Christian women who want to
pursue influential roles in politics, the church, and other sectors of
public life in the United States and Canada have never before had more
opportunities to do so. As the following profiles in our cover package
show, they are taking advantage of those opportunities in spades. It's
not just a golden moment for Christian women, of course, but for the
entire church, as we benefit from the fruit of their manifold gifts.
Not that long ago, this cover package would have been inconceivable.
But that isn't to say that Christian women had no influence in church
and society before 2012. It was women who formed the Philadelphia Female
Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Harriet Tubman, a Christian who escaped
slavery, went on to lead an influential movement within the Underground
Railroad.
Methodist Frances Willard led two million members worldwide in the
temperance movement more than a century ago, influencing many to support
women's suffrage as a "weapon of protection to her home and tempted
loved ones from the tyranny of drink." The movement also started
kindergartens, passed child labor laws, and in the 1870s created the
first daycares for the children of working women.
Today evangelicalism continues to feel the effects of women's
leadership. In the 1940s and '50s, Henrietta Mears, a dynamic Christian
educator, shaped the church's future in powerful ways, discipling a
number of future evangelical leaders, including Bill Bright, founder of
Campus Crusade for Christ.
Women writers have played a particularly important role in evangelicalism. Rosalind Rinker's Prayer: Conversing with God
changed the way evangelicals prayed together. Before Rinker, many
believed that prayer should be in the King's English, spoken formally,
as if addressing a monarch. The idea that Christians could talk to God
as a friend, conversationally, was Rinker's radical idea that is now
commonplace.
Tensions remain—and in some ways are exacerbated—as women pursue
leadership in many spheres. Denominations and particular churches
continue to argue about the appropriate role of women—whether they can
teach men or be ordained, for example. Others debate how to best
understand Scripture's description of the role of women in marriage.
Some raise concerns that by recognizing women who find a voice in the
public sphere, we may be subtly denigrating the work of stay-at-home
mothers. (This would be true only if one believed that public work was
intrinsically more valuable than private, which would be hard to defend
if one really believes the meek are blessed.)
In some key respects, though, the distinction between public and
private, between professional career and mothering, is being blurred.
Many stay-at-home moms have become publicly influential as they blog
from their farmhouses, tweet from grocery stores, or phone in a
conference call while watching a 2-year-old.
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