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One of the most pervasive and influential ideologies in the modern world is feminism. When viewed through a modern lens, feminism does not appear to make very radical or groundbreaking claims. Yet, if viewed from the perspective of the average historical norm, it becomes clear that feminism makes fundamental claims that cut against some of the most basic assumptions that human societies have made regarding the nature of human gender. One of the strangest phenomena that one can witness in contemporary discussions regarding gender is the attempts by Christian conservatives to sublimate some of the instincts and ideas that underlie feminist thought. This maneuver is strange indeed, both to feminists and to conservative anti-feminists, as it fails to grasp the inherent contradiction between the fundamental claim of the feminist ideology and some of the most basic social and religious structures that a scripturally observant traditionalist Christian is obligated to endorse.
The Nature of Feminism
Feminism is a power ideology: it is an ideology that is concerned with a particular aspect of how power is structured in society. (Power, in general, is simply a distribution of a legal or social ability to apply coercive means to another to compel action). Feminism is not concerned with power broadly but with a particular allotment of power in society, which I think can broadly be defined as patriarchy. Patriarchy is a power structure in which power is granted to a group of men over women because they are men. The last part is important here. It is not simply a structure in which men have power and women do not, or where most of the people who have power are men and not women. It is one in which women are barred from holding authority because they are women, and because of that alone. Feminism acknowledges that such a power structure exists and makes the following normative claim: Any patriarchy is, by its very definition, unjust.
I think this definition is workable precisely because it is fair. Too often, when we talk about feminism, it is defined either too narrowly or too broadly. For instance, one can define feminism as a female supremacy movement where a bunch of women get together to plot nefarious ways to emotionally torture men (see, for reference, any Incel Reddit page for proof that such an outlook exists or does not because such individuals have problems). Alternatively, one can be much too loose, such that feminism becomes a claim so trivial and vaguely construed that anyone would assent to it. Often, feminists define their movement as simply a belief in equality between men and women. Such a definition is underdetermined because it is unclear what is intended by “equality”. Consider for the sake of argument an individual who believes that women and men are both of equal dignity and worth in the eyes of God (a strong notion of equality, to be sure), but at the same instant believes that women should not be allowed to vote, own property in their name, dress immodestly, attend universities, or pursue any other vocation than marriage. Is there any individual who would identify with feminism who would be able to affirm that such an outlook is consistent with their worldview? The obvious answer to this question is no. When a feminist speaks of equality, they have a particular conception of it in mind that would exclude every part of this worldview (other than the first claim). The definition of feminism lays out precisely what this criterion is.
The definition also fits well with the three major forms of feminism: liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, and radical feminism. These three forms of feminism can be viewed as attempts to diagnose the source of patriarchy to discover how to best combat it. For the liberal feminist, patriarchy results from legal structures that afford men unjust privileges over men. Rewriting legal structures to be gender neutral eliminates the primary source of patriarchy. For the Marxist feminist, such an approach falls short, as feminism, like most forms of inequality, originates out of systems of production that are rife with internal contradictions and are defined by material inequality. Property comes to be viewed as the source of patriarchy, and the plight of the feminist is resolved through the overall movement of society towards communism. Yet, it is the radical feminists who can isolate the root of patriarchy, as radical feminism, originating from an application of existentialist philosophy to the issue of gender inequality, recognizes that the attempts put the shoe before the foot. Patriarchy is a result of flawed ontological conceptions, namely the concept of woman itself, which is properly understood as a myth created by man affirming himself as subject. To affirm himself as subject, man has created the myth of woman, who is created as another. Under all conceptions, it is patriarchy as previously defined that serves as the power structure that needs to be defeated.
The Incompatibility with Biblical Christian Institutions
Now that we have established what feminism is, we can interrogate whether it is consistent with Christianity. It becomes apparent that this is not the case if we investigate some of the most basic institutions of Christian religion. A way to show such an inconsistency would be to forward an instance of a patriarchal power structure that is not posed to be unjust by necessity. Moreover, if we can show that Christianity encourages such a structure, we could become even more certain that Christianity is inconsistent with feminism. (I don’t think it’s going to be very surprising to hear that such an institution exists) Here, we can return to the podcast for a moment, as the podcast makes several attempts to argue that much of the Scripture traditionally understood to support patriarchy is in some way the result of an erroneous translation. This is a common theme amongst feminists who claim to be acting consistently with Christianity. The goal is essentially to play a mind game where one squints as hard as possible at the original Hebrew of Genesis 2 and 3 and the Greek of Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Peter 3, Colossians 3, Titus 2, such that one denies the apparent ethical and metaphysical claims that these passages put forward when read in concert (important to mention that only Genesis 3 was discussed explicitly in the podcast, and Ephesians 5 was implicitly mentioned without diving into the content that would nullify feminism). These chapters deal with many topics, but one is the proper ordering of an institution called marriage, in which a man and a woman are unified in a covenantal union to find a family. As it relates to the topic at hand, I will let these Scriptures speak for themselves:
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” – Ephesians 5:22-24
“Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.” – 1 Peter 3: 1-6
“To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”” – Genesis 3:16
“The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” – Titus 2:3-5
“Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” – Colossians 3:18
Notably, in 1 Peter 3, we have a commandment for the wife to submit to a husband even if it is not the case that he is a believer, and in Ephesians 5, the command to submit is referenced to everything. The implication is that the duty to submit arises because the wife is the wife. A wife is a female partner in the covenant (literally, what it means to be a wife is to be the female member of the two-party union), such that we have before us an institution in which a man is given authority over a woman because he is a man and for no other reason than that he is a man. This is why even in the Protestant Reformation, the main reformers were ardent about the significance of the patriarchal nature of the institution of marriage, such that both Protestants and Catholics could unite (the fact that Eastern Orthodox Christians agree is obvious). The other institution that all orthodox (lowercase o) Christians must agree on as being essentially patriarchal is the Church itself (Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians all have different ideas of what the Church even is, but regardless of what it is, we agree that women cannot be the ones to lead it). I present yet more Scripture:
“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” – 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35
“Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” – 1 Timothy 2:8-15
Both passages prohibit female leadership in the church because a woman is not to serve as head of a church, because she is a woman. This is again why we can see that the Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics all agree that a woman cannot serve as head of a church. It does not matter how well-read, well-spoken, or well-mannered a woman is; because she is a woman, she cannot serve as head of a church. This means that the church is, by necessity, a patriarchal institution in which women are to be denied power simply because they are a woman. I gave the extended passage in 1 Timothy because this quote read in its entirety would not only prohibit female leadership in the church but would be an overall prohibition on female leadership in general. There is, in fact, a basis for this view in the tradition, which means that the text of Scripture would seem to directly negate feminism and posit that a just society will be of necessity patriarchal (i.e., it is possible to have unjust patriarchy, but not possible to have just matriarchy). This extended interpretation of the text is unnecessary to accept its significance as negating feminism. The significance here is that we now have two institutions of no small consequence that are posited as patriarchal institutions: the church and marriage. If one is a feminist, one will need to oppose these institutions as they are posited in Scripture as being inherently unjust. To do so one would need to oppose Scripture, and as a result, the Christian tradition itself, which simply results in a denial of orthodoxy in any of the mainstream denominations.
The Incompatibility as Expressed by Feminists:
Now that we have established why feminism is inconsistent with Christianity, we can approach the question of the emergence of feminism on the historical stage. As mentioned previously, feminism can be split into three camps: radical, Marxist, and liberal. The first of these camps is the one that emerged first and for which many today who call themselves Christians are often pointed to as a salvageable or redeemable part of the project. As the name implies, feminism in this era was entirely a byproduct of the liberal ideology that had appeared on the world stage at the close of the 18th century and had not yet posited a world of its own. One can look to the work of Thomas Hobbes, who in the Leviathan lays out a theory that allows him to make statements that directly prefigure feminism:
“And whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex, they misreckon in it. For there is not always that difference of strength or prudence between the man and the woman as that the right can be determined without war.” Leviathan – Book 20
Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy is built on the claim that all people are created equally. That societal hierarchy derives from some individuals being stronger than others. Sexual difference is in no way unique; as such, hierarchy is also simply the result of the physical strength of man. Although people like John Locke tried to take Hobbes’s picture and put it within the context of a less materialistic worldview (Hobbes is a materialist, after all), I think that the social contract theories that they end up supposing suffer from many of the same faults that Hobbes points to. The point, however, as it relates to feminism, is that it becomes quite easy to see how such a movement arises out of the overall framework of Enlightenment Liberalism. All of these theories end up supposing the equality of man by nature in some sense and thus attempt to make the basis of government reside in the mutual consent of the governed (in Hobbes’s case, the Sovereign is envisioned as consisting of the individuals who are governed such that overthrowing a Sovereign is tantamount to an act against oneself) and in many cases posit that the law should regard as fundamentally equal every individual within its midst. It is easy to see how feminism would emerge from such a picture: if the traditional legal and institutional barriers between individuals are to be torn down as unjust, why not extend such an outlook to the barriers between men and women? This is the basis for liberal feminism: one aims to end patriarchy by fixing laws and institutions.
It should be noted that from the outset, this set of ideas was understood to run contrary to the traditional understanding of the role of women and the grounding for why that role was justifiable. Here are several quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft from Vindication of the Rights of Women where she comments on the norms associated with a traditional understanding of Christianity.
“The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.” – Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Book 4
“Probably the prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from Moses’s poetical story yet, as very few, it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that Eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam’s ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke, because the whole creation was only created for his convenience or pleasure.” – Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Book 2
“With respect to religion, she never presumed to judge for herself; but conformed, as a dependent creature should, to the ceremonies of the church which she was brought up in, piously believing that wiser heads than her own have settled that business:–and not to doubt is her point of perfection. She therefore pays her tythe of mint and cummina–and thanks her God that she is not as other women are. These are the blessed effects of a good education! These the virtues of man’s helpmate!” – Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Book 4
“Most of the evils of life arise from a desire for present enjoyment that outruns itself. The obedience required of women in the marriage state comes under this description; the mind, naturally weakened by depending on authority, never exerts its own powers, and the obedient wife is thus rendered a weak indolent mother. Or, supposing that this is not always the consequence, a future state of existence is scarcely taken into the reckoning when only negative virtues are cultivated. For, in treating of morals, particularly when women are alluded to, writers have too often considered virtue in a very limited sense, and made the foundation of it solely worldly utility; nay, a still more fragile base has been given to this stupendous fabric, and the wayward fluctuating feelings of men have been made the standard of virtue. Yes, virtue as well as religion, has been subjected to the decisions of taste.” – Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Book 4
“Supposing woman to have been formed only to please, and be subject to man, the conclusion is just, she ought to sacrifice every other consideration to render herself agreeable to him. and let this brutal desire of self-preservation be the grand spring of all her actions, when it is proved to be the iron bed of fate, to fit which her character should be stretched or contracted, regardless of all moral or physical distinctions. But, if, as I think, may be demonstrated, the purposes, of even this life, viewing the whole, be subverted by practical rules built upon this ignoble base, I may be allowed to doubt whether woman were created for man: and, though the cry of irreligion, or even atheism, be raised against me, I will simply declare, that were an angel from heaven to tell me that Moses’s beautiful, poetical cosmogony, and the account of the fall of man, were literally true, I could not believe what my reason told me was derogatory to the character of the Supreme Being: and, having no fear of the devil before mine eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex.” – Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Book 4
A couple of things to note here would be that Wollstonecraft directly questions the Biblical story in Genesis 2 and 3 of the creation of Eve from Adam, and she directly questions the notion that woman was created for man. She questions these things because she understands that the consequence of such an idea would be a spiritual justification for patriarchal structures, with the main one she objects to directly being marriage. The norm that conflicts with a traditional understanding of marriage is that she asserts that a norm of obedience present in marriage would interfere with the mutual development of virtue in marriage. She would substitute such an image for the idea that marriage is some friendship between a man and a woman. While I can see the attractiveness of such an outlook, I think that it, unfortunately, stands in direct contradistinction to a properly ordered conception of marriage posited by the Christian tradition and that its implementation in contemporary society (this is how most people think of marriage) has served to help facilitate the destruction of the institution of marriage. I would finally note that Wollstonecraft directly contradicts Biblical truth in denying that woman was made for man:
“A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” 1 Corinthians 11: 7-9
More accurately, one can see opposition to the Christian patriarchal institutions in sentiments published at Seneca Falls. This was the First International Woman’s Conference and was signed off by many of the most influential figures in early American feminism (Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth-Cady Stanton, etc.) The Sentiments complain about the abuses that women have suffered because of the authority of men in society in the style of the Declaration of Independence. We see a rejection of the Patriarchal institutions established by the Christian Religion:
“In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master.”
“He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.”
The overall takeaway of the above quotes is that the application of classical liberal political philosophy to the issue of women’s standing in society leads to a justice claim on patriarchy that is consistent with that outlined above (namely, it amounts to feminism) and that this justice claim when applied to traditional Christian institutions which are established as patriarchal leads to a denial of these institutions as established in Scripture. This is a truth claim that will hold of necessity whenever one accepts the essential feminist justice claim, and it is one that we can see in the most important feminist writings of its earliest phases. As a result, one can see the earliest feminists clashing with truth claims made by the Scriptures and traditional religious authorities (as shown above, you even see feminists denying the very stories that these Scriptures contain).
Conclusion
As a result, we can confidently say that so long as one is a feminist, one opposes structures that are fundamental to the Christian Religion. The earliest writings of the feminists do not in fact, contradict this assertion but show that feminists have not only been, but have always actively seen themselves as fighting against the basic institutions of the Christian religion. Often the sublimation of feminist ideas into Christian circles occurs subtlety and lacks a clear systematic orientation. Again, this frequently takes the form of claims like asserting that first wave feminism should be regarded as having achieved several important and morally upstanding victories, with second or third-wave feminism going astray of an originally moral mission with its pursuit of abortion on demand, and transgenderism. Yet what we discover above is that feminism has always conceived itself in opposition to scripturally mandated institutions. Any good that it has managed to do is therefore incidental to a movement that is otherwise directly aimed at harm as it is conceived. As a result, any attempts to compromise with feminism should at the very least be immediately questioned, if not treated with immediate suspicion. Feminism is not compromised; it is to be defeated.
