A Feminist Theological Analysis of Two Church Services

 10 May 2022

        When approaching Oak Lawn United Methodist Church’s service from a feminist perspective, there are many elements that could be considered reflections of feminist values. Feminist theology is centered around the recovery of women’s voices, the criticism of sexism in our traditions, and the construction of more inclusive theology.

During their church service, Oak Lawn UMC is able to achieve all three of these tasks. Starting with the recovery of women’s voices, the clear presence of women guiding and facilitating the service is hard to miss. More than just being passively present, these women are active voices of leadership. Beginning with the announcements and the call to worship, women are heard speaking to the congregation. However, any church, even an anti-feminist church, could acquiesce in the inclusion of women in the service outside of teaching and sacraments. Therefore, what makes Oak Lawn UMC truly able to recover the voices of women is that a female pastor, Rachel Baughman, gives the sermon, and then administers the sacrament of communion alongside another woman. Historically, women have not been allowed to participate in theology or to teach a church body, and when they were reluctantly allowed to do so, it was often conditional upon whether their audience consisted solely of women or young children. Here, we see a woman who assumes the leadership role of the church’s senior pastor and speaks to the entire congregation, both men and women. In doing so, Pastor Rachel Baughman gives a voice to the perspective of women as her own experiences as a woman inform the way that she interacts both with Scripture and with her congregation.  

        During the sermon, Pastor Rachel Baughman also achieves the task of criticizing society’s acceptance of sexism. In her discussion of the Scripture found in Mark 12:38-44, she points out the harmful effects of the patriarchal society in which the widow lived: “In the Scripture we this brave widow in a world, in a system, where she is under-resourced, and those like her have their property, and their rights, and their security taken away.” Additionally, in the slideshow of announcements before the service began, there was a slide dedicated to their worship series called “Did God Really Say That?” This series is focused on “calling out and questioning society’s long held misinterpretations of the Bible,” which we can only assume would include criticisms of how traditional theology has been limited to the experience of men and based in traditions of misogyny and androcentrism. 

        As the sermon continues, Pastor Rachel Baughman goes on to construct theology that is inclusive. The sermon takes the experience of all people – not just men, not just the rich – seriously. The experience of women is better represented by the voice of a female pastor and by a story of a woman in the Bible. However, rather than acting as though this Scripture passage only applies to women because a woman is the main character, or that it only applies to the wealthy because Jesus reprimands the hypocrisy of the teachers and scribes, Pastor Rachel Baughman instead communicates a message of inclusivity. She accomplishes this through the use of language with which all members of her congregation can resonate. Opting to not use the sometimes accusatory second-person pronoun of “you/your,” or the exclusionary first-person or third-person singular pronouns of “I/mine,” “she/her,” or “he/his,” she instead uses the plural forms of the first-person and third-person pronouns of “we/us/our” and “they/them/their.” The service is also made more inclusive by its focus on the collective charge to care for others. At the close of the sermon, Pastor Rachel Baughman says, “God’s mission, to borrow a phrase from Mary’s Song, is to lift up the lowly, scatter the proud and the thoughts of their hearts, and bring down the powerful from their thrones. May we more fully participate in God’s joyous work of turning the world upside down.” In this closing, she not only again creates a space for the experience of women by quoting one of the most clear examples of a woman’s voice found in Scripture, but in challenging the church to join Jesus in “turning the world upside down,” she encourages them to care for the vulnerable and to love their neighbors inclusively. Oak Lawn UMC’s social media and website display their mission for inclusivity – in their Instagram account’s biography, the word “inclusive” itself is the very first word they use to describe/brand themselves. The homepage of their website also outlines how they are welcoming of all and are focusing on “advocating for justice and full inclusion of all people in [their] congregation and in the community [they] serve.” Inclusivity appears to be at the very core of what Oak Lawn UMC stands for and of who Oak Lawn UMC is. 

        Outside of the three tasks of feminist theology, other elements of Oak Lawn UMC’s service that are also helpful from a feminist perspective include the concern for interests beyond women’s rights and the discussion of the meaning of living sacrificially. The service has an outwardly-focused emphasis on serving others and helping the poor/vulnerable, as well as a direct reference to issues that are included in feminism’s broader interest of caring for the marginalized. For example, while reminding the congregation to analyze whether their motives are based on others’ perception of them or on the impact they can make, Pastor Rachel Baughman encourages them both to intentionally build relationships with the LGBTQ community and to start conversations about being anti-racist in their homes. In discussing the meaning of living sacrificially, Pastor Rachel Baughman asks the question, “Does serving God mean we have to live a life of ultimate sacrifice?” This question relates to the way feminist theologians grapple with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and how it validates paradigms of female discipleship where women are taught to accept subjection, exploitation, oppression, abuse, and more. Pastor Rachel Baughman’s answer to the question is “yes and no;” she explains that the spirit of giving and sacrifice should be rooted in a “practice of mutuality.”  As Joy Ann McDougall describes in Rising with Mary: Re-visioning a Feminist Theology of the Cross and Resurrection, feminist theologians would agree with Pastor Rachel Baughman’s interpretation of the passage: “Rather than focusing on Jesus’ obedience unto death, feminists turn instead to his life and action, to his healing ministry and his relations of mutuality as the key to redemption,” (168). While Pastor Rachel Baughman explains what sacrificial living should look like, her portrayl of what it should not look like also connects to a central concept of feminist theology. In describing the danger of believing that living faithfully means you must be willing to sacrifice all of your own needs, she says that sacrificial living should not be “rooted in a lack of self,” which relates directly to what Valerie Saiving would call the “underdevelopment or negation of the self” and Phoebe Palmer would call the “idolatry of the other.” By correcting this Christian tendency to overvalue self-sacrifice, the pastor is able to construct a theology that is helpful, instead of harmful, to women and their self-development. 

        While the Oak Lawn UMC service reflects many of the values of feminism, the same cannot be said for the Prestonwood Baptist Church service. Women are not only unequally represented by the fact that it is two men speaking, but throughout their discussion of Joshua 24:14-15, the experience of women itself is also left out.  Even though the Scripture does say “as for me and my house,” the two men never make any attempt to recognize that the audience might not identify with the picture of “me” that they represent as white, straight men with families. From beginning to end, they are speaking only to men, at times mentioning wives and children, but never including their perspectives. The manner in which the message is directed exclusively to fathers reflects the feminist concern with how traditional theology was written by men, about men’s experience, within the framework of patriarchal tradition and reason, for other men to read. Despite suggesting that women can be more skilled at the spiritual practice of praying out loud, throughout their entire conversation, it is made abundantly clear that they believe men are meant to be the leaders of the household, as a man should “use his voice of leadership and headship that God gave him.” 

        This superior and separate view of the male/husband/father is sustained through Prestonwood Baptist Church’s social media and website. On Instagram, their women’s and men’s ministries have their own separate accounts, highlighting the difference in the ministering of men and women that they perceive as necessary. On the Prestonwood Baptist Church website, their “Our Beliefs” page includes a section titled “Created Man’s Need for God,” which says “Human beings are the special creations of God, made in His image. They fell through the sin of the first man, Adam, and all human beings are sinners in need of salvation.” Despite the inclusivity of using the term “human beings” instead of “man” or “mankind,” the failure to even mention Eve, who serves as a representation of one half of all human beings, in their reference to the fall yet again keeps women from being fully included. For more information on their beliefs as a Baptist church, the Prestonwood website redirects viewers to “The Baptist Faith and Message.” Here, in their statement on the church, it says, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” Not only do they believe women cannot be pastoral leaders of a church, but their statement on the family demonstrates that they also believe that women cannot be leaders of the home, as the wife is to “submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.” Despite affirming the equal creation of women and men in God’s image, this same statement identifies the “God-given responsibility” of a wife to be one of respect and service where she is merely “his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.” Even as this statement limits a woman’s role to the tasks of home-making and child-rearing, it manages to keep her still under the authority of her husband, as she is merely helping him and his house in serving the Lord. 

        In view of all this, it seems that Prestonwood is not concerned with even attempting the tasks of recovering women’s voices and criticizing patriarchal tendencies in order to construct more inclusive theology. However, in the first half of the service, a video is shared that might be considered an attempt at including the experience and perspective of women. In support of the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center, this video portrays the story of a woman who finds out she is pregnant and feels as though abortion is the only option for her, until a God-figure (played by a white man, of course) shows her how “He” can make something beautiful out of the life that she has “ruined.” Although the video communicates the experience of a woman, from a feminist perspective, it can be viewed as an experience marked by a religious pressure and manipulation that speaks in favor of the denial of women’s rights to the autonomy of their own bodies. 

        Along with the ways in which the services Oak Lawn UMC and Prestonwood Baptist Church do or do not accomplish the goals of feminist theology, there are other interesting ways in which the two services compare and contrast. While the Oak Lawn service is community-oriented and focused on the collective calling of the church, the Prestonwood service is focused on the family unit and how the father can be a figure of faith. Even in their opportunities to serve, Oak Lawn outreaches to the homeless community in their area, while Prestonwood is focused on the family matter of pregnancy/abortion. Even in their announcement slides preceding the service, Prestonwood’s focus on the family was visible as they advertised their couples mentor program, while Oak Lawn’s announcements remained community-related. The use of God-talk language is another interesting point of difference between the two services. The two services differ not just in their use of pronouns in reference to God, but also in the metaphors of God they employ. The two men in the Prestonwood service refer to God as a male by using the male “he/him” pronouns. Feminist theology takes issue with this habit, as it perpetuates the idolatry of the male, for as Mary Daly says, “If God is male, then the male is God.” In contrast, in the Oak Lawn service only Jesus is referred to by male pronouns, and God is never referred to with pronouns of any kind. In terms of metaphors for God, Pastor Rachel Baughman says “you are our rock and our redeemer” in her prayer. On the other hand, the two men in the Prestonwood service heavily use victory language in their God-talk. Using words like “conflict,” “conquest,” “consequences,” and even saying that the passage is  “all about victory,” they create a tone of severity that is rooted in the patriarchal metaphor of God as a victorious king, which establishes a distance between God and the individual. 

        Given the extent to which these two services represent the ethics and goals of feminism, when reviewing them from a feminist perspective, it is clear that Oak Lawn UMC’s service is a better reflection of feminist values than Prestonwood Baptist Church’s service.