Herstory and Evangelicalism: A Review Essay

by S. Sue Horner

Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles by Julie Ingersoll. 
New York: New York University Press, 2003. 180 pages, paperback.

Evangelical Feminism: A History by Pamela D. H. Cochran.
New York: New York University Press, 2005. 243 pages, paperback.

Who are those women who constitute the category called “evangelical Christian women”?  What is evangelical (or biblical) feminism? How has the contemporary feminist movement interacted with evangelicalism or conservative Protestantism? How has gender influenced religious historians’ and sociologists’ understanding of what evangelicalism is? These are the foci of two recently published books by New York University Press: Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles by Julie Ingersoll, and Evangelical Feminism: A History by Pamela D. H. Cochran. Their studies bring to light the role women play in creating new institutions such as EEWC and Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), and their research thus contributes to bigger or more nuanced understandings of conservative Protestantism or evangelicalism.

Research on Evangelical Feminism

It is exciting that research on women in conservative Protestantism is finding a place in the academy. These are important stories that need to be more widely understood. It seems to be the day for this research—a very good thing given the current state of ignorance on the helpful role of feminism in our culture. Ingersoll, Cochran, and I were all independently engaged in doctoral studies and doing research on evangelical feminism in the 1990s. Ingersoll completed her dissertation at the University of Santa Barbara in 1997, I finished at Northwestern University in 2000, and Cochran received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2001. All three of us have some measure of ”insider” perspectives—we have lived in the evangelical ethos—but differed in the methods and focus in our research. All three of us interviewed a range of members of both EEWC and CBE. As archivist for EEWC, I had primary source materials very close at hand for my research and was able to provide space and materials to Cochran for her research. Though Cochran’s and my work bear a close resemblance, we employed different methods.

Methods of Analysis: Intellectual History

Method does make a difference in the analysis of data. It is important that readers be aware of the diverse methodologies employed to analyze quite similar data—in this case, the events, stories, memories of women and some men associated with EEWC and CBE. A variety of methodologies are available to historians of religion. In the past, intellectual history was most common. That is a study of the ideas of the leaders or elites of the movement and a focus on constructing a “coherent narrative.” Often then, the story of evangelicalism was dominated by the idea-focus of Reformed/Calvinistic theology constructed out of white, male experience. The perspective of women or of Wesleyan theology—based more on experience than on theological concepts—has essentially been invisible. This single-focus or privileging of one tradition is being increasingly challenged. See, for example, Reta Finger’s fine explanation of the differences between “core” and “penumbra” evangelicalism in our forthcoming Encyclopedia entry. (See sidebar for more information.) Additionally, I believe that the desire for a coherent narrative often squashes the multiple, distinctive voices that constitute a movement like evangelicalism. What happens then is not a coherent narrative, but an “incomplete narrative.” Trying to capture the meanings of evangelicalism by only focusing on theological writings, typically the work of white men, loses the richness of diversity and multiplicities of a living evangelicalism. Women’s actions, thinking, and experiences have shaped and continue to shape evangelicalism.

Methods of Analysis: Enthnography and Culture Production Theory

Ingersoll’s study is innovative in the world of evangelical historiography. She uses ethnography and cultural production theory as expressed by noted religious sociologist Robert Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. Cultural production theory sees the creation of culture as an on-going process characterized by negotiation, compromise, and conflict. Framing evangelicalism as a subculture widens the definition beyond a solely theology-based understanding. Categories like gender become powerfully relevant alongside ideas and theology when trying to answer the question, “What is evangelicalism?” Cultural production theory brings into focus how conflict and dialectical processes create and recreate religion.

Methods of Analysis: Theoretical Model of Accommodation

Cochran’s methodology is more traditional or “core.” She builds on the “accommodation model” of prominent sociologist of religion James Davison Hunter, her dissertation advisor. This theory sees changes within evangelicalism as the effects of increasing secularism. That is, evangelicalism is a fixed or normative reality that loses its authentic core in its interaction with secular culture—hence the behavior that Hunter describes as a “culture war.”

Many of us may be familiar with the evangelical lament of the destructive nature of “secular humanism.” This flows out of an “essentialist” or fixed view of evangelicalism. Cochran suggests that the center of evangelicalism is biblical authority. She admits that the historic view of the Bible as “inerrant” has shifted to what she calls a “hermeneutical” stance. That means that the Bible continues to be authoritative, but there is more recognition of the cultural context and the necessity of using interpretive methods—hermeneutics. However, determining what is culturally-conditioned truth and what is absolute truth has distinct boundaries. In other words, evangelicals are more open than they once were to biblical interpretive historical critical methods, but only to a point. Evangelicalism then has some openness to change, but it is the extent of changes that evangelical theologians debate. What becomes important here is defining the boundaries of who and what can be considered evangelical. Cochran suggests that evangelicalism functions as a community that establishes these constraints or boundaries.

My Own Perspective on the Study of Evangelical Feminism

To understand my perspective on all of this, it may be helpful to know how I analyzed the data of EEWC in my dissertation. My methodologies included social history, social movement theory, and feminist biography. My thesis is that the evangelical feminist movement is a significant and vital social reform movement within evangelicalism, that also drew resources from second wave feminism. Additionally, the evangelical feminist movement contributes to the ever-broadening understandings and definitions of feminism or feminisms, as well as expanding meanings of evangelicalism. Evangelical feminism then is a diverse movement. Priorities of evangelical feminist organizations are based on a range of commitments to evangelical biblical hermeneutics and feminist issues of equality. My method, like Ingersoll’s, focuses on the dialectical shaping and reshaping of evangelicalism rather than on an evangelicalism defined by theological and social boundaries, the framework used by Cochran.

Ingersoll’s Book

Ingersoll’s study, Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles is intended to spotlight women’s contributions to conservative Protestantism and to enlarge or complicate a definition of evangelicalism. She wanted to look at actual women’s experiences within evangelicalism, not explaining them as empowering within that subculture as do some religious historians, but uncovering how these stories of conflict (or battle) constitute a significant role in shaping and reshaping the culture of evangelicalism. Her goal is to help historians (and all of us) nuance understandings of evangelical women and their role in shaping evangelicalism.

As noted before, Ingersoll brings both an insider and outsider perspective. As an insider, she draws from her former experience within the conservative evangelical/fundamentalist Orthodox Presbyterian church and graduate studies at evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary. Though Ingersoll interviewed a number of EEWC members, she has not been part of EEWC. Her thinking clearly evolved in the process of research and feedback from some of our members. As an outsider, she admits that she no longer functions within an evangelical worldview and so can offer a more detached view.

She divides her book into two parts.  Part one encompasses 44 in-depth interviews with women in Christian higher education and the ministry, as well as institutional analysis of Christians for Biblical Equality (“relatively moderate feminists”) and the fight in the 1990s within the Southern Baptist Convention (“extreme fundamentalists”) over women’s leadership, specifically at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. These case studies bring to life Ingersoll’s use of the “new cultural” sociological methodology that is shaping research on American religion. Part two of the book fleshes out the methodological underpinnings and the meanings of the study.

In the chapter on Christians for Biblical Equality Ingersoll describes effectively how CBE (“relatively moderate feminists”) has both challenged traditional evangelical understanding of gender roles but also has stayed within the evangelical ethos. She suggests that CBE has maintained the evangelical focus on boundaries—that is, who is in and who is out. For example, CBE intentionally sought public support and participation from notable and influential evangelical leaders (e.g. John Stott, Richard Mouw) and, like most outspoken leaders and organizations that identify themselves as evangelical, CBE is opposed to homosexuality. But at the same time, CBE  pushes for change on the issue of egalitarian gender roles. The challenge on gender roles then is softened by using known evangelical resources. By intentionally staying within the evangelical conversation, CBE demonstrates a process of negotiation and conflict and consequently “shapes and reshapes” evangelicalism.

EWC is only briefly examined. It is noted as a “divergent feminism” which led to the 1986 split and the establishment of CBE. However, this point of conflict is not addressed as to how it effected the broader movement of evangelicalism or how it produced or reproduced evangelical or biblical feminism. It left me with the question, what subculture is EEWC part of, creating and recreating? In fact, this point was raised in my dissertation. What exactly does make one part of a community? Is it the community’s recognition of a person or group?  Or is it a person’s or group’s claiming identity with the community?  (I noted with some interest that in the spring, 2005 issue of  EEWC Update, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott identified herself as a member of the evangelical left. She defined evangelicals as people who have a personal relationship with God and take the Bible seriously, while at the same time allowing for a continuum of positions on social issues. This is a generous definition, but I fear that few evangelicals would consider either her Biblical interpretive methods or her positions on social issues as “evangelical” enough.)

Finally, I like Ingersoll’s conclusions that conservative Protestant attitudes towards gender are characterized by fluidity rather than a fixed norm. Culture is produced both explicitly and implicitly. Her study looked at conflict or battle stories, uncovered women’s voices and experiences and made implicit culture production visible. This is hugely important for women to understand themselves as players in the shaping of evangelicalism. Further, she expresses well the challenging tension that religious traditions are cultural systems always in the process of change and always in search of a coherent narrative. This tension perhaps forces the people on the margins out of the narrative. For example, EEWC is characterized as moving beyond evangelicalism given its engagement with a range of justice issues related to sexism. CBE, on the other hand, functions within evangelicalism given its focus on equality between women and men and justice defined narrowly or within acceptable evangelical boundaries.

Cochran’s Book

Cochran’s book, Evangelical Feminism: A History, is both intellectual and social history. She analyzes both the theology of evangelical feminism in relation to evangelical theology and some of the social context of the movement. The book is organized historically. The birth of biblical feminism, 1973 to 1975; the early years, 1975 to 1983; the split over homosexuality, 1984 to 1986; the emergence of two streams—progressive evangelical feminism and traditional evangelical feminism; and 1986 to the present. Chapter five looks in depth at theological changes in biblical feminism from 1986 forward, comparing and contrasting the theological understandings espoused by various movement leaders. Cochran had noted in her book’s introduction that the “leading spokespersons” in CBE and EEWC do not speak for every person within their respective organizations but their ideas and positions “have filtered down to influence their organizations’ structure and membership, both socially and theologically”(9).  In chapter 3, Cochran discusses the biblical interpretations of Patricia Gundry (as “representative of ‘conservative’ evangelical feminists”) and Virginia Mollenkott (as “representative of ‘liberal’ evangelical feminists”). In chapter 5, Reta Finger’s perspective on core theological doctrines, such as the trinity and the atonement, is discussed as another example of a progressive biblical feminist point of view.

Cochran calls homosexuality the watershed issue in evangelical feminism that resulted in an institutional division (EEWC and CBE) and a theological division into progressive biblical feminists and traditional biblical feminists. She states, “Biblical feminists who advocate the evangelical acceptance of homosexuality and use the authority of reason and experience are thereby violating both the theological and the social norms of postwar evangelicalism” (108). She suggests that these norms are an alignment of a high view of biblical authority with strict standards of moral behavior.

Cochran makes a strong case that progressive biblical feminists were influenced more by secular feminism than by evangelicalism. Part of this contention is based on the fact the EEWC is not engaged with traditional evangelical institutions the way CBE is. Another reason is that EEWC presents an “ecumenical” posture on biblical interpretation methods. She also cites EEWC’s inclusion of mainstream Christian feminist theologians like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Rosemary Radford Ruether as signs of EEWC’s being outside of evangelicalism. An example of this is the epigraph from the introduction. She begins her book with this quote: “Feminist theology cannot be done from the existing base of the Christian Bible.” (Rosemary Radford Ruether, Womanguides, p. ix (1985.) This is a classic evangelical signal—a demonstration of the boundary of what is “true biblical/evangelical religion” and what is “liberal” Christian theology.

Apparently, in order to be heard on women’s issues within evangelicalism it is necessary to clearly state that even if you embrace the equality of women and men, you do not align yourself with “liberal” theology. The exclusive nature of evangelicalism appears to fight the inclusive nature of feminism. Personally, I find it more helpful to conceptualize feminist theology as consisting of multiple streams. All feminist theologies have common ideas and distinctive positions. To present biblical/ evangelical feminism in opposition to liberal feminist theology actually masks the commonalities. This is why I find Cochran’s epigraph an unfair representation of Ruether’s approach to doing feminist theology. In Ruether’s writings she emphasizes that the Bible should not be a closed set of historical documents, but she clearly credits the Bible as the source of the “liberating prophetic tradition.” She does not dismiss the Bible. However, Ruether is clear on the point that to suggest that the Bible is the only authoritative word of God is to sacralize patriarchy and injustice—hence feminist theology cannot be done from the existing base of the Christian Bible. This sentence is a reminder that as the Bible exists it is encapsulated in patriarchal thinking that has at the very least resulted in women being excluded from ministry. Further, as a Catholic, Ruether views experience as integral to God’s revelation and not limited to the canonical biblical text. Evangelicals, on the other hand, typically understand the Bible as standing outside or above human experience. Unfortunately, I think Cochran’s epigraph reinforces the simplistic view that most liberal Christian feminists throw out the Bible, and only traditional evangelical feminists are biblical.

I recommend both books. I think they both show different angles on evangelical feminism. Ingersoll’s study is broader with more focus on CBE. EEWC members will find much of the Cochran book informative about the history of our organization. Originally, Cochran’s focus was on the theology of the movement, but I think the addition of social history has improved the book for the reader’s comprehension of this movement of evangelical feminists.

Although Cochran notes in the bibliography that I have a forthcoming book based on my dissertation—a more in-depth history of EEWC—this is no longer the case. Apart from my chapter in the Ruether book (see sidebar), I do not plan to publish my dissertation as is. At this point I am more interested in writing some type of historical fiction on feminism and religion. I think our movement needs a wider audience than the academy.

Though not referenced by Ingersoll in her informative discussion of the Southern Baptists, I strongly recommend the film, Battle for the Minds, a powerful documentary of the takeover of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY by conservatives in the mid 1990s. The story of the dismissal of dearly respected theology professor Molly Marshall is riveting. The film is an excellent visual presentation of conservative religion and the backward movement of the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years on women’s roles. My students at North Park University were often stunned by the behavior and reasoning presented in this documentary. There is nothing quite like seeing men quote scripture to support their views on male theological superiority. I became aware of this film at a National Women’s Studies Conference. A great example, I think, of how evangelical feminism has emerged in the contexts of both conservative religion and the contemporary secular feminist movement.

Finally, a note of correction is in order. Cochran notes that we in EEWC refer to ourselves as “Sisters of the Summer.” That is not exactly right; though I recall hearing Virginia Ramey Mollenkott use the phrase after reading my dissertation. I, in fact, created the phrase. In the dedication of my doctoral dissertation it reads:

For the sisters of summer
Struggling to become all they’re meant to be

There are two reasons for this dedication. First, I wanted to honor EEWC’s long history of summertime conferences. Second, it is a reference to a film shown at the 1988 conference in Chicago. This was a painful period in our history; the first conference after the split in the organization. The film, Women of Summer, was the story of a summer program run by Bryn Mawr University in the 1930s for working-class women. It was a poignant portrait of women in later life remembering and reliving their summer of college opportunity and new possibilities. The film was about becoming. It was a healing moment for many of us as we in EWC were living through the becoming of EWC into EEWC.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

It is important and necessary for all of us to look back. Over the last eighteen years, when I was teaching women’s studies at North Park University, I often began my classes with the following quote by artist Judy Chicago, a quote I had first read in Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her. In the mid 1970s, Chicago created The Dinner Party, a collaborative multimedia exhibit symbolic of women’s presence and contributions from prehistory to the rise of feminism in the 20th century, now housed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Commenting on the significance of The Dinner Party Chicago said, “Sadly, most of the 1038 women included in The Dinner Party, are unfamiliar, their lives and achievement unknown to most of us.  To make people feel worthless, society robs them of their pride; this has happened to women.  All the institutions of our culture tell us—through words, deeds and even worse silence—that we are insignificant.  But our heritage is our power!” Ingersoll and Cochran’s books are a place to begin to know our “herstory.” I urge you to live into our herstory/history and experience the empowerment of action.

Editor’s note: Readers may also wish to read or reread sociologist Joan Olson’s review of Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life by sociologist Sally K. Gallagher, in the Spring 2004 issue of EEWC Update.

Table of Contents

Sue Horner has been involved with EEWC since 1978, serving in a variety of leadership roles. She is currently EEWC archivist and one of the Northeast representatives on the executive council. She formerly taught at North Park University in Chicago. Sue and her husband David now live in Boston and Harpswell, Maine and Sue reports that “both are envisioning new ways of being in the world.”

© 2005 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus