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The blight of infallibility

By Ray Barraclough - posted Wednesday, 27 July 2022


In the mid-nineteenth century, across the Atlantic, both before and during the American Civil war, divisions arose within evangelical ranks as to whether slavery was to be regarded as a God-ordained and biblical practice, or whether it was to be opposed in the name of biblical Christianity. Who, in that context, were the genuine Bible-believers?

Consequent to that war, there has developed a tradition of evangelical interpretation that seeks to sugar coat the biblical passages. I cannot go into detail, but that tradition of interpretation aims to suggest that these writings carried the seeds of slavery's destruction. An immediate question arises. If these seeds are so obvious, why did it take at least 1,800 years for Bible-believing Christians to plant the seeds in the ground?

Incidentally, history records that the first political group of humans to outlaw slavery (at least in their immediate domain) was the secularised government of the French Revolution. This occurred on the 4 February, 1792. [The conservative Napoleon sadly rescinded the decree in 1802.]

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Nearer to home, accounts of the violent colonisation of Australia, especially its northern regions, have a number of references from both colonial and Indigenous eye-witnesses describing the forced labour imposed on Indigenous men and women as 'slavery'.

Slavery is no longer an issue in Australia. But gender relations are. And to focus on one area where there is genuine and growing concern is the practice of violence against women. In the context of this article it is worth noting that the Bible has next to nothing to say about such violence. Next to nothing!

In regard to an evangelical viewpoint that "what the Bible says, God says", presumably one can also say "What the Bible is silent about, God is silent about". Or more pointedly: "What the Bible writers do not care about, God does not care about". Why is the Bible so silent about domestic violence against women and children? A partial explanation is as follows:

And here we return to the context of the writers of scripture. Just to note briefly several points:

1. It is generally believed that all the biblical writers were male. So no woman contributes first hand to any biblical writing. There is no acknowledgment that domestic violence against women exists in the biblical writers' world of reference. That absence is worth noting especially if, in our context, these documents are interpreted as having the last (and infallible) word on how women are to be treated and subordinated.

2. The prevailing Greco-Roman (and Jewish) cultures were patriarchal. To use an evangelical term, the prevailing power arrangement in general society, as well as in domestic relationships, was 'male-headship'. The Christian scriptures were written totally within structural arrangements of male power. Such structures are never seriously questioned by the writers. Several of the writers actually entrenched further male power over females in the name of Christianity.

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In contemporary conservative theology, one encounters the casuistry that, on the one hand, there is no objection to accepting that God has equipped a woman to be Premier (who thus heads a state government), or a female Prime Minister (who thus heads a nation) or a woman Professor (who heads a University Department), but, on the other hand, this theology can in no way acknowledge that God may also have equipped a woman to share the headship of a household, or the leadership of a diocese, or the leadership of a humble parish. To those outside the casuistry bubble, this is mind-boggling.

The famous political passage in Romans 13:1-7 would suggest that God does not feel outraged at having a woman in the leadership position, whether it be a large nation or a small parish. But conservative evangelicals are outraged at the latter prospect. There is no way God can call a woman in their dioceses to be ordained to be a priestly leader. Yet God calls women to other dioceses. Does this mean that the difference comes down as to whether God is a conservative evangelical, or a moderate evangelical, or even a non-evangelical?

And the passages that are adduced by these interpreters to keep women subordinate in those same three domains come out of central-casting of first century Graeco Roman culture and society. And no changes that have occurred since the first century, it seems, can dent their gender theology.

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About the Author

Dr Ray Barraclough is a theologian who has lectured at St Francis College in Brisbane and St George's college in Jerusalem.

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