“Bruised Beauty” col­lage art by Pam Hogeweide

A new friend in Face­book­land posted on my time­line a link to a site called The True Woman Man­i­festo. She made it clear with her com­ment (this is nau­se­at­ing) that the site is decid­edly not in keep­ing with her womanhood.

Before I had even clicked on the link I knew I would have trou­ble with it, no mat­ter the con­tent. Let’s just start with the title, True Wom­an­hood. True. A won­der­ful word that can be defined as mean­ing the real deal, pure, hon­est, unfil­tered, authentic.…true wom­an­hood than com­mu­ni­cates a rather sour mes­sage just from being strung together that there is some­how the capac­ity to be an inau­then­tic woman – an inau­then­tic human being – and so before I even hopped on the inter­net high­way to roll into this site, I kinda fig­ured I’d be look­ing in a dis­torted mir­ror that would tell me, Pam, you are not a true woman.

And I was right.

The True Woman Man­i­festo is a col­lec­tion of sig­na­tures from Chris­t­ian women who are assert­ing their com­mit­ment to the com­ple­men­tar­ian view of them­selves. Com­ple­men­tar­i­an­ism is one of those the­ol­ogy words that obscures an ugly truth: Chris­tian­ized sex­ism. In the world of church, com­ple­men­tar­i­ans hold that God has a cre­ated divine order of men lead­ing and women fol­low­ing. This mind­set is evi­dent in sev­eral points of The True Wom­an­hood Manifesto:

We are called as women to affirm and encour­age men as they seek to express godly mas­culin­ity, and to honor and sup­port God-​​ordained male lead­er­ship in the home and in the church.

When we respond humbly to male lead­er­ship in our homes and churches, we demon­strate a noble sub­mis­sion to author­ity that reflects Christ’s sub­mis­sion to God His Father.

Self­ish insis­tence on per­sonal rights is con­trary to the spirit of Christ who hum­bled Him­self, took on the form of a ser­vant, and laid down His life for us.

God’s plan for gen­der is wider than mar­riage; all women, whether mar­ried or sin­gle, are to model fem­i­nin­ity in their var­i­ous rela­tion­ships, by exhibit­ing a dis­tinc­tive mod­esty, respon­sive­ness, and gen­tle­ness of spirit.

Mature Chris­t­ian women have a respon­si­bil­ity to leave a legacy of faith, by dis­ci­pling younger women in the Word and ways of God and mod­el­ing for the next gen­er­a­tion lives of fruit­ful femininity.

I address this kind of think­ing in my book, Unla­dy­like: Resist­ing the Injus­tice of Inequal­ity in the Church. I address it head on offer­ing read­ers a primer in a the­ol­ogy of equal­ity, his­tor­i­cal con­text of patriarchy’s influ­ence on Chris­tian­ity as well as many sto­ries of how this kind of sub­servient pos­tur­ing is dam­ag­ing to a woman’s soul.

Instead of pick­ing apart this man­i­festo, I would like to offer a dif­fer­ent kind of man­i­festo, an unla­dy­like man­i­festo for women and men who embrace the full per­son­hood of woman along­side the full per­son­hood of men.

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Unla­dy­like Manifesto

• We believe that male and female are cre­ated to col­lab­o­rate, co-​​lead and co-​​exist in a mutu­al­ity of sub­mis­sion to one another. (Gen 2:18 – 23,Galatians 3:28)

• We believe that gift­ing is appointed accord­ing to the will of the Holy Spirit and that call­ing is deter­mined by gift­ing, not gen­der. (1 Corinthi­ans 12, John 20:1 – 20)