Jim Henderson of Off the Map is working on a book on how the church treats women. As part of his research he commissioned the Barna Group to conduct a survey of women’s experiences in the church. They (Barna Group) spoke with 603 women who met the following qualifications: 18 years or older, described themselves as “Christian” And had attended a Christian church service at least once during the past six months. Among those women, 63% met the survey criteria for being a “Born Again Christian.”

Here’s a bit of what the survey discovered –

1. 84% say that their church’s perspective on women in ministry is almost identical, very similar, or somewhat similar to their own.
2. 83% say that their Senior Pastor is somewhat, highly or completely supportive of women leading in their church
3. 82% say they can tell by their church’s actions that the church values the leadership of women
4. 81% say that their church provides women with the same degree of leadership opportunities as Jesus would.
5. 72% say they possess a lot of spiritual freedom in their life
6. 70% say that the media has little influence on their decision-making
7. 71% say fear is not something they experience ever or often in their life
8. 62% say that ALL leadership roles are open to them in their church.
9. Only 1% say they often struggle with jealousy
10. Among those who feel they are capable of doing more to serve God, and should be doing more, only 4% say that their fear of failure is holding them back from doing more to serve God.

Jim admits that these results seem almost unnaturally positive and asked for other women to comment if these results actually represent their own experience. Here’s what a few Emerging Women wrote on their own blogs concerning the results -

Pam Hogeweide responded -

When I first saw these stats, I had to reread them three times just to make sure I was understanding the data. It then became apparent to me: if a woman in church believes she is only meant to serve and lead other women or children, then yes, of course she is content within her church experience. If today’s Christian woman is convinced by the men in power who teach her that she is to remain dutifully in her biblically mandated role, then this is the perception she will report from.

To answer Jim’s question for myself, No, these stats do not match my experience, nor the experience of many, many women on the road of faith I have known for the last 28 years.

Kathy Escobar commented as well –

once i look up and out at the reality of women in the typical evangelical-y church system i get really, really sad. and really, really mad. when i read these statistics i honestly thought it was a joke. they are not representative of the majority of women that i know and their experiences. but then i remembered that most of the women i hang out with on a regular basis are, on the whole, no longer drinking the christian company kool-aid.
what do i mean by the company kool-aid?

i mean the things that the system tell us to believe. the things that leaders engrain into the community’s culture. the things that are backed up with “we’re 100% certain this is what God meant.” the subtle and direct messages that “good christians believe this.” the herd mentality that is so strong in any homogenous culture–this is the direction everyone’s going so i better tow the line and walk this way, talk this way, too.

And Sonja writes –

It made me angry to read these statistics. It made me angry, not just for the women … but for all the people involved in those churches. They are losing out. This is not the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, or as he walked with his disciples or at any time. Would even Peter, or John the beloved disciple be able to answer these questions so affirmatively? How about Mary Magdalene? Good grief, if even the disciples struggled with jealousy why on earth can only 6 women out 603 acknowledge it? Perhaps it was the word, often, that threw them off. Maybe they decided that they could deny that jealousy was something that strolled in and regularly did battle in their hearts. I know I will stand up and say that I am jealous all the time. It doesn’t make me mean anymore, but acknowledging it to myself and being able to laugh at it has made it easier.

Then this report made me sad. The kind of sad that aches in my bones. Because when I look at it I see poverty. The church in North America (like the US) may have a lot of money. It may have a lot of stuff. We may also have a lot of people for all I know. But we are starving to death. Emaciated and dying for lack of food, water and oxygen. Worse, we are doing it to ourselves. With a huge smile on our faces. We are a people with anorexia or bulimia. When we look in the mirror we see fat and happy, but the reality is we are starving. Dying.

In all truth I lost my faith in the Barna Group’s ability to conduct meaningful surveys years ago. The way they ask their questions, and especially who they ask them of, doesn’t exactly represent reality as I know it. But I get that for women in churches that tell them that “1. Women must not lead in the church, 2. To question that is to question the Bible, and 3. That to question the Bible (or admit there might be different interpretations) is a slippery-slope into unchristian liberalism” OF COURSE they are going to say that they are in agreement with their church’s confining views of women. I bought that lie hook, line, and sinker for years, I know that world.

So like the other women have expressed, these survey results sadden me. They do represent a segment of the church – one where patriarchy rules disguised in biblical clothing. These women don’t have the freedom to question their position without fear of being mocked or excluded from their fellowship. They don’t even have the freedom to admit they experience fear or jealousy (what sort of sick repression is going on here in our image first church world????) They don’t believe that they are allowed to be happy in any other setting. I get that that part of the church exists. But it’s not my experience anymore. Maybe the women who have escaped that world might not fall into Barna’s strict definition of Christian (didn’t a few years ago they define a Christian as one who believes in the Bible’s inerrancy?) I don’t know, I just know that some of these results are disturbing on a deep and visceral level. There is much we can learn from the results, and I am eager to read Jim’s response in his book. But I also think there is a real danger of these statistics being grievously misused in defense of the continued oppression of women and the silencing of half the church. I pray that is not the case.

Clay Shirky’s recent blog post A Rant About Women has been getting it’s fair share of attention – mostly of the angry and upset variety. In the rant, he asserts that women don’t have the high-paying jobs and positions of power that men do basically because we don’t sell ourselves well enough. He sees male students all the time pompously asserting themselves and even lying in order to get where they want in life. Women just don’t act like arrogant bastards, and so therefore we are still underrepresented in the professional world. He suggests, we need to just be more like men in our self-promotion. He writes-

And it looks to me like women in general, and the women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, are often lousy at those kinds of behaviors, even when the situation calls for it. They aren’t just bad at behaving like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.

Now this is asking women to behave more like men, but so what? We ask people to cross gender lines all the time. We’re in the middle of a generations-long project to encourage men to be better listeners and more sensitive partners, to take more account of others’ feelings and to let out our own feelings more. Similarly, I see colleges spending time and effort teaching women strategies for self-defense, including direct physical aggression. I sometimes wonder what would happen, though, if my college spent as much effort teaching women self-advancement as self-defense.

* * *

Some of the reason these strategies succeed is because we live in a world where women are discriminated against. However, even in an ideal future, self-promotion will be a skill that produces disproportionate rewards, and if skill at self-promotion remains disproportionately male, those rewards will as well. This isn’t because of oppression, it’s because of freedom.

So on one hand, I understand his point. Research has shown that often women make less than men simply because women don’t ask for raises as often as men do. We don’t put ourselves out there in risky ways, making ourselves look good no matter who it may hurt. But as a Christian I have a hard time with his suggestion that if women just became selfish jerks like men, we would be all good. Yes, we have the freedom to play that game and yes, it may actually get us more power and money, but we’d have to sell our soul in the process. I don’t want to play a bitchier meaner game in order to compete, I want to change the game itself. I would rather live in a world where being an arrogant bastard wasn’t a virtue. Sure, that might sound naive and idealistic, but it also sounds much more in line with my faith. If I want to be like Jesus, I can’t play the game “me first, screw whoever gets in my way.”

So I wonder if the professors and consultants who are putting their time and energy into helping women be able to play just as dirty as the men in a broken system would instead put effort into building a new system what difference that would make? What would it take for that to start to happen? What changes need to be made at fundamental levels to shift the way this entire game gets played? What would a system even look like where caring for the other instead of “every man for himself” was the central tenet?

Julie Clawson is a mother, writer, and speaker. She is the author of Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices (IVP, 2009). In addition to moderating the Emerging Women blog, she also writes at julieclawson.com.