The Bible and Women — Patriarchy, Power, and the Stories the Church Often Skips
Critics call the Bible irredeemably patriarchal. Some Christians defend it by ignoring the parts that make them uneasy. This plan does neither. It walks through the actual stories of women in Scripture — including the violent and uncomfortable ones — and asks what kind of revolution Jesus and the New Testament writers were actually starting in a deeply patriarchal world.
Few accusations against Scripture are repeated more often than the charge that it is hopelessly patriarchal. There are violent stories that make the charge seem fair — Hagar driven into the desert, Tamar raped by her brother, the unnamed concubine in Judges 19, the silencing texts in the epistles. There are also stories the church habitually under-tells: Deborah leading the nation, Mary's revolutionary song, Priscilla teaching Apollos, the women who funded Jesus's ministry and were the first to see him risen.
This plan refuses both the dismissive reading ("the Bible is anti-woman") and the sanitized one ("the Bible has no problem with how women are treated"). It reads the stories as they are — the dignity, the violence, the patriarchal assumptions of the ancient world, the moments where the biblical authors are clearly subverting those assumptions, and the Jesus who broke them open in ways the church has often failed to live up to.
What to Expect
Twelve days through Scripture's most consequential, uncomfortable, and revolutionary stories about women. N.T. Wright on what was actually radical about Jesus and the early church on this subject. Augustine — for all his complicated history — on dignity and the image of God. Tim Keller's careful pastoral work on gender, abuse, and what the gospel demands of men. We let the texts say what they say, including when they make us flinch.
Who This Plan Is For
For women whose questions about the Bible's treatment of women have not been taken seriously enough by the church, and for men who have never had to ask the question. For anyone who suspects the truth is more complex — and more demanding — than either the dismissal or the defense.