Walking Together In Golden Gate Park

Jon Lemmond is Pastor for Congregational Life at Montecito Covenant Church, Santa Barbara, CA and an adjunct professor at Westmont College. Jon received a M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in early modern European history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focused on the issue of domestic abuse during the Protestant Reformation. He is married to Marianne Robins, a full-professor at Westmont College, and they parent four children: Jeremie, Emma, Jordan, and Lea.

My daughter wasn’t surprised when I told her that I would be one of the bloggers for the Commission on Biblical Gender Equality. But, I was surprised at her response as we wound our way through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco one brisk morning: “That’s great, Dad,” she said. “But don’t try to liberate me.” What followed was a delightfully humbling conversation as my daughter carefully reminded me of what it means to be man participating in a conversation about women and gender. So the following remarks are my brief, initial thoughts as a response to her questions and insights. Specifically, what role should men play in such a discussion about gender, equality and empowerment?

1. Our first priority should be to listen.
That listening should be a priority is not always easy, particularly for many of us who want change quickly. I suspect that many of my male counterparts (myself included) feel like we clearly understand the problem of female (dis)empowerment and simply need to address it. Armed with our critical exegesis and theology, our well intentioned desires to see our congregations change, we often forget that we might have something to learn from our sisters for whom this is more than simply an intellectual or even vocational struggle. Our well intentioned privilege, in other words, can mask our own assumptions about strategies for change or our female colleagues’ experience amidst the struggle. Or even worse, our well-intentioned critique and activism might become disempowering. Do my female colleagues really need me to liberate them? I don’t think so and my daughter’s words remind me that I should be uncomfortable enough to want to ask and listen more. Jesus has something to say about this, “Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away.” (Luke 8:18). We must pay careful attention to our female colleagues and how we listen to them. When we do so we are more apt to come along side, or maybe even fade into a supportive role, as they seek to speak for themselves. In the end, isn’t that the point?

2. Our second priority should be to question “leadership” and “male identity.”
Let’s face it – most of our models of leadership come from the male corporate world with only a thin Christian veneer. The recent popularity of a secular book on leadership among Christians can be instructive. In her book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, seeks to identify the challenges facing women in a male, corporate CEO culture. In one section, she discusses the differences between how her male and female colleagues describe their own success. Sandberg notes that women often speak of the help they received from personal networks and connections while the men claim they arrived at their current positions thanks to their own personal strength and ingenuity. In response, she claims that women who point to the support of others have a negative image of themselves and encourages them to speak more like the men – highlighting their own personal achievement and skills. While there is much to like, at times, in Sandberg’s critique of women’s place in a corporate world, her answer for women to adopt male patterns of power and communication seems flawed and neither truthful nor Christian – the myth of the self-made man who, against all odds, determines his own identity and success. I know that my own success (and the success of many of my male friends) fits far more closely with that of the women she describes than the men. Moreover, the Scripture’s call to humility and grace would appear to question the very foundation of her perspective. So another aspect that men who care about gender equality should consider is to question and unmask myths of male power that attribute success to individual prowess. The small number of women in current lead pastor roles in our denomination has little to do with female initiative or chutzpah and far more to do with structural models of leadership that serve to exclude women in the first place. So my prayer is that we would let Scripture more thoroughly dictate our visions of empowerment (the book of Philippians is a good place to start), thereby questioning the shallowness of the “self-made man” myth that helps perpetuate female disempowerment. To do so would not only help our female colleagues but serve to free men from myths that also harm them, particularly when they fail. In the end, it would seem, we both need liberation and I pray that my female colleagues would help male leaders by questioning the very notions of power that identify personal efforts as the key to success. I am suggesting, in other words, that men also need women’s help in the struggle for their own liberation. So let’s all take a walk in Golden Gate park – together.