just blowing smoke???

My quest for rest this week has hit a snag. This morning I thought, ‘well, I’ll just get a quick start on the web research for this paper, and then I’ll take the afternoon off’. That was almost seven hours ago. Why could I not resist the temptation to research? It’s because of the topic. The paper is about gender issues in the emerging church.

Almost every book I’ve read on the emerging church has something to say about gender. It’s usually a sentence about how women and men are treated equally in the emerging church, and how diversity is valued. And then the author goes back to whatever he (yes, usually he) was saying before he paused to show us how inclusive he is. But after spending time looking into the issue a little more, I have to ask, is the emerging church just blowing smoke about women in leadership? As someone who considers herself a part of the emergent conversation, I’m directing this question towards myself as much as anyone else.

A lot of the discussion I saw today looked really familiar. In fact, it was the same old discussion we’ve been having in the traditional church for the last 20 years. There are people saying that women should be ‘allowed’ in leadership because they provide a nurturing, caring approach. (To me, this is insulting to both men and women because a) shouldn’t women be in leadership because they’re capable humans too? and b) it continues to perpetuate the idea that all men are insensitive jerks (well, straight men, at least). There are people who believe married women can be in leadership because they are “under the covering of a male”, but single women “should be counted out of leading” (For more on that one, see the comments on the post found here.) By the way, there are some people who wonder if that’s not just smoke screen for the real argument that we don’t really know what to do with single women in the church, and that they can’t be trusted—see Jenny Baker’s post here

Then, of course, there are people who shove a certain passage from 1 Timothy down our throats. (I’ve always wondered if the revolutionary part of that passage wasn’t that women should learn in “quietness and full submission”, but that women should learn. Of course Paul wasn’t going to tell every 1st century woman to start teaching—they’d never had the opportunity to learn, so why would they suddenly teach? Okay, now I’m on a tangent, sorry.)

I’m going to be writing this paper for awhile, so I’m sure this will be the first of many posts on this topic. (Translation: I’d better shut up before this gets even longer). But I will leave you with some interesting stats:

--At the recent Evolving Church Conference 2006 by Ephiphaniea Inc, there were three main speakers and seven other session leaders. Only one of them was a woman, and she was leading a session on ‘the voice of minorities’.

--But most women just aren’t as interested in speaking at conferences, right? Women are more involved at the grassroots level, right? Well, on one rather extensive list of emerging blogs (http://emergingchurchblogs.info/), out of 179 bloggers listed, 11 of them are women.

--But women just aren’t as into technology, right? Women are more involved in ‘interpersonal networking’, right? Tell me, for those of you involved in emerging networks, how many women are part of your network? (And that’s an actual question that I’d love an answer for, I’m not being sarcastic. Okay, I’m not just being sarcastic.)