Is the Bible Good News for Women?

Matt: The Bible has shaped the lives of women for thousands of years, but it's also been used to tell women where they can speak, what they can say, how they can lead, what they can teach, and even where they can belong. So is the Bible actually good news for women? Welcome to Church for People Who Don't Like Church. I'm Matt Oldham.

Anthea: And I'm Nancy Ratten. How are you? I'm alright, thank you. You've just got

Matt: Hello, Anthe Ratten, how are you? Good.

Anthea: away from a little trip away, haven't you?

Matt: I have, and that's why I'm cold and I'm wearing a gilet, even though the sun is outside. but I'm very excited about today's episode because we're going to do something slightly different. so a couple of months ago we did a Q<unk>A episode and one of the questions was, is the Bible good news for women? And we thought that it was such a good question that we'd do a whole episode on that, and here we are.

Anthea: That's right. And here we are. And I felt that really my knowledge ran out when it came to thinking about this and

Matt: Yeah.

Anthea: that we really needed to draw on some expert opinion.

Matt: Yeah, phone a friend. So I mean I I know this is something that you're really passionate about, but I have to admit that as a man, this is a topic I have not even considered. And if I'm honest, I'm slightly embarrassed about that. So I'm really, really keen to learn. and as you mentioned, Anthony, we have phoned a friend and we're delighted to be joined by Lynn, Lynn Burnhope, who's a theologian, church leader, and fair to say a friend of River Marlowe, now living in lovely Whitzerball in Kent. Hello, Lynn.

Anthea: Hello, Lynn.

Lyn Burnhope: Hi, thank you, thank you. It's really nice

Anthea: Welcome, welcome.

Lyn Burnhope: to be here.

Matt: Fantastic. Well don't get too comfortable because something we like to ask all our guests and we even ask ourselves is tell us something you don't like about church.

Lyn Burnhope: just one thing. Okay, just

Matt: J just a just a one for now.

Anthea: Yeah.

Lyn Burnhope: the one thing. So I drink decaf coffee and sometimes, not all places, but sometimes the decaf coffee is either non-existent or not very nice.

Matt: Okay, we'll put that on our list. Bad decaf coffee, bad coffee options.

Anthea: Mmm. Mmm. Bad day, calf coffee. Yeah.

Matt: Okay, no, I think that's fair enough. Because I always think that you need you need something before you sit down to brace yourself. And normally it's for me a good, strong black coffee, and then I'm ready to go. So if your drink of choice isn't up to snuff, well then that's bad news. So we'll put that on the list. so Lynn,

Anthea: Yeah, yeah. Thank you,

Matt: yeah, Lynn, it's fair to say that you are you have studied this topic in detail, so let's dive in. is it reasonable that a modern woman could open the Bible and think that this book wasn't written with someone like me in mind?

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really, really reasonable thing to think. Having said that, it's not something I thought for years and years and years while I was a Christian. I was quite happy to come to the Bible, open it up and just kind of read it as though God was speaking directly to me. just taking all the promises etc and kind of not even seeing some of the things we might be looking at today and I think that's mainly because I'm a woman in the western world I am privileged you know I've got property I've got a husband children I kind of meet the the norm of woman that is privileged really and so you know when I come came to the text often when I come to the text I read it from that perspective in a way with with those spectacles because I don't really have the kind of problems that other women around the world might have so I think since I've studied and studied with a lot of people I've realized that for many, many people, many, many women, that is a very, very reasonable question because the big question is what kind of woman are you? And what do you in the text to tell you or show you good news? So yeah, I think... even if we are women who have come to the text and not thought of it like that, not thought of it as being against us, I think in this day and age we need to be aware of the fact that women around the world face problems where they need the gospel to be good news and the Bible hasn't and doesn't always give those, it is not always good news. I think we, you know, we need to acknowledge that whatever kind of woman we are.

Matt: And Anthea, have you ever felt

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt: that disconnect yourself when you're reading a Bible?

Lyn Burnhope: Excuse me, I'm going to shut the window, sorry.

Matt: it's okay.

Anthea: She's still here listeners. Yeah, I think it would be a very, very similar story to Lynne that you grow up, you're given a book, you read it. It's the Bible, you read it. It has amazing passages in it and things that encourage you. And as we've talked about before on this podcast, was taught to read it a very flat and literal way, like a big old long story. And, and as I said earlier this week, I'm a terrible skim reader. So if I come across things I didn't like, I would just skip over it and, you know, just go to the good bits. And you grow up being taught to just quote proof texts and little verses at people. And if you read it like that, then it kind of works for you. I certainly was not brought up or taught to, to think about it differently as a woman. But then I probably wasn't. in a church where difference was seen as being valid or important. However, looking back on it, there was difference and the driving force was the male one. But I didn't feel like that at the time because that's what I was growing up in.

Matt: And I and I missed your talk on Sunday because I was on a beach in Portugal, but you you spoke about Ezekiel. Is that a particular or are there particular passages that really sort of almost trigger you or is it more just generally the Bible as a whole?

Anthea: That's a bigger topic. Does the Bible as a whole trigger me? It's certainly, I find it very

Matt: Yeah.

Anthea: difficult to read it these days because I read it so differently and I've got so many questions coming to it all the time that it's hard just to pick it up without having a big old think. So it's easy to not pick it up. But there are, I think as a woman, there are particular passages that I find difficult. Any that talk about a sort of sexual violation of women, physical. oppression of women, particularly those sort of passages and they are there and we have to think about them.

Matt: Okay, we'll come back to those because I think that's really important to to not dodge the the difficult passages.

Anthea: Mm.

Matt: But more generally in terms of the sort of this patriarchal context, Lynn, how much does the sort of the male dominated world of the Bible shape what we're reading today?

Lyn Burnhope: Well, I think it shapes it in incredible ways and it's that whole thing of unconscious bias. you know, we, as Anthea says, you know, we've grown up in a world where we use the Bible in a particular way, we're comfortable with it, we've kind of, we've got comfortable and I think... Asking a question like this makes us feel uncomfortable and I think we've all got to be in a situation again with the Bible. I think when we come to the Bible it should make us uncomfortable. I think that it should challenge our norms and our biases. And I think that... If we look at the church and how the Bible has been used, I think that it is fair to say that often the church is more misogynist than the world. And I think, you know, I grew up in a kind of Christian ghetto because I was a wife, I had children young, I was a mum at home and church was my life. Then I think I got job as a teacher in a school and I just really felt different actually. felt like the church do treat... does treat women differently and that there is a kind of hierarchy even when we use expressions like complementarian and egalitarian, know, this comparison between whether women are the same, are equal but different or whether, you know, there should be equity and there's kind of big discussion around that and, you know, the Bible, has been used over so many, many years as a thing that where things are so taken for granted like male headship and all of those kind of things and I think what I've found is that when I've stood back and thought about even the church that I've grown up in there is And even in our marriage, we've worked through this whole thing of we grew up in the belief that the male is the top and then go further, further down and there's a hierarchy of human, being human. I think all of that, well, a lot of that comes from the Bible and... an ancient worldview which the Bible endorses in many ways.

Matt: So I think that was like a wow statement for you. I've just written it down like you're saying that the church is more misogynistic than the world that we live in. And you're just saying then that that's reflecting the ancient world of the Bible. So that's really about im important context and w what was the context of women in that ancient culture? What what power did women have at the time that the Bible was written?

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah, you can imagine that there is lots and lots of different ideas about this and... Remembering that the Bible itself probably was written within a sort 2000 year span. you know, often people think all the way back to Genesis, but actually Genesis and those first chapters, the Pentateuch were written probably when they were in exile, sort of 1500s where they were asking questions about who they were as the people of God because they didn't have a land, they didn't have a temple, et cetera, et cetera. So their theology was kind of being formed and they were writing down their history so that they kind of had this. So Israel, the Jews had this history. So it spans many many years and laws changed, attitudes changed, but probably not as much as they do change as quickly today. know we've had massive things that have caused our cultures to change, printing press, internet, etc. All of those things totally change how society runs. But having said that, around the time of Jesus, say, the worldview was very much dominated by the fact that people groups had power over other people groups. So war was a massive assumption of freedom. the Romans ruled, so Israel was in occupation and the Jews were scattered. So I've been looking particularly at the book of Romans in my study and, you know, within the Roman Empire. Again, my expression, depends what kind of woman you were, because if you were a free woman, then the expectation would be that the ideal way your life would go was that you would marry and have children as many as possible, because the free women were basically to produce children, produce heirs. and in a war economy it was important a lot of people were dying. the emperors wanted people, families to have as many children as possible. So sexually it was actually acceptable or encouraged that the free woman was for producing children and the enjoyable sex was to be had with the prostitutes and the slaves. So everybody had slaves, everyone used and abused their slaves. slaves as they wanted. So the Roman idea was very much the stoic idea of what it meant to be human, the ideal person was the manly man. In Greek it's the via, the v-i-r, he was kind of like the... the height of virtue and the ideal man was the man that was always at the top, always in charge, metaphorically sexually that was the case, he was always the penetrator. so the hierarchy went all the way down from the emperor who was the father of the fatherland, and the whole idea of father interestingly wasn't a particularly nice one because the father had the power of life or death. Certainly the emperor had the power of life or death over anyone in the empire, but also that went down to the family group where the father could decide, for example, if they had a girl, baby, and couldn't really afford to bring her up. They would expose her. So there was the idea of infanticide and the father made all those decisions. And, you know, there's even stories of how the mothers would sometimes give money to the beggars on the street wondering if that was their daughter. It doesn't bear thinking. And yet, again, depends what kind of woman you are. If you were a free woman, you could be a property owner, you could be in the power mix, but you were basically in the power mix of this specific man-centered hierarchy. But if you were not a free woman, if you were enslaved, or just if you were on the lower echelons of society, you didn't have the rights, you didn't have the law for you, didn't have anybody kind of looking out for you, you were basically nothing. mean, the... the idea that an enslaved person and a lot of remember with the warfare economy a lot of people were continually being brought back into society sold in marketplaces and if you were a slave you were considered property as was the wife actually so Again, there's lots of scholars saying, know, the women had no rights. The women was the property. The woman was the property of her husband and her father, et cetera. And then you've got someone else who come along and say, well, actually, it wasn't as bad as that. Women could have property. Actually, they weren't the property of their husbands. They were more the property of their father. So you've got one scholar sort of saying they had nothing. And then another scholar came back. Yeah, they had something. But I think it's absolutely fair to say that you only had any kind of power under the auspices of your father or your husband and it had to be quite a manipulative, know women had the reputation didn't they for being manipulative and the reason for that of course was because they had to negotiate the men you know it was like So there was a time when I used to joke with Steve, my husband, I had this idea but I had to kind of make you come around thinking it was your idea. So I had to be a woman.

Matt: So I guess you'd see that reflected in the you'd see that reflected in things

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt: like Greek drama or Greek tragedies, that the

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Matt: women were often these conniving or manipulative

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Matt: but strong women in their own rights, but under a patriarchy which was dominant.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah. Yeah.

Anthea: and needed to sort of control them and control women's bodies and put them down and keep them in place.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Anthea: A fear of their power maybe.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Matt: So it's clearly under that context then that the Bible was written by men. but how do we now then distinguish between a Bible describing a patriarchal world and that being or not being an endorsement of patriarchy as God's sort of ideal?

Lyn Burnhope: Is that for me? That question for me? Yeah,

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt: Well it's n it's not for me.

Anthea: Yeah.

Lyn Burnhope: I mean, I think that that's where if you're if you're coming to the Bible as more than a book of devotion. on which, and for a lot of people, they pick up their Bibles and it's a book of devotion and it's like, God, what do you want to say to me today? And they read it and that's how they read it. If we're come to it in any way, thinking, what is this, what has this book done in history and what is it doing now in the world? What power does the Bible hold? What is it doing? So it's not just what is it saying, but what is it doing? Then, I think that we have to read it very carefully and we have to not just think about how it affects me when I read it but how it affects people who are being trafficked, it affects refugees who are being told that they're... illegal and they have no home to go to. They travel, we travel and we come home and home is a wonderful place to come back to wherever we've been in the world. But when you have no home, they travel because they have to move from place to place to place and everyone throws them out. What does the Bible have to say to that? And does it have anything to say to that? And yeah, I think that we have to... do really, really deep work with the Bible text. We have to look at what it's doing in the world. We have to have the text of the world and the text of the Bible and read them together to really understand, I think, what God is wanting to say from it.

Matt: That's a really good answer. so I'm gonna answer this to Anthea, but also be keen on your views on this, Lynn. have male readers then simply failed to notice some of of what women are doing in the biblical story?

Anthea: Yeah, that's a good question, isn't it? It would be interesting to get your perspective on that matter as well, because obviously you are a male reader. I think it's also male writers. It's written by men, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Lynne, and therefore it will bring out the male. And there are many women in the Bible, there are many, if you look, you can bring that out, but I don't think the writing highlights it. I think it's probably not in the foreground in the way that if it had all been written by women, it might look very different. I'm also sort of taking it back, I'm interested in why certain books were chosen and why they weren't. And if the whole collection of library of books is put together by men, then where were the women's stories? Because there almost certainly were women's stories at that time, and especially later on. And as Lyn and I've talked about this point, in the oral tradition, there will have been women's stories. And yet somehow those have got lost, which is a pattern we see. throughout history and in our more recent history is that women's writings, women's stories don't get collected, don't get archived, and therefore get lost out of history. It doesn't mean they weren't there. And I haven't looked into this in any detail. It would be fascinating, and I'm sure people have, to look at Jewish history, Jewish female history. Yes, women were always under headship, but they were also often secluded into women's only quarters. know, so what went on there? There must've been a lot of power in the women there and story and stuff that happened there. I'm drifting away from the original question you asked me, but yeah.

Matt: Well, let me let me ask you something then more specifically then. Which women do you think we should be paying in the Bible should we be paying more attention to? And I have one in mind and I'll come back to it later.

Anthea: yeah, Lynne, here go.

Lyn Burnhope: No, you go first.

Anthea: I recently, last year, did quite a lot of reflecting on Mary, Mary the mother of Jesus. And I know, you know, those of us who listening who are Catholic will probably have spent a lot of time reflecting on Mary, but those of us in Protestant tradition haven't and have almost been a bit like, whoa, you know, don't go there. Whereas actually, the more you think on Mary, the mother of Jesus and the... the song she sung over Jesus, the prayer she prayed, the woman, the strong woman she was, the influence that she had into her son's life is really interesting to think about. So I think look more closely at Mary, or any of the Marys to be honest, but in the New Testament.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Matt: Lynn

Lyn Burnhope: I think mixing that with the question you asked before about, you know, have men not seen the stories? And I think that is an interesting question in itself in relation to this, because as we can see, as we all know, there are lots and lots of women in the Bible. And I think that what's happened in the last hundred years or so is that women have started to write, women have started to, you know, have caused a massive impact on what men have contributed. And that is so appropriate, isn't it? Because it should be the women that draw out the voice of the women. And in a sense, what we're saying is, you know... wasn't what the men doing enough. And no, it wasn't enough. And the reason

Anthea: You

Lyn Burnhope: it wasn't enough was because women weren't doing it. So women need to be doing it. Women need to be biblical scholars and theologians. By the way, I think I'm probably considered more of a biblical scholar than a theologian, but I'm probably not even that yet because I haven't got the qualification or whatever, but it doesn't really matter anyway. I'm just Lin, yeah.

Anthea: Nearly.

Lyn Burnhope: So there's been a massive change in the way that the stories of the women in the Bible have been read because women have been looking at it and contributing to scholarship which is fantastic and you know One of the women that has spoken masses to me in my study is Hagar. And it's quite interesting that the black women scholars who have come to be called womanist scholars, so you've got your feminists who started in the West and in America, the black women started to say, well, yes, we've got women looking at these stories, but actually there's a thing about Black women have had a different kind of injustice. So we have a different kind of eye that we bring to the text. And of course, a lot of the African American and the Black studies come from a people who were enslaved literally in the transatlantic slavery. And so there's there's a womanist called Dolores Williams who wrote a book about Hagar called Sisters in the Wilderness and she unpacks the story in Genesis and again it's interesting that if you look at the New Testament and all that's written about Abraham Hagar is very much pushed down you know she's the one she's the fleshly one she's the one that you know we don't want to be like but Sarah, know, she's the real thing, know, she should have, you know, it's her son that counts. So actually that is a very, that is a story with a lot of injustice in it. And actually, if you look at the, if you go back to the original story in Genesis, it's an amazing story. Hagar has an amazing story. You know, she, she has this son, Firstly, she gets enlisted as the enslaved woman. She might have been, it was agreement, but she had to do what her mistress said. She had to be Abraham's whatever. Abraham. used her to have a baby. So there's some kind of sexual abuse that goes on there because Abraham takes his slave and Sarah approves it. So that is not just a man thing. Sarah gave her slave to Abraham and said, I can't give you a son. Have, you know, have Hagar. So, you know, how many women in the world does that story resonate with? Because in the New Testament, a very very negative view of this woman but if you take the story go back to the story and again this is where the oral tradition comes in I think because I think you know when these stories were talked about in the early church the women would have been saying these things but the men didn't write them down so there you know you've got the thing so you know Hagar she she has the son that they wanted her to have the son grows up and then Sarah has her baby and all of a sudden this son isn't honest anymore. You know, maybe the sons had a had a bit of a you know a power struggle themselves But Hagar gets thrown out into the wilderness with a picnic box or something and Abraham just says, you know Go, we don't don't need you anymore. You're you're out of the story and Hagar puts her son under a bush, some kind of bush. She can't even sit with him. She has to walk away because she cannot bear to watch him die. And she just sits there and she doesn't even pray. It's like she just can't even pray. And again, how many women does that resonate with? When you're captured, when you're under people's power, you don't have the resources to rise up and do the right thing even. So she just sat there basically and cried. And then this angel comes and says, God sees your son and God sees you. And there's this whole story around how God sees her, God and provides for her. He puts her in a community and he gives dignity and credibility. point Hagar even does get sent back and again you know why does God send Hagar back into an abusive situation so anyway these womenists have done fantastic work with Hagar and you know they've drawn theology from this which says that actually the good news for Hagar or for people who are in Hagar's situation is not immediate rescue. actually that's not what happened but the good news was that God saw, God honoured, God knew and God eventually kind of provided for it in a certain way but the whole kind of theology is around survival in the wilderness and actually

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: the good news for some people who are crossing the world in boats or whatever you know is somehow we can survive. So there's a story of a woman who carries a theology that actually isn't really drawn out in the New Testament.

Anthea: Mm.

Lyn Burnhope: It's kind of put aside, but actually for many people in the world, that theology is the one they need.

Matt: That's really interesting. So I said that I had a a name in mind on this, and it's Mary Magdalene. so if you think about characters in the New Testament, we know a lot about Paul, but we don't know much about Mary Magdalene. And there's also, I think, as a definite non-scholar, Lynn, you'll be comforted to know that there's I've one

Lyn Burnhope: We're all scholars.

Anthea: Hehehe. Hehehe.

Matt: just about on my in my case, but There's also like question marks about her character and what she was, what her relationship with Jesus, and it's sort of not written about. And a lot of this I think is guessed at or inferred. But I don't I don't know why that's the case. And maybe it's just because things were excluded or or not covered. But I don't know anything about her really, other than she pops up significantly in the story of Jesus. so I think I don't know. That's that's the person who sprung to mind when I was thinking about. Who should we've been paying more attention to or who do we not know enough about that we that probably had a bigger part to play in the in that particular story in the Bible? which I guess links into my next question because Jesus clearly had a relationship with Mary Magdalene of some description. And we talked, Anthony talked about the relationship he had with his mother. what stands out to you, Lynn, about how Jesus relates to women?

Lyn Burnhope: I it's because of the stories of Jesus and women that people like myself have read the Bible for so many years and thought that it was actually for women because Jesus obviously is amazing. He seems to not actually care what culture expected of him. But I think even then, the stories of Jesus and women have been interpreted in a male-centric way. Various people, and Steve spoke actually this weekend at our church on the woman at the Well, the Samaritan woman. and how all the assumptions are that Jesus was saying, well, you know, you're a very loose woman, you've obviously had five husbands. But, we don't know why she had five husbands. You she

Anthea: No we don't.

Lyn Burnhope: may have been a slave herself and the husband, the same word actually in Greek could be husband or man. So it could be that, you know, five men had had her. she could have been married five times. We don't know whether she was a free woman or a slave woman. So there's so many things we don't know. But again, there's lots of assumptions that have been made on the sort of general readings. So I think our job is to go back to Jesus and look at how the woman caught in adultery, you know, he... He didn't even look at her, he didn't want to shame her. I think he was probably very reserved in the way that he spoke to the religious leaders, because probably one of them was the man. mean, there's so many questions around that story. Where was the man?

Anthea: Mm.

Lyn Burnhope: She was caught in adultery, who with? Where's the

Anthea: Yeah.

Lyn Burnhope: man? If adultery was the issue. And so there's so many questions that need to be answered and I think that story, think really, if you can imagine Jesus kind of like turning around and writing in the sand and just almost like ignoring them and just kind of like turning around. You know, they were going to stone her and somehow I think he used a lot of wisdom as well as, you know, because he had to, he had to kind of de-escalate that situation because it was full of emotion, know, all these men were ready to throw stones and so we kind of look at his words and we think... what does that mean, what does that mean, what does that mean? But it was probably far more complex than even the words on the page.

Anthea: Hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: He probably had to be really, really careful about what he said in case they started throwing those stones. I think there's so much. one of the things that I've been looking at, which is a fantastic study, and I do encourage people, and Anthea sort of talked about the oral tradition, and there's this whole new kind of way of studying, called performance criticism of the Bible and you know to take these stories and the stories of Jesus are great because they really lend themselves to thinking about them as they were performed. mean even the the stories that we have themselves they were written to be read you know people didn't have books like we do that their New Testament was not a book it was or it was storytelling it was people probably learning the texts and doing it in front of the small congregations, largest congregations as time went on, whatever, but it was oral storytelling. I think all of the stories of Jesus and the women are something that we need to revisit and imagine, not just the words on the page.

Anthea: Absolutely. I love that. What you're saying as well is that a lot of assumptions are made about the women and they're not necessarily there in the text. And yet if we've been taught them over the years, we just carry the assumptions and the importance of going back to the text and asking the questions and thinking about, what's not said is as much as what Jesus did not say as what Jesus did say. And I... I love the fact, and I've learnt this from my husband Paul, who's recently passed his masters in biblical theology. he's, I love this idea that the significant things Jesus does often mirror something that's gone on in the Hebrew scriptures, in the Old Testament. So you can look back and find a story that is mirroring, and yet Jesus is usually doing something different with it, which is really interesting. so a question for me immediately then as well. Jesus met the woman at the well. What was going on with women at the wells in the Old Testament? How is it different? How is this encounter different? And how is it redemptive in that way, know, turning it, changing it slightly? And I have just recently spoken on Ezekiel and some of the stuff that I found very triggering and offensive for me personally was, it's all metaphor, but some stuff around female blood, in particular menstrual blood and birth blood. And those are things that particularly men cannot have that blood. so I'm just thinking, and I know Ezekiel was a priest and it was into purity, but there's a law in the Jewish culture then that didn't like the blood of women and it was seen as being impure. And when you're a woman and you come to it and you think, does that make me dirty? sorry, men that are listening, I'm talking about female stuff, but women's menstruation over history has been seen as dirty and impure. it's called the

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah.

Anthea: curse, it's this, that, and the other. But what did Jesus do in the scriptures? There's a woman that touches him in a crowd and she's been bleeding and bleeding, we don't know why. And instead of just, he knows that this happens and he turns to her and he heals her. Now that's a completely impure situation and yet he honors her, he honors the bleeding, he honors the blood. So I've just kind of been thinking about that just as we've been talking, thinking, hey, you know, that's something quite different to what we see. in older scriptures. So I love that Jesus does that with women in particular, I think.

Lyn Burnhope: Yes.

Matt: So so Anthea, how how then does this sort of more careful careful look at the stories of Jesus? So for example, how Lynn described a stoning of the woman scene, how does stories like that feel different from the Christianity women or maybe you have experienced sometimes?

Anthea: is that different to how we've had it sort of taught over the years?

Matt: How you experience Christianity, yeah.

Anthea: Well, I think it brings inequality. I definitely think it brings inequality that is not assumed when you're younger. Yeah, I'm just thinking about, you know, the fact that we have to call it womanist theology or feminist theology when we don't call it male theology or white male theology or, you know, we have to give a label, but we don't give a label to the male. And the fact that we give a label to the female means it is equal because we've had to label it. Things like that, that are so subtle. And yet as women, you tend to notice it. And so I think the freedom to be able to question this and raise it and talk about it in culture and in particularly in churches is very, very empowering for women. For the person who asked us that question at the beginning, know, how can I read the Bible when it's written by white male, not all white, but you male patriarchs? Good question. You know, wrestle with it. Yeah, so I think it brings inequality to our. our Christianity now that perhaps we didn't have then.

Matt: So what what do we do then with the very difficult passages that seem to restrict women, to silence them in church, to make them submissive, take them away from teaching or leadership? What what do we do with those? Lynn.

Lyn Burnhope: think there's different ways that we can approach it. the classic feminist approach is, they call, and other ways of kind of coming back at power plays in the way that Bible's been. put across is this thing called a hermeneutic of suspicion. I think that that's the kind of place to start. It's not that we're suspicious of God, and it's not that we're suspicious of the fact that God has given us this word. You know, people say, don't they, that the Bible is like his story. Well, you we need to think of it as her story as well. And even, you know, even in the way we think of God, you know, I don't think God is a man. Jesus, obviously, was a man, and Jesus of history was a man. I don't think if we are... there are different agendas aren't there? Some people will come and say you know get rid of the men, the women need to be in charge and then everything will be alright. You know other people... say no it's got to be about equality and I think probably for Althea and myself we would be similar we would be wanting to say we want to live together we want to appreciate everyone's gifts we want everyone to have a voice so we're actually not looking for it to turn upside down we're not looking for

Anthea: Absolutely.

Lyn Burnhope: for the women to become the ones with the you know with the stronger voice etc but what we're wanting to do is to question it so that the women's voices are heard equally and for a while sometimes if you're realigning something then that means you need to listen more carefully to the voices that haven't been heard before. So I think this sort of idea of the hermeneutic of suspicion is a good place to start because you're actually asking that question is this really saying what people have said it you know have said it's been saying and you know we could spend hours talking about what the women have to say. But one thing I did think when we were talking just now is that, and I know that men have brought this out as well in a lot of studies that I've read, the fact that it was the women who were the witnesses of the resurrection. And if the women hadn't been the witnesses, then who would have ever known? Do you know what I mean? It's those kind of things, like so crucial. And

Anthea: Hmm. Hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: I think it's about drawing things like that out. Finding the voices in the places that you wouldn't expect. So for me, for the Hagar thing, it's going back to the story because it's the story that shouts. It's not necessarily the one-liner. So if I read the story of Abraham now, I think of the whole story. I think of everything about Abraham, the good and the bad. the significance that that has. So yeah, I think that, like you were saying, I think that men and women all need to be aware that this is something that has contributed to... to injustice against women and obviously you can then take that in all sorts of ways to other marginalised people. yeah, definitely I think that recognising the problem is the beginning of being able to

Anthea: Mm-hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: do something about it.

Anthea: Absolutely. I think with certain texts that can, and I haven't, unfortunately I haven't been on the end of this as a Christian woman, but you can read a lot of stories of women who have been, like women should be quiet in church, women should cover their heads, women should, and it immediately, the first thing to do is like, like you say, go to the text, go to the story. Where does it say that? Why is it saying that? What's the context? What's the context? know, and I just, you me and my stories and a story that the women should be quiet in church. What's the context? Well, it's in some sort of synagogue context. Well,

Lyn Burnhope: you.

Anthea: some of my family are Jewish and I have the privilege of going to a bar mitzvah and a bat mitzvah. The bat mitzvah is a synagogue and the women sit separately behind a screen behind the men and the men at the front. It's quite boring, lots of reading and in a language I don't understand. And I'm sat with the women in the back and I notice the women are just taking a war in it. They're just chattering. They're just doing their thing, coming and going.

Lyn Burnhope: Thank you.

Anthea: Some of them going in and out from the kitchen, sorting out the food for later. It's quite noisy. You think that is a context. How interesting. Be quiet. Otherwise you're not going to be able to learn anything. It

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthea: context, I think, as well. Why were these things written in the first place? And

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah. Yeah.

Anthea: they're not written for us now. We can learn from them now, but they weren't written to me sitting here in my kitchen. They were written to women then, you know, so

Lyn Burnhope: Yes.

Anthea: if you weaponize them and beat me up with them, I'm not, I won't be having that, but you know.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah. Yeah. And for one argument, there's going to be a whole crowd of scriptures and for another argument, there's going to be another crowd of scriptures, which

Anthea: Absolutely.

Lyn Burnhope: I think, you you come from, you start with the perspective of the Bible. believes that we're all made in the image of God, male and female, equally.

Anthea: Mm.

Lyn Burnhope: And then if it doesn't seem to be saying that, it's not that you're changing the text, but you're looking for a way of arguing. So there's one of the scholars that has some good theory, Lucy Papiachi, talks about a mutualist she talks about rather than equality or what was the other one I said? can't remember.

Matt: equity.

Lyn Burnhope: Yeah, so looking for equity, you you can either say women are... have the same dignity but have different roles, which is the complementarian idea or

Anthea: and tearing,

Lyn Burnhope: egalitarian and then you've got these kind of Christian views fighting each other. Well, Lucy has come in and said that this idea of mutualist where she looks at Corinthians and she says that Paul is actually contradicting, it's like he's not, he's almost contradicting in what he's saying, he's contradicting what the men are thinking. So there's a way of reading it where you can read it like that. there's that. also, I you know, I've been looking at Romans and one of the things that most many, many scholars now are saying that Phoebe is obviously she's the one that carried the letter. So at the beginning of Romans 16, where Paul talks about all the people, he recommends Phoebe to them and says, look after her. She's looked after me. she takes the letter. Paul doesn't take the letter himself. And the idea now is that Phoebe she reads the letter sheet, so she embodies it. Everything she's saying, every time she says I, yes, she's representing Paul, but she's also embodying a message which applies to women. And she's also got the authority to answer questions when they come. So there

Anthea: Hmm

Lyn Burnhope: is a woman who Paul has chosen to be his representative to the whole of the church in Rome. And he mentions other women. He mentions Priscilla. who is the wife of Aquila and she's always mentioned first. So it's always Priscilla and Aquila and not Aquila and Priscilla. So there's so many things. There's an apostle, Julia, Junius and... I can't remember which is Junious Junior. And for years the male scholars were saying, no, this is a male name, this is a male name, but it's not, it's a woman's name.

Anthea: Hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: Paul is recommending her as an apostle. So there are so many things that endorse women in ministry. And if we go from that and pull out those things, then I think that's the way to read it. Obviously there are very clear statements that act against women and have done and they're the ones that have caused harm over the years and they would be the household codes where it says specifically slaves obey your masters, women obey your husbands, submit, you know, that that word submit. And then there's Romans 13 where it seems to be saying, you know, submit to people in authority. And actually, it's like, and you were saying context, because if you look at the context of all of those things, I think in many, many of those cases, not not the household codes, because I think that that was That was actually not, was Paul writing those. The household codes don't come in his actual authentic letters. They're more from his team, Timothy and people later. but they were more kind of trying to help people to live within a society where all of that happened and kind of, I suppose almost like compromise in terms of, you know, live like this and you'll be okay. It's like, you know. that kind of thing. But certainly the Romans 13 one where it seems to be saying submit to that whole hierarchical thing. Many people again say it's actually it's double speak. It's Paul saying the opposite of what he seems to be saying because there's only seven verses that say that. But the whole of the rest of the letter of Romans is actually talking about how Christ brings resurrection into the death of the Roman Empire. So those seven

Anthea: Hmm.

Lyn Burnhope: verses in Romans 13 are almost just an aside, but I actually do remember that we have to exercise all of this wonderful freedom that we have as the body of Christ to love one another, to live by the rule of love. And there's this joyous thing in Romans 12, and then it's like the baddie music comes on for seven verses. That only seven verses, and they're the ones

Anthea: Mm.

Lyn Burnhope: that people say, well, what about? But actually, that's

Matt: Yeah.

Anthea: Yeah, fascinating.

Lyn Burnhope: the That's the way I think we can be reading it properly.

Anthea: Absolutely.

Matt: So that I mean that's fascinating and I I think hopeful and positive. And I think to maybe to sort of end with hope, what would you say to a woman who loves Jesus but sometimes struggles to see herself in the Bible? And ask that to both of you. Anthea, start with you.

Anthea: I'd say keep looking, keep looking, as you will find, you will find yourself. But yeah, and acknowledge that maybe women aren't in the foreground, but they are there, keep looking.

Matt: Len?

Lyn Burnhope: Well, I've met some... wonderful people who are quite sort of and read some stuff about some of the answers that people have and there's this one scholar who talks about Paul as gaslighting by claiming to be a slave and using mother language because she says you know how could how could he even claim to think that he knows what it likes it feels like to be a mother or a slave And yet, you know, obviously that's one way of dealing with it is actually kind of confronting what is wrong and being secure in yourself. And then there's another womanist who was talking at a conference and she said, well, I was called by the Lord Jesus Christ to be a minister of God. And so actually it's got nothing to do with Paul.

Anthea: the

Lyn Burnhope: And I just thought, that is fantastic.

Anthea: I like that. Brilliant.

Lyn Burnhope: And you know, let's just do some of that because sometimes

Anthea: Mm.

Lyn Burnhope: we don't understand it all. But let's go back to Jesus. You know, if Jesus has called us and then, you know, we have the consensus of the people around us. We don't just go around saying Jesus has told me this, Jesus has told me that because we've got our community around us who help us to, you know, to work out the wisdom of what God is saying. But, you know, I think we do need to, know, and then the slave. There's a Howard Thurman's grandmother was it enslaved? in America and she says, I'm never ever going to listen to Paul. I'm never ever going to read Paul. And she said, because when we were slaves, the preachers would come around and they would say to us, slaves obey your masters as if to the Lord, as if you're obeying the Lord. And obviously, God doesn't want you to do that. God doesn't want women to do that. So if there's no other way of doing it, just know that Jesus is on your side. Don't have

Anthea: Absolutely.

Lyn Burnhope: to totally understand it. And I think we have Jesus as our Jesus of history and our Jesus of faith. We know him today and we have the stories of how he treated women and they should add up. We shouldn't be treated differently to the way that he treated the women.

Anthea: Absolutely.

Matt: I think that's probably a perfect place to end. And so I just want to say thanks so much to to Lynn and Anthea. As ever, I'm always learning. I feel this is more of a start point than an end point. And I think we will talk about this more. So much more to talk about

Anthea: Yeah, so much to talk about.

Matt: here. So thanks so much, Lynn. And look, we'd love to hear from listeners. What I'll do, I will put somewhere, make clear how you can communicate with us, maybe send an email to us. I'd love to hear other people's views on this. but that's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much. And yeah, brilliant. Thanks, Lynn. Thanks, Anthea, and speak soon.

Anthea: Thank you, Lynn. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Lyn Burnhope: Thank you, thank you so much.

Matt: Bye now.