You've Come a Long Way, Baby¹

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In the late 1960s, the Morris Tobacco Company introduced Virginia Slims as a "women's only" cigarette, launching it with the now well-known slogan, "You've come a long way, baby!" The print ads were marked by staged, old-fashioned, black-and-white photos picturing the miserable state of women in the 1900s, prior to the first women's movement, juxtaposed against full-color photos of far happier, modern women demonstrating their emancipation from male dominance . . . by smoking Virginia Slims.

In one such ad, three small black-and-white scenes depict an arrogant, overweight husband impatiently ringing a bell, demanding that his servile wife respond to his every need. The caption reads, "With this ring, I thee wed. Ring for supper. Ring for paper. Ring for slippers." The happy, modern, Virginia Slims woman pictured in the forefront rejects the traditional male-defined institution of marriage. Man will not be the head of her home. "You've come a long way, baby!"

The caption of another ad announces, "Back then, education taught men to run the world and women to run the house." It shows bored women sitting at old-fashioned desks learning about home economics. The blackboard proclaims that there will be a laundry quiz on Tuesday, and that their homework consists of several cooking and cleaning assignments. The Virginia Slims woman on the adjoining page stands in marked contrast to this outdated concept of female domesticity. She is enlightened. She knows that running a house and looking after children is a low-class, unfulfilling, demeaning job, unsuitable for someone with a university education. She's determined to get out of the house and do something really important—like run the world! "You've come a long way, baby!"

The old-fashioned, black-and-white scene of a third ad depicts several women working hard at typewriters and desks behind their male boss, who thumbs his lapels and takes all the credit for their efforts. The caption reads, "Virginia Slims looks back upon the self-made man (and all the women who made him possible)." The smug Virginia Slims woman in the foreground holds the lapels of her business suit in the same manner as the boastful male boss. But there's no one in the background propping her up. She's a self-made woman. She makes herself possible! "You've come a long way, baby!"

A final ad features a large, colorless photo of two policemen forcibly removing a woman from a public beach for wearing an immodest bathing suit. The woman is screaming, "You just wait! Someday we'll be able to wear any bathing suit we want. Someday we'll be able to vote. Someday we'll even have our own cigarette!" The policeman retorts, "That'll be the day." But the happy, enlightened Virginia Slims woman in the forefront has the last word. She doesn't doubt there will be a day when she has the right to set her own standards of sexual conduct, morality, and propriety—a day when she dismantles and rewrites all the rules.

"You've come a long way, baby!"

We've Come a Long Way

Women truly have come a long way in the past fifty years. But a long way isn't necessarily a good way or the right way.

Up until the middle of the last century, Western culture as a whole generally embraced a Judeo-Christian perspective on gender and sexuality as well as the purpose and structure of the family. Heterosexual marriage, marital fidelity, and the bearing and nurturing of children in an intact family unit were highly valued concepts—the norm of societal practice. Most agreed that the primary responsibility of the male was to lead, protect, and provide for his family, while the primary responsibility of the female was to nurture and care for her children and home. Differences between male and female were accepted and seldom questioned.

Furthermore, for both men and women, their sense of duty and responsibility to family was far greater than the pursuit of personal fulfillment. Though they may not have been able to identify the source of their values, most individuals had a sense of what it meant to be a man or a woman. They understood the appropriate outworking of gender roles and relationships.

Not any more. We've "come a long way, baby." And the speed and magnitude of force with which this understanding has been deconstructed is visibly astonishing.

Consider the cultural image of women in the 1950s represented by the popular TV sitcom Leave It to Beaver. The Cleaver family exemplified the idealized suburban family. In this television series, four ideals were presented as requisites for a happy life, both for women and men: education (Ward and June Cleaver both had college degrees), marriage, children, and hard work. In typical late fifties fashion, June worked hard at home all day taking care of her household and serving in the community, while her husband, Ward, worked hard outside of the home to financially support the family. June was there with fresh-baked cookies and a tall, cold glass of milk when her children, Wally and Beaver, arrived home from school. When Ward walked in the door after work, June, wearing a pretty dress, greeted him with a smile and a kiss, a clean house, and a hot meal on the table for supper.

June and Ward Cleaver were both very happy. In fact, adults in the Leave It to Beaver sitcom who didn't or couldn't attain the cultural ideals of education, marriage, children, and hard work were the ones depicted as being troubled or missing out. Mrs. Mondello, for example—the mom of Beaver's friend Larry—had a husband who was frequently out of town on business. She was presented as an unhappy, exasperated parent struggling singlehandedly to raise a son, sometimes depending on Ward to help discipline him. Spinsters like prim, rich Aunt Martha were presented as irksome and interfering, while Uncle Billy, the globe-trotting, yarn-spinning bachelor; free-loading Jeff, the tramp; and Andy, the alcoholic handyman, were depicted from the happily married viewpoint of the series as having missed the mark in life. In the one episode dealing with divorce, the event is depicted as a horrible tragedy, having solely negative effects on children and adults alike.

As the Leave It to Beaver sitcom suggests, life for women truly was very different fifty years ago than it is today. Consider these real-life observations from the 1950s:

• Getting married was the norm. Almost everyone got married. The average age was twenty for gals and twenty-two for guys.
• O nce married, it was expected that the couple would have children, and that the husband would financially support his wife so she could stay at home and care for them during their childhood years.
• The divorce rate was very low. People were expected to remain married and to make their marriages work. Divorce was considered a terrible tragedy.
• If a divorce did occur, and if there were children involved, the courts expected the ex-husband to financially support the wife in a homemaking role, because society considered it vitally important that children have a mom at home.
• Chastity, virginity, and fidelity were virtues; sex outside of a marriage relationship was shameful.
• Scarcely anyone lived common-law, for it carried the stigma of "living in sin." Furthermore, it was unthinkable and totally improper for a single woman to have a male roommate. The number of couples living together common-law before marriage was so small that statistics for this phenomenon were not even recorded.
• Having a child outside of wedlock was also considered shameful. (Today, one American child is born outside of marriage every twenty-five seconds. More than 40 percent of children will go to sleep tonight in homes in which their fathers do not live.)
• O nly 30 percent of all women were employed outside of the home in 1960, and many of those worked part-time only. Very rarely was a woman professionally employed if her children were younger than school age.
• Children were highly desired, highly valued, and highly welcomed additions to both family and community.
• There was no birth control pill.
• Abortion was illegal.
• Pornography, rape, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual addiction, and sexually transmitted diseases were uncommon and rarely encountered.
• Men saw it as their responsibility to protect and provide for the women and children under their care.
• Women saw it as their responsibility to ensure that the home front was in order so they could promote and enjoy family life, support their husbands, and focus on raising children in a stable, nurturing, loving environment. Their professional careers took secondary status to their primary and most important career of raising and nurturing the next generation.
• Though certainly not attained by all, the idyllic, Leave It to Beaver pattern of morality, marriage, family, and home was upheld by society as the ideal.

That was the world I was born into, less than fifty years ago. So I can say with firsthand experience and with absolute, undeniable accuracy—as perhaps you can too—"We've come a long way, baby."

So have our ideas about womanhood.

By the late 1960s, the image of June Cleaver being happy at home in her role as a wife and mother had fallen by the wayside, replaced by the 1970s Mary Tyler Moore image of a perky single woman in her thirties, pursuing a career at a television station. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was lauded as a television breakthrough because it portrayed the first independent, attractive career woman as the central character. It discreetly implied that although Mary was single, she was on the pill and sexually active. Yet the focus of the show was on her career, not on her association with men. She was truly on her own, with no recurring father, boyfriend, fiancé, or husband looking out for her. With each episode, the show's theme song proudly alluded to her autonomy, her independence, and her ability to survive just fine without a man: "You're going to make it after all!"

In the 1980s, television introduced us to Murphy Brown, an investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional TV newsmagazine. In contrast to the gentle sweetness of Mary Tyler Moore's character, Murphy Brown was loudmouthed, brash, driven, self-assured, self-absorbed, and highly opinionated. She was a divorcée and a proud atheist. During the course of the series, Murphy became pregnant but chose not to marry her baby's father. Naturally a man would cramp her style. Instead, she left the baby in the care of a revolving door of nannies so she could pursue her career. The child was merely a side plot in a story line that revolved around Murphy's self-actualization in the workplace.

In the mid-nineties, enter Ellen—a woman who owned her own independent bookstore. Ellen lived with a man, but their relationship was merely platonic. She wasn't sexually attracted to him; he was just her roommate. Gradually, however, we discovered that Ellen wasn't attracted to men at all. She was a lesbian—a woman-identified woman with the right to define her own sexuality and her own morality. And no one had the right to judge her for it! As the cover of TV Guide lauded, Ellen was "OU T—and in charge!"—as are virtually all the women portrayed in the media in the past decade. From children's cartoons to television series to movies, women in popular media are now portrayed as having an "in charge, kickbutt, don't-need-a-guy, I'm-powerful, traditionalmarriage- and-family-and-morals-are-outdated, I-have-the-right-to-rule, how-dare-you-tell-mewhat-to-do" mentality.

We've now been thoroughly inundated with the message that when it comes to relationships, women can make their own rules. They can sleep around, hook up, be in casual or long-term relationships, live common-law, get married or remain single, get divorced, get pregnant, have a baby (being married is inconsequential) or abort it, have men as roommates, have sex with men and/or women, and participate in virtually any type of behavior they choose. The sitcom Friends was based on the premise that all of these are equally valid choices. A woman can set her own standards and dictate the terms of her relationship with men. And as long as she's "nice" about it, and true to herself, it really doesn't matter what she does. Who are we to judge?

The epitome of this mind-set is reflected in the most recent popular sitcom for and about women: Sex and the City. Selfhood and sisterhood are what it's all about. As long as women are loyal to themselves and to their female buddies, they're on the right track. They can be single or married, lesbian, heterosexual, or any combination thereof. They can be promiscuous, perverted, immoral, have sex as a onesome, twosome, threesome, or roomsome. They can be loud, arrogant, vulgar, crude, and crass, but if they stand up for themselves and for other women, and if they're caring and nice underneath, then they're OK. In the new worldview, men are whiny, needy, not too bright, and totally unreliable. They are marginalized and emasculated—used, regarded, and discarded like Kleenex from a box. (The Sex and the City character Charlotte only hesitates a moment before giving up her engagement ring to help her girlfriend pay for the down payment on a house.)

Nowadays, the height of empowered womanhood is to live a self-serving, self-righteous, neurotic, narcissistic, superficial, and adulterous life. The main character in Sex and the City wraps it up well when she counsels women that "the most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself."

So in a few short decades—in the span of my lifetime—the ideal of a happy, fulfilled woman has gone from one who values and serves her children, her husband, and her community, to one who serves and exalts herself and has a very different type of commitment toward men and children.

Which begs the question: How did this happen? The factors are many and complex, but a very large piece of the puzzle can be attributed to the philosophy of feminism.

The Feminist Revolution

Feminism is a distinct philosophy that shook the underpinnings of society in the early 1960s like a tsunamic earthquake shaking the ocean's floor. Feminism is indeed an "ism"—like atheism, humanism, Marxism, existentialism, or postmodernism. The "ism" indicates that we're talking about a particular philosophical theory, a doctrine, a system of principles and ideas.

It's important to understand that feminism encompasses much more than the cultural phenomenon of the women's rights movement. It's more than just "yesterday's fashion"—a neglected piece of our past hanging like the hippy beads in the back of our mother's closets. It's more than women having the right to an abortion, the right to vote, or the choice to pursue a career. Feminism is a distinct worldview with its very own ideologies, values, and ways of thinking. And whether or not you know it—or would even care to admit it—feminism is a philosophy that has profoundly affected each and every one of us living in this day and age.

Some may think that an intellectual foray into past philosophy, like the one we're taking together in this chapter, is an exercise in futility. But it's the student of history who both understands current culture and is equipped to envision a path for the future. We need to know where we've come from and how we got to this point if we hope to determine where we go from here.

I can prove that this is a biblical way of approaching history. During a time of national turmoil, the people of ancient Israel were served by the men of Issachar, men who, according to 1 Chron 12:32, "had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." My purpose in this overview is to help you "understand the times" so that God can raise us up as a holy Issachar generation of women in our day. Women who hold the knowledge of our times in one hand, and who hold the truth, clarity, and charity of the Word of God in the other. Women whose hearts are broken over the gender confusion and the spiritual, emotional, relational carnage of our day. Women who (like those men of old) "know" what we, the church, "ought to do."

So I'm going to take you back to the 1950s—back to the days of Leave It to Beaver—and paint some very broad brush strokes to show you how the philosophy of feminism developed and was integrated into culture.

First, a bit of historical background. Geopolitically, the world of the 1950s was witnessing an era of revolution. The American, French, and Russian Revolutions that had preceded this time had each been based on the enlightenment idea that all people are equal, that no one group has an inherent right to dominate and rule another group. The word "revolution" itself (from the Latin revolutio) means "a turnaround," entailing a fundamental change in power that takes place in a relatively short period of time. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the world witnessed revolutions in India, Korea, China, Hungary, Iraq, and Cuba. In all these revolutions, the ruling class was overthrown through violence or civil disobedience by the class they had ruled and sometimes oppressed.

This revolutionary fervor and the fight for individual rights steadily spread from political to social structures. Workers demanded their rights and formed unions—then went on strike if their demands weren't met. College students marched against oppressive educational establishments. Attention was drawn to the racial inequity between blacks and whites when, in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, and the Civil Rights movement was born.

But that wasn't all. During the 1950s, a female French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, proposed that modern society was also in need of a revolution in gender roles.

de Beauvoir argued that in the relationship between male and female, men were the ruling class, and women were the lower "second sex." She believed that in order for women to live as full human beings, they needed to demand their rights, collectively rebel against men, and overthrow all the societal structures that men had constructed to keep women in a state of servitude. Specifically, de Beauvoir proposed that in order to gain equality with men, women needed to get out of the home and intentionally deconstruct Judeo-Christian ideas about marriage, motherhood, and morality.

In the late 1950s, American political activist and journalist Betty Friedan picked up on de Beauvoir's thinking. She constructed a questionnaire for the fifteen-year reunion of her graduating class, asking her college-educated female colleagues about the level of happiness and fulfillment they experienced in their marriages and their roles as wives and mothers. Friedan detected undercurrents of discontent and dissatisfaction in their answers.

In the following months she interviewed dozens of other women. And from all of these combined responses, Friedan concluded that a discrepancy did indeed exist between what society told women would make them happy and fulfilled, and how happy and fulfilled they actually felt. In her resulting book, published in 1963, Friedan argued that women were trying to conform to a religious, male-dictated image of womanhood—the Leave It to Beaver ideal she called the "feminine mystique"—but that doing so left them with vague feelings of emptiness, yearning, and wanting something more.

Friedan proposed that a gnawing sense of unhappiness with woman's role was a common female problem, albeit one with no name, concluding that the role itself was to blame for woman's discontent. So like de Beauvoir, Friedan suggested that in order to find fulfillment, American women should begin to question, challenge, and rebel against the accepted role of wife and mother and traditional thoughts about morality. According to Friedan, a woman could only be fulfilled if she had a life plan that included education, a career, and work that was of "serious importance to society." (Homemaking and raising children were not thought to be of "serious importance.") To be equal to men, each woman needed to move beyond the restrictive shackles of the male-defined, male-serving, traditional role of wife and mother, and name herself by developing a vision for her own future. She needed to reject the image of womanhood that had purportedly been constructed and perpetuated by men. Woman needed to claim the authority to define her own existence.

Friedan summarized the underlying precept of feminism when she declared, "We (women) need and can trust no other authority than our own personal truth!" According to feminism, the only hope for woman's happiness and self-fulfillment lay in rejecting a male-defined, Judeo-Christian worldview and convincing herself to define her own truth.

Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, called Friedan's The Feminine Mystique "the book that pulled the trigger on history." And indeed, once woman accepted this very basic premise of needing and trusting no other authority than her own, she set her foot on a path that would rapidly take her—and ultimately the whole of society—in a direction diametrically opposed to the heart and purposes and ways of God.

Throughout the 1960s, de Beauvoir's and Friedan's writings began to gain popularity among North American women. Many were evidently experiencing inner feelings of frustration and discontentment, eagerly yearning for the "something more" proffered by these feminist pioneers. A problem had been exposed. Feminists were convinced that it was the problem. And although they had not yet found a word to adequately describe it, they felt confident that therein resided the cause of woman's malaise.

In the late 1960s, feminist author Kate Millett used the term "patriarchy" to describe the "problem without a name." Patriarchy derives its origin from two Greek words: pater, meaning "father," and arche, meaning "rule." Patriarchy was to be understood as the "rule of the father," and was used to describe both the dominance of the male as well as the inferiority and subservience of the female.

Feminists argued that patriarchy wasn't just an abstract concept of men having more power and authority than women. It was a pattern woven throughout every aspect of culture and thought. Patriarchy had dictated the whole of Western culture's family, social, political, and religious structures. Patriarchy was at the root of its social etiquette, customs, rituals, traditions, and laws. Patriarchy was woven throughout its entire system of education and the economic division of labor. All of these things were responsible for keeping men in a dominant position (and therefore women in a subservient position) throughout human history.

This conclusion could mean only one thing: in order to attain woman's equality, every aspect of belief and culture would need to be changed. Only the demise and redefinition of all patriarchal structures would lead to her freedom. Only in breaking free from traditional Judeo-Christian roles and rules would woman find meaning and self-fulfillment.

And thus, the trigger was pulled.

Renaming Self

In the first phase of feminism, women claimed the right to name themselves, to redefine their own existence. Their goal was to become more like men and to shed the differences that made them weak and vulnerable to exploitation. Women began to dress like men; to smoke, drink, and swear like men; to claim sexual freedom and participation in the work force on the same basis as men; and to control the biological functions that made them different from men.

Newly established feminist groups, such as NOW (the National Organization for Women), began public lobbies and demonstrations in order to further the feminist agenda, which consisted of five main tenets: (1) full self-determination, (2) freedom from biology, (3) economic independence, (4) total and equal integration, and (5) sexual freedom.

To that end they fought for an Equal Rights Amendment, liberalized divorce laws, legalization of abortion, reproductive technology, Planned Parenthood, state-funded day care, pay equity, affirmative action, women in the military, and lesbian rights. They picketed outside The New York Times building in opposition to the male/female segregated help-wanted ads run by the paper. They organized demonstrations against the firing of stewardesses. They demonstrated on Madison Avenue against TV soap operas. They organized a splashy protest of the Miss America contest that played across nearly every television screen in the country. They boycotted, picketed, lobbied, demonstrated, sued, marched, and engaged in all kinds of nonviolent civil disobedience.

But although awareness of the women's movement was growing, allegiance to the feminist perspective was still not widespread. Feminist theorists concluded that women as a whole needed enlightenment. They needed to discover how oppressed they really were.

Then along came a tool—discovered quite inadvertently—that effectively convinced women of the rightness of the feminist cause. This proved to be the key to igniting their revolution.

Feminists in New York discovered that if they gathered women together in small groups, and got those women talking about their personal hurts and grievances against men, then all the women in the group would begin to get upset and bitter against men—even those who initially had no identifiable issues. With the right direction, the group's anger could then be channeled into personal and political activism. Collectively, the whole group could be empowered to rebel against men, thereby becoming actively committed to the feminist cause.

Kathie Sarachild, a feminist activist in New York, learned that this new technique was called "consciousness raising," and that it wasn't actually "new" at all. Consciousness raising was a political technique that had been used by the revolutionary army of Mao Tse-tung, whose slogan was, "Speak bitterness to recall bitterness. Speak pain to recall pain." To promote discord and instability in a village, Mao's political revolutionaries would gather townswomen together to discuss the crimes their men had committed against them, encouraging the women to "speak bitterness and pain." Initial reluctance gave way to collective anger as woman after woman recounted stories of rape by their landlords, of being sold as concubines, of physical abuse by their husbands and fathers-in-law. As the women vented their bitterness, they experienced a newfound strength and resolve that empowered them to corporate action. In one village, for example, a peasant man was physically pummeled by an entire group of women because his wife had complained to the others about the way she had been treated. The revolutionaries had incited the women to speak bitterness. And as a result, the women grew angry and rebellious. They went home and demanded personal and political change. That's how Mao Tsetung fueled his revolution.

In the fall of 1968, Sarachild organized a guide and manifesto to consciousness raising (CR) and presented it to the first national Women's Liberation Conference, held in Chicago. She proposed that the feminist movement use this political technique to activate a broad scale gender revolution, arguing that through consciousness raising groups, small sparks of personal unhappiness could be fanned into an inferno of corporate discontent and political action. The small group dynamic was the most radical, effective tool for leading a woman to a personal "aha!" moment—the moment when she sees that all the problems in the world are due to the rule of men, and that traditional rules and roles need to be discarded in order for women to achieve equality and personal fulfillment.

Consciousness raising encouraged women to change their beliefs and behavior patterns, to make new demands in interpersonal relationships, to insist on their own rights, and to support the women's movement, thereby consummating their new awareness with political action. And the groups spread like wildfire. Soon there were "CRRap" groups in homes, in community centers, in churches, in YWCAs, and in many places of business.

Perhaps you remember an old Fabergé shampoo commercial that alluded to the CR craze. It started with a picture of just one woman. Then as her image steadily multiplied, she chirped, "I told two friends about Fabergé Organic Shampoo . . . and they told two friends . . . and so on . . . and so on . . ." Soon the screen was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of copies of her image. That's the power of word-of-mouth.

And that's exactly how feminism spread.

Only about two hundred women attended the first national women's conference in Chicago in 1968. But with the help of consciousness raising, incessant media coverage, and generous government funding, women all across the continent caught the revolutionary fervor and began to claim the right to name and define themselves. By 1970, twenty thousand women marched proudly down New York's Fifth Avenue, identifying themselves as part of the women's liberation movement. Friedan summed up the tenor of the occasion when, at the conclusion of the march, she blazed,

In the religion of my ancestors, there was a prayer that Jewish men said every morning. They prayed, "Thank thee, Lord, that I was not born a woman." Today . . . all women are going to be able to say . . . "Thank thee, Lord, that I was born a woman, for this day. . . ."

After tonight, the politics of this nation will never be the same again. . . . There is no way any man, woman, or child can escape the nature of our revolution.²

Renaming the World

Women as a group were having their eyes opened—their consciousness raised—to the commonality of their experience. They were now a sisterhood. The effect was an internal, personal legitimization of the differences found in women. Whereas the first phase of the movement viewed women's differences as weaknesses, the second phase viewed women's differences as a source of pride and confidence. Feminists began to believe that not only were women "just as good as" men. They were in fact "better" than men—a shift in mind-set epitomized by Helen Reddy's Grammywinning song "I Am Woman," which topped the pop charts of that time. Looking back, I can still hear the roar, "in numbers too big to ignore . . . I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!"

Feminists reasoned that women not only had the right to name themselves but also had the right to name the world. In the words of the song, they had to "make their brothers understand." Men had gotten everything so very wrong. History was but a legacy of arbitrary, male-defined meaning: his-story. And it was time for that to change. From economics to politics, psychology to linguistics, relationships to religion, women needed to challenge and change that which men had both constructed and construed for their own benefit. Women needed to look at the world through the lens of female experience and come up with new values and definitions. What's more, they needed to reeducate all people to think according to the new feminist paradigm. The formation of feminist-driven government agencies, combined with federal funding and media momentum, ensured that they were able to do just that.

Thus, their leaders embarked on an intensive strategy of feminist research and education they called "Woman Centered Analysis" and "Women's Studies." This was essentially the study of the world based on women's own perceptions and experiences. The National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), which coordinated and spearheaded the effort, noted that their aim was to promote "a breakthrough in consciousness and knowledge which will transform individuals, institutions, relationships, and, ultimately, the whole of society."³ It was not long, naturally, before college courses sprang up across the country exploring the rights of women, their status in society, the discrimination they experienced in public roles and private lives, as well as the male gender bias prevalent in culture, literature, and learning.

The explosion of woman-centered analysis and women's studies in the 1970s was absolutely staggering. Prior to 1969, there were no women's studies courses on college campuses. Ten years later, the number of women's studies courses had mushroomed to well over thirty thousand. Women's studies had been established as a distinct discipline with degrees available at bachelor, master, and doctoral levels. Feminist journals, publications, and magazines (such as Ms.) flooded the popular market.

Efforts by the NWSA led to the introduction of feminist theories into all areas and all levels of education. Educators modified kindergarten books, grade-school curricula, continuing education courses, and technical school syllabi to reflect a feminist worldview. The values and beliefs of feminism began to be presented in newspapers, periodicals, newscasts, and television programming. By the end of the 1970s, it was difficult to find any medium of communication uninfluenced by feminist thought.

Feminists often refer to the 1970s as the Golden Age of feminism. At the opening of the decade, their theory was being espoused by a small handful of radicals. By the close, however, it had disseminated to the point where to some extent, it had influenced every member of society. As the eighties dawned, many women had claimed the feminist right to name themselves and their world. And a few, both in secular and religious circles, had started to claim another right: the right to name God.

Renaming God

When Helen Reddy accepted the Grammy award for her "I Am Woman" song, she proudly proclaimed, "I'd like to thank God because She made everything possible." Betty Friedan, earlier that year, had predicted that the great debate of the next decade would be "Is God He?" Feminists had proven successful at naming themselves and their world, and in the final phase of feminist thought development, they turned their attention to naming God. The progression was logical. For if woman has the right to define her own existence, as well as the right to define what men and the world ought to look like, then she surely has the right to redefine God too.

Feminists argued that the "male" God of the Bible was bad for women. For "if God is male, then the male is god." They argued that religion and the God of the Bible were the primary tools men had used throughout history to keep themselves in a position of power, and women in a position of servitude.

But if the male God of the Bible is unacceptable to women, then who or what is god? According to feminism, women get to decide—which ultimately means that they themselves are god. The feminist metaphysic teaches that each woman contains divinity within her own being. New Age philosophy, Wicca, and goddess worship are all expressions of the feminist spirituality that arose in the 1980s and 1990s. According to feminism, each woman is her own goddess, part of the elemental, female creative power of the universe.

Have you ever wondered why advertisers nowadays would name a new women's shaver after a goddess, marketing their product as being able to provide stubble-free legs worthy of the goddess in you? This idea didn't come out of a vacuum. It reflects the fundamental premise of feminism that women have the inherent right to name themselves, the world, and God.

God's Right to Name

Again, the fundamental premise of feminism is that "women need and can trust no other authority than our own personal truth." Feminism teaches that women ought not to bow down and submit to any external power.

But that's not the message of the Bible. God created us. And He created us male and female. This fact is not inconsequential. It means something. The Bible informs us that there was an essential difference in the manner and purpose behind the creation of the two sexes. The New Testament reiterates that there are basic differences between men and women that are to be honored as part of God's design. By refusing to honor these differences, or by defiantly stating that it cannot be so, we are claiming the right to define our own existence. But according to the Bible, that is a right which belongs to God alone. It is God who made the earth and created mankind upon it, and we have no right to question the wisdom of His directives for our behavior. God spoke through Isaiah:

Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd [a broken piece of pottery] among the potsherds on the ground.

Does the clay say to the potter, "What are you making?" Does your work say, "He has no hands"? . . .

Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?

It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it (Isa 45:9, 11-12).

Paul repeats the admonition in Romans:

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? (Rom 9:20-21).

The Creator fashioned the two sexes differently. This is a fact we dare not overlook nor trivialize. In 1 Corinthians 11 we are told that "man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man" (vv. 8-9). Furthermore, "woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God" (vv. 11-12). Numerous other texts in the Bible deal with differences in both the creation and roles of male and female.

The two sexes were simply created differently. And the Bible provides important information as to how these differences are to be evidenced. It does not, as some have argued, provide a stereotyped checklist of which sex does what (like, men fix the cars; women do the baking), but it does provide broad foundational principles for the proper functioning of male-female relationships. The biblical framework teaches us to know and understand ourselves as men and women.

Our identity as male and female also has an important symbolic aspect. It teaches us about the relationship between ourselves as God's people (the church) and God. It also teaches us something of the inter-Trinitarian relationship within the Godhead itself. The reality of who we are, how the world works, and who God is, is not hidden. It is revealed to us through the symbols and images of God, as well as through His creation of male and female. If we lose these fundamental images, we lose ourselves.

Feminists recognize that the act of naming conveys power to those who do it. When women claim the right to name themselves, they remove themselves from God's authority, claiming what is rightfully His as their own. This is the crux, as well as the foundational danger of feminist philosophy. As Christians, we must allow God to name Himself, to name His world, and to name male and female. This belief contains the only hope for getting life right. The only hope for discovering our true identity and purpose. The only hope for untangling the gnarled, knotted mess that sin has made of gender and relationships. The only hope for experiencing ever greater measures of healing and joy. And above all, the only hope for reflecting and exalting the beauty of the gospel and the glory of God.

Saying "Yes!" to True Womanhood

So what's the answer to the question feminism posed almost fifty years ago? It was a spiritual question: "What is going to bring women happiness and fulfillment and joy in life?" Do we turn back the clock and return to the 1950s? Is it true that woman will only find satisfaction when she finds the perfect man—when she's a mom and housewife, when she's safely situated in a station wagon and a white picket fence? Or do we rely on the current feminist formula for fulfillment—woman's unmitigated freedom to pursue fulfillment in career and sex, controlling and discarding men and doing what we please?

History has shown that the Leave It to Beaver ideal is not the one that will satisfy. There is no man on the face of this earth who can completely fulfill the desires of a woman's heart. Being a wife and a mom is great, but it doesn't satisfy our deepest needs.

The feminist solution, however, won't satisfy either. The longings of our hearts will not be met when we look to careers and sex and self-determination for fulfillment. We won't find any more happiness striving for the modern-day ideal than our 1950s sisters did by striving for the ideal of their time. No, in order to find fulfillment as a woman, you and I need to turn our hearts toward the right target. We need to turn to the One for whom we were created and to whom all our yearnings point—the Lord Jesus Christ—and say "yes!" to Him.

We tend to reduce the discussion about womanhood merely to questions about her marital status and whether or not she has children, along with peripheral issues like her education and career choices, whether or not she works outside of the home, her use of birth control, whether she homeschools or publically educates her children, the type of clothes or make-up she wears. The essence of true womanhood is to understand and agree with the Creator's design for womanhood as it is revealed in Scripture. A woman is a true woman when her heart says "yes" to God's design.

Feminism promised women happiness and fulfillment. But it hasn't delivered. The new generation is disillusioned. They can see that feminism hasn't brought women the satisfaction it promised. Today women are searching for new answers. They want to know how to make life work.

Ultimately their longing will only be satisfied by embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ and a biblical understanding of manhood, womanhood, and gender relationships. The time is ripe for a new movement—a seismic, holy quake of countercultural Christian women who dare to take God at His Word, who have the courage to stand against the popular tide, choosing to believe and delight in God's plan for male and female.

And I say we get ready to take it "a long way, baby."

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