[This entry is an assignment for David Scholer's course entitled "Women, the Bible, and the Church." We were to summarize and reflect critically and personally upon Osiek's text. Michelle Baker Wright is the TA and I have included a couple of her comments on my assignment.]

As its title suggests, Carolyn Osiek’s Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in the Church is concerned with women who are committed to the church, but who need to deal with their frustration regarding the church’s sexism and patriarchalism. In her words, the book is not a “personal account” (1). Nevertheless, Osiek draws from her personal experience and her knowledge of other women’s experiences in order to outline a potential journey for “angry” women in the church. Her essential statement in the book can be summarized: “Anger at the abuse is justified, but capitulation to the abusers is not” (65). According to Osiek, women need not give up their faith, even the powerful Christian symbol of the cross, because of its abuse by those in power. Indeed, they can be a key part of the church’s transformation process both personally and structurally.

The book’s first chapter highlights the initial stage in the process of transformation: “the process of awareness.” Osiek identifies the problem that society teaches women that “their most effective way of expressing themselves in the world is through a man” (9). Women are taught that they cannot perform as well as men outside the home and that, indeed, they are not allowed to try. Osiek calls this “the myth of male superiority” (10). There comes a point, however, at which women recognize their repression and realize the emptiness of the myth. Upon this realization, the woman reinterprets the events of her life, big and small, which reveal her oppression by male superiority. The natural response to this new-found awareness is anger. The anger is not inappropriate and it must not be repressed, for repressed anger leads to depression. Anger, however, is not the final resting place. In order to deal with this anger, the woman must go into the depths of her being and come to an impasse. This impasse is where she wrestles with the meaning of her “‘dual membership’ in the world of church and that of feminism” (23). “The way out [of this impasse] is the way through” (24), but Osiek’s description of that breakthrough awaits a later chapter.

In her second chapter, Osiek develops something of a typology of coping responses for women in these situations. First off, she acknowledges that many women can easily just “give up” on their faith and leave the church. Her concern in this book, however, is for those women who decide to stay and try to work out this challenge from within the church. Osiek introduces her five types with personal experiences of specific women for each case. She then describes the “marginalist” as one who hides on the sidelines of the church with her anger. The “loyalist” raises questions from within the church, but does so “quietly and loyally” (30). The “symbolist” concentrates her attention on the feminine characteristics of God, but is in danger of advocating superiority of the feminine over the masculine. Similar to the “symbolist,” the “revisionist” looks to reinterpret the faith. She looks to what positive things women have done in the past and advocates for the possibility of change in the present. The most radical of the types is the “liberationist,” who believes in the conversion of society, but picks and chooses which Scriptural texts are revelatory. While her descriptions are fairly tightly defined, she admits in the end of this chapter that no woman will fit only within one type, but any woman “with some kind of feminist consciousness” will “find resonances with her own experience here and there among the alternatives” (43). Osiek does not explicitly endorse any type above the others.

These coping methods are “holding patterns” (44), while the aware woman awaits her breakthrough, which is the topic of the third chapter. In order to get through their impasse, these women must find a “new way of seeing” reality. In that vein, Osiek outlines the conversions that must take place. We must get to a place where the past is not our concentration, but rather the present and future. As for institutional conversion in the church, it must be both intellectual and spiritual. There must also be personal conversion, however, and she specifically points to the need of conversion in women. Similar to institutional conversion, women must also have a spiritual and intellectual conversion to come to their new way of seeing, but they must also have a moral conversion. Osiek identifies the primary sin of women to be “the sin of passivity, of acquiescence in oppression” (49). The woman must recognize her own power, but in tension with this, her spiritual conversion includes the need for true humility. Women must love her “enemies” and refuse to take vengeance. She must find the strength to remain vulnerable. These conversions can then lead to the transformation of both women and the structure of the church.

Osiek’s last chapter concentrates on the tricky paradox of the theology of the cross: the “cross is contradiction,” as she says (74). The cross has been abused by those in power to keep the powerless oppressed, including women. Osiek emphasizes the need for women’s awareness of her own freedom in order to deny herself and take up her “cross.” If they do not have a true sense of self, they will give up that which they do not own. Osiek calls this repression and not truly self-denial. Suffering can yet be redeemed, however: “Redemptive suffering is then the heart, the root, of the mystery of the cross. The paradox, and here we can appropriately speak of paradox as two apparently contradictory co-existing truths, is that through pain comes life, through voluntary surrender of some of our freedom comes liberation.” (82) The key phrase that reveals Osiek’s attempt at balancing this paradox is “some of.” If women give up all of their freedom, this could be misconstrued as a welcome mat to the repression of patriarchalism. But if they do not accept self-denial and the inevitable suffering of discipleship, they will be neglecting a central piece of the gospel.

Osiek’s conclusion is something of a disclaimer. Yes, she knows that things are more complicated than she put them. The journey is not one solid line of progress, but a cycle of ups and downs. Indeed, things may even be different for following generations as they have a different starting point. And of course, this account is not objective, but comes from “my own experience.” Finally, she gives nuts-and-bolts practical advice for how women can attempt to live out this vision. In the end, she challenges women: “Have the strength to be weak” (87).

This last point gets to the heart of what is most compelling in my own reading of the book. There is a necessary tension between the need to empower women out of their “sin of passivity” and the need for all Christians to humble themselves in self-denial. In many ways, Osiek’s understanding is helpful, but I also find it somewhat unsatisfying. She suggests that women’s sin is to “doubt their own power” and allowing themselves to be victims. In her next section, she emphasizes the need
for women to have a spiritual conversion that “cuts across all human pride” and motivates them towards forgiveness of their oppressors, etc. The root problem, it seems to me, is not sexism, racism, or classism per se, but the abuse of power (which, of course, is operative in all of the “isms” mentioned [parenthetical emphasis suggested by Michelle]). Women who have power, as humans, are just as likely to abuse it as men. Thus, to speak of the need for women to realize the “assumption of their own power” (49) sounds dangerous. If the concern is to empower women toward equality, this is a good thing. But that spiritual conversion must not be neglected, for if the empowerment goes unchecked by Christ-like humility, we are missing the gospel.

Furthermore, Osiek gives this warning about self-denial:

It is only with the acquisition of a good amount of self-knowledge, that is, with appropriate psychological and emotional maturity, that one is able to freely surrender one’s own desires, preferences, and attachments for the sake of others and for the sake of union with God. Such self-denial with anything less than the full awareness and freedom of which one is capable at any given moment is not self-surrender but repression. (78-9)

Here she eloquently captures the dangers of self-denial upon women who are already victims. But I wonder if she mischaracterizes the nature of the sacrifice of the cross. Osiek emphasizes that one should not choose suffering, and she assails the concept of masochism, but her description of how a woman approaches self-denial appears to depict a conscious choice for suffering. She should recognize her freedom, indeed her power, and choose to suffer its loss. Can “repression” be completely removed from this picture? It appears to be a paradox: Jesus’ crucifixion was both self-denial and repression. Likewise, the martyrs of the church were killed for living out the gospel as best they understood it. They were aware that the consequences may lead to suffering, but that suffering would not have occurred if it weren’t for the repressive acts of violence from others. If repression did not exist, then freedom would be meaningless. If freedom did not exist, then there would be nothing to repress. Can we truly hold on to our freedom as we accept suffering? I have to admit that I do not understand it. [Michelle's comment was that she would emphasize the conscious stepping into vulnerability.]

In the end, I also have to admit that I come to Osiek’s text as a man who feels somewhat a foreigner reading a different language. I could complain about the missing references to the male experience and what appears to be the subtle or implicit demonization of men, but then I would be missing the point. I must recognize that, though the book makes me feel uncomfortable (as does the Bible), it is a beautiful text designed to help women deal with both tacit and overt oppression under “male superiority.”

I declare myself to be a feminist, but thinking about things from a woman’s perspective causes me to question how deeply I feel the feminist cause. When I allow my wife to do most of the cooking, do I truly believe that it is because she is the better cook? She is a dietitian, after all. Or am I assuming an “oppressive stereotype” in thinking that because she is a woman she should do the cooking? I have a tee shirt that says “This is what a feminist looks like” and I declared our marital vows with pride when it came time to recite, “When you are inspired to pursue a dream, I will follow you.” I did follow my wife to Seattle and worked at an unfulfilling job while my wife pursued an internship to become a dietitian. I can point to things such as these, but I can never say that I have gone into myself so deeply as to come to an impasse of anger, need methods of coping, and a search for breakthrough intellectual, moral and spiritual conversions. I cannot truly know what the “feminine transformation” is about, so I am enormously grateful for books such as this to give me an inkling of awareness of the feminine perspective.

[On this last paragraph, Michelle asked: "Can you articulate a process that you went through?" She suggested that it could be different for men. It must be. But I don't think I could quite put my finger on it yet. I have never felt the oppression, so I don't know what feelings my process should entail. Whatever the process is, I am still within it.]