Thread by @kkdumez

As Women's History Month draws to a close, I would be remiss if I didn't highlight my favorite forgotten woman in American history, Kate Bushnell--once a world-renowned anti-trafficking activist, innovative feminist theologian, & all around woman you didn't want to mess with. 🧵

After repeatedly encountering upstanding Christian men who perpetrated and condoned all sorts of cruelties against women--both in the United States and across the British empire--Bushnell concluded that "the crime" must be "the fruit of the theology."

But she upheld the authority of the Scriptures: The Bible was all that it claimed for itself: "inspired...infallible...and inviolable." During the fundamentalist/modernist split, she sided w/ fundamentalists. The problem was the Bible had been translated & interpreted by men.

Not one to mince words, Bushnell accused men of giving free reign to their own egotism under cover of "headship." Men had created and defended "a whole fossilized system of theology," one that made "one half the human family some resplendent glory...

...which the other half is appointed to reflect and manifest forth." And the "glorified and spiritualized half of humanity assigned themselves the task of teaching theology to the other half."

The only way men could keep women confined to lives of servitude and submission was by "binding them down to ignorance and superstition." And only by repudiating such theology could women be free to participate in "the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Having advocated for abused women, Bushnell explicity linked the doctrine of male headship to the abuse of women. In fact, she claimed that "subrodination was abuse": "Man would feel abused if enslaved to a fellow man," & the same was true of women, even if (male) theologians...

...liked to claim that women's subjugation was "the happiest state in which a woman can exist." But what men taught as "God-ordained marriage," Bushnell considered a relationship that robbed women of their "will & wishes," & thus the sexual abuse of wives by husbands.

Bushnell rejected that equality and submission could go hand in hand. "The wife cannot obey while recognizing her equality w/ her husband, without also realizing his injustice." And a husband "cannot command a wife who is his equal without his conscience accusing him of wrong."

Most importantly, Bushnell questioned how men who claimed to follow Christ--the incarnate God who emptied himself and submitted to death on a cross--would claim power over women. Only a sinner would desire "to exalt himself and have dominion over others."

And he would do so "in exact proportion to the degree of selfishness in his heart." I told Kate Bushnell's story in my first book, A NEW GOSPEL FOR WOMEN. It's fair to say I couldn't have written JESUS & JOHN WAYNE if Bushnell hadn't given me eyes to see.
amazon.com/New-Gospel-Wom…

I'll close with a few of my favorite Bushnell quotes & various links to additional resources:
“Cows were made before men—even before theologians—[therefore] men must be subordinated to cows.”
christianhumanist.org/2018/05/christ…

“Any argument drawn from the ‘image’ [of God] idea must apply surely quite as equally to woman, who was created at the same time as man, & by the same act. It is the spirit of phallic worship which contends...this image inheres in physical sex, not the spiritual characteristics.”

“We would rather believe that the expositor is mistaken, than that the very term “Gospel,”—“Good News,”—proclaims oppression to women.”
cbeinternational.org/resource/artic…

“The world, the Church, & women are suffering sadly from woman’s lack of ability to read the Word of God in its original languages. There are truths therein that speak to the deepest needs of a woman’s heart, & that give light upon problems that women alone are called to solve.”

“Servility and weakness are two contemptible vices. They have been too often recommended to women clothed in the names of “humility” and “meekness,” to which virtues they are as opposed as north is to south.” patheos.com/blogs/anxiousb…

“We imagine [some male expositors] would have been pleased had God sent into the world, an additional female Christ, to set women a female example; but since God did not see fit to do so, women are under obligation to endeavor, as best they are able...

to follow the ‘manly’ example of Jesus Christ, and leave the consequences with God. [This] is woman’s truly humble place. Any other is sham humility.”
kristindumez.com/resources/me-t…

“Woman can never be matured as a useful instrument in God’s hands or...servant of His church until she comes to understand that ‘she is not her own; she is bought with a price,’ & it is neither her duty nor her privilege to give herself away to any human being, in marriage or...

...in any other way.”
Finally: “Here is where the great mistake is being made on the ‘woman question.’ Is it ‘prudent’ to allow women to do thus and so? men ask themselves at every step of woman’s progress. The only question that should be asked is, ‘Does justice demand this?’

...If so, ‘let justice be done though the heavens fall’; anything short of justice is mere mischief-making.”

If you made it all the way through this thread I think you'd love Bushnell as much as I do.
meghantschanz.com/episode-59-the…