Dialogue article about Paul's letter to Ephesians

[Whistler]

I recently read this Dialogue article:

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-cont ... N02_82.pdf

The tl;dr of it is it's a reading of Paul's letter to the Ephesians in a progressive light (stick with me here!). Roman culture saw marriage as the man owning his wife and his slaves; Paul tells husbands and wives to love each other (and tells women to "respect" their husbands b/c being loving wasn't the macho paterfamilias thing to do).

Also the article presents a new reading for "submission" as being more "place yourselves below others" and less "obey."

I really liked reading this article. Upon reconsidering the servant-master relationship, I had new appreciation for how the apostles freaked out a little when Jesus started washing their feet. I guess a good modern analog for me (to get a similar visceral reaction) would be Jesus painting my nails. Well sheesh, that's not necessary!

If you have time to read this article, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

[Zedability]

I'm filing it away to read after finals week. It reminds me of a really good article that a woman's studies and religion professor collaborated on but I haven't been able to track that one down.

[Zedability]

Okay I finally read this and I really liked it. It also fits really well into a Board question I'm working on about gender roles in the Church (which is so overdue that the person has probably concluded that I'm never going to answer it).

My interpretation in light of this information is that equality between men and women is the ideal, but prophets throughout history have had to work within and sometimes against the constraints of temporary culture, which limited that to some degree. We lose context and start thinking inequality was the goal all along.

For instance, something I've been thinking about is that the sealing ceremony doesn't involve any "giving away" of the bride from the father to the husband. The husband simply affirms that he receives his wife, since his consent is implied by culture, but she receives her husband and also affirms that she is willing to "give herself" to her husband, or be married. (If I receive my husband, by implication either he gave himself to me or I took him without his consent - hopefully the first.) To me, this places the emphasis on the importance of the woman's consent. Or another example, even before the wording change from "obey" to "hearken," promising to obey your husband under certain conditions strikes me as much more free than other Christian traditions where the woman was to obey, full stop. Of course as context changed, that wording came to be restrictive, hence the gradual shift towards more egalitarian language in order to approximate the truth in a way better suited to our culture.

But that's just my opinion...any thoughts on that?

[Whistler]

As far as "hearken" goes, our own Melyngoch has an excellent essay on it here http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2011/04 ... rken-mean/ (tl; dr, sometimes in the scriptures it means "listen and obey" and sometimes it means "listen")

I've thought a bit about the wording of the sealing too. When I married my husband (Acius), he already had a job and a house, and I moved in with him and tried to change my life to be a mom. I also came to do the traditional housewife stuff like cleaning and cooking. From my point of view, his life stayed pretty much the same (same house/job) but it just got easier (someone to help do housework/cooking). In some respects it feels like I've "given up" more or had a bigger change to become a housewife in this situation, or give of myself more, especially after our daughter was born and I decided to be her primary caretaker. So for me personally, I look at the difference in covenant to reflect the different amount of change in our lives. That said, Acius did have to make changes to his life as an adjustment to marriage--everyone does. And in many other types of marriages both sides have to make big changes initially. I'd prefer the covenant to have equal wording for men and women, but for now this is how I've reconciled that difference in my head.

I like that you point out how the father doesn't "give away" the bride in the temple ceremony. Are you talking about when the father escorts the bride down the aisle?

[Zedability]

Yeah, like historically it was really treating women like property, she belonged to the dad and now she belongs to the husband.

I guess for my husband and I, we moved into a new apartment together and we're both in school/equally busy, so that was different for me.