Three Commentaries on Sue Horner's Article:
"Herstory and Evangelicalism: A Review Essay"

To  accompany Sue Horner’s review essay on Cochran’s Evangelical Feminism, we invited commentaries by other EEWC members on the recent spate of writings about evangelical feminism and about Cochran’s book in particular.

Editor’s note: The first commentary addresses the topic in general. The following two focus only on Pamela Cochran’s Evangelical Feminism: A History.

Listening to Voices Long Silenced

by Alena Amato Ruggerio

Enheduanna, ancient Sumerian high priestess; Marjorie Kempe, British mystic; Christine de Pizan, fourteenth-century author.  These women practiced feminism before the word had been coined, and linked their feminism inextricably with their religious beliefs long before biblical feminism as we know it existed.  Given the systematic global silencing of women in history, it is a feminist act just to remember the handful of women like Enheduanna, Kempe, and de Pizan who have been recovered from patriarchal versions of history, for they represent the hundreds of thousands of women’s voices lost across the ages.  Books like Pamela D.H. Cochran’s Evangelical Feminism: A History ensure that another handful of feminist voices are committed to print so we cannot so easily be erased. 

Alena Amato RuggerioIt is cause for celebration that we have reached a point of organizational maturity after our formation and struggle where we can now engage in reflection.  Yes, EEWC has had a dramatic history worth sharing.  But if we dwell on the past as Nancy Hardesty warned us against at the 2004 conference, we will condemn ourselves to obsolescence.  The recent upsurge in books and dissertations focusing on EEWC helps the upcoming generation of biblical feminists truly appreciate the gifts that have been won for us in the past, while also identifying the goals that have been set before us for the future.

When some historians tell the sweeping story of centuries of American feminism, they choose not to emphasize the contributions of Christian feminists.  Sometimes, they even go so far as to omit us entirely.  The academic study of EEWC helps to make certain that the story of biblical feminism will be included in the larger narrative of multivocal feminism in the United States.  Each book and each dissertation, however, offers only one version of how to tell the story of biblical feminism.  Cochran’s is not the final word or the definitive version, for there should be no such thing.  The more that is written by us and about us, the richer the diversity of perspectives and the more people who will hear the message of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus.

Alena Amato Ruggerio teaches communication at Southern Oregon University.  She wrote the cover story, “Texts of Truth,” for this issue of EEWC Update.

A Personal Reaction to Pamela Cochran’s Evangelical Feminism: A History

by Anne Eggebroten

Reading this history, I am impressed by what an important role we in EEWC have played in theological and social developments larger than ourselves.  I am also grateful to Pam Cochran for reading so many of our newsletters from 1975 to 2003, both Update and Green Leaf, as well as everything published by and about us in Christian and evangelical journals, and putting it all together to make a coherent argument. 

During most of our history, I felt we were a small group trying perhaps in vain to make an impact on the evangelical world, but Cochran’s analysis shows we really have been heard and have effected change.  The growth of our newsletter Update into a journal soon to be named Christian Feminism Today is an appropriate marker for EEWC’s impact historically and our centrality today.  With the end of Daughters of Sarah, we were left with the task of ministering to feminists who are still biblically rooted, want contact with women and issues beyond the denominational level, but may not fully relate to groups like the Women’s Alliance for Theology an Ethics in Religion (W.A.T.E.R.) or the Grail movement.    We in EEWC have really been “walking on water and making waves” (the theme of our Norfolk conference in 1996) all these years, and we will continue to do so in the future.   

The introduction and first two chapters were an education for me on the history of the evangelical movement, both in the 20th century as founded by Carl F. H. Henry and others, and in earlier centuries.  Because I never went to seminary or took courses in things like evangelical history, I operated all these years like a traveler without a map.  I learned inerrancy as a young Christian in church, participated in groups like Campus Crusade and InterVarsity, and got my first job as a summer intern at Christianity Today, where I saw Harold Lindsell on a daily basis but never realized he had left Fuller Seminary over inerrancy issues.  Once he quizzed me on my view of Scripture, and later I heard about his book The Battle for the Bible, but I had no idea that he was a key player in the struggle between conservative and progressive evangelicals over the authority of Scripture.  I didn’t realize Evangelicals for Social Action was founded in response to “an ongoing struggle between liberalism and conservativism in American evangelicalism” (p. 17).  As EEWC struggled with writing and amending its statement of faith, I didn’t realize we were following in the footsteps of Bernard Ramm’s goal to “reform the concept of inerrancy, not to abandon biblical authority.”  For this new understanding of where EEWC fits into the larger picture, I am grateful.

Cochran talks about cultural influences on American evangelicals, particularly individualism and consumerism—the sense that we are entitled to choose what we will consume, from churches or parachurch organizations, rather than accept a package unthinkingly from a church to which we have unquestioning allegiance.  This point struck me as accurate in my own experience.  My allegiance has shifted from a denominational affiliation to EEWC and Women-Church Convergence.  Even the Protestant-Catholic boundary feels archaic to me because I worship with Catholic women and care about winning ordination in their church structure.  Perhaps the idea behind the label “cafeteria Catholic” applies to many evangelicals, especially those of us in EEWC.

I do have some questions about Cochran’s thesis in chapter 4, where she discusses the disagreement on homosexual issues among biblical feminists and other evangelicals and asserts that the real cause is “conflicting views of biblical authority” (p. 77).  Is the root of these disagreements really differing views of infallibility—or differing personal, experiential reactions to homosexuality?  Which is more powerful and unlikely to change, one’s view of Scripture or one’s deep feelings about sexuality?  In addition, each of us has differing levels of comfort with change, and this factor may be more deeply seated than our view of Scripture.  Cochran points out that “until the mid- to late-twentieth century, homosexuality was considered criminal behavior throughout the United States” (p. 107).  Psychological and personal factors are left out as she charts the choices of evangelical individuals and organizations in regard to forming a biblical approach to homosexuality.

Though I have many disagreements with statements in her last two chapters, one delightful detail is her naming of the two branches of evangelical feminism since 1986 as the “traditional biblical feminists” and the “progressive biblical feminists.”  In 1974 or earlier, the phrase “traditional biblical feminists” would have been some kind of three-headed oxymoron.  Having a group thus labeled today is progress.  If EEWC like the lead bird in a migrating flock can deflect some of the blustering wind from CBE, so be it.

One correction: in a footnote Cochran states, “Note, however, that traditional evangelicals are marginalized in the EEWC.  Ex-fundamentalists and Roman Catholics may be welcome, but CBE is disparaged” (p. 221).  She generalizes to the present after citing a report in the fall, 1994 issue of  Update [incorrectly listed in her footnote as 1993].  The report listed some of the 43 responses to a free-writing exercise at the general business meeting held during the EEWC conference that year.  Cochran is referring to one responder’s mention of  EEWC’s attitude of welcoming and inclusiveness. The writer had said, “marginalized are welcome—lesbians, Roman Catholics, African/Asian Americans, emerging ex-fundamentalists, Pentecostals. Inclusivity and diversity” (Update, Fall, 1994, p. 6).   Cochran does not give a source for her claim that “traditional evangelicals are marginalized in the EEWC.”  Nor did any of the 43 responses disparage CBE   Perhaps she was editorializing after noting that CBE members are not among those marginalized groups listed in this one woman’s free writing.   But CBE members are not likely to come to mind as being among the “marginalized” who long for a spiritual home where the equality of women and men is affirmed.    In fact,  EEWC leaders individually and at conferences make a point of welcoming inquirers who are more traditional.  We thank God (sometimes publicly at our conferences) for the successful ministry CBE is having, and we occasionally exchange emails with CBE leaders to that effect.   CBE has had literature tables at some EEWC conferences, and some EEWC members have held dual memberships as part of both organizations.

Many of Cochran’s conclusions are based on an unpublished essay by Kaye Cook reporting the results of surveys she did over ten years or more.  In the academic world, it’s not acceptable to depend on a source to which other scholars do not have access.  This study could have been an appendix to the book, but at this point it needs to be published as soon as possible so others can review the scholarship and respond.  It would also help if someone did a current survey and analysis of EEWC members.

Using Cook’s study, Cochran cites 31% of EEWC members as supporting some form of inerrancy, though in a footnote she admits that another 9% are probably in that camp.  She contrasts that figure with 86% for CBE members and makes generalizations aiming for maximum contrast.  She doesn’t highlight the 14% of CBE members who are outside the inerrancy boundary line nor the 40% of EEWC members who are inside it and probably very orthodox in the rest of their theology.  No one seems to understand what it means to be inclusive—that a large number of our members can be recognizably evangelical while others are not, yet all still choose to associate together for biblical feminist work.

Likewise, Cochran’s “Summary of Biblical Feminist Theology” is the weakest part of the book (pp. 146-7).  In it she leaps from the published statements of one or two prominent members to conclusions like, “they viewed Christ’s death as an exemplary model of selfless love or, as in Mollenkott’s case, as a regrettable model for women that should not be dwelt on overly much.  Sin also was redefined….” 

In other places footnotes are missing, such as for Catherine Kroeger’s claims about pederasty in relation to understandings of homosexuality at the time of the Apostle Paul (p. 85).  Is her evidence unpublished and therefore unreviewed by other scholars?  If so, how can Cochran use Kroeger’s work here to make her case? 

Here’s an example of where I have trouble with Cochran’s logic: she says “the issue of homosexuality and the progressive evangelical feminists have helped move American culture toward a declining acceptance of moral arguments, on any subject, that are founded primarily on the biblical witness” (p. 180).  But her only evidence for this shocking claim is, “Progressive biblical feminists have helped convince some people in the conservative Protestant community that rejecting someone because of her or his sexual orientation is unjust and therefore not Christian, regardless of the truth claims of scripture on this topic” (p. 179).  However, the point of the books on this topic by Scanzoni and  Mollenkott 1and Myers and Scanzoni2 is that Scripture and its truth claims really lead them to conclude that this kind of discrimination is unjust and unchristian.  They work very hard to persuade evangelical and other Christian leaders to accept this moral argument based on the biblical witness.  So how does that add up to progressive evangelical feminists moving “American culture toward a declining acceptance of moral arguments”?  One can only conclude that certain parts of the biblical witness are privileged; peacemaking and working for social justice are not among them, despite the Sermon on the Mount and the witness of prophets such as Isaiah and Micah. 

The biggest issue in the book is whether the EEWC is still evangelical.  Cochran considers various boundary definitions of evangelicalism, including whether EEWC leaders are “accepted members of the evangelical community” and comes up with the answer: no.  The EEWC doesn’t have enough members who espouse limited inerrancy, our hermeneutics are too flexible, we don’t associate with enough other evangelical organizations, and our adherence to evangelical “behavioral norms” is lacking.  By that, she means that we transgress the behavioral norm of heterosexuality—it’s not listed as a requirement in our affirmations, as it is in CBE’s.  It’s interesting that the only behavioral norm that matters is being heterosexual—having affairs, getting divorced, loving one’s enemy, or spending hours per day in praying or praising God don’t seem to count.

In recent years, as right-wing evangelicalism has come to be associated with militarism and bigotry, I have reflected on whether to continue to identify as an evangelical.  I’ve concluded, yes, I am an evangelical, based on the Greek roots of the word (eu-angelion “good news”) and based on my allegiance to Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible.  But apparently that reflection was a waste of time; others will examine me and EEWC and decide whether or not we are truly evangelical.  In Young Life, I used to sing, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love…” but now it appears they will judge whether we are their kind of Christian by a lot of other standards. 

It is painful to be excluded by evangelicals from the kind of Christianity to which I still feel an allegiance.  It reminds me of how I felt in 1970 when I first cautiously expressed interest in women’s issues to other members of InterVarsity on my college campus (recorded in Our Struggle to Serve by Virginia Hearn). 

Photo: Anne EggebrotenIf my careful analysis of the Bible leads me to the conclusion that gay and lesbian faithful partnerships are not forbidden, then suddenly I am outside the fence.  My commitment to biblical authority, my hermeneutics, and my behavioral norms are suddenly not good enough.  It’s like becoming a leper overnight.  If on top of that, I conclude that God is not male and that use of male language for God is idolatry, my ostracism from the evangelical community is cemented.  Never mind that I still love and serve Jesus the Christ in the kind of personal relationship typical of the early evangelical and revivalist movement. 

For these reasons, reading Evangelical Feminism: A History was for me not only informative but also painful. 

Notes:

1. Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? (HarperSanFrancisco, 1978, 1994).

2. David G. Myers and Letha Dawson Scanzoni, What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

Anne Eggebroten> is a research scholar with the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA. She has been a member of EEWC since its beginning and is presently one of EEWC’s Southwest representatives.

Nancy A. Hardesty comments:

Aside from the thesis of Pamela Cochran’s book, which I would dispute, the volume includes a number of factual errors.  Below are some of the more egregious. (Page numbers are in parentheses.)

On page 11 Cochran says that I left Eternity magazine “to teach English at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.”  Seminaries normally do not have English faculties; I taught English at Trinity College (Deerfield, Illinois).

Cochran wrote that Lucille Sider Dayton was “one of the ‘uninvited’ wives to attend the first conference” of “Evangelicals for Social Action” (15).  Lucille, sister of convener Ron Sider and wife of participant Donald Dayton, did not attend any of the working sessions of the first conference, which was called “Evangelicals and Social Concern.”  Later, as a result of that first gathering, an organization was formed that took the name “Evangelicals for Social Action.”

“The Daytons and Hardesty were together in the Chicago area as colleagues at Trinity” (44).  Neither Don nor Lucille worked at Trinity.  I believe I met Don about the time I left Trinity College in 1973 in order to resume graduate work at the University of Chicago where Don was also a student.

Concerning the second Chicago Conference, Cochran says it “included a special seminar on the topic of women’s equality” (2).  No, there was no organized seminar at this gathering of Evangelicals for Social Action.  Rather, those present divided into working “caucuses” around major topics mentioned in the Chicago Declaration (a statement on Christians and social concern that emerged from the initial gathering the year before).  Among the topics the caucuses worked on were race, poverty, and women.  Hence our original name, the “Evangelical Women’s Caucus.”  

Concerning EWC’s conference in Fresno in 1986, Cochran notes that I moderated a “session” (actually a workshop) in which “lesbians were able to share their struggles” (96).  She omits the fact that the panel included a young woman from Exodus, an “ex-gay ministry,” who shared the story of her deliverance from homosexual activity and her engagement to a fellow Exodus member.  Cochran also says that “when Virginia Mollenkott arrived,” she and I “discussed working on resolutions to introduce at the business meeting” (101). We did not.  She also says that several members had heard “rumors” that I and others might “introduce a social justice plank,” and they were prepared to speak out against it.  She appears less willing to believe the reports about closed doors meetings engineered to squelch passage of resolutions at the conference at Wellesley two years before, thus setting the table for what happened in Fresno.

On page 98, she writes of the Fresno conference that “a number of people agreed with Scanzoni and Mollenkott’s position in All We’re Meant to Be.” But Scanzoni and Mollenkott did not write All We’re Meant to Be; they wrote, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?  Letha Scanzoni and I wrote All We’re Meant to Be.

Cochran seems to want to lay much of the blame for EEWC’s presumed shift in biblical understanding on Virginia Mollenkott.  For example, she says that “Mollenkott suggests that many aspects of American society would be changed if Christians (a term she uses inclusively) embodied justice” (123).  Apparently Mollenkott’s inclusive usage is in contrast to “evangelical” usage that will only grant the label “Christian” to those who agree with them, despite the much more historically orthodox faith that others around the world affirm and practice. Cochran argues that Mollenkott holds a “universalist” view of salvation and then on page 136 attributes that view to EEWC as a whole without any further evidence, a tactic that she uses several times. 

Later Cochran says that “Scanzoni also reexamined her stance on homosexuality and her biblical hermeneutic based on Mollenkott’s experiences as a Christian lesbian” (134).  Had Cochran checked Men, Women, and Change, the sociology textbook that Letha coauthored with John Scanzoni (McGraw-Hill, 1976), she would have known that Letha had already written on gay marriage (using that term long before it entered public discourse) and had also laid the groundwork for her later views in Sex Is a Parent Affair (1973), a book to help evangelical Christian parents educate their children about sexuality.  For these books, as well as for All We’re Meant to Be, Letha had been researching the subject, studying Scripture, theology, and the latest scientific scholarship through Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute well before she and Virginia Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? (1978).  Letha’s views about homosexuality took shape long before Virginia or I shared any personal experience with her (indeed before I had any experience to share with her!).  To be fair, Cochran does indicate some awareness of Letha’s previous scholarship on homosexuality (76, 104) but minimizes its role by omitting any mention of it here.  She appears to want to give the impression that Mollenkott used the disclosure of her lesbian orientation to sway Scanzoni’s opinion on homosexuality and to urge her to change her biblical hermeneutic.  But what Virgina’s story did was simply to help Letha understand more fully the intense struggles and  suffering of lesbians and gay men.  The issue was no longer a matter of sociological research or biblical debate.  She understood that lives were at stake, and this gave her the courage to take a public stand on this controversial topic in spite of its cost to her writing and speaking ministry in the evangelical climate of those times. She and Virginia both speak about that in the revised edition of Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? (1994).

On page 150 Cochran asserts that after Fresno EWC “turned to liberation theology for a methodology.”  I would suggest that we simply continued to develop a biblical feminist theology in conversation with other Christian feminist and womanist theologians.  All theologians, male and female, ancient and modern, interpret scripture and formulate their theology out of their own experience.

Cochran says that “for a while, Nancy Hardesty joined the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.,” but that I “left when it, too, refused to ordain openly homosexual persons”(179).  I was an active member of the Episcopal Church for twenty-five years, from my confirmation in 1964 until I moved to Greenville in 1989.  Since South Carolina dioceses had been very reluctant to ordain women, I could not find a congregation with a woman on staff, and so I did not affiliate with a parish here.  I have never “left” the Episcopal Church.  And I was always aware of gay priests and bishops within the church, as well as lesbian priests after women were officially ordained in 1976. 

Cochran also attributes the words of the “Doxology” to Psalm 100 (112).  One would have thought that “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” would have been a clue. (She was likely confused by the fact that the Doxology is sung to the tune Old Hundredth, the same tune used for the sixteenth-century paraphrasing of Psalm 100 in the hymn, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell.”)

On 171 she refers to EWC as having a conference at “Northpark.”  Four lines later she calls it “North Park College and Theological Seminary.”  On 173 she calls it “North Park Theological College and Seminary” but again says we held “the 1994 conference at Northpark.”  We met at North Park College, which is now North Park University, in Chicago.  (Where were New York University Press’s copyeditors or proofreaders?)

Photo: Nancy HardestyOn page 174 Cochran describes Update as primarily devoted to news of “when someone moved, was promoted, finished a program of study, or published a book. . . . obituaries, prayer requests for those who were ill, and retirement notices.”  Apparently she has missed all of the articles on timely subjects and book reviews of recent books.

These are a few of the errors and misinformation that stood out to me. In my opinion, Cochran’s arguments are no more carefully thought out than her facts are researched.   The biblical feminist movement still awaits a careful historical treatment that tells the story without trying to justify a preconceived thesis or reducing it to a theological catfight.

Nancy A. Hardesty, professor of religion at Clemson University, Clemson, SC, was one of the few women invited to the original Thanksgiving conference on “Evangelicals and Social Concern.”  She has attended every EWC and EEWC conference.  She and Letha Scanzoni are planning the next conference in Charlotte, NC, July 20-23, 2006.  Y'all come!

Table of Contents