Maybe Christianity Has a Feminine Feel?
Several years ago, a friend of mine, Simone Richardson, a teacher and wife of a Presbyterian minister, wrote a great post on God Gave Christianity a Feminine Feel.
In order to follow Christ, believers must become somewhat feminine. We respond to Christ as a wife responds to her husband - in obedient submission. There is no room in the church for alpha male types. Christ fulfils this role. He is our alpha.
And he delights to choose people (male and female) who delight in being beta. Compare Jesus' encounters with Nicodemus (Jn 3) and with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4). Jesus was not pleased with Nicodemus' masculine competitiveness and took him down a peg or ten. He favoured the more feminine response of the Samaritan woman.
God gave Christianity a feminine feel on purpose. Throughout history his choice has consistently been for the underdog - quiet, bookish Jacob over big hairy Esau , harp playing poet David over beefy Goliath, the village of Bethlehem over the city of Jerusalem, a stable over a palace... and now, the oppressed gender over the oppressor gender. It makes sense that Christianity has a distinctly feminine feel. If one wants to be part of God's kingdom he/she will need to leave macho behind and learn to submit to Christ as a woman does to her husband.
I think that is an important correction to certain other configurations of Christianity today as masculine or manly.
The Romans saw Christianity as a servile and effeminate religion of the dregs and deplorables, the have-nots and never-will-be’s.
I don’t think we should pit one against the other at all. This seems to try to equalize femininity with masculinity by trouncing on masculinity. My oldest son is by nature very “traditionally masculine”. My youngest son is the complete opposite. This article seems to imply that Jesus would be against my oldest son which I think is completely false. He is for both.
Does this essay deconstruct itself, it appears on surface reading to undermine 'mSculine Chrustianity' with its masculine hierachy. Yet there are phrases about female/wifely 'obedient'submission to husband, nothing about mutual submission which is present in Ephesians. Jacob may have been 'bookush' (when was that a purely feminine attribute in the biblical context, scribes were surely predominantly male?). He was also very much a trickster archetype and as an alpha male accumulated wealth and prestige. Similarly David, both of them complex and flawed characters used by God in the furtherance of his kingdom. Rahab was a successful inn keeper/possibly prostitute also with trickster flaws. All appear in the geneogy of Jesus for a good reason. Perhaps we are seen a reversal of patriarchy in church but this post does little to encourage it.