Baptising Feminism and Twisting History

https://breakpoint.org/motherhood-myth-busting/

Stonestreet wants to 'bust' myths about motherhood. How does he do it? With Scripture? No – with the myths of historical revisionism.

Stonestreet pulls out one of Evangelicalism's recent revisionist narratives – old feminism is good and the problem is only with second and third-wave feminism.

And yet, this is not historically honest. As I've repeatedly argued the feminism that Evangelicals now endorse was only a generation ago condemned by social and theological conservatives. And the nineteenth-century Suffragettes (Stanton, Anthony, et al.) were never revered until Evangelicalism switched positions in the 1990's and early 2000's. Previous to that they were largely despised and viewed as subversive and evil.

The problem is that this reluctance regarding children and the rest is nothing new. This is not something limited to current forms of feminism. It's always been in the air as it's a logical consequence of the ideology and its hostility to motherhood - denigrating it as the 'barefoot and pregnant' paradigm. To pretend that the old feminists were somehow pro-family is to engage in self-delusion. Visit Seneca Falls, New York and read the words on the monuments. These are not Christian women with an orthodox view of the family.

The Declaration of Sentiments rails against basic New Testament frameworks of marriage and Biblical womanhood. Marriage is equated with slavery (the husband as 'master'), divorce is endorsed, and these early feminists effectively argue for the ordination of women on the basis of equal rights.

Needless to say the repeated and elaborated sentiments regarding careerism would at the very least subordinate the role of mother and the priority of children in marriage. All the things Stonestreet rails against today are contained within the declaration dating all the way back to 1848. Feminism is not something new. It is an evil that arose largely because of another evil – the Industrial Revolution and its consequences for society. On another level it's just a form of spiritual rebellion as old as the hills.

If he would take the time to actually look into these early feminists he will find that they were negligent mothers with subversive views of motherhood, marriage, and womanhood.

This was almost universally understood among theological conservatives until the 1990's when the social needle had finally tipped and the debate had ended. At that point if Evangelicalism had taken a stand it would be ostracized and no longer able to find a place at the bourgeois table of security, respectability and the corollary ideas of social standing and political access. It would have taken the Fundamentalist road of separatism, something abhorrent and antithetical to what the post-WWII movement was all about.

And so the Evangelical movement changed, and started a revision project which not only gained traction but won the day due to a bevy of Scripture-distorters and propagandist-liars like John Stonestreet. What is this article but a baptising of feminism?

Only by shifting the blame on later forms of feminism or as I argue 'moving the goalposts' can this argument retain any credibility. But it is thoroughly bogus.

And like a good Evangelical rather than simply argue from Scripture (which is not on his side), he quotes sociological statistics to try to float his pseudo pro-family arguments in terms of a sales pitch.

We don't obey Christ because it's going to make us 'happy' or 'fulfilled' though indeed that may be the case. I realize he's trying to counter the sociological arguments being used by feminists by countering them with statistics and surveys.

Why argue on their terms? Is this how we reach lost people? This sort of approach typifies the confusion that dominates Evangelical-Dominionist circles. The gospel for them is as much about social standing as it is message of salvation and the promise of Christ's coming and judgment. Scripture draws lines and alienates. They want their place at the table. These fools think this will somehow given them a means to influence society. Decades of their activism have demonstrated otherwise. Once again they would change the world but it's clear that the world has changed them. The record of compromise is extensive and many like Stonestreet are already moving over into a camp that just a generation ago would be described as theologically liberal. Others are dropping off the Right-wing cliff and departing the faith on the other side of the spectrum. Needless to say within another generation the shift will be indisputable and palpable – indeed we're already seeing it. Stonestreet is among those laying the groundwork for the next generation's apostasy.

The delight spoken of in Psalm 37 is rooted in eschatology. The meek shall inherit the Earth. We experience delight but not in the context of prospering. It is the wicked who do so as the psalm suggests. The promises in the psalm are glorious but are not compatible with Stonestreet's goals and twisted way of thinking.