Phyllis Schlafly’s Tragic Failure
Schlafly was beautiful, brilliant, unconventional, hated by her enemies. She may be better than most anyone today. Still, for all her greatness, Schlafly was fighting a rear-guard action that ultimately failed as it took too much for granted to work in her own time (and in ours). Hers was the work of the positive world when women were generally more conservative than men. She lived long enough to recognize that her own project had failed.
Feminism is among modernity’s most successful social movements. Feminists pretend to promote choice, but feminist laws and culture really cultivate a particular kind of womanly character, one economically and emotionally independent of men, family, tradition, and marriage. Feminism’s successes pose an acute challenge. Can feminism, which points women away from the family, and a family-centered society coexist?
Conservatives and Christians have been dealing with this challenge for generations, with only limited and short-lived successes. As feminism determines society’s understanding of an honorable woman, opponents of feminism become by definition anti-woman. Prudence seems to demand accommodation to powerful, widely-held social opinions, but accommodation brings social decay. Resistance, on the other hand, means political oblivion.
One method of accommodation is the “who stole feminism” gambit, to borrow the title from a 1995 book by Christiana Hoff Sommers. “Who Stole Feminism” critics oppose the latest, apparently extreme feminist or gender reform in the name of a supposedly true, more moderate, more pro-family feminist path that once existed or could.
In the beginning, they say, feminists embraced salutary goals like increased female opportunity that would not compromise family life or the sexual dance. Later, however, “radical feminists” warred against men or undermined family life or promoted abortion or transgenderism. Such critics of feminism often disagree about what the good feminism represented, why and when things went sideways, and how to bring back the better brand. But they never disclaim the mantle of feminism: Early feminism, real feminism good; later feminism not good.
Another option is opposition, where the risk is political oblivion. The most successful and famous anti-feminist of the past sixty years is Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly, who died in 2016, is justly considered the most successful organizer in the modern conservative movement. Her successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s and 1980s also made her, in the words of her daughter-in-law and co-author, Suzanne Venker, “the premier anti-feminist of the twentieth century.”
Schlafly rejects the “Who Stole Feminism” gambit. When asked later in life whether feminism made any positive contributions to American life, Schlafly only saw debits: “No. I think it’s made women unhappy and it’s made them believe that we live in a discriminatory and unjust society, and that they should look to government to solve their problems.” To read Schlafly’s works (as I have the past year) is to hear nary a nice word about feminism (though a fairer disputer thinks Schlafly is a feminist herself).
The woman was a force of nature, such that her legacy guides, inspires, and intimidates opponents of feminism today. Giants walked on the earth then! Helen Andrews took to the New York Times to explain why the next Phyllis Schlafly has not yet arisen. Rebekah Curtis has given “5 Reasons there is no Phyllis Schlafly 2.0” today.
Schlafly was beautiful, brilliant, unconventional, hated by her enemies. She may be better than most anyone today. Still, for all her greatness, Schlafly was fighting a rear-guard action that ultimately failed as it took too much for granted to work in her own time (and in ours). Hers was the work of the positive world when women were generally more conservative than men. She lived long enough to recognize that her own project had failed.
Schlafly launched her campaign against the ERA with a 1972 essay, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” Women’s liberation, she wrote, represented a “total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother, and on the family as a basic unit of society.”
Yet “equal rights” already had a basis in American law and culture as Schlafly rose to oppose it. Schlafly accepted earlier feminist reforms and then gave them a most conservative spin. The suffragettes, she concluded, were “family-oriented women who had no desire to eradicate the female nature.” The Equal Pay Act of 1963 accomplished “equal pay for equal work,” which, she said, no one opposes. (Advocates of the family wage do oppose it.) She favored including sex as a protected category in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, though she thought that sex is not the same as race, that the law should allow for reasonable distinctions between the sexes, and that the civil rights framework was destroying male-only spaces.
The ERA’s more radical emphasis on equal rights, she worried, would destroy sex-role realism, the key to healthy family life.
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A Certain Hope
With certainty we know that the Christ who shed His blood for the remission of our sins, now sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; thrones, angels and powers all made subject unto His majesty. He must reign until all enemies are subdued, then He shall come to judge the living & the dead, and offer up the Kingdom to His Father, that Christ may be all in all. While the timing is uncertain, we rest assured that this is how it will all play out.
Imagine the disciples at the Last Supper. All their lives, as good sons of Abraham, they’d heard the prophecies, partaken of the feasts, prayed the Psalms, and hoped for the Messiah to come. Here He was, at last. He’d come. He sat in their midst, telling them that His body would be broken like the bread He passed to them, His blood would be poured out like the wine in the cup.
God’s people had cried for deliverance. Deliverance from the wicked sons of Cain. Deliverance from Pharaohs, giant, Canaanite Kings, Philistine champions, demon-gods, Assyrian, Babylonian, Grecian, and Roman empires. “Avenge us, oh Lord,” they had prayed. And God had done so. Repeatedly.
But now, in the carpenter from Nazareth, this Deliverance had a face.
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Be Faithful Unto Death! The One Who is Slaughtered for Their Testimony
Jesus does not call us to look for ways to suffer but to know that we will suffer for him. Disciples have an endurance mindset because of the value of knowing and being known of Jesus. John’s esteem for those who have been slaughtered and those who have been martyred reminds us that our faith is valuable.
Some of the roles John sets forth in Revelation lack appeal for modern readers, just as they would have for John’s live audience. As creatures, humans tend to avoid pain, not embrace roles that might lead to suffering. Let alone death. John exhibits pastoral concern in Revelation, compelling him to esteem those taking up the role of being slaughtered for Christ. The general hue of Revelation places believers in the cross-hairs of spiritual war, and in Rev 6:9, 18:24, and 20:4 John lauds those who have embraced the role of suffering for their faith even to the point of death.
The Slaughtered Ones Heard in Heaven
Revelation can be seen as a protracted answer to the saints’s question John hears when the sixth seal is broken, “Lord, the one who is holy and true, how long until you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?” (Rev 6:10, CSB). John notes that the ones crying out to God for justice are those who had been slaughtered because of God’s word and their testimony of Christ (Rev 6:9). The role of being slaughtered or martyred in Rev 6:9 and in Rev 18:24 expresses the highest degree of faithfulness to Christ. Beale states it clearly: “Since the symbol of identity for all Christians is the slain Lamb, they all also can be referred to by the same metaphor.”
Two ideas in Rev 6:9 underscore the saints’ devotion to God as they cry out for justice. First, John’s grammatical choice of “those who had been slaughtered” portrays the violent means of the martyrs’ deaths as yet vivid and in full color. Even if their deaths were decades before, the effects and violent frame of those deaths cast a shadow extending to the very moment when they cry out for God to avenge their blood. The slaughter they endured was thus an antecedent action that placed the saints in the resulting state implied by the slaughtering event. To be slaughtered is to die violently with scars and visible effects that forever mark a person as having been slaughtered.
Further, the nearness and proximity of the violent death of the martyrs anticipates John’s description of why the saints were slaughtered. At the conclusion of Rev 6:9, John notes that the saints had been martyred because of their continuous, consistent testimony of Christ.
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Inerrancy and the Gospels: How to Handle Narrative Differences
Defending the inerrancy of scripture can be a challenging task for the unprepared Christian. In the world today, there is no shortage of critical voices speaking out against the authority of scripture. Even within Christendom, some seem determined to undermine the bible’s inerrancy in every instance. Therefore, Christians need to be equipped to defend, not only their faith but also the scriptures on which the only true, ancient religion is based upon.
Due to the narrative-centric nature of the gospels, seeming contradictions can be troublesome for even the most devout of believers. The gospels give us 4 different representations of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Because of this, the same event can be recorded multiple times. What do we do when there appears to be a contradiction between two or more narratives?
A notable example of this can be seen in The Centurion Servant. If we compare the narratives in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, questions can be raised between the two accounts. Most notable is the role of the “elders of the Jews” and the centurion’s “friends”. As Vern Sheridan Poythress, Westminster Theological Seminary Professor, rightly points out in his book Inerrancy and The Gospels, “Luke does not indicate that the centurion meets Jesus face to face. By Contrast, in Matthew 8 there is no mention of the intermediaries. What do we say about this difference?” (pg. 19).
Poythress goes on to point out the possible explanations for this seeming contradiction. He guides the reader to think critically about the texts, nuances, authorship, and literary features. He points out that, due to the author’s background and objective, certain emphasis may be added in specific areas. Such instances are not meant to contradict but complement one another. Citing South African Theologian, Norval Geldenhuys, Poythress explains that likely “there were several stages in the encounter between Jesus and the centurion. The centurion first sent elders of the Jews, then sent friends, then came in person (pg. 19). Luke was led to emphasize different aspects of the narrative when compared to Matthew. The example sets the stage for the entire book.
I don’t often read a theology book in a single sitting. However, I did just that with Inerrancy and The Gospels. I highly recommend Poythress’ book to anyone desiring to understand the harmonization of the gospels better. The book is largely broken up into two sections. The first is centered on the basic principles for studying harmonization, and the second examines specific gospel problem texts. I found the principles section to be the most useful part of the book. It creates a brilliant groundwork for the reader to approach the gospels in a logical, practical, and faithful way.
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