Churchmen Projecting Their Shame on the Woman

And why they can.

This is a ruling from the 2024 General Assembly (GA) of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. My former denomination. Complaint #4 was against an OPC session (governing body of church elders) for their paper on women in the church affirming women can teach Sunday school classes and small group meetings, just like unordained men can. The complaint went all the way to the highest church court in the denomination—GA.

At first, I looked at this ruling and was not going to write about it.

Of course they did.

No surprises, here.

I experienced first-hand how the OPC views and treats women.

But then I became aware that the ruling is against my former church session. And the personal nature of it surfaces all the messages I received in my own case. I envision the congregational meeting held after, with the members of my former session explaining this ruling and how they will now need to comply. That any women who have been teaching in their small groups will now need to stop. How men will need to replace them. I think of how the women who were currently serving in this way had to sit with the shame of it all during that meeting. And the infantilization. I think about all the invisible stones thrown at them during this General Assembly meeting, and the acceptance of it now by their own session. And for what? For their compliance to share from the word of God. Maybe in their own home. What do their children think, hearing this message? About their mom. This public scandalizing of her research, planning, and speaking of the holy word of God in a small, informal setting.

Don’t I know this feeling.

And the irony is that my shame was for writing a book about the agency of women in the church. Here it is.

One of the most humiliating experiences of my life was going to my regional presbytery meeting in the OPC. I was openly mocked from the chair of the ad hoc committee giving his recommendation for a ruling about my session. No one objected that he was out of order. Not one church officer, including the ones from my own church. Many laughed at his jokes about me and my work, as if I wasn’t even there. Like I wasn’t a real person. I write about that experience in The Hope in Our Scars. Of the acts and rulings by men holding church office that are acceptable:

As it turned out, sessions, presbyteries, and the denomination as a whole were willing to let me continue to hold the heavy, heavy shame. The shame of all the online violence against me by church officers, of sitting in a presbytery meeting where I was mocked and referred to as “that lady,” after a presbytery committee report suggested I am as guilty as the perpetrators (that’s a tactic called sin-leveling) and that my writing provoked it all, after being openly reviled as a “raging wolf” among other things during a presbytery trial, after another presbytery failed to take action when one of their pastors posted a YouTube video calling them to act against me (in which I was compared to a barking dog), after blogs were written about how I am the general of the feminist army, after sermons preached about God’s “perfect hatred” against feminism, and after yet another presbytery meeting that failed to deal with one of the officers casting blame on me—the only apologies I have received are personal ones from some of my former elders and a few who tried to help but could not. No public apologies. Boatloads of shame. The most the denomination will call it is “error.” Well, not all of it. Only the words “raging wolf.” Here, hold that shame, Aimee. Many survivors of spiritual, sexual, or domestic abuse never receive apologies, never get restoration, never receive vindication.

It’s an extreme betrayal and violation of trust when the shepherds accountable before God to love and care for the sheep leave you exposed to abuse and then use the process of church order to keep you under it. It makes you wonder what these “men of God” really believe. About love. About power. About community and belonging.

But this ruling at the 2024 General Assembly continues to show us what is worth putting a stop to. Not harassment and plotting against women by their leaders. Not getting ahead of the abuse cases in the denomination. No, it’s women coming up with discussion questions in an informal Sunday school or small group setting. This is forbidden. She is to hold the shame.

In my last post, I talked about the long bag we drag behind us, filled with the messages we stuff down about who we are. And I mentioned there are also collective bags in our families, neighborhoods, churches, and even our countries. The OPC’s bag is open. Their fear and hatred of women is poking out. Fear of the strength of the feminine. Robert Bly writes about what happens to parts of ourselves that we put in the bag and ignore over long periods of time. They regress, becoming primitive and hostile to the person who opens the bag. This is what we see in the behavior towards and rulings over the woman’s voice and presence in any rooms of influence in the denomination of the OPC. And I can’t help but feel like the ruling is in part another punitive act, violence by proxy against me and my work, as one friend put it.

And now what? What a precedent it sets for the rest of the women in the denomination. There was a protest filed, with some signatures of church officers who disagree with this ruling. But the now what is basically compliance. Compliance to the ruling. Have the congregational meeting. Get rid of the women teachers. Close the bag, quick! Don’t I know that feeling. The women continue to pick up the tab. Of the shame of their mind and voice and desire to share. The men need protected from this. The twisty tie they reclose the bag with is called “proper church order.” And everyone returns to business as usual.