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Shortest summary of feminism ever

I was preparing to speak with some ministry trainees a few weeks ago about men and women in ministry, 1 Timothy 2, and other simple subjects like that, when it occurred to me that we couldn’t really discuss these questions without dealing with … 

Well, I was going to say ‘the elephant in the room’, but it’s more like the wallpaper, the carpet, the table, the chairs and the air conditioning in the room. It’s a set of settled and pervasive ideas that form the environment in which any discussion of men and women takes place these days—without us being really conscious of their existence. 

I speak, of course, of feminism.

Feminism is hard to identify and even harder to critique. It’s hard to identify not only because we barely even notice it any more (such is its social pervasiveness), but because everybody has their own version of feminism that are in favour of (at least in some way)—usually while having very little idea of what feminism has actually taught and done over the past 50+ years. 

The variety of feminisms makes it a hard movement to understand and critique, but so does its status as one of the moral orthodoxies of our time. To resist genuflecting to feminism, or at least nodding appreciatively in its general direction, is to risk nutcase or pariah status in our culture. It’s like criticising air, or Jacinta Ardern.

So to help my trainees think about men and women, 1 Timothy 2 and complementarianism, I figured I had to make the core assumptions of feminism visible, and to show how they related to the Bible’s view of men and women. 

Hence this shortest summary of feminism ever.

Lets start with the biblical worldview:

* Men and women are equally created in the image of God, and yet are not uniform. The created differences between men and women are a reality and are good. 

* Complementary, ordered relationships between men and women (e.g. in marriage and in church life) are also a good created reality.

* Sin and the fall make the conduct of these ordered relationships difficult, but men and women experience a satisfying, productive unity in their difference, as they pursue God’s purposes together in the world.

2nd Wave Feminism (the bra-burning, women’s lib feminism of Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer, dominant from the 60s to the 80s):

* There is no material difference between men and women; we are all just people. Every woman can and should be able to do anything a man does; sex difference should be radically de-emphasized. 

* There is therefore no ordered relationship between men and women. Any attempt at ordered relationship is repressive, because it denies the total equality of persons (i.e. equality = sameness). 

* The goal is not unity (which implies difference) but uniformity—the dissolving of difference so that all individuals can pursue personal freedom and self-actualisation in the same way (a way, ironically defined in t