you have to appreciate what it cost to bring it about. Hours of prayer into the night, or begun very early, some on knees or face. Hours. Five, six, seven hours. The whole eldership of a church in one case meeting for such protracted prayer two days a week while an elderly lady of the congregation and her sister prayed in concert with them at their home. (Notice something here. Since both men and women met together in the Upper Room, separating the sexes is no doubt not necessary in all circumstances, but I think it's interesting that in this case the men prayed separately and the praying women didn't join them. But then it was specifically the elders of the church. It is not said but I suppose the women covered their heads in those days. This was in Wales or Scotland, I forget, I just remember a few of the particulars.)

They prayed like that for months before God answered but He did answer in great power, the kind of power that moves people to seek God without a word's being spoken to them. They showed up at the church drawn by a power they knew not what.

Such exertions of individuals for the power of God are often not described as the reason God empowered them, or not described in terms of dying to self at least. We may hear about what they were doing before the blessing came, praying and studying the Bible for instance for long hours at a time, or what they were asking for in prayer, or how many got together. And sometimes their actions aren't even given as explanation, just as descriptive fact, but it seems to me the key in all the cases is the dying to self that they went through, the hours spent, the comforts abandoned.

There is sometimes a specific giving up of comforts mentioned in some of the stories, sleeping less, eating less or less luxuriously for instance, much fasting. Or there is the story how under the prompting of the Holy Spirit a man is moved to give up his last dollar to help someone else in need although having himself no prospects for his next meal. Thrown absolutely on the Lord's care at such a time the man learns that He provides -- in a way that is never really learned until all human means are exhausted. It always happens that way.

Revival can come to individuals as well as whole congregations and communities, though that's not usually the word for it. It's the same phenomenon though.

John 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Burgon said the Textus Receptus was not perfect

This is a footnote in a discussion of the reasons why the Textus Receptus should have been made the foundation for the Revision of 1881 instead of abandoned as was done by the Revising committee. The Revision Revised, page 21:

Once for all, we request it may be clearly understood that we do not, by any means, claim perfection for the Received Text. We entertain no extravagant notions on this subject. Again and again we shall have occasion to point out (e.g. at page 107) that the Textus Receptus needs correction. We do but insist, (1) That it is an incomparably better text than that which either Lachmann, or Tischendorf, or Tregelles has produced: infinitely preferable to the 'New Greek Text' of the Revisionists. And, (2) That to be improved, the Textus Receptus will have to be revised on entirely different 'principles' from those which are just now in fashion. Men must begin by unlearning the German prejudices of the last fifty years; and address themselves, instead, to the stern logic of facts. [his italics]

Eclecticism, madness? What a collection of doctrines I pursue.

Been reading around in some of the websites about the Bible versions. What a huge task it is just to grasp the basics of the dispute. Found more books I'd like to have. Need to pray about it. No point in buying books I won't get around to reading, or that won't be of use for anyone but myself if I do read them. I'm doing this because I want to be among those who are doing what they can to broadcast the problems with the modern Bibles.

The position I'm in sometimes amuses me. I think of myself as a Calvinist but I'm finding the best sources on this subject are Fundamental Baptists. I appreciate very much what they have done in exposing Westcott and Hort and their work. Yet some of them are aggressively anti-Calvinist.

David Cloud and Brandon Staggs' AV1611.com are the best internet sources of information against Westcott and Hort and for the KJV. Donald Waite is the source for books by Dean Burgon but also gives Amazon.com as a source, where you can find secondhand copies at a good price. He also has the website of the Dean Burgon Society. Here's an excerpt from Waite's Four-Fold Superiority of the King James Version at the AV1611 site. Cloud also has a page on Waite that is worth reading.

There's also the women's head covering issue, and none of these sources agree with me about this. For the most part the Calvinists don't either, but "Bible Researcher" Michael Marlowe does, though he disagrees with me about the Bible versions. I haven't read all his material on women but suspect I'll agree with most of it; and Mary Kassian, whose book is at the website of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, also believes Paul is calling for a literal head covering.

Those I feel the most affinity with these days are some who put great weight on the writings of the early church fathers as evidence of the doctrines and practices of the early church, and also tend in the direction of the old Anabaptist groups, the Mennonites and the Hutterites and so on, though many of them are ex-Church-of-Christ themselves. There are disagreements among them, but on the whole they are strong on the head covering and modest dress and a strict position against remarriage under all circumstances excepting the death of the spouse, and have pretty much persuaded me of their position on nonresistance as well. I've found some strong KJV-only people among them, but they aren't in the majority and for the most part they don't pay much attention to the Bible versions conflict. The best source of material for this line of thought I've found to be David Bercot and Scroll Publishing. Bercot's A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, published by Hendrickson, is a great reference and a revelation and interesting to read on its own.

I found that Fundamental Baptist David Cloud has an interesting-looking book on modest dress, though he believes the head covering is a woman's hair. I'm considering getting his book on dress, but he has others out that are just as interesting or more so, on the Bible versions problems: a history of the dispute itself for instance, going back to the year 1800, and another about the views of individual defenders of the versions, from before Westcott and Hort through today, demonstrating their rationalism over faith. Links to his site stop working before long but here's another try, to his page of Topical Books.

On top of all this I still have a special fondness for the Holiness preachers, for the teachers of the "second blessing" or the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a separate experience after conversion, and strongly feel that there is something missing along these lines in most of the churches, though it may never have been given the right name. I reject the way the Pentecostals and charismatics think about it and am still looking for the most trustworthy understanding of it. I have two or three sources for this but will have to look them up and post them here later.

I also still appreciate some of the contemplative and the mystical tradition, as did A. W. Tozer, while agreeing that there is a lot of heresy among them to be recognized and avoided and that today's versions have gone badly wrong.

One thing that is probably true about all this is that you couldn't make a denomination out of it.

But then considering the history of the church maybe that shouldn't be counted on.

And on third thought, maybe this would be the true denomination.