Who doesn’t love a good, harmless political faux pas?
(Well, maybe not the person who committed it, but you know.)
Romney’s “binder full of women” comment was classic, vaulted to internet fame by Twitter. Before you could say “open mouth, insert foot,” this Tumblr site had cropped up, featuring a distraught Ryan Gosling and incredulous Patrick Swayze.
“Hey girl. I won’t put you in a binder.”
“No one puts baby in a binder.”
It’s all in good fun. Mostly.
This morning, Karen Spears Zacharias jumped on the #binderfullofwomen bandwagon by posting a pic of her favorite books by female authors. Now THAT is a binder I can get behind! Here’s mine.
Of course, this sampling is woefully insufficient, particularly since so many of my books are on my Nook, and my brother STILL has my copy of My Antonia. Still, a handful of my favorite books, and books that have had a significant impact on my life, are represented here.
Here’s what struck me, though. As I scoured the shelves that hold my school books, my texts on theology and history and sociology and anthropology, I was only able to find one book by a woman, a novel based on a female anthropologist’s experiences in West Africa.
Not cool.
I’m sure there are many reasons for this. Employment prospects have not traditionally been bright for female theologians, and the rise in female seminary students is relatively recent. Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that many seminaries wouldn’t even let a woman in! Female theologians are massively outnumbered, especially in the older generations, the generations we look to for wisdom, insight, and experience.
And of course there’s the fact that when it comes to religion, people just don’t seem take women’s words as seriously as they take men’s. A recent article in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin made this point eloquently.
IN RESPONSE TO my recent memoir, Breaking Up with God: A Love Story, several reviewers came close to calling me stupid. Many suggested I didn’t know what I was talking about. As the title of the book suggests, I used the analogy of a romantic relationship gone wrong to describe my faith and its dissolution. These reviewers seemed to believe I understood my metaphorical romantic relationship with God to be a literal one. They wrote about me as if I actually thought God was my real boyfriend, as if I sat around waiting for God to take me to the prom and just couldn’t understand why my date never showed up. Silly girl.
Even though I have two graduate degrees from Harvard—including a doctorate in theology—many reviewers failed to treat me as a scholar of religion. The reviews were infantilizing and patronizing.
You can read the rest here.
Despite the article’s depressing expose of the barriers women writing on “serious topics,” especially theology, still face, I was left feeling hopeful. 50 years ago, the secular publishing houses were run by men. Now, most agree women are running the show. And to keep things in perspective, let’s remember that less than a lifetime ago, our grandmothers weren’t even allowed to vote! We’ve come along way, baby, and we’ll storm the walls of the academic publishing houses just like we did the polling places, the colleges, the workforce, and the commercial fiction markets.
So what are you waiting for, ladies? Start sorting your words, your heart and your intellect into the binders of your choice. Let’s do this thing!
Binders Full of Jenny
Wait, what are you saying? That you have no theology books written by women? Well, there are plenty out there. I’ve read some of them and have heard of others that I haven’t gotten to yet. I can give you a list later. Or do you mean specifically by evangelical female theologians?
No, I have books by female theologians, but only one of the 50+ books I had to read for school was written by a woman. :-/ AND it was anthropology–and a novel, no less!–not theology.
I’d still love that list, though!!!
Okay. I figured I was misunderstanding something.
I’ve gone through my old seminary papers but unfortunately have ditched most of the required and suggested reading lists from most of my courses. I kept only those related to spiritual formation.
Anyway, here are a few books that I have (I gave away many of the books too):
Margaret Guenther – Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction
Sarah Heaner Lancaster – Women and the Authority of Scripture: A Narrative Approach
Jean Miller Schmidt – Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism, 1760-1939
Margaret Silf – Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality
Barbara Brown Taylor – Speaking of Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation
Sandra Cronk – Dark Night Journey: Inward Re-patterning Toward a Life Centered in God
Wendy J. Miller – Jesus Our Spiritual Director: A Pilgrimage Through the Gospels
Some names of women theologians also on reading lists which I no longer have and I’m sure you’re already familiar with are:
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza
Letty M. Russell
Karen Armstrong
Ooh, those books sound great! I actually haven’t read ANYTHING on spiritual direction, so this is an especially helpful list for me. The Guenther book looks great!
The Lancaster book is the one that looks like it might interest me.
A word of caution on the book by Barbara Brown Taylor: I read her book Leaving Church and found that the way she described her faith is full of syncretism and heterodoxy.
Glad I could help! Another good author is Wendy M. Wright. She’s a professor of theology at Creighton University. I didn’t list her earlier because I hadn’t read any of her books, but I have read several of her reflections and articles in Weavings ( a journal publication I highly recommend!).
Jenny,
As always, thank you for your thought-provoking posts! Today, I’m especially grateful for the encouragement, as a female, to begin sorting my words and pushing some writing boundaries! I also find it a little funny that you would write on this issue today because a MALE friend of mine tweeted earlier this week about the need for more female theologians. *cue “It’s a Small World” now*
Awesome! Go, Mallory, go! Looking forward to reading those words.
I agree with a take on the binder thing that I heard on TV. If you want to meet qualified women, just come by my house!
Great response!
My sentiments exactly, thank you. There is an apparent female no-go zone for many christians- no preaching, no writing theological books on anything except possibly women’s issues and marriage, no ordination etc. To people who think this way I often say, well what if you were reading a theological book by someone with a name that is used for both male and female? Would you assume they were male? Would you be surprised to discover they were female? Would you discredit what they were saying if you made that discovery? Before you knew they were a woman, that person’s gender has no bearing on what they say, then afterwards it does. That’s ridiculous.