Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs and a devout Catholic, gave a speech to the graduating class of Benedictine College in Atchison Kansas on May 11, 2024. Subsequent to his controversial comments about men and women, he has been pillaried in the press. Some of his comments were standard Catholic positions on issues like abortion and euthanasia. Some were critiques of prominent professing Catholic politicians who have diverged from Catholic views on social issues. But some were badly worded versions of the problematic adage “A woman’s place is in the home.” He attests that his wife, Isabelle, “would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
I have recently read Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian by Michelle Lee-Barnewall (published in 2016), and am in the middle of “Feminism is Not the Story of my Life.” by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (published in 1996). I have wondered how much effort I should put into finishing the latter book. It is a compilation of conversations Fox-Genovese had with women in the mid 90’s about their identification with feminism. Both feminism and women’s reactions to it have probably evolved considerably in the last 30 years, so this book may not be as relevant. But I will connect two ideas from it with my discussion of the content from Michelle Lee-Barnewall’s book.
The Butker controversy is confirmation that there are still believers in traditional men’s and women’s roles and the value of home life and marriage for the formation of children and society. Butker praises women who are homemakers, saying they have embraced ‘one of the most important titles of all.” Representing a different opinion, this past weekend, a college age woman at church expressed derision that he was essentially telling those graduating women to do “nothing” with their degrees. I do not share Butker’s antipathy for women prioritizing careers nor the belief that homemaking makes no use of a college degree. The value and dignity of family life is a priority I share with him, and I hope other Christians do as well. If home life is valuable for character formation, it does vindicate the attention that many women still want to give to their families, at the same time wanting to have the option to work outside their homes. The debate around what is the most appropriate sphere for wives and, more particularly, mothers, is a longstanding one. Both Lee-Barnewall and Fox-Genovese consider some of the history and societal trends in thinking about women’s roles.
Lee-Barnewall’s book begins with three chapters presenting historical trends in societal thinking about women’s rights, roles, spheres and equality in three particular periods. The author asserts secular trends had significant influence on how Christians of the time periods also began to think about each of these things .The three periods she discusses are the Victorian era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, the 1950’s, and the 1960’s to 1970’s. In the Victorian era, Lee-Barnewall asserts that both secular and Christian people began to see women as intrinsically more virtuous (Lee-Barnewall defines virtue on page 20-21 as a “superior moral and spiritual nature,” “purity, piety, and domesticity” and “industry, modesty and good stewardship”) than men. Due to the Industrial Revolution, men became more involved in business pursuits (which had a corrupting influence on them) more than in home life. Because production of goods was taking place in factories, women’s roles in the home focused more on motherhood. Accordingly, many began increasingly to believe that home life was the locus of virtuous guidance and character formation for the next generation. “Motherhood became the moral foundation of society, and the main civic duty for women was to instill civic virtues in their children,” says Lee-Barnewall (22). The life of the home was perceived as very important to the building of a virtuous and healthy community, country and world. Therefore, women were seen as important in their role of nurturing children. However, the author goes on to document that not only were they called upon to instill virtue in their children, but they were also called upon to see their larger communities, their churches and even their nation as an extension of the home and thus to altruistically enter into the work of reform in this broader “home” sphere. In this era, the types of reform they engaged in were predominantly the Anti-Slavery and Temperance movements, and World Missions. It’s worth noting that secular women pressed for women’s rights, in particular for the right to vote, but Christian women for a long period resisted what would later be known as first wave feminism. (For more information on the objectives of “First Wave Feminism, see https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm). In large part, their resistance was the result of thinking it unbecoming to women, unbecoming to their virtue, to be preoccupied with their own rights and equality, and to potentially supplant men in their leadership role. (One of the grievances expressed at Seneca Falls was that women are “compelled to promise obedience to her husband.”) The entrance of Christian women into the world of public reform and gospel missions was encouraged by men and motivated by concern for the common good, not their own rights. Only toward the end of the fight for women’s suffrage did Christian women join that cause, and then only because they believed the vote would give women greater influence for good in their society, through voicing their unique women’s virtues in the public arena. Their roles as public speakers both inside and outside of church settings were not meant to communicate a rejection of traditional biblical roles, but expressed a practical concern both for virtue and for the world’s need for the Gospel message. Lee-Barnewall quotes Barbara Cutter in her book Domestic Devils, ‘The dominant ideology of the nineteenth century was “redemptive womanhood“ because the key was woman’s use of her superior “moral, religious, and nurturing nature to redeem others”. . . Women were encouraged to “perform heroic actions as part of their duty to preserve the moral and religious health of the nation.”’ (Lee-Barnewall, 25).
In later eras, this “service to the collective” mentality manifested differently. For instance, in the 1940’s women entered the work world to serve their country while men were fighting in WW2. Then in the 1950’s, they were sent home again, to prioritize the home and family which was still seen as a place of important work. Some women exited their wartime jobs also to give the higher paying jobs to men and, according to another author cited in Lee-Barnewall’s book, because of “the emphasis on helping the returning servicemen readjust to life after the war.” (37) But many women had enjoyed participating in the workforce and resented their reassignment to homemaking. This set the stage for “Second Wave Feminism” among both secular and Christian women.
By contrast to the first wave, in the 1960’s and 70’s, Second Wave Feminism unabashedly promulgated a fight for women’s rights and equality– in other words, their own rights. Some of the rights they demanded make sense to us all – equal pay for equal work, and opportunities for education and career advancement. But some of the rights they pursued were, in my opinion, misguided responses to “double standards.” For example, men have perhaps always enjoyed sexual freedom, without the attendant results of stigma, pregnancy, and with less risk of contracting STD’s. Feminism demanded the same sexual freedoms for women. I believe the Bible resolves that double standard by saying men have no more sexual freedom than women before God. But the feminist solution to that double standard was to claim that dubious privilege for women as well.
Christians have not fully adopted all of the demands of feminism. However, the ideology certainly impacted the Christian world. One group that formed as a result of the collision of the feminist worldview with the Christian one is the “Evangelical Feminist” scholars and writers, who later were renamed “Christians for Biblical Equality.” Both complementarians and egalitarians believe that men and women are equal in Christ. Egalitarians, however, argue for “no restrictions on women’s roles in ministry and leadership and [that] they share equally in decision-making in marriage.” (83) They deny that men have a “special role in the church and home.” They sometimes soften the language of rights and speak more of having equal access to leadership in the church or concern for utilizing women’s gifts.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, writing in the mid-90’s was focused on reasons women gave for not calling themselves feminists, or saying that feminism did not represent their concerns. Fox-Genovese was interviewing mostly non-Christian women and her book includes minimal mention of religious reasons for not identifying as feminists. The connection I noticed to Lee-Barnewall’s book is in both authors’ exploring the ideas that women are more virtuous and less concerned for their own rights, in particular as it related to career ambition and desire for sexual freedom..
While most of the women she interviewed to write “Feminism is Not the Story of My Life” appreciated benefits gained for them by feminism, particularly in affording women more of the opportunities and choices enjoyed by men, they were not aligned with the movement on all of its tenets. Many were still pro-life, which did not and still does not align with feminism. They still wanted to look feminine and to be attractive to men. But most pertinent to my point in this essay was that they still cared about the well-being of husbands and children and did not want their individual pursuits, whether career pursuits or pursuit of sexual freedoms to harm the stability and health of the family. Fox-Genovese writes that many women believed “that a woman’s life should be grounded in her family and cooperation with men.” (28) They did not want to assert their rights without regard for others.
Later as Fox-Genovese discusses women’s complicated decisions to assert their equal sexual freedoms with men, which necessitates in many minds the unlimited access to abortion so that they, like men, do not have to pay for their sexual freedom, she writes: “American culture long placed a high, not to say sacred, value on the relation between mother and child. It especially assumed that mothers willingly devote themselves to the children whose lives and characters they help to shape. Feminist scholars quickly point out that this vision of motherhood has not told the whole story of real-life mothers who might not always have been able to stay home and care for their children full-time, and who sometimes might not even have wanted to. But most Americans still find comfort in the idea that mothers have a special inclination to care for the young and the vulnerable. And even today feminists frequently argue that motherhood endows women with a special moral sensibility.” (92)
I have heard widespread reports and complaints of “the second shift,” a burden of responsibility working mothers carry for their families even in two parent/two income homes. I wrote two posts a long time ago on a book entitled All the Rage. The premise of the book was that even with mothers working comparable hours and for comparable salaries with fathers, they end up doing most of the childcare and housework while their spouses watch TV and hang out with friends in their free time. Mothers are much more dialed into the needs and schedules of their children. And I also talked about the book Taking Sex Differences Seriously in which Steven Rhoads asserts that women are so much better at nurturing children than men that they should endeavor to work no more than part-time, so that they can enjoy a healthier workload and have the energy to do the work of mothering that they do best.
Even if there is evidence to support women being superior keepers of home life, Fox-Genovese also reported conversations with the same women who were reluctant to identify as feminists that they found work outside their homes to be deeply satisfying. It would seem like there are many women who feel pulled in both directions. Is that because women are naturally more virtuous or concerned to serve others rather than themselves? Or have we simply been socialized to believe women are better nurturers of children and keepers of home so that women will do the work that men do not want to do? Do men then get to live their lives as independent agents, pursuing career dreams, optimizing their intellectual gifts and opportunities, accruing financial and political power, with sexual freedom to gratify their personal desires, all with freedom from inconvenient and bothersome familial hindrances? First Wave feminists, in the declarations at Seneca Falls in 1948, not only declared their desire for the vote, but other commensurate rights to men. Second Wave feminism went on to pursue the rest of the list. But Fox-Genovese attests to the fact that not all women want to exercise all of those rights. Maybe that is a sign of virtue. Men might, short term, be having more fun and excitement, but will that serve them well to have gained their personal aspirations but neglected their neighbor and the common good?
What if women really are more virtuous than men? Rhoads not only did research on women as nurturers, but also did research on the impact of the hook-up culture on women, finding that living with the same sexual freedoms that men have was profoundly depressing to many women, even young women. What if that is because they are more virtuous and clear-headed about what really matters in life (being faithful to one spouse and taking care of one’s family, for instance)? He proposed that if women denied sexual freedom to men by cutting off the supply of willing women for hook-ups, they had the potential to lead men into marriage and family, and have a beneficial (altruism-increasing) influence on their spouses. Women evidently feel the wrongness or emotional impact of serial uncommitted sexual partnerships, even if relatively long lasting. The Victorian-era assessment that women were more virtuous than men was evidently linked to women being more emotional. (I did not know until reading this book that there was this whole era where people at least gave lip-service to the idea that women were better than men!) Their emotional sensitivity is perhaps linked to their moral compass. So they were valuable in the reform movements of the Victorian Era. They are valuable in the home and church. (We might write more in the future about how valuable they are in the workforce.) They are valuable everywhere!
Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, I remember a TV show called “Father Knows Best.” It ran from 1954-1960, so I guess I was watching it in reruns. There was also The Andy Griffith Show, and of course, the iconic novel/movie “To Kill A Mockingbird.” The image of men through those shows was very virtuous, with no toxicity in sight, even involving single fathers. Was this a campaign to correct bad press on men from the Victorian era? Certainly none of these shows maligned the virtue of women. But they did reduce women in a way: either they were dead and the father was managing well alone, or they were once again confined to the domestic sphere. I would say shows like these ones, depicting fathers positively, became rare again as the women’s movement of the 60’s gained steam. We seem to ricochet back and forth between exalting the virtues of women and exalting the virtues of men. Surely we can find ways to honor both men and women simultaneously!
If all this talk of women’s virtue is just a thinly veiled ruse to overload women with responsibility for the well-being of others, that truly is not fair. But I nevertheless want to accept the compliment and leverage it. I don’t want to turn my back on this oft-observed difference between men and women, and be so quick to try to gain for women all the often self-centered privileges of men. Has this fallen world afforded to men more temptation in the form of power, so that their virtue is periodically less visible to us? Is enough attention being given to the virtues of men, because motherhood has been romanticized at the same time as women’s grievances have gained momentum and credibility? In my heart of hearts, I believe women and men have some different virtues, strengths and weaknesses. In their shared humanity they also manifest many of the same virtues, strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, women and men are not generic representatives of their gender but individuals gifted by God for service to humanity. They should shoulder the load together of nurturing families, being salt and light in a needy world and responsibly getting the housework done, whether it’s the housework of the nuclear family, the church family or world at large. Perhaps by having that kind of “team” mentality, we can not only serve the collective which needs our service, but also promote a greater care for the servants/teammates themselves, showing respect for the beautiful diversity of talents individual women and men have to offer the world.
Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective To The Evangelical Gender Debate. By Michelle Lee-Barnewall. Baker Publishing Group, 2016
“Feminism Is NOT The Story Of My Life:” How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch With The Real Concerns Of Women. By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Doubleday, 1996.
Harrison Butker’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JS7RIKSaCc