In Strange Company
by Letha Dawson Scanzoni

When a review copy of Grady's book, Ten Lies the Church Tells Women arrived at the EEWC Update office, I quickly perused it before sending it out for review. 

Grady's introduction stated that each chapter would begin with "shocking quotes from various theologians ranging from respected church fathers such as Origen and St. Augustine to brave reformers such as Martin Luther and John Knox." He said these were "men greatly used by God" but they "harbored wrong beliefs about the inferiority of women." 

The quotes were familiar to me, and I agreed with Grady about the errors made by church leaders throughout history in teaching about the roles and relationships of women and men. 

But when I got to the "shocking" introductory quotes for Lie # 4 ("A woman should view her husband as the "priest of the home"), I was stunned. Because the three quotations cited in support of this notion came from Thomas Aquinas, John R. Rice, and -- me! 

The quote from Aquinas said that "the woman is subject to the man, on account of the weakness of her nature, both of mind and body. . . ." 

The quote from evangelist John R. Rice argued that women were to show their submission to fathers and husbands by wearing long hair. I recognized it immediately as being from Rice's 1941 book, Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers. 

But I certainly didn't recognize the quote attributed to me, because it was implying I espoused teachings I've written against for most of my adult life! Yet, there it was! Directly after John R. Rice's quote, Grady had included this sentence: 

"'Even the single woman is not to make any decision without a male head.' -- Letha Scanzoni, author of the 1974 book, All We're Meant to Be" 

How in the world had I ended up in such strange misogynistic company? And how had I been placed there by an author whose book title emphasized not bearing false witness? 

I guessed something had been taken out of context, not simply made up. But at best, it exemplified very shoddy scholarship. 

First, Grady had me listed as the sole author of All We're Meant to Be; even though Nancy Hardesty and I are equal co-authors. 

But especially troubling was the quote itself. I've long had to face criticism for my feminism but have never been quoted as supporting female subordination! My first article on women in the church , (Eternity magazine, Feb., 1966), resulted in a page of letters in a subsequent issue, the first of which began, "Mrs. Scanzoni's article, 'Women's Place: Silence or Service?' is a perfect example of why a woman is admonished to be silent in the church." 

And although Nancy and I received boxes of letters from women who found All We're Meant to Be encouraging and empowering, we also heard from people who said they had burned the book or urged us to take it out of print because it was "of the devil." No one on either side misunderstood its clear feminist message! 

Since Grady included an endnote for my alleged quote, I turned to the back of the book and found this reference: "Letha Scanzoni, quoted in Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, 411." No primary source was given. 

I looked through All We're Meant to Be, but found no place where the quote could have been wrested from context. I next checked an extended interview that Radix magazine had conducted with me in 1984. This is what I found: 

I had been talking to the interviewer about some reactionary gender role teachings then emerging in certain Christian circles. Radix asked if some of the these "regressive theologies that justify subordination" were worse than some encountered in earlier periods. Referring to some historical research I was doing on late 19th and early 20th century discussions on gender, I said, "What I see is that back then there were a variety of positions and much debate about women's roles. But what we didn't have was this really strange and thorough subordination of the woman so that even the single woman is not to make any decision without a male head." That "head" could be a church elder if she had no other man available. I said that some of these extremist views of the 1970s and 1980s obliterated the personhood of women. 

Yet, Grady had taken 14 words from that section -- a sentence fragment -- and made them form a complete sentence that sounded as though it expressed my views. 

Since he hadn't gone to the original source (the Radix interview) or even acknowledged it, I wondered if perhaps the secondary source he had consulted had given a false impression. I phoned Nancy Hardesty and asked if she knew anything about the authors cited in Grady's end note. She said Ruth Tucker and Walter Liefeld were reputable scholars of history and that she had their book Daughters of the Church on her bookshelf. She checked the cited page, saw that they had identified me correctly as co-author with her of All We're Meant to Be, and that they had cited the Radix interview and had indicated that I was troubled by certain gender-teaching developments, including the new emphasis on the single woman's subordination -- in other words the quote Grady used. 

Perhaps all this "detective work" about a quotation may seem insignificant, but the principle is highly important. 

I work as a writing consultant and editor of dissertations and book manuscripts, as well as serving as EEWC Update editor. A point I make to clients again and again is that proper attribution in using source material is not only a matter of good scholarship but also a matter of integrity. Proper attribution includes indicating where material is quoted directly or paraphrased. (Failure to do so, whether as deliberate plagiarism at worst or careless scholarship at best, has seriously hurt the reputations of some prominent scholars recently.) But proper attribution also means not taking something out of context to make a point -- unless that context and the author's meaning and intent are clearly acknowledged.

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 © 2002 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus