In September, Protestants gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss, in a first-ever conference of its kind, what a Protestant theology of the body might look like. Topics ranged from singleness and celibacy to CRISPR and surrogacy, with much ​in between​. I ​lectured​ on the history of contraceptive technology, considering Protestant theology for the female body. And there was much we could have covered but did not in our short time: disability, infertility, abortion, adoption, suffering, death, and so much more. There is rich ground to till. The harvest is plentiful​,​ but the workers are few.

In​ a recent essay for First Things, ​Carl Trueman ​said that we exist today in “a battle for the body.” “The status of the body as it relates to us as human persons,” Trueman posits, “seems to be the issue that lies, often unseen, behind many of the other more prominent debates of our age.”
Take, for example, the debate about what a woman is. Or, to be more church-centric, the many denominational splits that occur over issues of sex and gender, including the issue of same-sex marriage. Likewise, consider one of the primary reasons Christians (some of whom identify as “ex-vangelical”) “deconstruct”: The church’s teaching on sex, marriage, and gender. Debates about abortion​,​ or IVF​,​ or surrogacy—all these are related to Christian teaching on the body. Trueman is right: There is a battle for the body. But Protestants are late: the battle has been raging for a very long time. If we are to meet our secular, post-Christian culture with grace and truth on these matters, it will be the defining task of our age to embrace a robust and comprehensive theology of the body.
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Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.

In the new movie Barbie, Greta Gerwig wants you to believe that being pregnant is weird. Midge, a pregnant Barbie doll that serves as the butt of many jokes, was discontinued “because a pregnant doll is just too weird.” Midge has no speaking parts, and characters throughout the movie are repeatedly taken aback whenever she appears. Barbie wants to empower women to be anything they are or choose to be (in the film, Barbie comes in every career, country, shade, size, and even sex) — except, apparently, the one thing that most women eventually hold in common: becoming a mother.
Mattel’s Barbie doll has always provoked conversation about womanhood and the female body. She has been an icon of femininity in the truest sense of the word: Barbie was the ideal. But Barbie has also been plagued by controversy, with some claiming she perpetuated unattainable standards rather than empowering women to overcome them. The Barbie doll’s meteoric success and then rapid decline, however, is only a mirror reflecting deeper cultural questions about what it means to be a woman.
Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.
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