New Book Calls Women to Exercise Womanly Dominion, Part I

When a football or soccer coach yells "stay at home, play your position," his players understand his words to mean: "Carry out the assignment that I have given you and that your position demands." In his compelling new book Womanly Dominion: More Than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit (Calvary Press), Mark Chanski demonstrates with biblical clarity God's good and critical design for women.

In his previous book, Manly Dominion (Calvary Press), Chanski explored the implications of God's design of men as rulers and subduers in the culture, church and home. In Womanly Dominion, the author argues that such a mandate was not given to men alone, but also to women. Females, Chanski asserts, as God's fellow image bearers, also share the dominion mandate; both men and woman are to carry out this mandate within their specific, God-given spheres. Chanski, who serves as pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Holland, Mich., uses the illustration of a soccer coach telling his players to "Play your position" and "Win it," to encourage women to fight with valor in the struggle for womanly dominion in the 21^st century.  The reminder that women must keep telling themselves to play the position God has assigned them is particularly important given the myriad of cultural voices that are offering counter instructions, Chanski writes.

"Due to high-powered feminist social pressures, they've got to keep telling themselves, ‘Play your position!'" Chanski writes. "On the field of life, women hear constant shouts from unprincipled sideline voices telling them to leave their God-assigned posts. These voices are much like the voices of misguided parents telling their goalie daughter to ‘Get the ball, honey, and try to dribble down field and score!' But the coach has charged her to ‘Play your position'....she's been assigned a glorious and important position in this world. But the sideline voices attempt to drown out her Lord's words of instruction."

In 13 chapters, Chanski unpacks the way in which women may be liberated to live in accord with Scripture's call to womanly dominion in their roles as wife, mother, homemaker and follower of Christ. Women must intentionally strive to rule and subdue those spheres over which God has given them particular dominion-they must 'Win it'-Chanski asserts: "Godly women, made in the image of God, must daily tell themselves: 'Win it!' to the glory of God," he writes. "[They must] for the long haul, for the entire game, contest after contest, resolve to put forth maximum effort to rule and subdue their daily challenges, so help them God. Womanly dominion is a blessed virtue, as urgently needed in our day as manly dominion."

In tomorrow's post, Gender Blog will examine some of the specific areas to which Chanski's book calls women to retake their biblically-mandated roles.