GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

feminism

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With the Bible, one little word can stir a ruckus and, thus, produce a news story

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With the Bible, one little word can stir a ruckus and, thus, produce a news story

Here’s an intriguing story taken from religious Internet sites that has yet to reach any mainstream media, at least that The Guy has seen.

It’s a feminist-hued fuss over the English Standard Version (ESV), which ranks No. 3 in U.S. Bible sales behind the venerable King James Version and the New International Version. And no, we're not talking about that long-running argument over replacing singular pronouns in the biblical texts with “gender inclusive” plural pronouns.

In August the ESV’s publisher, Crossway, announced 52 word changes for a 2016 second edition.

Journalists will want to know that the most important concerns God’s curse upon sinful Eve in Genesis 3:16. The original ESV (duplicating the Revised Standard Version) says “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

The 2016 rewrite has “your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

This shift involves one little word, the Hebrew pronoun ‘el, which has a primary meaning of “to, unto, or toward.” Instead, the ESV translators (all male, all conservative) used the secondary meaning of “against,” which is archaic though some scholars find it acceptable if the context fits. Here it indicates rebellious women. Shall we say uppity?

One vigorous critic of the change is Scot McKnight of Northern Seminary. He says the change teaches that humanity’s sinful Fall in Eden caused women’s “desire to rule or dominate” and “usurp men’s authority,” which challenged God’s design in which the male is to rule the woman.

The original ESV leaves room for the interpretation favored by McKnight and others, that God’s statement is not a “prescriptive” command but is “descriptive” of what human sin produces, with the man seeking rule over the woman. Says McKnight, “This is not what God wants; but this is what will happen.” He wants Crossway to immediately restore the previous wording. Here's another useful article on similar lines.

All of this has been fused with a second issue.


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RNS looks at 'new' Jewish Institute for women priests -- but not closely enough

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I get it – we've all been there, all of us newspaper religion writers. Holidays come up, and our editor demands something besides the "same old same old." So we reach for the new and bizarre.

So it's understandable when the Religion News Service used Yom Kippur, which Jews observed on Wednesday, for a look at the Hebrew Priestess Institute, even though the institute is a decade old.

Still, why simply hand the mike to its boosters?

The institute is about as non-traditional as they come, as the article quickly establishes: dancing, beating a drum, sitting in a circle, placing women's pictures on the altar, praying to the "divine feminine." And, of course, ordaining women as priests – something that would arch many Jewish eyebrows. But RNS offers only the slightest hint that not everyone buys into this approach.

That approach gets a loud, clear hearing in the article. Rabbi Jill Hammer, co-founder of the institute, wants to "re-imagine the role of a holy woman, an intermediary between the human and the divine who is part prophet, liturgist, shaman":

For inspiration, this Jewish priestess movement looks to biblical women such as Miriam, Moses’ sister, who drums and sings, and Deborah, the judge who held court beneath a palm tree.
It also embraces those ancient Israelite women who worshipped fertility goddesses condemned by the prophets, as well as modern teachings from various Earth-based religions with their healers and ritualists.
This Yom Kippur, as Jews crowd synagogues for the Day of Atonement, some women will gather in a circle for a mix of prayers, chants, songs and meditations — all of which incorporate references to the divine feminine – sometimes known in the Jewish mystical tradition as the Shekhinah.

Institute students are introduced to 13 women’s "archetypes" of leaders, including prophetess, witch and fool. Some participants refer not to God but the Goddess. And Jill Hammer and cofounder Taya Shere use artifacts like stones and divination cards in worship.


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Schlafly was hated by cultural left, which means her obits featured classic, 50-50 reporting

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If you want to learn how to write obituaries about controversial figures, all you need to do is pay close attention to articles written about leaders on the cultural and moral right. They are sure to include a 50-50 mix (or close to it) of warm quotes from the person's supporters and stinging attacks from critics.

This is not the approach that one sees when a controversial figure dies on the cultural left. If Gloria Steinem died today, one would see obituaries packed with tributes, stacked up against one or two (at most) quotes from her many critics. Most of all, the story would emphasize – as it should – her many victories in life, the times when she spoke out and was proven right.

We can leave all of that to another day, since, in this case, we are talking about the death of Phyllis Schlafly. That means we are looking at classic, 50-50 journalism about a figure who was truly and utterly loathed by the left and, thus, by most journalists and pundits. By the way, it's wise to avoid glancing at Twitter, where can find a wide and deep river of acidic speculations on the left about how Schlafly will fare in the afterlife.

But consider the top of The Washington Post obituary, which includes a highly ironic summary paragraph:

Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist, lawyer and author who is credited with almost single-handedly stopping the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and who helped move the Republican Party toward the right on family and religious issues, died Monday at her home in St. Louis. She was 92.
Her daughter, Anne Cori, said Mrs. Schlafly had been ill with cancer for some time.
A champion of traditional, stay-at-home roles for women, Mrs. Schlafly opposed the ERA because she believed it would open the door to same-sex marriage, abortion, the military draft for women, co-ed bathrooms and the end of labor laws that barred women from dangerous workplaces.

The Post team offered that list without comment. It would have been easy to find scholars and pundits willing to note that most of Schlafly's wild predictions don't sound quite as crazy these days.


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Press missed this detail? Pat Summitt took a very timely walk into the waters of baptism

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During the 20-plus years that I taught a basic journalism class, I asked my students what I thought was a simple question during my lecture on strategies in beat reporting, including sports. The goal was to get them to think about the impact of one of the high commandments of the news business: All news is local.

In other words, you don't just cover news stories. You strive to cover stories with unique hooks into the lives and interests of your own, local readers. Thus, I would ask: If you were a reporter who wanted to specialize in covering women's basketball, where would you rather work – Atlanta (or some other big market) or Knoxville, Tenn.?

For decades the answer was obvious. You needed to work in Knoxville, because of two words – Pat Summitt.

As you would imagine, the media here in East Tennessee have been offering wall-to-wall coverage in the wake of the Tuesday morning death of the 64-year-old Summitt, who many consider the greatest basketball coach of all time, male or female. At the very least, the czarina of the Lady Vols was to the women's game what the great John Wooden of UCLA was to men's college hoops. Truth is, Summitt changed the whole world of women's sports.

I thought I knew quite a bit about Summitt and the challenges of her amazing life. Then a saw the tribute story at Baptist Press. Yes, Baptist Press.

It included a timely detail from her life that I had not seen in the local and national coverage. It's especially stunning that this detail – yes, it's a religion ghost – was not included in Knoxville coverage.

All news is local, you know, and just a few years ago Knoxville was named No. 1 in a poll of "Bible-minded cities" in the United States (and it's currently No. 11).

The key passage, starting with a quote just before she died:


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Will Catholicism admit women deacons or deaconesses to ranks of ordained clergy?

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Will Catholicism admit women deacons or deaconesses to ranks of ordained clergy?

THE QUESTION:

What are the reasons the Catholic Church might, or might not, ordain women in the clerical rank of deacon? (Almost all Q and A topics are posted by our online audience, but The Guy decided to pose this timely question himself.)

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Catholicism’s long-simmering discussion about whether to ordain women into the clerical ranks as “permanent deacons” took a dramatic turn May 12 when Pope Francis said he’ll form a commission to study the issue. His promise came during seemingly off-the-cuff answers to questions during a Rome session with the International Union of Superiors General, whose members lead nearly 500,000 nuns and sisters in religious orders.

Without doubt, female deacons would be a major change. Liberals hope — and conservatives fear — that permitting women to be deacons would be a step toward allowing female priests. However, that’s a distant prospect if not an impossibility considering Pope John Paul II’s absolute prohibition in his 1994 apostolic letter “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.”

To explain that term “permanent diaconate”: The order of deacons in the early church gradually dwindled over centuries so that eventually ordination as a “deacon” became a mere stepping-stone for men on the path to priesthood. (That usage occurs in Anglican and Episcopal churches. Lutheran deacons, male and female, fill a permanent office, not a temporary one. Baptists use the deacon title for lay members who govern congregations with the pastor.)

Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council (1962-65) restored the “permanent diaconate” as a third, separate and ongoing ministerial order in its own right that is subordinate to priests and bishops. Particularly in North America, which has half the world total, such deacons help ameliorate the shortage of priests.


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Time sounds alarm on young men and porn, while leaving religion out of the picture

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Long, long ago, I had a conversation with some religion-beat professionals about media bias, which is a tricky subject, to say the least.

The world is, alas, full of religious conservatives who automatically want to assume that all journalists basically hate believers in all traditional forms of religion. That's way too simplistic, of course, as I have tried to explain for decades when speaking in a wide range of settings – including religious colleges, think tanks and gatherings of mainstream journalists. This piece from The Quill – "Religion and the News Media: Have our biases fatally wounded our coverage?" – covers the basics.

However, this circle of Godbeat pros was talking about the worst cases that we were seeing of slanted journalism. We are talking about cases in which it was clear that editors had crossed the line between advocacy journalism and old-school reporting that stressed accuracy, balance and respect for the beliefs of people on both sides of hot-button subjects.

Was there a kind of journalistic Grand Unified Theory of Everything, when it came to explaining these really ugly cases? What was the thread that ran through them? A colleague from the West Coast eventually ended the silence with this blunt statement: "The Religious Right must lose."

Let me stress that we were talking about the very small number of media-bias cases in which it appeared that outright prejudice was at work. On the religion beat, in recent decades, these almost always have something to do with clashes between the Sexual Revolution and traditional forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Believe it or not, this brings me – taking a rather roundabout route – to that recent Time magazine cover story on pornography (which is locked behind a paywall). Now, one would think think that a newsweekly taking the destructive powers of porn seriously would be a victory for groups preaching a conservative view of sex (and, of course, for consistent feminists who take a similar stance for different reasons).

The team at Time deals with that angle, in one sentence.


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New York Times (#saywhat) interrupts papal tour for a dash of 'Da Vinci Code'

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After a shallow and at times confusing dip into church history and the theological clout of Vladimir Putin – coverage of the summit of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow – the mainstream press has returned to its comfort zone with full-scale papal tour coverage.

As always, most journalists seem to think that the key to covering a papal tour, especially during the Francis era, is to stress whatever the pope says about social justice and politics, while ignoring almost everything he says about Christian faith on other topics. Thus, the papal tour is all about immigration and the need for Catholic bishops to face the real lives of the poor and these important and valid themes are not framed – in Francis style – with appeals for confession, repentance, mercy, evangelization and truly radical grace.

In other words, journalists tend to offer wall-to-wall social gospel with as little Gospel as possible. Pope Francis, of course, is a both-and kind of spiritual father.

However, in one of these stories – "Francis Admonishes Bishops in Mexico to ‘Begin Anew’ " – the news team at the New York Times decided to push beyond this kind of ordinary papal tour editing and add a dash of actual heresy.

First, ponder this question: What does the Catholic Church teach about Mary, the mother of Jesus? This is a huge subject and one that confuses many people, both inside and outside the church. When in doubt, check the Catechism.

Suffice it to say, there are people who – hearing phrases such as "Mother of God" (a statement supporting the divinity and humanity of Jesus) – accuse the ancient churches of trying to edit Mary into a new wing of the Holy Trinity, turning her into some kind of goddess. With that in mind, ponder this passage in that Times report:


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Peace with the aging prog-nuns: Who gets to correct them and about what?

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So one of the big stories of the day is this: Did the progressive nuns on the buses win or not?

I would argue that the key to reading the coverage today is linked to two other questions. The key, looking at the stories in the elite publications, is whether these other questions are even asked.

First, what was the dispute actually about? Do the stories contain any reference to the doctrinal issues involved and, especially, was any attempt made to describe them?

Second, did the discussions about what to do with women religious actually move back into the shadows of Vatican and episcopal oversight life, rather than being out in the glare of mass-media who were openly cheering for the progressives? In other words, do the stories mention the small hints in the Vatican actions – aside from the glowing Pope Francis photo-op – that this story is not over?

OK, third question: Did some Vatican officials simply decide that these religious orders are aging and dying anyway, so why have a war when demographics will settle the issue?

The Los Angeles Times story is a good place to start, in that it signals its bias right up front, ignores the doctrinal substance, yet also – by quoting candid liberals – signals that some prog-nuns are still worried. What does that look like? In the lede, note that the investigation was "controversial" while the content of the orders' theological innovations were not.


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Modern Girl Scouts for a modern age: What about God, country and great outdoors?

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The red numbers in a recent Associated Press report on the life and health of the Girl Scouts are pretty blunt. It's rare, these days, to see these kinds of crunch paragraphs right at the top of a report – literally.

For the second straight year, youth and adult membership in the Girl Scouts has dropped sharply, intensifying pressure on the 102-year-old youth organization to find ways of reversing the trend.
According to figures provided to The Associated Press, the total of youth members and adult volunteers dropped by 6 percent over the past year – from 2,994,844 to 2,813,997. Over two years, total membership is down 11.6 percent, and it has fallen 27 percent from a peak of more than 3.8million in 2003.
While the Girl Scouts of the USA have had an array of recent internal difficulties – including rifts over programming and serious fiscal problems – CEO Anna Maria Chavez attributed the membership drop primarily to broader societal factors that have affected many youth-serving organizations.

In other words, how do you keep them down on the farm (or at a campground) digging in the dirt (even when the goal is to earn environmental badges) after they have seen edgy fashion sites on their smart phones and tablet computers?


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