Is the evangelical church missing the boat when it comes to justice for women? 

Not just missing the boat theologically by supporting doctrines that subordinate women, but missing the boat in general when it comes to advocating for justice?

I think it is. But I don’t think the evangelical church is the only one missing the boat. I think the more progressive version of Christianity can also miss the boat, as can many online progessive activists. And I’d like to spend the next three or four posts showing how this happens in different ways with all three groups, and asking us to seek Jesus in a different way that will actually bring healing and justice. 

But I want to start today with the typical evangelical church–either complementarian or egalitarian. For the purposes of this post, it actually doesn’t matter for once, and you’ll see why in a minute.

I have this test that I often use when it comes to church services, and it goes something like this:

Here’s how this test works.

For me, the news story this week would have been the Cornell Rapists (or the Cornell 7). News broke late last week of a young woman, 18 at the time, who was attending Cornell in 2024. She was invited by a friend back to his frat house, where she was drugged. He then sent out a text to the entire frat (55 people in all, I believe), inviting them to come and use her sexually (I won’t repeat what he wrote). She was then sexually assaulted for seven hours by seven men.

She reported the rape. Cornell expelled two of the students, but had five of them just write essays. The DA declined to prosecute (they announced today that they would be reopening the case).

So, here’s the question: Would that sexual assault survivor, or other survivors who had their trauma brought to the surface again by this story of extreme injustice, have felt seen and heard in your church service yesterday? Would they feel as if God was pleading their case for them? As if people cared what had happened to them?

I don’t mean that the church service had to talk about their particular case. 

But would they feel as if the people cared about injustice? As if God did? Would they hear that God was angry at oppression and injustice and violence? Would they hear that God wants us to do something to end that injustice and to figure out a solution to the violence against women (or whatever group we’re talking about in the particular news story) that all Christians should be a part of? Even if the injustice is talked about in theoretical terms rather than specifics, would they feel, in this church, that dealing with injustice and confronting evil is part of the work that God wants us to do?

And I am afraid that the vast majority of evangelical churches and church services would fail this test, for several reasons.

Evangelicalism focuses on our personal relationship with Christ.

Think of Billy Graham, the epitome of evangelicalism, even the one that defined modern evangelicalism. What was it largely about? People accepting Jesus as their personal Saviour. This is the end all and be all, and nothing much else matters.

Once you have Jesus as your Saviour, then you are right with God. And so the focus of the faith is on your personal walk with God.

Yes, this has implications for how we treat others, obviously, but largely we see the solution to problems that people are going through as being individual in nature:

• “They just need Jesus”
• “They need to surrender more to Jesus”
• “They need to feel the healing power of Jesus”

Think about how our sermons focus on how we need to experience more of Christ, or surrender more to Christ, or spend more time with Christ.

All of these things are true, yes. But they are not the whole story of faith that is presented in Scripture (as we’ll explore more in later posts).

So let’s go back to our sexual assault victim who is a victim of multiple areas of systemic injustice, where the justice system has ignored her; the university system has ignored her; and her peers have violated her.

Does the message “you just need Jesus” address these problems? Is it sufficient? Or does she also need to hear, “Jesus is angry when people are treated badly and when there is injustice, and Jesus wants us to fight for the oppressed?”

Evangelicalism encourages us to let go of the emotions that would motivate us to fix things

One of the things we talk about in our upcoming book Fawn: How a Trauma Response Became Biblical Womanhood, is that anger is actually a motivating and energizing emotion. It feels uncomfortable, so, properly channelled, it prompts us to do something to change things. It’s like one of my favourite quotes from A Wrinkle in Time: “Stay angry, little Meg. You will need all your anger now.”

In 2018 Rebecca Traister wrote Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, detailing how women’s anger was actually the catalyst to all the positive social change movements we’ve seen in the last 150 years–an end to child labour; health care; equal rights. When we see injustice, when we’re angry about injustice, and when that anger fuels us to fight injustice, then change can come.

But what happens if evangelical church services are geared to calm us down from our anger, and take away the uncomfortable emotions that may motivate us to fight for something better?

Imagine that you enter church doors upset about the Cornell 7, or about the rash of hangings of African Americans in the south, or about Nolan Wells’ death, or about ICE detention centers. You feel sad about the state of the world, but helpless to do anything about it.

And at that church service, you sing songs that say things like this:

• “All of you is more than enough for all of me, for every hurt and every need, you satisfy me with your love, and all I have in you is more than enough.”
• “He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own. And the joy we share, as we tarry there, no other has ever known.”
• “Over the mountains and the seas, your river runs with love for me, and I will open up my heart and let the Healer set me free…I could sing of your love forever”

Those songs are emotional. They calm you down. They assure you that God is with you, that all you need is His love.

And so those energizing emotions that may motivate you to fight for change are calmed, and you feel as if this is a good thing, like you have just encountered Jesus who brought you peace.

But you feeling better about the state of the world does not help the sexaul assault victim who is dealing with injustice. She does not just need to sing of God’s love forever. She needs the community of believers to stand around her and say, “what happened to you isn’t right, and we will be part of acknowledging that out loud and helping you get justice.”

Evangelical church services are often geared towards helping people accept the status quo.

Is this intentional? No, I don’t think so.

And I know that because one of the things that haunts me is that, years ago when I spoke at women’s retreats, this was largely the substance of the messages I gave. When life is tough, realize that God is enough, and He will give you peace. 

I wasn’t trying to get people to accept any status quo. I didn’t think to myself “this is a way to calm everyone down so they don’t upset the apple cart.” No, this is what I was taught was what Jesus wanted.

What if there’s more to Jesus than just Him comforting us?

The New Testament is not only about our relationship with Christ. It’s also about how we build a healthy community. It’s about what the kingdom of God is like, and how we’re supposed to be part of bringing that kingdom to earth. And the New Testament tells us that we fight not just against flesh and blood, but about powers and principalities–which are basically the systemic evils that we see in our society.

When we reduce the Christian life to simply our own personal relationship with Christ, we don’t end up with answers for people who are truly hurting. We don’t prevent others from being hurt in the same way.

There are also issues, of course, of many evangelical churches contributing to the suffering of others by promoting doctrines that are inherently oppressive and hierarchical, and I don’t mean to diminish that (indeed, I have written so many posts about that and podcasts about that I feel as if I’ve handled that from all angles).

But it goes beyond that. Part of the reason that evangelicalism cannot begin to address the sexual abuse crisis in its ranks or the racism in its ranks or the sexism in its ranks is because of the focus in evangelicalism on personal piety over healthy community.

And until we realize that Jesus came not just to transform our own hearts but to transform the world as a whole, then we’ll remain largely ineffective, and even dismissive, of those with real trauma.

Next time we’ll look at how the progressive/mainstream churches often don’t have an answer to the sexism and oppression of women either. 

What do you think? Has evangelicalism centered individual feelings too much? Do you have counter-examples? Let’s talk in the comments!