a twitter conversation
Yesterday morning I had a twitter conversation with a girl I don't know.  I'm still thinking about it because the question we ended with is an important one.  Here's how it went: 

 (spoiler, yes, we're all still talking about the Year of Biblical Womanhood, but c'mon, stay with me, this is important - if you're a woman or a Christian, you have a stake in how this plays out)

 I've put Hannah in plain text, and my replies in italics.
Hannah: How would your view of YBW and the ongoing conversation change if what says is true?  

Me: I think she makes some strong points (I noted the straw woman complaint in my review, too). But today I've been thinking: Doesn't Mary do the same thing to feminists that Rachel does to complementarians? In this video, she says "When Betty Friedan started the feminist movement in America in the 1960s..." selectively defining feminism as 2nd wave feminism to make it easier to condemn?  

Here's to reductionism all round! So how do we elevate the conversation? How do we move past simplistic egal and comp answers? Looking for a way forward. 

Amen to that. reading w/ hermeneutic of love is a good start, & cultivating humility...But we need more to find the way forward, I think. 

Biggest concern: YBW is just as easy, just as provincial as the problem. We need better, more robust answers.Need expression of Xian womanhood that transcends 1950s AND the post-feminist West. 

So you and I had better start writing :-) 

Absolutely. I'm on it. 

 I actually think that most of the time, the True Woman ladies do a lovely job at keeping Christ the center. 

Agreed. Disconnect is often in what is taught and what is practiced. Great perspective here:  

And this is the other major flaw in argument- what critiques may not be party line comp.-  but it is real and it is widespread and it is usually called complementarianism. 

Agree. And comps need to speak against it as strongly as they speak against any other abuses.

Today @ShaneyIrene made a similar point to Mary Kassian:
 ...There seems to be a disconnect between the "leaders" of complementarianism and what actually gets taught in churches. For example, you can call yourself "core" and Ms Pearl "fringe," but that doesn't take into account how much her teachings get recommended at a lay level. 
What do you think?  Do we need a whole new vocabulary? (I know neither the egalitarian nor the complementarian expression seems exactly right to me.) Why is it so important to us to be right?  Why is this conversation so emotional and tense and fiercely fought? Is there a way to talk about important theological points without just denying each other?
"being right", "complementarianism", "egalitarianism", "feminism", "mutuality", "rachel held evans", "theology", "twitter"Amy