FEMI-COMMUNISM: PART THREE
By Harmony Daws
13 Oct 10
On a spiritual level, it takes little imagination to see the way feminism has reshaped the American church. Many pastors have volunteered for the virtual castration of their leadership, favoring feminine, social values over truth and hard-line holiness. Today (as discussed in Rev. Ted Pike’s recent e-alerts), pastors choose to protect people’s feelings and accommodate their desire for feel-good sermons rather than speak the whole truth about how the gospel applies to the great moral issues of our age. Evangelicals have also compromised their theology to accommodate the single most important political tool of feminism: no fault divorce.
We rarely hear Him described this way, but Christ is the ultimate alpha male in the old-fashioned sense. He is the penultimate patriarch. During His life on earth, Christ was supremely unaffected by the emotions or responses of those around Him. He never tailored his words or actions in order to avoid their silent treatment or their hurt feelings. In an unthinkable affront to the feminine, He denied His own mother when she came to see Him, saying, “‘Who is my mother and who is my brother?’ And He stretched out his hand to his disciples and said, ‘Behold, my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my mother and brother and sister.” (Matthew 12:48-50) With the noblest characteristics of the male, Christ epitomized breadth of vision, heroism, protectiveness, faithfulness and initiative.
Unfortunately modern pastors resemble Him less and less in this. The feminizing of the church means pastors are manipulated by the emotions and responses of their listeners. They are spiritually castrated by loyalty to people’s approval. This prevents them from speaking the whole truth about a host of issues. Just 38 percent of American Protestants think it is acceptable for their pastors to preach about politics. My sister Liberty Pike, a speaker for Oregon Right to Life, is denied to speak about abortion in churches by nine out of ten pastors, fearing controversy.
Pressing moral issues about which pastors are often silent include the anti-feminism of Christ. Jesus and the epistles are very clear about the patriarchal way that society should be structured. Moreover, the New Testament gives specific instruction about the areas feminism has most revolutionized: divorce, reproduction, sexuality and gender. The modern American church holds firm to a few of these areas, generally disapproving of abortion, gender reversals and sexual immorality. Yet it has capitulated on the one thing that has most transformed the modern American family and, with it, society: divorce.
Prior to the sixties, it wasn’t enough to simply fall out love with your spouse. To obtain a legal divorce, you had to prove that someone had substantively broken the marriage vows. The law was similar in Canada. Prior to 1968, you couldn’t divorce without proving infidelity or cruelty.
But by late 1983, all but two states had enacted no-fault divorce laws. Couples could divorce without any proof of wrong-doing. Perhaps more significantly, divorce could be accomplished unilaterally—one spouse could simply divorce the other, with or without their consent. As of October 2010, unilateral no-fault divorce is legal in every single state. As I stated in part two of this series, women initiate at least two-thirds of all American divorces. And most of the time, it is against the husband’s will! Divorce attorney David Chambers says, “91 percent of women who have divorced say they made the decision to divorce, not their husbands.” (Making Fathers Pay, 1979)
There is very little weight to a legal contract which one person can break, at any time, without consequence, without the other person’s consent. Such a legal contract is virtually meaningless.
Alas, the religious contract of marriage has become equally meaningless. Since pastors are willing to remarry divorced people who divorced without just cause, the church has accepted the debased standards of the state, making its blessings, too, meaningless. There is no more weight to the words, “What God has joined, let no man separate.” The marriage contract means little more than an agreement to have lunch at a steakhouse; one person can break the date without just cause, without the other person’s consent, without any consequence. This is acceptable, though impolite, when we’re talking about lunches. But when the topic is marriage—the one thing most central to the well-being of innocent children—the consequences are far more dire to any civil society.
Jesus is firmly against no fault divorce—both because of its damage to innocent children and also because marriage is meant to represent our spiritual union with Him.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19)
It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5)
According to Jesus, not even cruelty, abuse or neglect can free a Christian to remarry (although they absolutely free a Christian to separate geographically or even divorce before the state). Only death or adultery gives license for remarriage. Because this is taught and believed in my church, my husband and I have powerful incentive to make our marriage agreeable, kind and affectionate. Every disagreement is tempered by the knowledge that we are “stuck” for life, truly for better or worse. Christ’s strict requirement of lifelong marriage for the believer has enriched our marriage in ways an adherent to no fault divorce will never experience.
Yet our church is unusual in this respect. Most pastors—both Protestant and Catholic—routinely perform marriage ceremonies for divorced individuals, regardless of whether they meet Christ’s narrow criterion for remarriage. This is just one of the many areas where church leaders have accepted feminism (and made room for sin) and thus further enabled the disintegration of Christian culture, endangered the futures of the next generation, and allowed wreckage of the very fabric of our society: the family.
A return to authentic Christian patriarchy will in no way resemble the iron fist rule of many Mideast societies—just as America one-hundred and fifty years ago didn’t resemble Saudi Arabia. Christ commands men to “love their wives” and to not “provoke their children” just as He commands women to reverence their husband’s authority, the unmarried to remain celibate and spouses to remain faithful for life. Christ knows that human beings, male or female, will naturally use others for selfish gain, unless His Spirit enables us to be transformed into spiritual beings that live in self-sacrificing love. Spiritual love is the only true solution to conflict between the genders, the races, economic classes or any segments of society.
I began this series by doubting whether women should have the right to vote. This is now a moot point, and women must vote. But we should vote at last for what is truly in our interests and those of our loved ones: for laws that support families, marriages and Christian freedom— for repeal of abortion on demand, no fault unilateral divorce and misandry-ridden family law. Joint physical custody should be the default result of divorces, which would cause a drastic decline in divorce rates. (Divorce rates drop four times faster in joint-custody states than in states where joint custody is rare.) I also pray for a growing awareness of the Jewish Marxist cultural roots of the second-wave feminist movement.
Above all I pray for Christian patriarchs—fathers, pastors, brothers and husbands—who will help restore authentic Christianity in their families and churches by boldly speaking against immoral divorce, abortion, non-marital sex and the great social evils of our day, without regard to anyone’s hurt feelings.
Surveying the present state of our nation, our feelings deserve to be hurt. I’m sure God’s are.
Listen to Harmony's Bible study 10-11-11 "Femi-Communism: Feminism, Divorce and the Church" available at Truthtellers.org's Biblical Answers page.
Harmony
Daws is a writer for National
Prayer Network. To greater understand
the illogic behind hate laws, read
her article “Top
Eleven Reasons You Should Fight
Hate Laws.”
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog organization.
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