We have reached that point in the political season where we are constantly bombarded with ads and requests for money. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing ads for one or both of the presidential candidates.
Our emails are flooded with requests for donations. And what annoys me the most is the perpetual stream of text messages. It doesn’t matter which party they are from, I delete them and report them as junk, which is satisfying for a second, but does not seem to do anything to diminish the number of intrusions.
A few weeks ago I received a series of texts that stood out from the rest. The first one had the heading “Trump for Traditional Wives.” Under that was a picture of what I think was the Duggar family — the family whose claim to fame is how many children they have — 19 at the last count.
This was the text that accompanied the picture: “Women today need to go back to serving their Husbands (capital H) and knowing their role as an obedient and loving mother.” The Democratic candidate, it added, is “obsessed with stopping God’s plan for women.”
That was just the beginning. Over the next hours I received three more texts with similar themes.
“Donald Trump will direct the government to block birth control and restore traditional Christian values,” one said.
“With Donald Trump back in the White House, women can once again understand our role as submissive wives. Pregnancy is a holy calling.” And just for good measure they tell us that the other party plans to put an abortion clinic on every block.
The best was saved for last. The headline for that one was “Trump for Sexual Purity.”
Apparently irony is not this group’s thing.
This time the picture under the headline was of the ex-president holding a Bible. Behind him was a cross draped with the American flag. Under that picture were three others. One showed his opponent with her husband. The other two showed her with men she publicly dated before she was married.
The text proclaimed that Trump’s opponent “is no role model for our girls! She slept around, married late, and have never experienced the holiness of pregnancy and childbirth. Maybe this is why she doesn’t understand the sanctity of life. A Christian woman would never run for president.”
What do these texts have to do with a sermon? They relate to our first scripture reading today from the Book of Genesis, the story of the creation of woman.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says of this story and the one that immediately follows it that “no text in the entire Bible has been more misinterpreted or misunderstood.”
The passage we heard today is part of the second creation story in Genesis. You remember that in the first story humans are the last thing God creates.
“God created humankind in his image,” that story says, “in the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them.”
Male and female created at the same time, both in the image of God. There is no hierarchy in this story.
But the second story is very different. In it the first thing God creates is man, forming him from the dust of the ground and breathing life into him. Then God thinks, “Hmmm, it’s not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.”
So God creates all the living creatures on the earth and parades them before the man, but none of them are right to be his partner. So God creates woman from the man’s rib. And at last, the man recognizes that this is what he has been looking for.
It’s a nice story. But it has had a lot of baggage place upon it through the centuries.
It has been used to justify the subordination of women. Women must be less than men because they were created last and from man’s own rib, the argument goes.
There are some fallacies in that argument. If woman is subordinate to man because she was made from his ribs, what does that mean for man, who was created from dirt?
Another argument is that man named woman, so he must have power over her. But a few chapters later in Genesis, Hagar. the runaway slave, names God. No one claims that gives her power over the divine.
This is not a story about hierarchy or status. In Hebrew, when God decides to make a helper for the man, the word for helper is ezer. That word is used another time in scripture, when God is called the ezer of human beings.
In some sense, woman, or Eve, is the pinnacle of creation. It is not until she is created that creation is complete. And that is not about hierarchy either.
But the truth is that this story, like others in scripture, has been used — or misused — to keep women in their place — that place being inferior to men.
Women are subservient to men. Wives should be submissive to their husbands and obey them. A woman’s place is at home, raising children and keeping the house spotless for when her husband comes home. A woman who is not married or does not have children is to be pitied.
We — men and women — have been fortunate to live in a time when those old tropes and stereotypes have begun to crumble. We see that in the church, in professions like law and medicine, and in businesses of all kinds.
Women may not have achieved full equality with men — the numbers on salary and percentages of women in leadership roles show this. But no one can argue that progress has not been made.
But not all have embraced the progress. There is a growing social media movement called “trad,” short for traditional, wives. Trad wives stay at home, have as any children as possible, and are obedient to their husbands.
It shows up in remarks by a candidate that “childless cat ladies” are not invested in the future of the country; that teachers who don’t have children should not be brainwashing our kids; that women who choose a career path outside of the home “choose a path to misery.”
All of those things are infuriating, but the most infuriating of all is that this misogyny is cloaked in so-called “Christian” values.
One can take isolated scripture verses out of context and use them to support almost any position. And some passages must be read within the context of the times in which they were written.
But the Christian values that I hold dear — and that I think you do, too — are that all people are created in the image of God; that no gender or race or nationality is superior or inferior to another; that God has given each of us gifts to help build up one another.
Amen.