Anyone who claims that Joe Rigney faults feminism—rather than women themselves—for what he considers to be empathy’s destructive impact on church and society has either failed to understand his words or failed to take him at his words.
Another well-thought-out contribution to this ongoing kerfuffle, Dani. I admire you for not giving up out of sheer weariness of interacting with Rigney and his supporters…after a while insults cease to be forceful *qua* insults and it becomes a matter of wearing down the opposition through tedious bad faith responses.
The Wokal Distance response struck me as a particularly egregious misrepresentation—the screenshot left out the entire following section in which you explained *why* you ultimately read Rigney as attacking women rather than feminism. For someone to accuse you of conflating the terms “women” and “feminism,” they have to ignore the fact that you are doing the *totally unheard of* writerly thing of… [checks notes] …stating a thesis before you delve into defending the claim in detail. (I teach college writing. This is literally argument 101.)
In any event, I think you’re doing a service not only by the clarity of your engagement, but also in the way your engagement highlights the blustering, evasive responses of those trying to defend Rigney’s stance. People who have dealt with friends or family members who are chronically unable/unwilling to hear criticism (due to clinical narcissism, garden-variety fragility of ego, or other internal dysfunction) will recognize the deflection and attack tactics on display here.
As an aside, does Rigney anywhere in his book offer a consistent definition of “feminism”? At the risk of encouraging you to go even deeper down this rabbit hole, I think this might be another important area on which to shed the light of semantic clarity. The Moscow et al. crowd consistently use the term without defining it, something that post-1960s conservatives are broadly guilty of as well, and I think it’s become the right-wing equivalent of labeling someone a racist. It’s lobbed as a slur and used to silence anyone who is questioning a fashionable orthodoxy by putting them on the defensive.
Until very recently, I have done a lot of rhetorical and emotional work to carefully signal to my conservative peers that I’m “not a feminist” while I seek to improve the conversation around men, women, relationships, and gender difference in the church. However, I have come to realize that most Christians I know have only a vague notion of what “a feminist” is (or that it is not one monolithic thing) and therefore it has become an almost empty term that often means “person [usually woman] whose ideas about gender I find too progressive.”
All that being said, I’m curious how YOU define what you are distancing yourself from when you say “I’m not a feminist,” and whether you would agree that you do hold to ideas that were considered “feminist” in the past (such as women’s intellectual equality with men – cf. Mary Wollstonecraft) and therefore may find yourself a type of feminist simply by
"affirming the human female was designed by God to be equally capable of rationality, equally invested in preserving truth, equally concerned with guarding what is good — and, tragically, that these good design features in women were just as compromised by sin as they were in men" [side note: AMEN!]
I am very familiar with how reassuring people that one is “not a feminist” functions as a shibboleth in our circles, and I am not saying declaring oneself “a feminist” is the answer (it may cause more problems than it’s worth, and be a stumbling block to listeners). But I have come to question the wisdom of playing the boundaries game set up by people who use the term “feminism” in weaponized ways to serve the culture war. For too many people, this creates the conditions for the cognitive reflex reflected in this meme: https://imgflip.com/i/9qwbzu
Hey Justice :) I don't have the book with me right now but my memory is that, no, Rigney doesn't provide a particular definition of what he means when he says "feminism". Instead he tends to conflate it - or at least its consequences - with female relational dynamics have influence in mixed-group settings and then, in the church, not only the issue of women's ordination but women having a particular presence up-front (even just reading Scripture or making announcements) or making a contribution to decision-making within the church. In other words, "feminism" is everything he's against when it comes to male/female roles and relationships. It's shorthand for "the boogey-(wo)man".
As I have just mentioned to Beccy in a comment above, I think I'll write a Substack post in coming weeks about why I demur from adopting the label of "feminist" in these conversations. I think your reflections - especially in the last few paragraphs above - are really important and helpfully provoking :)
Great! Can't wait to read the post. I've had these thoughts about the term "feminism" lurking in my mind for a while, but they didn't crystalize until I started writing the comment.
I really appreciate you calling out this horrendous language against women.
I am curious, as I am new to your substack - why are you against being labelled a feminist?
While many feminist movements have taken things in various different directions and extremes, the core definition of Feminism is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. Not that different to what you said - "affirming the human female was designed by God to be equally capable of rationality, equally invested in preserving truth, equally concerned with guarding what is good."
I don't think it is a contradiction to be a Christian and a feminist, even if one label is more important than the other. I also don't think it has to be a contradiction to be a feminist and complementarian.
Hey Beccy - great question about why I demur from being labelled "a feminist". In fact it is such a helpful question that instead of offering a quick reply here I think I might engage with the topic in another Substack post in the near future :)
I'm gonna borrow your comment section to make a brief and fumbling attempt to work out what I think about this...
I agree with Rigney that women are generally wired to be more nurturing and caring. I agree with Rigney that when this general disposition is unchecked it has led to harmful accommodation, for example around the issue of transgenderism. I do think that is true.
What I take issue with is that he thinks that *all* women, including *Christian* women are incapable of reining in their feeling *full stop*. It seems that because all women are generally empathetic, all women will be given over to the worst excesses of empathy *especially* if they are given a leadership role. Therefore, they absolutely *require* a male in order to check them, and ought never to exercise leadership. This is insane overreach.
I also think that if he is going to do business with what he considers to be the worst excesses of the female disposition, he ought to take a scalpel to the masculine ones. But I guess when men intimidate and bully their congregations and sleep with women who aren't their wives we have recourse to another generalisation: boys will be boys!
Still, I don't know if I'd use the word misogynist to describe him exactly. I'm not sure I believe that he *hates* women, but he is incredibly condescending towards them and seems to hold a hierarchical view that really seems to imply that they are morally inferior to men. And srsly - where does the role of the Holy Spirit figure in this? Or do men supplant the Spirit as the means of correcting, teaching and training women in righteousness?
Hi Chris - I'll reply at more length to the substance of your comment a bit later. (Thanks for making it). For the moment, though, your comment about not being sure he *hates* women prompted me to add a small update and footnote to the post. Like you, I'm not prepared to conclude that he "hates" women. But the definition of misogyny is not limited to actual hate - it also includes prejudice against and aversion to women. This is the sense in which I used the word (concurring with your comment about his condescending attitude towards women and the implication that they are morally inferior to men). I'm glad your comment prompted me to clarify my intention and meaning in using that word. Thanks!
"I also think that if he is going to do business with what he considers to be the worst excesses of the female disposition, he ought to take a scalpel to the masculine ones"
Yes. Exactly. One of the main contentions in my original review is that while unchecked sentimentality can be real and destructive, it is not the foundational (let alone, only) issue that has driven the ideological chaos of the world around us. Sin is ultimately responsible for that and both men and women sin equally. So for example, greed is a key driver of progressive ideology i.e., (countless companies - almost always headed by male CEOS - became "woke warriors" not because they had a corporate heart for empathy but because they wanted to maintain their profits). People pleasing and partiality is another. An innate desire to legitimate one's own corrupt sexual desires is another. And so on and on and on. Both women AND men are guilty of all of these things. Not women alone or primarily.
And further to that, as you suggest, if we are going to zoom in on aspects of female constitution and relational dynamics that can become problematic if untethered or weaponised, then we need to do the same for aspects of the male constitution and relational dynamics. But instead, Rigney approaches the latter as if it is the default gold standard that women deviate from and ultimately corrupt. This is another indication of his misogynistic baseline.
So I'm geek enough to inject some science into this conversation. According to the US National Institutes of Health:
* men's brains are advantaged (by volume) over women's brains in two areas: the occipital lobe and ventral temporal cortex, both of which are involved in identifying and interpreting visual stimuli.
* Women's brains are advantaged (by volume) over men's in these areas:
-- Orbitofrontal cortex (reward value, stimulus-reward associations, and stimulus-outcome associations);
-- Superior Temporal cortex (language, social cognition, attention, insight-based problem solving);
-- Lateral parietal cortex (spatial cognition, combining info from multiple senses, goal-directed physical movements, recall of personal experiences)
-- Insula (wellspring of social emotions like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement; translates body states [eg: hunger] into emotions that can drive action [eating]; pre-processes anticipated events [eg: begins adjusting body functions to help you stay warm before you to into the cold outdoors ]
* No distinctions appear in the lateral prefrontal cortex (memory, decision-making, reward-risk analysis); Temporal lobe: (hearing, memory, emotion, and some aspects of language);
Parietal lobe (interpreting sensory information, such as pain, pressure, taste, temperature, touch, and vibration.)
I tend to think that women's brains are so extravagantly equipped (in part) to accommodate some of the many challenges caused by hormonal flux and the demanding multitasking leadership style required for effective early childhood care. For instance, being advantaged for planning helps us to predict when we'll be hormonally challenged and to adjust our activities in advance accordingly. Being advantaged in risk-reward assessment makes it easier to know if a fast-running child is safe or at risk. Being advantaged for long-term planning helps us see goals for our child / family / business that go beyond this week's soccer game or this quarter's fiscal outcomes. I'm not sure why Rigby or anyone would imagine that those with brains so advantaged are in need of guidance by less advantaged brains. But that's just me. And the Biblical perspective is that those parts of the body least worthy of honor are clothed with greater honor so all parts would recognize their need one for another (1 Cor 12). So maybe that's why bigger brains are supposed to let lesser brains be in charge. God knows; I don't.
My wife and I were talking about your follow-up here this morning (which is *chef's kiss* btw), and she made a fantastic point about how the thinking around empathy and women mirrors the thinking around sex and men, and in the end both serve to bolster patriarchy and misogyny.
The basic structure goes like this:
• [Empathy/strong sex drive] is part of how God made [women/men], and in its place [the home, mothering, etc./marriage] it's a good thing.
• Because of the fall, [women/men] are especially susceptible to sinning with their [empathy/sex drive].
• The solution to this susceptibility is [male leadership/female submission (E.G. sex on demand, or "modest" dress in public)].
• Who is most at fault when things go wrong? Well it's obviously [women for not submitting to male leadership/women for not putting out enough, or not being modest enough].
I'll explore this a little more in my next post but the thing that is unclear to me (perhaps because it is unclear to Rigney himself?) is whether his view about how aspects of the female character and patterns of relating (elucidated in my review and this post) are inherently and inevitably destructive when "scaled up" outside of very immediate relational contexts are:
1) Themselves part of God's creative design for women
2) Consequences of the fall for women (but not for men)
3) A combination of both of these
Each of these options is theologically problematic (to say the least).
I read your review yesterday and then told my (complementarian) elders thank you so much for making me feel like an important part of our church family.
Thanks for these detailed and well-written articles, and for your desire to uphold the value of God's image bearers and the work of the Spirit in every Christian-male or female.
Thank you for this and your original review, Dani. I really appreciate your thoroughness and attention to detail in your arguments.
This definitely jumped out at me:
"…when the trans-movement presents themselves as victims. women become mothers and so they orient to victims as mothers orient to a child who has just scraped their knee. And therefore they… [are going to say] ‘Ok, we’ll call Bruno a woman now because we don’t want to hurt Bruno’s feelings, because Bruno is oppressed and Bruno is a victim’."
My main thought upon reading this quote was: has he ever MET a mother? At least a mother of toddlers? 😂 I could expand, but honestly I feel like anyone who's been up close to a mom handling a tantrum knows that giving in and accommodating is the exception (because its fruits are inherently short term), not the norm.
“…when it comes to drawing clear lines, setting a perimeter, when it comes to defining the doctrine and worship of the church or having a border as a nation, that same compassion actually becomes a liability.”
I understand your review and this article to argue that Rigney sees men as uniquely able to dispense the appropriate amount of empathy and reason, especially when it comes to the church and home. Women, on the other hand, cannot help but let their emotion overrule their capacity to reason, and thus, on the whole, cannot be trusted to render decisions that are good and biblical. Is this close?
If so, then what of “toxic reason?” “Toxic rationality?” Is there a point at which the wonderment, the miraculous, and the spiritual is suppressed by an over-love (lust) for rationality? It seems worth considering whether the suppression of empathy to this degree can be harmful especially in pastoral counsel applications. So the question, then, is what (or who) is the check on the pastor/spiritual leader who has so diminished the importance of empathy that those in his care suffer? Does he address this in the book? Or that men are in danger of the same over-desire for the opposite of empathy?
You've read my mind ;) The claim of privileged incorruptibility of (male) reason over (female) empathy is one of the things I'm going to explore a little in my next post :)
As a Christian male with some degree of empathy, the fact that someone has written a book like this makes me really angry as well… If I grew up in a church with that philosophy, I would probably be both non-Christian and trans today.
I hope that this makes it clear that I agree with your review and thoughts, even if I am not going to read the review right now because it would distress me further. But, just from this article, it seems like Rigney is not exactly claiming that "being a woman" is itself a sin, but rather that his definition of "empathy" is a sin that no woman can avoid committing if given the slightest opportunity. Apart from infantilising women (or anyone with empathy) by concluding that they need strong rational men to come to their rescue and set up healthy boundaries, this view totally overlooks the fundamental Christian belief that all humans naturally turn their hearts towards sin, whether man or woman. Isn’t it solely the work of the Holy Spirit that enables us to repent and behave otherwise? And where in the Bible is it stated that men receive "more Holy Spirit" than women, or else that said Spirit is not powerful enough to overcome women’s emotions?
"But, just from this article, it seems like Rigney is not exactly claiming that "being a woman" is itself a sin, but rather that his definition of "empathy" is a sin that no woman can avoid committing if given the slightest opportunity."
I've been deliberately using the "sin of being a woman" language as a kind of corresponding alternative to Rigney's intentionally provocative "sin of empathy" language. But I think your comment above is spot on in terms of what is going on underneath the hyperbolic title. Well put!
I for one am thankful for the brave, courageous women like Heather Mac Donald, Amy Wax, Ann Coulter, Megan Basham, Allie Beth Stuckey, etc., who stand firm against toxic empathy and its deleterious effects. We are all in their debt!
In a recent interview on the Beckett Cook show, rigney repeated the lie that any church that approves of women pastors inevitably becomes LGBTQ affirming.
He conveniently ignore classical Pentecostal denominations.
Another well-thought-out contribution to this ongoing kerfuffle, Dani. I admire you for not giving up out of sheer weariness of interacting with Rigney and his supporters…after a while insults cease to be forceful *qua* insults and it becomes a matter of wearing down the opposition through tedious bad faith responses.
The Wokal Distance response struck me as a particularly egregious misrepresentation—the screenshot left out the entire following section in which you explained *why* you ultimately read Rigney as attacking women rather than feminism. For someone to accuse you of conflating the terms “women” and “feminism,” they have to ignore the fact that you are doing the *totally unheard of* writerly thing of… [checks notes] …stating a thesis before you delve into defending the claim in detail. (I teach college writing. This is literally argument 101.)
In any event, I think you’re doing a service not only by the clarity of your engagement, but also in the way your engagement highlights the blustering, evasive responses of those trying to defend Rigney’s stance. People who have dealt with friends or family members who are chronically unable/unwilling to hear criticism (due to clinical narcissism, garden-variety fragility of ego, or other internal dysfunction) will recognize the deflection and attack tactics on display here.
As an aside, does Rigney anywhere in his book offer a consistent definition of “feminism”? At the risk of encouraging you to go even deeper down this rabbit hole, I think this might be another important area on which to shed the light of semantic clarity. The Moscow et al. crowd consistently use the term without defining it, something that post-1960s conservatives are broadly guilty of as well, and I think it’s become the right-wing equivalent of labeling someone a racist. It’s lobbed as a slur and used to silence anyone who is questioning a fashionable orthodoxy by putting them on the defensive.
Until very recently, I have done a lot of rhetorical and emotional work to carefully signal to my conservative peers that I’m “not a feminist” while I seek to improve the conversation around men, women, relationships, and gender difference in the church. However, I have come to realize that most Christians I know have only a vague notion of what “a feminist” is (or that it is not one monolithic thing) and therefore it has become an almost empty term that often means “person [usually woman] whose ideas about gender I find too progressive.”
All that being said, I’m curious how YOU define what you are distancing yourself from when you say “I’m not a feminist,” and whether you would agree that you do hold to ideas that were considered “feminist” in the past (such as women’s intellectual equality with men – cf. Mary Wollstonecraft) and therefore may find yourself a type of feminist simply by
"affirming the human female was designed by God to be equally capable of rationality, equally invested in preserving truth, equally concerned with guarding what is good — and, tragically, that these good design features in women were just as compromised by sin as they were in men" [side note: AMEN!]
I am very familiar with how reassuring people that one is “not a feminist” functions as a shibboleth in our circles, and I am not saying declaring oneself “a feminist” is the answer (it may cause more problems than it’s worth, and be a stumbling block to listeners). But I have come to question the wisdom of playing the boundaries game set up by people who use the term “feminism” in weaponized ways to serve the culture war. For too many people, this creates the conditions for the cognitive reflex reflected in this meme: https://imgflip.com/i/9qwbzu
On that note, I will end this long ramble. :)
Hey Justice :) I don't have the book with me right now but my memory is that, no, Rigney doesn't provide a particular definition of what he means when he says "feminism". Instead he tends to conflate it - or at least its consequences - with female relational dynamics have influence in mixed-group settings and then, in the church, not only the issue of women's ordination but women having a particular presence up-front (even just reading Scripture or making announcements) or making a contribution to decision-making within the church. In other words, "feminism" is everything he's against when it comes to male/female roles and relationships. It's shorthand for "the boogey-(wo)man".
As I have just mentioned to Beccy in a comment above, I think I'll write a Substack post in coming weeks about why I demur from adopting the label of "feminist" in these conversations. I think your reflections - especially in the last few paragraphs above - are really important and helpfully provoking :)
Great! Can't wait to read the post. I've had these thoughts about the term "feminism" lurking in my mind for a while, but they didn't crystalize until I started writing the comment.
I really appreciate you calling out this horrendous language against women.
I am curious, as I am new to your substack - why are you against being labelled a feminist?
While many feminist movements have taken things in various different directions and extremes, the core definition of Feminism is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. Not that different to what you said - "affirming the human female was designed by God to be equally capable of rationality, equally invested in preserving truth, equally concerned with guarding what is good."
I don't think it is a contradiction to be a Christian and a feminist, even if one label is more important than the other. I also don't think it has to be a contradiction to be a feminist and complementarian.
Hey Beccy - great question about why I demur from being labelled "a feminist". In fact it is such a helpful question that instead of offering a quick reply here I think I might engage with the topic in another Substack post in the near future :)
I'm gonna borrow your comment section to make a brief and fumbling attempt to work out what I think about this...
I agree with Rigney that women are generally wired to be more nurturing and caring. I agree with Rigney that when this general disposition is unchecked it has led to harmful accommodation, for example around the issue of transgenderism. I do think that is true.
What I take issue with is that he thinks that *all* women, including *Christian* women are incapable of reining in their feeling *full stop*. It seems that because all women are generally empathetic, all women will be given over to the worst excesses of empathy *especially* if they are given a leadership role. Therefore, they absolutely *require* a male in order to check them, and ought never to exercise leadership. This is insane overreach.
I also think that if he is going to do business with what he considers to be the worst excesses of the female disposition, he ought to take a scalpel to the masculine ones. But I guess when men intimidate and bully their congregations and sleep with women who aren't their wives we have recourse to another generalisation: boys will be boys!
Still, I don't know if I'd use the word misogynist to describe him exactly. I'm not sure I believe that he *hates* women, but he is incredibly condescending towards them and seems to hold a hierarchical view that really seems to imply that they are morally inferior to men. And srsly - where does the role of the Holy Spirit figure in this? Or do men supplant the Spirit as the means of correcting, teaching and training women in righteousness?
Hi Chris - I'll reply at more length to the substance of your comment a bit later. (Thanks for making it). For the moment, though, your comment about not being sure he *hates* women prompted me to add a small update and footnote to the post. Like you, I'm not prepared to conclude that he "hates" women. But the definition of misogyny is not limited to actual hate - it also includes prejudice against and aversion to women. This is the sense in which I used the word (concurring with your comment about his condescending attitude towards women and the implication that they are morally inferior to men). I'm glad your comment prompted me to clarify my intention and meaning in using that word. Thanks!
Yep that's helpful, and in that case - I agree. Lol I really do appreciate how rigorous you are with your definitions. It's sanity to me <3
Well, if I'm going to write overly "pedantic" reviews about how other people use their words, I need to have the same expectations of myself :)
"I also think that if he is going to do business with what he considers to be the worst excesses of the female disposition, he ought to take a scalpel to the masculine ones"
Yes. Exactly. One of the main contentions in my original review is that while unchecked sentimentality can be real and destructive, it is not the foundational (let alone, only) issue that has driven the ideological chaos of the world around us. Sin is ultimately responsible for that and both men and women sin equally. So for example, greed is a key driver of progressive ideology i.e., (countless companies - almost always headed by male CEOS - became "woke warriors" not because they had a corporate heart for empathy but because they wanted to maintain their profits). People pleasing and partiality is another. An innate desire to legitimate one's own corrupt sexual desires is another. And so on and on and on. Both women AND men are guilty of all of these things. Not women alone or primarily.
And further to that, as you suggest, if we are going to zoom in on aspects of female constitution and relational dynamics that can become problematic if untethered or weaponised, then we need to do the same for aspects of the male constitution and relational dynamics. But instead, Rigney approaches the latter as if it is the default gold standard that women deviate from and ultimately corrupt. This is another indication of his misogynistic baseline.
So I'm geek enough to inject some science into this conversation. According to the US National Institutes of Health:
* men's brains are advantaged (by volume) over women's brains in two areas: the occipital lobe and ventral temporal cortex, both of which are involved in identifying and interpreting visual stimuli.
* Women's brains are advantaged (by volume) over men's in these areas:
-- Prefrontal cortex (Controls behavior, impulses, emotions, planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and long-term goals);
-- Orbitofrontal cortex (reward value, stimulus-reward associations, and stimulus-outcome associations);
-- Superior Temporal cortex (language, social cognition, attention, insight-based problem solving);
-- Lateral parietal cortex (spatial cognition, combining info from multiple senses, goal-directed physical movements, recall of personal experiences)
-- Insula (wellspring of social emotions like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement; translates body states [eg: hunger] into emotions that can drive action [eating]; pre-processes anticipated events [eg: begins adjusting body functions to help you stay warm before you to into the cold outdoors ]
* No distinctions appear in the lateral prefrontal cortex (memory, decision-making, reward-risk analysis); Temporal lobe: (hearing, memory, emotion, and some aspects of language);
Parietal lobe (interpreting sensory information, such as pain, pressure, taste, temperature, touch, and vibration.)
I tend to think that women's brains are so extravagantly equipped (in part) to accommodate some of the many challenges caused by hormonal flux and the demanding multitasking leadership style required for effective early childhood care. For instance, being advantaged for planning helps us to predict when we'll be hormonally challenged and to adjust our activities in advance accordingly. Being advantaged in risk-reward assessment makes it easier to know if a fast-running child is safe or at risk. Being advantaged for long-term planning helps us see goals for our child / family / business that go beyond this week's soccer game or this quarter's fiscal outcomes. I'm not sure why Rigby or anyone would imagine that those with brains so advantaged are in need of guidance by less advantaged brains. But that's just me. And the Biblical perspective is that those parts of the body least worthy of honor are clothed with greater honor so all parts would recognize their need one for another (1 Cor 12). So maybe that's why bigger brains are supposed to let lesser brains be in charge. God knows; I don't.
See https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sex-differences-brain-anatomy And for more detail on functions of insula: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/health/psychology/06brain.html
My wife and I were talking about your follow-up here this morning (which is *chef's kiss* btw), and she made a fantastic point about how the thinking around empathy and women mirrors the thinking around sex and men, and in the end both serve to bolster patriarchy and misogyny.
The basic structure goes like this:
• [Empathy/strong sex drive] is part of how God made [women/men], and in its place [the home, mothering, etc./marriage] it's a good thing.
• Because of the fall, [women/men] are especially susceptible to sinning with their [empathy/sex drive].
• The solution to this susceptibility is [male leadership/female submission (E.G. sex on demand, or "modest" dress in public)].
• Who is most at fault when things go wrong? Well it's obviously [women for not submitting to male leadership/women for not putting out enough, or not being modest enough].
Some great thoughts here :)
I'll explore this a little more in my next post but the thing that is unclear to me (perhaps because it is unclear to Rigney himself?) is whether his view about how aspects of the female character and patterns of relating (elucidated in my review and this post) are inherently and inevitably destructive when "scaled up" outside of very immediate relational contexts are:
1) Themselves part of God's creative design for women
2) Consequences of the fall for women (but not for men)
3) A combination of both of these
Each of these options is theologically problematic (to say the least).
Good one @MichaelaFlack 👍
I read your review yesterday and then told my (complementarian) elders thank you so much for making me feel like an important part of our church family.
Thanks for these detailed and well-written articles, and for your desire to uphold the value of God's image bearers and the work of the Spirit in every Christian-male or female.
Thanks Brianna! I'm glad you've found my reflections helpful and encouraging :)
Thank you for this and your original review, Dani. I really appreciate your thoroughness and attention to detail in your arguments.
This definitely jumped out at me:
"…when the trans-movement presents themselves as victims. women become mothers and so they orient to victims as mothers orient to a child who has just scraped their knee. And therefore they… [are going to say] ‘Ok, we’ll call Bruno a woman now because we don’t want to hurt Bruno’s feelings, because Bruno is oppressed and Bruno is a victim’."
My main thought upon reading this quote was: has he ever MET a mother? At least a mother of toddlers? 😂 I could expand, but honestly I feel like anyone who's been up close to a mom handling a tantrum knows that giving in and accommodating is the exception (because its fruits are inherently short term), not the norm.
Yes. Exactly! This is another thing that I plan to address in my next article on the topic. I may just quote you ;)
“…when it comes to drawing clear lines, setting a perimeter, when it comes to defining the doctrine and worship of the church or having a border as a nation, that same compassion actually becomes a liability.”
I understand your review and this article to argue that Rigney sees men as uniquely able to dispense the appropriate amount of empathy and reason, especially when it comes to the church and home. Women, on the other hand, cannot help but let their emotion overrule their capacity to reason, and thus, on the whole, cannot be trusted to render decisions that are good and biblical. Is this close?
If so, then what of “toxic reason?” “Toxic rationality?” Is there a point at which the wonderment, the miraculous, and the spiritual is suppressed by an over-love (lust) for rationality? It seems worth considering whether the suppression of empathy to this degree can be harmful especially in pastoral counsel applications. So the question, then, is what (or who) is the check on the pastor/spiritual leader who has so diminished the importance of empathy that those in his care suffer? Does he address this in the book? Or that men are in danger of the same over-desire for the opposite of empathy?
You've read my mind ;) The claim of privileged incorruptibility of (male) reason over (female) empathy is one of the things I'm going to explore a little in my next post :)
🔥
Funny, I don’t know a single Christian woman who fits his description.🤔
You nailed it! Keep up the great work.
As a Christian male with some degree of empathy, the fact that someone has written a book like this makes me really angry as well… If I grew up in a church with that philosophy, I would probably be both non-Christian and trans today.
I hope that this makes it clear that I agree with your review and thoughts, even if I am not going to read the review right now because it would distress me further. But, just from this article, it seems like Rigney is not exactly claiming that "being a woman" is itself a sin, but rather that his definition of "empathy" is a sin that no woman can avoid committing if given the slightest opportunity. Apart from infantilising women (or anyone with empathy) by concluding that they need strong rational men to come to their rescue and set up healthy boundaries, this view totally overlooks the fundamental Christian belief that all humans naturally turn their hearts towards sin, whether man or woman. Isn’t it solely the work of the Holy Spirit that enables us to repent and behave otherwise? And where in the Bible is it stated that men receive "more Holy Spirit" than women, or else that said Spirit is not powerful enough to overcome women’s emotions?
"But, just from this article, it seems like Rigney is not exactly claiming that "being a woman" is itself a sin, but rather that his definition of "empathy" is a sin that no woman can avoid committing if given the slightest opportunity."
I've been deliberately using the "sin of being a woman" language as a kind of corresponding alternative to Rigney's intentionally provocative "sin of empathy" language. But I think your comment above is spot on in terms of what is going on underneath the hyperbolic title. Well put!
I for one am thankful for the brave, courageous women like Heather Mac Donald, Amy Wax, Ann Coulter, Megan Basham, Allie Beth Stuckey, etc., who stand firm against toxic empathy and its deleterious effects. We are all in their debt!
In a recent interview on the Beckett Cook show, rigney repeated the lie that any church that approves of women pastors inevitably becomes LGBTQ affirming.
He conveniently ignore classical Pentecostal denominations.