THE INVISIBLE IMAGE

The ageing single woman in the church

by Brigid O’Carroll

There have been many sad moments in my life as a woman: times when I
am sad on my own behalf and times when I am sad on behalf of others.
Such a moment happened in Beijing in September, 1995, when the UN
Women’s Conference and Women’s Forum were held there.

For the first time, the Vatican delegation to the official Conference
had female representation. Surrounding me on my floor of the Hua Du
Hotel, were women – including quite a variety of nuns – who were members
of Women and the Australian Church.

Some were attending a briefing held by the Vatican delegation. I
tagged along. Women were packed into the large room in which the
briefing was held until there was standing room only. A monsignor
chaired the session. Questions came from the floor. A woman of middle
years asked a question about single women. The monsignor’s response
dealt with women in religious life, nuns. Clearly, for him, ‘single
women’ equals ‘nuns’.

I am single. Widowed. How often I remember the woman who organised
a highly successful Junior Church in our Baptist congregation in the
Australian outback. I can remember how she used to discuss with a few
of us how she felt she was treated (read ignored) in the church. I was
sympathetic but I was in a family situation – husband, three children.
How could I know what life and relationships in our congregation were
like for a single school teacher of middle years? What was theoretical
to me then is my own experience now.

Is your church a family church, a family friendly church? This is
wonderful. To have ministry directed specifically to families is a
wonderful goal and strategy. But be careful. Almost certainly there
are single people among you. It is so easy to overlook them, or look
past them. They may have children. They may never have married and
never had children. They may be young and lonely or ageing and lonely
and chances are the word forgotten could be fitted in there somewhere.
Particularly if the single is female. Definitely, if the female is
single, female, and ageing.

The Single Ageing Female

The single ageing female is more likely than not to have experienced
gendered ageism – even in the family friendly church. She is, too
frequently, invisible. The image of God, but invisible.

Why is this? Do we accord no status to women without a man? Are
some women too afraid to allow a single woman into situations where they
will become friendly with their husbands too? I have been fortunate in
this respect to the extent where I get cuddles from my Christian male
friends (but not from non-Christian males). They understand my need for
touch and their wives understand too.

You may be thinking I know women in this category but they don’t make
these complaints. This may be so – there were/are docile slaves but
this does not endorse slavery. In fact, the most effective form of
repression is the one where victims limit their own behaviour and the
dominant forces achieve their desired result with no effort.

Consider the role of women in your church. How likely is it in your
church for a woman to head a planning and strategy committee? How
likely is it that a woman is the treasurer in your church? How likely
is it that she will be influential in the Sunday School committee, the
cr che, and seeing that church dinners go smoothly? This even before we
mention controversial questions like ordination and eldership and
authority over men.

I emphasise these roles because the male, even though single, has all
these things open to him. In most cases, women whether married or
single, would not have the first two roles open to them.

You might say that things are not like that in your church, that your
senior pastors are a husband and wife team. Have you considered the
role of the wife were her husband to predecease her? Would the female
spouse continue to run the church or would the elders be putting out
feelers for another husband and wife team? Would the situation be
different if the male spouse survived and the female spouse died (bear
in mind that statistically men remarry quickly – women don’t)?
Importantly, how would the women in the church feel about all of
this?

The Image of God

In Genesis 1:27 we read ‘So God created humankind in his image, in
the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’

Feminists talk about equality. Christians who don’t like the
feminist viewpoint talk about complementarity. Men have talked about
the weaker sex. Women have talked about male dominance. I suggest we
look at this most significant passage.

Do you see any suggestions of equality there? Do you see reference
to two equal halves of a whole? Do you see any fraction whatsoever –
like the male part of the image is larger than the female image? Do you
see any reference to complementarity? Any reference to this piece of
the jigsaw fitting in that part of the jigsaw? Some thing lacking in
one part of humanity that is made up for in the other?

We are God’s image. Is God fragmented or androgynous?

The answer is none of the above.

We are only beginning to learn what being imaged in God is about –
but we have lots of insights into what it is not.

It is no more about entrenching maleness in church authority,
leadership, ministry and ordination than it is about ensuring that such
roles and classification display Greek or Jewish qualities.

It is about wholeness – wholeness of the individual and wholeness of
the corporate, the Body of Christ.

As we understand more about our biology and our psychology we learn
that this is so. Females have a component of male hormones. Males have
a component of female hormones. Males manifest anima, females manifest
animus. These components are part of our wholeness, our humanity, our
God within us.

So it is with time. God is not time conscious. He lives beyond our
concept of time. Why then do we not have a transcendent attitude to
time as it manifests itself in the images of God, men and women? Why do
we give preference on the basis of age? In some societies, the young
are sublimated to respect for elders. In western societies, we
increasingly see the old set aside to focus on the young. We are
diminished in our humanity when we fail to touch or see the Spirit in
the other.

Galatians 3:28: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus.’

How often have I heard this passage of scripture talked down. It
does not depict the present situation, some say. This is when Jesus
comes back or when we go to Heaven. It is as if Paul said, Not now but
at some future time there will be no longer Jew or Greek, there will be
no longer slave or free, there will no longer be male and female, for
all of you will be one in Christ Jesus. Do you see all that written in
this passage? I don’t.

It has only one time specific and that is no longer and that no
longer was written almost two millennia ago. Denial of this passage
invites denial of the entirety of Paul’s teaching about the Body of
Christ. What do you think was part of the attraction of early
Christianity? The patriarchy? Is this what so many pagan and Jewish
women were attracted to when they heard Paul preach the gospel?

Complementarity

Finally, when we do make distinctions, when we do speak of
complementarity, or of some being more equal than others, when we speak
of anything other than individual or corporate wholeness how can we ever
be one in Christ Jesus? How can we ever know that unity that Jesus
described in John 17:20-23, the unity which preceded Creation, redeemed
us through Incarnation, Death and Resurrection, and transforms us and
fits us to return to Him whose image we are?

Every differentiation we make sets back God’s plan in and for us.
Every piece of partisanship unravels that Body which is knit together
and lives and moves and has its being in Him.

As ever it has been, the choice is for wholeness and relationship
against duality and fragmentation. I know where I stand – and I can do
no other.

Topics for Discussion

1. Rosemary Radford Ruether says: ‘God did not just speak once upon a
time to a privileged group of males in one part of the world, making us
ever after dependent on the codification of their experience.’ If Jesus
had chosen six women and six men as apostles, what difference do you
think this would have made to the gospel message? What impact would
this have had on the church and the scriptures? 2. Discuss Jeremiah’s
description of the Lord creating a new thing on the earth: a woman
encompassing a man. (Jeremiah 31:22)

3. Are women in the Church in the 21st Century, whatever their age or
marital status, able to go beyond the roles of women in the New
Testament? Are there limitations on women to-day? If so, what are they?
4. How can women go beyond cultural and religious contexts towards
wholeness? 5. How does the Church acknowledge sexuality in the single
and the ageing? 6. How does the Church acknowledge articulate, skilled
and competent women in its midst? 7. How can women in the Church
co-operate in reflection on their experience of being imaged in God and
empowered and encouraged in Christ Jesus and have this acknowledged
within their local faith communities? 8. How can women become exemplars
to ensure that within family, church, community and nation there are no
longer racial, economic, gender or social boundaries? 9. How can women
image the Divine within family, church, community, and nation? 10.
Discuss Robert Palmer’s phrase First the God, then the song, and then
the story.