On November 4, 2008 those who could and would, celebrated the election of the first U.S president of color. Seemingly against the flow of history, an African-american family would actually live in the White House presidential residence originally built by slaves.

That same night twelve years ago my granddaughter was born. The first two-thirds of her life would be informed by the knowledge that former restrictions no longer applied. She would see not only more racial diversity in the new administration, but gender diversity as well, as women “manned” positions in important departments, agencies, and even the Supreme Court.

As she celebrated her twelfth birthday, she witnessed the election of the first female as the nation’s vice-president. These two events, while twelve years apart, will serve as significant “book-ends” to her most formative years.

She now is moving toward an adulthood that lives just on the other side of her teenage years. She is intelligent and articulate. She is artistically gifted and creative. She is athletic. Academically she is years beyond her chronological age. She has a confident voice and the ability to assimilate and communicate her ideas. In short, she bears the very image of God.

Now please reflect on that for a moment. This is not just something that a proud granddad might say. This is incontestable truth. This is non-negotiable. She bears the image of her Creator, is gifted and talented and is precious in His sight.

Her world possesses possibilities unknown to females in my youth. Had she lived during the 1950’s, she would have never seen a female on a news desk or filing broadcast reports from the field. Females did not report and analyze the sports. Nor serve as physicians, nor surgeons. Nor Lawyers. Nor generally speaking, as professional athletes. They were basically “child-bearers.”

Gender roles in the 1950s were intimately connected to the Cold War. The term nuclear family merged to describe and encourage the stability of the family as the essential building block of a strong and healthy society. In this view, a woman played a crucial role in waging the Cold War, by keeping the family unit strong and intact. She could do this best, it was thought, by remaining at home to take care of her husband and children, and refusing to pursue a career. Thus was a link forged between traditional gender roles and national security. (https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/women-in-the-1950s)

A woman could be a nurse, but a man would serve as doctor or surgeon. She could be a teacher of children but men became principals. She could be a “secretary”, a term generally reserved for the female typists who took dictation from their male superiors (who often had never learned to type), and produced their written correspondence. She could be a “stewardess” (female flight attendant) but not a pilot. TV meteorologists were “weather men.” Even black sanitary workers were “garbage men.” (While many females of color worked domestic jobs, this was not viewed as female participation in the work force, but “what colored women did.”)

My granddaughter would have known nothing of the “Rosy the Riveters” who left the home to build ships and other war machinery a few years before my birth. She would have known nothing of the 7,000 British Bletchley Park women who worked as code-breakers during World War II, and for security reasons officially were identified as “secretaries”.

Back then, she could be excused if she never thought to inquire why ministers and other congregational leaders were exclusively male. We lived (so we were told) in a Christian nation. Whatever limitations that were imposed upon women in our culture were, no doubt, God’s will for both church and country.

Had she lived in the 1850’s, she would have heard from the church that:

In this country we believe that the general good requires us to deprive the whole female sex of the right of self-government. They have no voice in the formation of the laws which dispose of their persons and property. (Charles Hodge)

In the 1950’s if she grew up in my faith culture, and if she read religious tracts as I did during her formative years, she would have been taught the following:

Originally, in all religious matters the woman was the equal of the man, but the woman so abused her privilege that she led the man into sin and made it necessary, for the spiritual welfare of the race, that she be deprived of the right of equality with man in religious leadership. (E. C. Fuqua)

The message of the tract was clear. God created humankind, (male and female) in the image of God, in a status of equality and mutuality. Then, because of the shared act of disobedience. the female thereafter was unilaterally declared by God to be unfit and unequal by virtue of gender.

So it was. For years women could not vote, and my faith tradition opposed unsuccessfully the woman’s right to vote. When women sought societal equality, my faith tradition insisted that the female’s place was in the home, not in the workplace, with those few notable exceptions that carefully delineated the respective gender roles.

Although women had once worked outside the home replacing the absent men during the second world war, my faith tradition joined others in returning women to the homes. Churches had special “women’s studies” on how to be a good wife and good housekeeper. Conspicuously absent were classes encouraging women to find their personal giftedness, or to pursue any intellectual goals.

This was the world of her grandparents; but will never be my granddaughter’s world.

Her parents (my son and daughter-in-law) will not tolerate the toxic “unfit gender” theology of the past faith traditions nor of present day complementarian churches. My granddaughter, like my grandson, bears the very image of God.

So what is a grandfather to tell his granddaughter?

– That Mother Eve was deceived and shared forbidden fruit with her husband, and therefore carried more blame than the mate who, undeceived, just went and done it? That Mother Eve tainted her gender forever, making her daughters unfit for any sort of religious leadership? That she can follow her giftedness to fulfillment in any area, except in the Kingdom of God?

– That because of her gender she must accept imposed limitations should her calling be to ministry – concerning who and how she is allowed to teach God’s Word? Or concerning how she could exercise leadership?

– That these impositions are really the reaction of an all-knowing God against half of his human creation, due to the ignorance of one female?  Or even if she does not seek a public ministry in the church, that she and her daughters and her granddaughters are to be somehow “unfit” nonetheless, the penalty for being born female?

Is this what I should tell my granddaughter. Hardly!

Quite frankly, it embarrasses me to think she might ever have to encounter this toxic theology.

What will I tell her? I will tell her that she bears the image of her Creator , and that in the Kingdom of God :

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 NIV

Happy Twelfth Birthday, my gifted and amazing granddaughter  Zoe
who bears the image of her Creator !