Dis-Obedient Women (Sarah Stankorb) - Review
It is well known—or it should be
well known—that most religious traditions are patriarchal. The assumption is that men should lead, and
women follow/submit to their leadership. If you're old enough maybe you
remember (or have seen on nostalgic TV channels) the 1950s show Father Knows
Best. It's a theme that runs through history. While the version of
patriarchalism that was featured on TV seemed rather benign, in reality, it can
be quite dangerous. Rape, abuse, and more serious violence have all been excused
because men are more believable than women, or so we've been told. Religion,
including Christianity, has tended to reinforce this message. Consider the
words found in the New Testament that tell us that women should be silent in
the church (1 Cor. 14) or that women should not teach or have authority over
men (1 Tim 2:11-15). The passage from 1 Timothy 2 has been used to instill in
women the belief that because Eve sinned, a woman needs to stay home and have
babies so that she might be saved. Apparently, grace is for males only since women
need to have babies if they’re going to be saved.
Things have begun to change in
recent years, at least in the larger society and in some faith communities (my
denomination has been led by two women for the past eighteen years), but there
are still many Christian traditions that forbid women from taking leadership in
the church (though women can teach other women and perhaps children, at least
until they reach a certain age. However, please do not call them pastors—so the
Southern Baptist Convention has ruled). The message that is still being
broadcast in some circles is that women should submit to the male head. That
could be one’s father, husband, or pastor (who is male). With this male-female
hierarchy in place, is it any surprise that we’re seeing a strong authoritarian
trend circulating in our social context? This trend has its roots in extremely
conservative religious communities. While we’re seeing a resurgence of
patriarchalism in our society, at least a few women who have experienced this
kind of religiously inspired patriarchalism and authoritarianism have stood up and
said no more. They have been tagged as Disobedient Women. Their story
has been told by Sarah Stankorb in her book Dis-Obedient Women.
Sarah Stankorb is a journalist who
has been studying the above-mentioned trends for some time. She began her
research by discovering blogs where "disobedient women" revealed
horrific stories of rape, abuse, authoritarianism, and the religious
underpinnings of these experiences. Stankorb brings to the conversation
undergraduate and graduate degrees in religion, along with her experience as a
journalist. Regarding her journalistic experience, she has focused her
attention on the intersection of religion, politics, gender, and power. We see
this background on display as she explores the stories of women who have stood
up to authoritarian religion and revealed its dark side to a wider public. As
she tells these stories, she weaves in her own experiences growing up with an
abusive father and her attempts to find solace in her faith. As for her own
faith situation, she admits that it's complicated.
Stankorb shares with us that over
the years, her "imagination, my workday, has been consumed by people who
suffered much more than having disappointing Scripture quoted at them. They
were abused by their church or pastor, or by their family justifying harm as
Christlike and necessary" (p. 3). We meet these women and some men, but
mostly women, whom Stankorb first met online. In this book and earlier magazine
articles, she reveals their stories. I wish I could say that I found the
contents of the book shocking, but I can't. I witnessed some of the things she
reveals during my own life and even bought into the message as a young male
caught up in conservative evangelicalism. Her discussions of Bill Gothard and
his influence on conservative Christian communities brought to mind old
memories. While I wasn’t shocked by what I read, I did learn a great deal from
her revelations about some of the deeper dimensions of the ultra-conservative
Christianity represented by people like Gothard, James Dobson, and Jerry
Falwell.
When it comes to the sources on
which Stankorb bases this book, her work began with reading blogs where women
revealed their personal stories of abuse and worse. After reading these blogs,
she began to contact the women so she could gain even better insight into their
experiences. After doing her research, Stankorb began putting together a book
that would tell these stories to the broader public. Considering the increasing
embrace of authoritarianism in the United States and elsewhere (Victor Orban in
Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia to name but two examples of figures some
religious and political conservatives in the United States want to emulate), this
book will help the public better understand why and how this populist
authoritarianism is taking hold in the United States. People like Josh Hawley
and Donald Trump are simply embracing an ideology present in conservative
religious communities that have been influenced by the teachings of people like
Gothard and Dobson, as well as the patriarchalism found in conservative
denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention.
Stankorb divides the twenty-one
chapters of Dis-Obedient Women into nine sections. She begins the book
with a section titled "Womb-Man." In the first of two chapters in
this section, Stankorb shares information about a movement known as
"Quiverfull." This movement teaches that women must marry and bear as
many children as possible (ever hear about the Duggar family?). She reveals who
the teachers are and their message, as well as the implications. The second
chapter titled "The Daughters," tells the stories of how this idea
was transferred to daughters, largely through homeschooling. In other words,
parents prepared their daughters to follow their example and bear as many
children as possible. As we hear the stories of the wives and daughters caught
up in this movement, we quickly begin to see signs of hypocrisy, as Christian
leaders engaged in sexual predation, using their authority over their
communities and families. It’s all rather ugly and the movement grounds itself
in conservative Christian theology.
The next section, titled "The
Evangelical Pope." This section offers three chapters detailing the religious
empire of Bill Gothard and his message of living under the patriarchal
"Umbrella of Protection." These three chapters and others in the book
brought back memories of my exposure to Gothard’s “ministry” back in the 1970s
and the early 80s. Back when I was introduced to Gothard his organization and
platform was called "the Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts." I
attended two of his multi-day seminars that filled the basketball arena at the
University of Oregon. I had my red binder with all the materials, where we
learned all about God's "umbrella of protection," where the
father/husband served as the stand-in for God, holding God's umbrella
protecting wives and children. His teaching influenced many who wholeheartedly embraced
his principles of life. While he portrayed himself as an exemplar of the godly
life, as time went on that saintly aura began to tarnish as it became known
that he had strange proclivities. We learn here some of those proclivities, as
Stankorb reveals the stories of those caught up in Gothard’s web of influence.
Apparently, Gothard had a thing for young, usually blonde, girls whom he
essentially groomed for his sexual pleasure. It doesn't appear that he had
sexual relations with them, but he liked to play footsies and put his hands in
places he shouldn’t. It's all horrific, but even worse is that he influenced so
many Christians who embraced his teachings with tragic consequences.
After hearing these stories,
Stankorb offers three chapters under the section title "The
Unsilenced." She writes in Chapter 6, which is titled "Compendium of
the Accused," that "when girls are taught 'Biblical womanhood'
equates with purity and submission, they are trained to feel responsible for
protecting men from their allegedly God-ordained sexual appetites—dress
modestly, avoid front-to-front hugs, vow virginity until marriage—but also
obliged to yield to authority figures: their pastors, fathers, men. Through one
lens, they are delicate, precious. But through another, easy prey" (p.
69). We read in these three chapters about numerous cases where men, often
pastors and youth ministers, used their authority to force women to have sex
with them and then used this same religious authority to silence them. While
many have remained silent, other women who were abused, stood up and shared
their stories. The willingness of these women to tell their stories took great
courage as they were often ostracized by their faith communities and even
families for speaking up.
The next section explores movements
that emphasize divine sovereignty and how that emphasis has worked out in
practice through patriarchal teachings. In these two chapters, we encounter the
ministry of C.J. Mahaney which goes by the name “Sovereign Grace Ministries.” In
these two chapters, we encounter how a conservative Reformed/Calvinist
tradition that emphasizes submission to pastoral authority serves as the
foundation for a narrow patriarchalism and its impact. When it comes to this
movement, we see how its teachings led to spiritual manipulation, abuse, and
cover-up among leaders and followers influenced by Mahaney’s teachings. It
should be noted that Mahaney was involved in the patriarchalist/complementarian
organization Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization founded
by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. Mahaney was also connected to Al Mohler of
Southern Baptist Seminary.
Unfortunately, there is more to
come. In a section titled Anonymous but Not Invisible,” we encounter a set of
chapters that reveal the dark side of the homeschooling movement and for the
first time the teachings of James Dobson. Dobson seemed rather benign at first.
After all, he was a professor at a prestigious medical school and author of a book
on discipline and parenting that seemed to be based on secular psychological
theories (with a dash of the Bible). Of course, I should have seen the problems
when I first encountered him, but he was so popular. In these two chapters, we
see the effects of Dobson's teachings on corporal punishment and controlling strong-willed
children as well as revealing major problems that emerged within the homeschool
movement. Thus, we encounter stories told through blogs like Homeschool
Anonymous that reveal how young people were manipulated and oppressed. In
telling their stories through blogs like Homeschool Anonymous, these
disobedient women challenged a “religious movement that was not so quietly
reshaping our country.” Therefore, they wanted “the rest of us to see the
danger they knew intimately” (p. 147). Now, Stankorb is making their stories
known to an even larger audience.
We’re not finished yet. Perhaps
you've heard about the “Purity” movement within conservative Christianity,
where "true love waits" and dating is kissed bye. In this movement, we
again see the kind of patriarchalism instilled by people like Bill Gothard. We
read here about women, who as young girls were taught to be pure, wear their
purity rings, and then ended up being sexually abused by religious leaders who
used their authority over them and then cast them aside as damaged goods. Besides
learning of the “Purity” movement that took root in conservative churches, we are
introduced to the "Me Too Movement" that emerged within Christian
communities, which helped bring to light the effects on women that we’ve been reading
about up to his point. Thus, in this section titled “True Love and Side Hugs” we
read about women who were raped by church leaders and then ignored or
disbelieved by authorities. Maybe you’ve read about the problems of sexual
harassment and assault that have been revealed as taking place among pastors
and leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention along with the mishandling
of the reports that began to emerge. Once again, the dark side of
patriarchalism is revealed.
The penultimate section of the book
is titled "Whose Dominion?" The focus here is on a leading figure in
Christian Nationalism, a man named Doug Wilson, whose church, school, and
seminary, located in Moscow, Idaho, has all the problematic marks of the
patriarchalism we’ve already read about. Once again we see in Wilson’s
teachings an emphasis on patriarchy, along with submission to authorities
whether fathers, husbands, or pastors. In other words, we see the religious
foundations of the authoritarianism that is creeping into American society. Stankorb
shows us how Wilson’s teachings led to sexual abuse within that community and
in other churches influenced by Wilson's teachings. We also once again encounter
figures such as John Piper, who offer similar teachings. One of the items
discussed here is the teaching of Wilson and his wife that wives are to
"cultivate a sort of lovely garden for their husbands and 'of course, a
husband is never trespassing in his own garden'" (p. 213). In other words,
men can demand sex from their wives whenever they wish, and wives must submit. In
this teaching forced sexual relations within marriage are not considered rape.
Of course, women are responsible for keeping their husbands faithful, because
men can't control their sexual appetites. So, if they don’t service their
husbands, they’ll go elsewhere. Other teachings accompany these teachings that
are not gender-related but are connected to a growing Christian nationalist
movement. Thus, we also read about the church's resistance/defiance of pandemic
restrictions and support for such things as the January 6th insurrection. What
we see here is various forms of what is known as dominionism; an ideology that
teaches Christians to take dominion over all forms of society including the
government (we see this taking place at all levels of government beginning with
school boards). As part of this effort to take dominion over society,
Christians are being taught that if they have enough babies, keep them out of
public schools, and mobilize strategically, they can take control of society and
impose biblical law (theonomy) on society. The ironic thing is that many who
warn against the institution of Shariah (Islamic law) are the biggest
proponents of dominionism. The takeaway from this section is that
patriarchalism takes many forms, and among those who are revealing the reach of
its tentacles are women like those whose stories are being told in Dis-Obedient Women.
The final section of Stankorb’s
book is composed of two chapters. The section is titled "The Rewards of
(Dis)-Obedience." In these final two chapters of Dis-Obedient Women, Stankorb
reveals some of the impact that the women who resisted and disobeyed have had. Among
the stories told here is the departure of evangelical Bible teacher Beth Moore
from the SBC because she was treated so horribly by male SBC leaders, despite
her popularity as a bible teacher. We read about the efforts to hold SBC
leadership accountable, along with a report on sexual abuse within the SBC
among pastors and youth leaders. While this is still ongoing and efforts have
been made to bury the report, the fact that this abuse has come to light is a
step forward. We’re reminded again of the stories of women who stood up, spoke
up, and revealed the underside of patriarchal religious movements that lend
themselves to abuse and oppression. Stankorb concludes the final chapter by
noting that "They were called disobedient, Jezebel, Satan's mistress,
while they tried to protect others. From them, I learned a vital lesson:
Disobedience is not wrong when you defy those doing harm. It might be the thing
that saves the rest of us in the end" (p. 265).
In Dis-Obedient Women, journalist
Sarah Stankorb has woven stories together that reveal the dark underside of a
significant portion of conservative Christianity. Some of us will recognize
many of the players in this story, especially those of us exposed to people
like Bill Gothard. I look back at that time in my life and the influence Gothard
had on the churches I was involved in. It sounded so “biblical.” Gothard had a
proof text for every “principle” that he espoused. If you are of the right
mindset that embraces biblical literalism, then you might be susceptible to
such teachings. I remember how the leaders of the church I served as a youth
minister when I came out of college used Gothard’s materials for men's
ministries and pastoral leadership. I even attended Gothard’s pastor’s
conference. I remember how my female friends were told that they were
responsible for the behavior of guys like me. Yes, I have encountered in
various forms at least some of the teachings and ideas revealed here. I
embraced some of them at certain points in my life. So, I understand how they
can take root and influence movements beyond the church. It’s important to
remember that Christian nationalism has been present within conservative
Christianity for a very long time (it once had roots in more liberal churches
also).
I believe that Sarah Stankorb, in
writing Dis-Obedient Women has done a great service because she reveals the
dangers of authoritarian religion. That authoritarianism, which takes various
forms in our society, is rooted in the teachings of people like Bill Gothard,
C.J. Mahaney, James Dobson, and Doug Wilson, among others. So, if you want to
know what the implications of authoritarian forms of religion are, just read
this book. It is truly eye-opening.
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