The Handmaid's Tale and Biblical Illiteracy

I have been watching The Handmaid's Tale, adapted from the book of the same name, on Hulu the past few weeks.  Not the greatest show I've ever seen, but it's still a solid 8.  Two things keep running through my head as I watch it.

First, how do the villains in movies in which Bad Guys Take Over The World always find such a ready and willing supply of henchmen?  The premise of this movie is that a plot is devised in which the government is overthrown by militias sympathetic to this cause.  This, of course, makes one wonder where the police and military and national security agents were in all this.  In addition, in this age of constant Big-Brotherism, how extensive could the Gilead government be considering there are it seems a dozen dudes in black vests and stocking hats sitting on each corner in Boston?  And are these henchmen all being paid good wages?  Did none of them have wives or girlfriends who found out and reported these plots?  How on earth did this million-man militia arise without somebody at the Washington Post or the FBI getting word of it?

But second, and more importantly, what has really struck me about this show is how prevalent Biblically illiteracy would have to be for people to allow it to happen.  One of the key points of the show is that when the handmaidens are essentially raped each month in the hopes of producing a healthy heir, a passage of the Bible (Genesis 30, I think) is read as a guide for how this can happen.  Now, bad hermeneutics have enabled people to justify many terrible doctrines and practices over the years...but usually in every age there have people who have stood up and said, um, I think you are completely misunderstanding the Bible.

The more I think of it, though, even people who claim to be most religious often have no idea what their holy books actually teach, and ignorance allows those who misuse those books to get away with such things.  Those who should know better stay silent because, in the end, they don't really know, and when the evil people of Gilead point to Genesis 30, the people who know that this can't be right cannot say why it is not right.  Of course,  goes in many other directions as well...today many use the Bible to support conservative principles such as low taxation, income inequality, or 2nd amendment rights; of the latter issue, the one that cracked me up the most was the one in which Jesus' disciples say to him, "'Look, Lord, here are two swords.  And he said to them, 'It is enough.'"  As if Jesus was saying that self-defense weapons were justified before he went to the cross.  Liberals, too, misuse the Bible, thinking that Jesus only preached unlimited love and freedom without responsibility, salvation by just 'being good people' and the like...but again, they are just as wrong as conservatives.

This, my friends, is another reason why Biblical literacy matters.  It's not just about ensuring that we avoid sins, but that we don't get ourselves believing that the Bible endorses rape, extreme patriarchy, or any other kind of foolishness.  If we don't know what is right, then we can't very well speak up for what is right, can we?

Fear and Loathing in Church Gender Wars

A second article this week about self-righteous conversations that go on in my head...guess I need to do some mind cleansing.

One of my ongoing interests through these years in ministry is seeing how gender roles are played out in churches.  After all my years of study, I'm not convinced by either 'side' that they are really right.  While I believe that the egalitarian crowd is a bit presumptuous with what they think Jesus was all about, I also think that the non-egalitarians have mishandled the so-called Scriptural prohibitions about female leadership.  It's not an easy question by any means, and finding the right balance seems very much elusive.

But today I was thinking way back, maybe twenty years, to a conversation I heard about this topic.  I think I was in grad school at the time, and some of my fellow students were fixing the church world by their heated discussion. One of them was arguing for a more expanded role for women in church leadership when the other piped up with a response I have heard several times since: "If we open doors to women in this, they'll come in and take over and there won't be any men left!"  Maybe not the exact words, but the exact sentiment by my recollection.

Possibly the most troublesome arguments in these discussions come when people let their emotional fears take over, and this was one of those times.  In essence, somebody who was 'in charge' of church could not handle the thought of no longer being in charge.  Whether it is race relations in South Africa in my lifetime or in the U.S. during reconstruction or the 60s, or whether it is issues of finance and power in the American economy, the question of who gets to be the Big Dog always comes up.  Those who are out of power want to be in, and while those in power are wholly suspicious of those who would usurp their authority.

It has always struck me as curious that even in our churches in which women do much of the unseen work that enables the church to operate that they do not speak up more about the inequality when it comes to who stands up in front of the church.  Maybe they agree with the detente that exists in the current church...maybe they just don't care that much.  But when we effectively curtail the ability of people to do what God may (again, that is questionable) have called them to do, the question of why those most impacted don't speak up has always troubled me.  Is it that they don't want to be in charge (and thus have responsibility)?  Or maybe it's just that they realize that it's a lot better to simply DO rather than fight about unanswerable questions?  My experience is that many women do great things without seeking permission from the men supposedly in charge...and because those in leadership positions weren't even anticipating that this work might get done it goes completely under their radar.

I do fear, though, that the day is coming when the women that are left (and many have left already, no longer willing to wait around for that day) decide to speak up in Churches of Christ; it's not that they will wrongly speak up, but that those defending their territory won't handle it very well.  There's nothing as dangerous as a desperate power class who cannot accept that their time is over.