UNITED STATES
Slactivist
June 14, 2014 By Fred Clark
This is a pleasant surprise. They took down that post.
By “that post” I mean the horrible rape apologia published earlier this week by Leadership Journal, Christianity Today’s magazine for white evangelical pastors.
And by “they” I mean both Leadership Journal — which removed the post entirely, and “they” the dozens of Christians, mostly women, who wrote to the editors of LJ, commented, wrote blog posts and started the Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost. The latter “they,” remarkably, were the ones who persuaded/forced the former “they” to begin to correct their ghastly mistake.
That’s tremendous, considering that Leadership Journal is decidedly and determinedly an institution at the heart of white evangelical institutionalism. That’s not an arena where the voices of women are usually able to make themselves heard. Especially not young women (and “young,” in Christianity Today terms, means anybody under 50). And not young women who don’t have a market or media platform or any formal, institutional support. And most especially not young women who ask too many questions, or who are too vocally critical of white evangelical purity culture, or who do not have the proper Official Stance opposing LGBT people and feminism.
And yet, astonishingly, dozens of just such women were able — eventually — to force the powers that be at Christianity Today to listen and to respond. That happened because they had the courage to speak up and to refuse to be silenced. And because they were right. They were obviously, powerfully right. And in the end, the men who run Christianity Today had to acknowledge the truth of what these women were saying.
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