Learning goals: (a) look at the historical perspective to give us a better understanding of contemporary “women’s issues,” (b) draw out principles for crafting a more biblical view of marriage and family, and (c) challenge ourselves as Christians to respond.

Lecture Outline:

1. The Industrial Revolution: Pre and Post
2. Effects on Men and Women
   1. Decrease in the range of work, increase in responsibility for the narrow range of tasks that remained
   2. Redefinition of masculine and feminine character

• Resentment and Tension Between the Sexes

1. Drawing Out Themes
   1. We need to relate the changes in women’s roles to parallel changes in men’s roles.
   2. Women’s attempts to “remoralize” the public sphere
   3. “Remoralizing” men did not work and ought to be abandoned.
   4. The failure of the doctrine of separate spheres led to the growth of the feminist movement in the 1960s
2. The Church Responds: A Challenge
   1. Rethink a biblically inspired philosophy of economics.
   2. Challenge the “ideal-worker” standard in American corporate culture.
   3. Offer practical alternatives for reintegrating family responsibilities with income-producing work.
   4. Challenge the prevailing ideology of success that dictates paid employment is the only thing that will give women a sense of dignity.

*We’ve been following Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity for this series. This handout has been adapted from her book.

Pearcey, Nancy. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. Crossway Books, 2008.