“Never apologize for the truth” (UPDATE: Wallace responds)
At the Gender Blog, Jeff Robinson critiques the somewhat reluctant stance of Greek scholar Dan Wallace on the issue of female leadership in the church:
“I have great respect for Dr. Wallace and even appreciate much about the letter, including his desire to be gracious in debating theological matters. However, I cannot follow him in his halting manner over what he admits to be the very clear teaching of the Word of God. …”
Update 11/7: Wallace has posted a response at Parchment and Pen:
“I thought it [Robinson's post] misrepresented my views in some serious ways, so I wrote a response. I had thought that that response would either get posted on the site (it wasn’t), would have caused the author to alter what he said (he didn’t), or at least have stimulated the writing of a letter to me from the CBMW folks (they weren’t). Regrettably, I have to post my response here, because of the one-sided story that was given at CBMW. …”
tags: church leadership, controversy, gender, women
i have to ask, why did you decide to “illustrate” this post with a picture of a woman sans head? The picture has nothing to do with the content (unless the fact that it depicts a female counts); your other photo is (i presume) Dan Wallace - an appropriate photo for the content.
Furthermore, the picture has as its focus the woman’s chest. Why in the world would a reader - especially a reader interested in church leadership, controversy, and gender - want to look at a decapitated woman’s chest in front of the Bible?
The picture you have chosen displays the same characteristics as many sexist advertisements as well as pornography: among them, the characteristic of dismemberment. Dismemberment is chopping up the body into separate parts, illustrating the concept that a woman’s body is not a whole person, that her physical form is not connected to her intellect. We see ads everyday that show only a woman’s lips, legs, backside, or (as in your picture) chest. Studies have shown that advertising dismembers women’s bodies far more than it does men’s bodies. Decapitation utterly depersonalizes the subject of a picture.
i urge you to take a look at some sites which show sexist advertising (there is a site called “gender ads” that is particularly good) & reconsider use of this photo.
(apologies if duplicate submission - can’t tell if your system is accepting my comment or not)
Angela,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that the ‘dismemberment’ that you’re talking about happens — often intentionally — in the advertising world and elsewhere on public media.
Still, in good conscience I can tell you that I was not trying to use this image in an exploitative way. Here was my rationale for choosing and cropping this picture as I did, as best as I can remember:
1. I very often crop images, because it saves disk-space and it saves me from prosecution (but not criticism
). Showing only a portion of a copywritten image is similar to quoting only an excerpt from a book. It ensures I don’t unknowingly commit copyright infringement. (I try to choose copyright free images anyway, but I crop, usually down to 125X125px).
2. I needed a picture that was relevant but abstract, ie, that portrayed a woman exercising some type of authority in an ecclesiastical context (ie, a church). Here’s another post that called for ‘depersonalized’ figures, as an example: http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/3842
3. I didn’t want viewers to be distracted by the identity of the woman — only to convey the elements mentioned in #2 (woman, authority, church); hence I didn’t show the woman’s face. I intentionally depersonalized her, because I didn’t want people thinking, ‘Wait – is that a woman who pastors somewhere? Do I know who she is? Is she one of the people involved in the discussion described here?’ etc. The only parts of the woman’s body showing in the image were her head and chest, and since I didn’t want to show her face, well, all that was left was her chest. I think it is rhetorical exaggeration to call this ‘decapitation’, which conveys that I have, in some intentional or Freudian way, committed an act of violence.
I hope that the following examples demonstrate that I am not averse to showing women’s faces when I want their identity to be known or reflected upon:
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/207
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/4760
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/2402
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/2557
Finally, here are some images of depersonalized men and male body parts I have used:
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/881
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/1422
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/3739
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/4225
http://www.dailyscroll.net/archives/4825