Dear Chris Field,

I was going to jot you a short little note in the Comments section, but it turned into a HUGE note, so here it is:

Thanks. There are a lot of "justice issues" that I hope Christians will get more serious about.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I didn't feel attacked, and my toes are just fine. Forgive me if I did come off as somewhat combative--I like to argue.

And I agree with Connor, thanks for talking about the stuff no one wants to talk about. I'm just afraid it was sort of one-sided and that it aimed to attack a symptom, not a problem.

Christian women who dress immodestly do so because it gets them something they want: power, self-esteem, attention, affirmation, dates, etc. And why does this work? Because as Scoots, DLove and others mentioned, the way men and women in the church interact is all jacked up, and that’s the problem. (Or at least one of the problems in the church. Not enough room to address them all here, but I digress.) Women’s dress is just one of the many symptoms of this problem.

I mean, let’s face it, I’ve never heard an older Christian man say to a younger one, “You should keep her around; she’s got a great set of morals.” I have heard plenty of, “She’s a good-looking girl,” or “She’s sweet.” The one I always heard growing up was, “What a pretty girl!” God love ‘em, the elders at the church where I grew up (the good ones who are dead now) used to tell me how pretty I was, even when I was at my most awkward and least pretty. I love those men dearly and what they said to me was good and I needed to hear it, but it never occurred to them to compliment me on my spiritual gifts or my talents or the good things I did. It didn’t occur to me then that they should be encouraging me in those things, especially because the church I grew up in is still not really big on women using their gifts where other people can see them.

And now that I think about the church where I grew up, I remember my Dad preaching a sermon on the fact that women (especially the teens) should dress modestly in church because it was brought to his attention that some of the men were struggling because of some immodest dress. (I was a teen at this time, but I can tell you that the sermon was not directed toward me. I have only recently learned that I might be able to wear spaghetti straps in public and not go to hell.) Anyway, the whole time he was preaching I was thinking about this older man, probably in his thirties, who needed to hear the OTHER side of the sermon: that he needed to control his thoughts even when he saw women who were covered. This man creeped me out and always made a special effort to talk to me, and when he did, I got the feeling that he was imagining me naked. Ewww. He weirded some of my friends out, too, but I don’t think we ever told our parents or any other adult. I probably should’ve said something, but if he had tried anything, it would’ve given me an excuse to knee him in the balls, which I’m pretty sure he deserved. He and his wife moved away after a while, so it wasn’t a problem anymore, anyway.

I also just learned through experience that the Singles Groups at many larger churches are like meat markets. Very few of the singles in the local groups I visited would talk to me, and I couldn’t understand why. Now I think it’s because I am an attractive and intelligent woman, and the women saw me as competition and the men either didn’t notice me or found me intimidating. It was, for me, more like trying to meet people in a bar than in a church. Or trying to make friends on the set of The Bachelor. And that made me sad.

I also got the feeling that the singles at a lot of churches were either pitied or thought of as existing in a sort of purgatory. It’s pretty easy to argue that the church places more emphasis than it should on getting people married and that singles, especially older ones, are sometimes viewed as second-class citizens. And why is this? Didn’t Paul say that being single was better? I think too many of us are convinced—because of our culture and what we witness in churches and not because of anything biblical—that we can’t be happy unless we’re paired off, that one is not a whole number. Are we uncomfortable around older singles because we’re afraid there’s “something wrong” with them?

Or are we afraid that they’re homosexuals? I think the way we treat homosexuals is also a symptom of this problem. If homosexuality is a sin, then why do we treat it as so much worse than any other sin? Why do we invite in the greedy jerkwads who mistreat their wives and tell the homosexuals that they have to change before we’ll accept them? Is it because we’re afraid to admit that if they’re attracted to people of the same sex, then perhaps we could be, too? Are we afraid that they’ll contaminate us in some way or “lead our children astray?”

Why do so many Christians blame the breakdown of the American family on the prevalence of homosexuality in our society? It seems pretty obvious to me that most of the time, the American family is broken down because the American parents get divorced. Why are the divorce rates of Christians the same as the rest of the country? Could this be another symptom of the problem?

I would even argue that in many churches, women aren’t allowed to use their gifts in public because some men have a desire for them to fit certain roles and not because of any shared hermeneutic perspective. It seems to me that their “biblical beliefs” may spring more out of their tradition and expectations than any actual study. I think this is another symptom of the problem.

So thanks, Chris, for starting the discussion. Let’s keep it going.