"It is easy to be for yesterday's change. It is quite another to make the change your own time requires." -Bill Clinton, in a speech honoring the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
This is so true, especially in the call for gender justice. As Christians, we like to think that we would have been on the right side of the civil rights struggle, but why are so many Christians still uncomfortable with the basic concept that women are fully equal in the church and the home? Why is the church so behind on so many important issues to women? Those who hold to limiting gender role theology but claim to speak for justice are for the easy change of yesterday. Confronting the ways that our own flawed theology undermines women is the hard uncomfortable change that God calls us to today. Working to uplift women worldwide from the scourge of gender violence and abuse is indeed the moral challenge of our day. That there is resistance shows where the moral edge is in God's continuing call for a higher justice.
Are you working within a faith context to Establish Justice for girls/women? Do you find yourself struggling to work through similar ideas/roadblocks our suffragist sisters faced 100+ years ago? If so, “chime in” with us & share insights, laments, hopes & strategies for change to continue the unfinished work of establishing Liberty & Justice for All, males & females alike.
In the same way that slavery was a moral challenge for the 19th c. & totalitarianism was a challenge for the 20th c., the challenge that women & girls face around the world is the moral challenge of our time.
~ Sheryl WuDunn & Nicholas Kristof
This was a very powerful quote, however when it comes to gender and religion I have to disagree. When you talk about equality - I believe that men and women should be able to do as many things but they were designed to do something. Just because you can do something- it does not necessarily mean that you need to. Equality for females comes with sacrifices. If a woman wanted to move forward in business she would have to sacrifice a lot of her household roles and may rarely see her children. Look at Alice Walker's daughter (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html).
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