Fearlessly Feminine: How Circular Arguments and Personal Truth Threaten Women’s Right to Self-Determination

In the interest of understanding more about the view of women that informs so many of the religious right’s policy goals, I’ve been reading books such as Jani Ortlund’s Fearlessly Feminine: Boldly Living God’s Plan for Womanhood and Michael Farris’ How a Man Prepares His Daughters for Life.

Ortlund’s book — in which I am currently reading the chapter on motherhood — is particularly interesting. On the first pass, I was surprised with just how much of her outlook I actually agreed with.

After all, in my experience communication is central to a good marriage. Things that can be bought and sold are not of true spiritual significance. Sex without respect is morally bankrupt, and taking care of the needs of others is a critical component of righteousness.

So many good points started jumping out at me that I started asking myself, “just how different am I from Christian Nationalists, anyway?”

Confused, I went back and re-read the passages I agreed with. I began to deconstruct Ortlund’s rhetorical devices and quickly realized that her book is 95% regurgitated conventional wisdom about marriage, motherhood and singleness.

Like most conventions of our society, this wisdom is tinged with hints of misogyny. After all, we’ve changed the relationship between the sexes more in the past 50 years than we did in the past 4,000. It’s perfectly understandable — although not acceptable — that our social conventions still reflect our patriarchal roots.

This is where Ortlund segues so effectively into her more controversial points about the role of women. Before you know it, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that a woman’s place really is in the home being “slave labor” — as she so elegantly puts it — for her children. She extrapolates her arguments beautifully from the tendrils of social convention that so desperately need to change.

Sprinkling a few insidious ideas in among commonly accepted or truthful information is one time-tested strategy for convincing others of something specious. I believe that Jani Ortlund genuinely believes what she has to say. Furthermore, I respect her choices to put her husband and family ahead of her own needs, goals, dreams and desires. If this is what she truly wants for her life, who am I to judge?

Jani Ortlund’s life choices are not insidious. What’s insidious is the assumption that what’s good for her is good for me. Her personal experience of God in her life informs her view that women should subsume our needs to those of our husbands and children.

Because this is such a tremendous sacrifice, it requires tremendous justification. It’s not enough for Ortlund to believe that this is God’s plan for her. In order for her sacrifice to be worthy, it must be part of God’s plan for every woman. And so she relies on a circular argument about the undiluted veracity of the scripture on which she bases her life to convince herself that God wants the same choices from every woman.

In order to test Ortlund’s arguments anecdotally, I took stock of what really matters to me. I looked at my calendar and my bank accounts. I peeked into my shoe closet and started thinking about the kind of money I make and spend every month.

I do lead a pretty materialistic, hedonistic lifestyle. I am determined to be upwardly mobile by the sweat of my own brow. I dream of a world in which my sexuality is an asset, not a liability. But I am not spiritually impoverished. I am alive with passion for the world, for the needs of others, and for the relationships of deep and abiding love in my life.

And yes, I am alive with passion for the eternal mystery. I am fascinated by the relationship between the farthest reaches of the universe and the deepest cravings of the human soul. I do not crave easy answers. I do not reject faith or those who have it. I do not denigrate others or the covenants they make with one another. I live as justly as I am able, and I accept my imperfections. I know that there is always room for improvement.

If this spiritual satisfaction — which seems identical to that Ortlund decribes — is possible in an agnostic, Jewish, bisexual feminist, then Ortlund’s choices are not the only way to achieve that satisfaction. The path to satisfaction is different for every woman — indeed, for every human being.

The true danger of Christian Nationalism is that it does not accept this idea, nor will it entertain any arguments that support it. It bases policy goals on the fallacy that personal experience and circular arguments are tantamount to truth. And it justifies its more radical perspectives by conflating them with conventional wisdom.

If we are ever to move away from this particularly dangerous chapter of American politics, it must be with a clear recognition of the abyss of fundamentalism into which we are currently staring.