I have been looking at modern Feminism and its impact on the church. Since the Women’s Liberation Movement came to the fore in 1970, an entire generation of women has been born and grown up under the demagogic language of the movement. Demagoguery is “is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda.” (Wikipedia definition). A whole generation of girls has been instilled with Feminist notions by now. “Feminist theory, which emerged from these feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women’s social roles and lived experience.”

Interestingly, the flagship for the feminism movement is the UK magazine Spare Rib. Founded in 1972 its first editorial explained that the magazine’s role was to “investigate and present alternatives to the traditional gender roles for women of virgin, wife or mother.” Wikipedia notes of the magazine, “The fact that Spare Rib reached its high point of circulation and influence … in the late 1970s usefully charts the women’s liberation movement itself.” It ceased publication in 1993.

One can see immediately how the Feminist movement was a direct rejection of the God-ordained roles He set out for men, women, children and families in the bible. Adherents to the movement’s tenets directly reject biblical notions of family, domestic leadership, marriage (straight and gay), virginity, abortion, sexuality and sexual activity, and more.

Note the movement’s flagship magazine Spare Rib is based on the verse from Genesis 2:21-22: “So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

Now that a generation of women have grown up with secular saturation of unbiblical notions of how they are to relate to the world and to men, we look at how the church has been affected. In part 1 I looked at the language of the movement in relation to the church, noting two prominent news articles published this week asking if Jesus was a hermaphrodite and if God is a girl. That was the Demagogic. In part 2 I looked at women’s roles in the church as related to the Middle Ages and the modern Mystic. In this last part I will take a look at the biblical role of the woman as related to Logistics.

Is God female? Is Jesus a hermaphrodite? Feminism’s modern attacks- part 1
Is God female? Is Jesus a hermaphrodite? Feminism’s modern attacks- part 2

LOGISTICS

The satanic, fundamental flaw in the Feminist movement (Women’s Liberation) is first that women need something to be liberated from. As we see above, the movement seeks to “liberate” the woman from biblically mandated roles, which is really saying it rejects God’s order of things. The second flaw is that there is something inherently unequal about the roles of men and woman as wife, mother, husband, father, etc. They are not unequal. They are equal. They’re just different. Men have mostly been assigned a role for leadership and women of support. Both are vital and both are for the glory of God. Both win the battle. You cannot have one role without the other role and expect to win the war.

Let’s take a look at military logistics to see what I mean.

In the 1862 Battle of New Orleans the major military strategy was to cut off supplies to the city. “Early in the Civil War, Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott devised the “Anaconda Plan” for defeating the Confederacy. A hero of the Mexican-American War, Scott called for the blockade of the Southern coast as well as the capture of the Mississippi River. This latter move was designed to split the Confederacy in two and prevent supplies from moving east and west. The first step to securing the Mississippi was the capture of New Orleans. The Confederacy’s largest city and busiest port, New Orleans was defended by two large forts, Jackson and St. Philip, situated on the river below the city.”

As for the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, it was won partially because of supplies: who had them and who didn’t. “The Chancellorsville Campaign was one of the most lopsided clashes of the war, with the Union’s effective fighting force more than twice the Confederates’, the greatest imbalance during the war in Virginia. Hooker’s army was much better supplied and was well-rested after several months of inactivity. Lee’s forces, on the other hand, were poorly provisioned and were scattered all over the state of Virginia.”

The thing that gets the provisions in a campaign from one place to another is logistics. Even making a determination of who needs what and how much is also one of logistics. You can’t win a battle if the soldier is tired and hungry. If he is cold or lost. If the supply train doesn’t get there. Or as we have seen in M*A*S*H episodes, of sending winter coats in July or thermometers when they needed blood.

Military logistics is defined as “Military logistics is the discipline of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of military forces. In its most comprehensive sense, it is those aspects or military operations that deal with:
–Design, development, acquisition, storage, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposition of materiel.
–Transport of personnel.
–Acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities.
–Acquisition or furnishing of services.
–Medical and health service support.”

Vice Admiral Robert B. Carney, USN said of logistics: “Because of my wartime experience, I am insistent on the point that logistics know-how must be maintained, that logistic is second to nothing in importance in warfare, that logistic training must be widespread and thorough, and that it is folly to waste time on mediocre talent.”

To support logistics, we have a home front. “Home front is the informal term commonly used to describe the civilian populace of the nation at war as an active support system of their military. In a modern industrial nation, the fighting “teeth” of combat soldiers, depends to a considerable degree on the “tail” of civilian support services—extending all the way to the factories that build materiel to support the “military front”.”

“… in its relationship to strategy, logistics assumes the character of a dynamic force, without which the strategic conception is simply a paper plan.” — Commander C. Theo Vogelsang, USN

Logistics is the method by which the dynamism between the Home Front and the Military Front is energized and maintained. “This continuity of “military effort” from fighting soldier to manufacturing facility has profound effects for the concept of “total war.” (source)

Let’s adapt this language of logistics and home front/military front to the roles God ordained for the family. Christians are in a war. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:” (2 Corinthians 10:3. Also Ephesians 6:12). We are not battling flesh and blood but we are in a spiritual battle every moment of every day. We are all soldiers. Women who are unmarried, widowed or divorced and single men are just as important and useful for God’s glory in the battle as are married folks who are fulfilling their ordained roles.

But a biblical wife will keep a good home. She will labor in her own battles to supply the home base so her soldier who comes home weary from the battle will rest and have peace. His renewed energy will allow him to go forth the next day. Look at the list above again of what logistics is, and tell me that isn’t what a mom does every day. The Home Front is just as important to winning the overall battle as are the ones whom the General deployed to the military front.

Jesus is our Commander In Chief. He is the One from whom we receive our battle orders, and that military manual is the bible. The CIC knows what He is doing and why. It is only Him who has the bird’s eye view of where this one or that one is needed, or where the more pitched battles are taking place. But He gave us the Word so we may be prepared and we know what to do at all times.

The Enemy will always try to disrupt the supply trains. He will mess with logistics. He will attempt to make the soldiers lose their way, tire them out, and starve them. He has his own “Anaconda Plan” and it is the same as the Union’s was: to split the family in two and strangle and starve them out. An entire generation of men have been starved from that comfort and peace they had formerly been receiving in the home.

As far as the church goes, we are reaping a generation of women who have swallowed the demagogic language that women’s roles need to be exact in authority to a man’s, identical in gender. They have gone so far as to propose that God is a woman and Jesus was a hermaphrodite. So now you see the success of satan’s goal. He has always wanted to put himself where God is, (Isaiah 14:14). Soon the feminists will be saying that God IS a woman. And thus satan will have supplanted the biblical view of God to one that he’s perverted. In satan’s mind, a perverted God who doesn’t look like Himself as He showed us in the bible is just as good as a God he has booted out completely.

In the bible, women and men have complementary roles. Complementary does not mean unequal. Understand is that a difference in role does not equate to a difference in quality, importance, or value. The bible says,

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.” (Ephesians 5:22-24)
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” (Ephesians 5:25)
“Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” (Ephesians 5:33)
To be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands … (Titus 2:4-5)

“I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.” (1 Tim. 5:14)

This is because a man needs to focus on provision and to be able to lead his family into the statutes of God. He doesn’t need the extraneous problem of quelling rumors and dealing with slander against his family. A woman who causes the enemy opportunity for slander is draining the resources from one half of the dynamic relationship that is needed for a complete approach to the battle.

This is the man’s role:
“If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.” (Deuteronomy 24:5)

I am convinced that if the world were to accept the roles that God put forth there would be such happiness.

In conclusion, I’ll end with a personal anecdote. I always thought the woman’s movement was bunk. Despite having been raised in the 1970s and 80s and despite my mother being a divorced feminist, I always felt that it was more natural and normal for a woman to be the supply side of the family relationship. (**Note that I understand that finances or circumstances sometimes deems it necessary for a woman to work outside the home. I also understand that abuse is rampant and that there are inequalities in employment relationships etc. This essay is not addressing those.) I was twenty in 1980 when this famous television commercial came out. It features a glamorous Liberated woman moving through her day. The singer croons,

“I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan…”
“I can work till five o’clock and come home and read to the kids tickety tock”

I always thought, ‘what good is THAT? Now women have to go out and work AND do all the household chores’. In the latter part of the 80s and the 90s the battle then became who was going to do all the tasks left undone by the woman who is now out working. The whole thing seemed obviously unworkable to me. See, the logistics were disrupted and instead of the battle being against the enemy it became a battle against each other: wife against husband.

The song also croons, “and never ever let you forget you’re a man”

Why would a man need assurance he is still a man if the Feminist Movement was properly righting a societal wrong? The implicit message of the song is that now because the woman is taking over the men’s duties he needs to be reassured that he is still relevant. But he didn’t buy those assurances, because as I mentioned in part 2, men have left the family in great numbers. Fatherless households are a rampant scourge. And they have left the church too.

I know it isn’t popular to say so but it really is a beautiful thing to see a wife submit to her husband. And also it is a beautiful thing to see a man sacrifice for his wife. If performed properly and biblically with the Holy Spirit being the logistical glue that greases the dynamics of the biblical marital relationship, bliss would ensue. Not that everything is always harmonious in a marriage, but the overall feeling of bliss comes in knowing each person is functioning how God wants them to. The deference goes both ways. But the girls of this generation have bought the lie of the feminists, that instead of seeking a Godly husband who would cherish her and sacrificing himself for her, that we didn’t need a man at all. It is not true,

“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

Men are alone. It is not good. There is no help-meet for him. And the generation is reaping the price.