Female Warriors and Feminized Men
by Phil Lancaster, April 15, 2003
Earlier this month, the news media reported the dramatic rescue in Iraq of an American soldier, a nineteen-year-old supply clerk in an Army maintenance unit that had been ambushed after the unit made a wrong turn in the city of Nasiriyah. What was remarkable to me about this story, aside from the daring nature of the nighttime raid in the heart of enemy territory, was the fact that the rescued soldier was a young woman, Pfc. Jessica Lynch. By now every American who is not comatose has seen the photograph of the fresh-faced teenager in her camouflage fatigues in front of the stars and stripes.
However, the media does not seem to have been as fascinated as I over the gender of the soldier. I don’t recall seeing or hearing any report that addressed the fact that a woman had been serving in a role in which she was vulnerable to violent attack and that the capture and rescue of an ambushed female soldier in a war zone is surely unprecedented in the annals of American warfare. Although she was not technically in a combat position by military definitions (e.g., infantryman or tank gunner) — nor at this point in history does the law allow a woman to be — she was armed and obviously in harm’s way. The media, by their lack of comment on the novelty of the gender issue in the story, seem to be attempting to treat this situation as normal. And indeed it will be the new normal, if the feminists get their way: they want armed forces that fully integrate women into every military specialty, including all combat roles.
The main impetus nationally for this transformation of the military comes from the Defense Advisory Committee On Women In The Services (DACOWITS). The charter for this group (February 28, 1998) reads in part: “In carrying out its duties, the Committee serves as a vital link between the civilian community and the Department of Defense regarding the need for, and role of, women as an integral part of the Armed Forces.” Only feminist ideologues see a “need” for an androgynous society in which women and men have interchangeable roles, but this is manifestly the course on which our nation has embarked. If they succeed, Jessica Lynch will be only the first of many female combat casualties. But the larger tragedy is the seemingly inexorable dismantling of the patriarchal culture that once protected women from such dangers.
To have women serving as soldiers on the battlefield is an abomination in the eyes of God and ought to be an offense to righteous men and women. It is an abandonment of the God-given order for society in which men are called upon to lay down their lives in defense of their wives, their homes, and their country, so that women can fulfill their primary calling to bear and nurture life. Christians ought to oppose this modern development on principled, Scriptural grounds. However, before we look at the biblical case against women in combat, we should also note the simple impracticality of this attempt to deny God’s design for the genders.
The Practical Case
Feminists are at war with God and with His creation, and that’s a tough battle to fight! They treat gender as an abstraction that can be manipulated by wishful thinking. However, an ideological commitment to egalitarianism does not change the fact that men and women are different. Every study comparing the sexes concludes what common sense already knew: men are by nature more aggressive, more competitive, more willing to take risks, more combative. Women have 55% of the muscular strength and 67% of the endurance of men. Studies at West Point have identified no less than 120 physical differences between men and women that have a bearing on military requirements. In short, men make better warriors than women, moral considerations aside.
Not that this abundance of evidence will stop those whose mission for the military is that it becomes an agent for the transformation of society, with national defense a secondary concern. This is why the services now have different standards of physical performance for men and women. Although we don’t know her test scores, Jessica Lynch could qualify for her dangerous position by meeting physical standards that would have disqualified a male for the same occupation. But the lethal threat in that Iraqi town was no less threatening for her than for her male counterparts. The fighting effectiveness of that American unit, and thus the safety of each of its members, was reduced to the extent that it was manned by women.
Mixing men and women in the military services creates a whole set of sexually-related issues that also have an impact on overall combat readiness. Not surprisingly, sexual immorality increases dramatically in a coed force, as does the incidence of sexual harassment and abuse. Female soldiers and sailors have a high incidence of pregnancy, both in and out of wedlock, and are thus obviously hindered in fulfilling their military mission. Though it is difficult to quantify, the normal sexual tension in a mixed-gender atmosphere creates a distraction that cannot have a positive effect on mission effectiveness.
Many male military personnel are dissatisfied with gender norming and the preferential promotion of inferior officers to meet social policy goals. Some become disgusted and simply leave the armed forces altogether. This has the perverse effect of encouraging the entry of yet more women into the military and assuring that there will be more positions for them to fill.
It’s not just combat readiness that is negatively affected by having women in the service; there are broader social costs as well. Sending married women overseas creates hardships for the husbands and children they leave behind. A married woman soldier has two masters — her husband and her commander — and there is no doubt about whose claim on her is primary when push comes to shove. So the God-given domestic focus of a wife and mother is abandoned as she takes on the calling of national defender.
The inclusion of women in the armed forces makes no sense militarily or socially, and you don’t need a Bible in hand to know that it’s a bad idea for women to be in combat. But Christians do have the Bible as a guide for faith and life, and Christians throughout the ages have believed that the Bible requires men, not women, to give their lives in defense of home and nation.
The Historical Case
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. -Martin Luther
A key battle that rages today is the multiple-front war of feminism upon biblical patriarchy. In their reckless attack upon God’s order, feminists have injured women and degraded society in many ways. As women have left home to enter the workforce, they have come to add the stresses of the workplace to their inescapable domestic duties, thus multiplying their physical and emotional burden. As women have been sexually “liberated” (a.k.a., promiscuity) they have contracted diseases; they have become more expendable in the eyes of lustful and self-centered men and divorce has increased; and they have learned to kill their babies through abortion to remove the “inconvenience” that pregnancy creates in their quest for “freedom,” thus suffering the physical and spiritual trauma associated with murdering their own offspring.
Pushing to have women in military service, even in combat roles, is just the latest surge in the battle to transform a patriarchal society into an egalitarian utopia. Ask Jessica Lynch, with her multiple bone fractures and gunshot wounds, how that equality feels. (As of this writing no one knows if she was raped, an entirely likely additional trauma for captured women soldiers.)
Opposing women in combat is essential to a faithful confession of Christ in our day because this is one of the places where the devil is attacking the Word of God and the social order that Word prescribes. Unfortunately, the lies of the enemy have already so infiltrated the minds of Christians that their objections are often muted or nonexistent. Godly men of the past have uniformly opposed the very notion of women in combat. Here are the words of just two. First, John Chrysostom, a fourth century church father:
O ye subverters of all decency, who use men, as if they were women, and lead out women to war, as if they were men! This is the work of the devil, to subvert and confound all things, to overleap the boundaries that have been appointed from the beginning, and remove those which God has set to nature. For God assigned to woman the care of the house only, to man the conduct of public affairs. But you reduce the head to the feet, and raise the feet to the head. You suffer women to bear arms, and are not ashamed. (John Chrysostom, AD 344-407, Homily V on Titus)
Here are the words of John Calvin from his sermons on the book of Deuteronomy:
For it is good reason that there should be a difference between men and women. And although there were no law written, doth not even nature teach it us? ... Again, when women go appareled like men of war, (as there be some which had rather to bear a hackbut [an ancient firearm] on their shoulder than a distaff in their hand:) it is against kind, and we ought to abhor it. Although we were not spoken to, nor had any law or ordinance of God: yet do we even of ourselves perceive it to be strange and whosoever hath any spark of pureness in him, will judge so. (John Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, AD 1556)
There are some bright spots in the contemporary church where saints have spoken with clarity against women in combat. First this from the Baptists:
That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting June 9-11, 1998, in Salt Lake City, Utah, do with loyal respect and deep concern, warn against and oppose the training and assignment of females to military combat service because: it rejects gender-based distinctions established by God in the order of creation; it undermines male headship in the family by failing to recognize the unique gender-based responsibility of men to protect women and children; and it subordinates the combat readiness of American troops and the national security of the United States, to the unbiblical social agenda of ideological feminism. (“Resolution No. 3, On Women in Combat,” in Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1998)
Some of the Presbyterians also have recently addressed the issue of women in combat:
Historical theologian, Harold O.J. Brown, has written: “Within both Judaism and Christianity, indeed almost universally in all human culture, the military profession has been reserved for males... Ephesians 5 (tells us) that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her... (H)usbands should be prepared to die for their wives rather than vice versa.” With this weight of testimony enumerated above, it becomes clear that the burden of proof does not rest on those who claim that man has a duty to defend woman, but those who deny this duty. (“Man’s Duty to Protect Woman,” Journal of the 29th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2001)
The weight of historical evidence from the church is on the side of opposition to women in combat. It has only been in recent decades that the corrupting effects of feminism have taken their toll on many of the churches and their teachers. But our supreme authority is neither the wisdom of great teachers nor the pronouncement of church councils; it is the teaching of the Word of God. Let’s now consider the Scriptural evidence against women serving in combat.
The Scriptural Case
If someone reads the Bible through the lens of feminism, he will be inclined to find what he wants to find: a justification for his cause. But an honest reading of Scripture, letting it speak for itself without ideological presuppositions, yields a patriarchal view of men, women, and society. Specifically, it reveals a world in which men have the duty to defend their families and their nation and in which women are not placed in harm’s way. The Scriptural case is fourfold.
God Appointed Men to be Warriors in Israel
First, the Lord Himself determined who should be the warriors in the nation He established to show forth His glory in the world. Consistently it is men, and men only, who are directed to wage war.
And he said to them, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’” (Exod. 32:27)
Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai... saying: “Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from twenty years old and above — all who are able to go to war in Israel.” (Num. 1:1-3)
When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. (Deut. 24:5)
Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side of the Jordan. But you shall pass before your brethren armed, all your mighty men of valor, and help them. (Josh. 1:14; cf. 6:3; 8:3; Jud. 7:1ff; etc.)
In addition to the uniform example of God’s calling men to fight in battle, we also find references to the shame of women being involved in military-type action. When a woman dropped a millstone from a tower onto the head of Abimelech, fatally wounding him, “...he called quickly to the young man, his armorbearer, and said to him, ‘Draw your sword and kill me, lest men say of me, “A woman killed him” (Jud. 9:54). Since women have no place in warfare, it is a shame to be killed by one.
In predicting the destruction of Babylon, Jeremiah wrote this description of their warriors:
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting, They have remained in their strongholds; Their might has failed, They became like women; They have burned her dwelling places, The bars of her gate are broken. (Jer. 51:30)
Because women have no place in battle, it is a sign of judgment when men become weak and defenseless like women.
Deborah the judge is the poster child of feminism and she is regularly trotted out as an example of a woman who was a military and civil leader, as if her example is proof that women can fill the same roles as men. But even a casual reading of the narrative reveals a very different conclusion. First, this was a period of great decline in Israel’s history when everyone did what was right in his own eyes; it is hardly an example of God’s ideal (Jud. 2:10ff.; 21:25). Second, when it was time for war, Deborah called on a man to raise ten thousand men to do the fighting (Jud. 4:6)! Third, when this timid man said he wouldn’t go fight unless Deborah accompanied him, she said she would go but that the glory for the victory would go to a woman; and, in fact, it was a woman who killed the commanding officer of the enemy (Jud. 4:9,21). The whole point of the story is that in times of spiritual degradation, when men are wimpy and need women to take on the roles of men and to hold their hands, God is still faithful to deliver His people. This is hardly a commendation of gender role reversal.
Every relevant command and example in the Bible points in the same direction: men fight the battles and defend the women and children.
The Father and the Son Are Warriors, Defenders, and Saviors
The feminists believe patriarchy is just a bad habit inherited from the past, one that needs to be abandoned completely. But patriarchy is, in fact, God’s decreed pattern for human life, and it is rooted in the very nature and actions of God Himself. In the Godhead are the original Father and the original Son, and human fatherhood and other relationships are rooted in the patterns that exist eternally in the Trinity. God’s Fatherhood and Sonship are the archetypes upon which the callings of manhood are based, and both Father and Son are warriors, defenders, and saviors. This is the second evidence from Scripture that men, not women, are called to take up arms.
The prophet Isaiah presents the Lord as a “man of war” going out to battle against his enemies:
The LORD shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies. (Is. 42:13)
Although this is anthropomorphic language (speaking of God as if he were a man), it is not that God just describes himself in terms we can understand. He is revealing his own nature. God is a fighter, a defender.
We find this taught in other passages. “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in His holy habitation” (Ps. 68:5). One of the characteristics of the Lord is that he takes up the cause of the weak and defenseless and protects them from their oppressors. “For the LORD your God ... administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing” (Deut. 10:17,18). Because this is what He is like, the Lord makes the same demands upon men who would obediently follow His example: “Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy” (Ps. 82:3).
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, like his Father, fights on behalf of the needy. He has done battle with Satan in order to win the freedom of his bride, the church: “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). Of this Warrior-Savior, Tertullian wrote:
[Christ] came to wage a spiritual warfare against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual weapons... Christ also must be understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife. (Against Marcion, Book 4, Chapter XX)
The exemplary nature of Christ’s role as defender of his bride is seen most clearly in Ephesians chapter 5, where Paul draws the tight analogy between Christ and a faithful husband. “For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body” (v. 23). To properly love his wife as her head, the husband must be her savior. Obviously this refers not to redemption from sin but rather to the need for the husband to sacrifice himself for the welfare of his wife, even to the point of death. This is confirmed two verses later: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (v. 25). As Christ gave Himself for His bride, so must a husband lay down his life for his wife.
So we see that the role of men as warriors and defenders is not arbitrary; it is rooted in the very nature of God and in His saving acts toward mankind.
Gender Distinct Roles Derive from the Creation Order
The third Scriptural proof that God has called men, not women, to the role of protector of home and country is the distinctive callings that God gave man and woman at the creation. When God created mankind, he created them male and female (Gen. 1:27) and pronounced this creation “very good” (v. 31). Gender distinction is not an accident; it is part of God’s perfect plan for men and women, and part of that plan is a distinction of roles.
Before God had created the woman, he gave Adam a twofold task in the garden: “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep [guard] it” (Gen. 2:15). Adam’s task was to cultivate the plants and to guard the garden. The next verse suggests a source of danger: he and his were to stay away from a particular tree. As we know too well, Adam failed to guard his wife from the temptations of Satan and instead readily succumbed to his wiles along with Eve. The point is that the man was created first and given the assignment as the leader and protector of his wife and all future children. He failed to act faithfully in his role as defender, and we have all been paying the price since.
The importance of gender distinction is seen in the commandment found in Deuteronomy 22:5: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God.” Men should act and dress like men, and women should act and dress like women. And what more blatant violation of this commandment than for a woman to adorn herself with military fatigues and the gear of war? In that act she not only wears the clothes of men, she also takes on the male role of defender. The gender distinction that God pronounced “very good” is thus abandoned as women dress like, and try to act like, men.
Men Are Called to Protect the “Weaker Vessel”
A fourth and final evidence from the Bible that God has given men the duty of protecting home and nation, even to the point of death, is the unique vulnerability of women and their need for protection. In our last point we saw that God gave Adam the role of protecting his wife and the garden, but God also had a role for Eve to play. We know, of course, that she was made as a “suitable helper” for Adam (Gen. 2:18). One of the chief ways in which she would help Adam was to bear his children, thus enabling mankind to fulfill God’s command that they be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it to the glory of God (Gen. 1:28). Adam recognized his wife’s essential nature and calling, and so he named her Eve, which means “mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). Central to a woman’s role in the world is the bearing and nurturing children. This fact is also evident in that the curse pronounced upon the woman for her sin involved pain in the bearing of children (Gen. 3:16), just as Adam’s curse was related to his primary task, the tilling of the earth (vv. 17-19).
It is not just in Genesis that we see the childbearing role of women emphasized; it is the consistent message of the Bible throughout:
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine In the very heart of your house, Your children like olive plants All around your table. (Ps. 128:3)
...that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. (Tit. 2:4,5)
For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim. 2:13-15)
Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully. (1 Tim. 5:14)
The central place of childbearing and child nurture in the life of a woman gives meaning to the exhortation addressed to men in 1 Peter 3:7:
Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.
Men need to understand the unique vulnerability of women. A woman’s body is equipped with the means to bring a new human being into the world and to nurture that person in the early years of life. God shaped her body not with the physical strength to take dominion over the rocks and soil, nor to wage war against evil men, but with a special strength that enables her to be a life-giver. Yet this very strength leaves her vulnerable to many physical dangers and thus in need of a protector. She is a “weaker vessel” not because she is weak, but because her very strengths leave her more threatened by the harsh conditions which sin has introduced into the world. This is why, in the midst of a description of great tribulation on the earth, Jesus said, “But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days” (Matt. 24:19)! It is a great tragedy for these life-givers to be subject to the threats of war and violence. A man who views a woman “with understanding” will “give honor” to her by taking account of her vulnerability and trying to keep her out of harm’s way, even to the point of laying down his own life for her. The very idea of placing a woman on the field of battle ought to be repugnant to real men who understand the preciousness of women. In a sense we can say that men are “expendable” in a way that women are not. Here is the insight of F. Carolyn Graglia in Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism (which though not written from a strictly biblical perspective contains the substance of a biblical view of life):
If a nation must wage war, a young man’s death in combat fulfills his destiny as protector of a society the fundamental purpose of which is to reproduce itself and secure its children’s safety and well-being. A young woman’s death in combat can never fulfill, but only negate, her destiny as bearer of those children. (p. 190)
For men to allow women in combat is a denial of the central calling of both genders.
But we must consider more than the fate of a man or woman on the battlefield. Since a young woman is a life-giver, she could at any time be carrying another human being in her womb, possibly unbeknownst to her. Even if one were to grant her the “right” to choose to be a soldier, a woman has no right to subject another person — the one who may be in her womb — to the life-threatening dangers of war. The goal of that murderer, the devil, from the beginning has been to destroy the seed of the woman. Placing women and their unborn children in harm’s way is one effective strategy in that diabolical plan. It is noteworthy, in this connection, that savage enemies have always made it a point to destroy both women and their unborn children. Elisha the prophet said to the king of Syria, “I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword; and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child” (2 Kings 8:12). A godly society will keep women and children as far as possible from the violence of war.
Lest it be thought that women have a soft life and only men are called to self-sacrifice, let me clarify something. Women are warriors, too, and bloodshed is part of their calling. They are called, just like men, to self-sacrifice and service for the sake of others. But the domain of the woman’s warfare is the home. There she gives birth to children, and childbearing has always carried with it pain, bloodshed, tears, and even the threat of death. Christian women are engaged in a very real warfare for the dominion of Christ over Satan when they submit to their calling to bring forth new soldiers for Christ’s kingdom. Just as men sacrifice themselves for the protection of their women and children, so women sacrifice themselves to bear and nurture new life for the glory of God. When each one takes up his or her position in the battle, the kingdom of God will gain ground in the world. When men and women abandon their unique duty posts, the enemy gains the advantage.
Conclusion: Calling Men to be Men
The evidence is not in doubt. Women do not belong in combat roles; men do. This is evident not only from the biblical and historical data but from a common sense look at the practical effects of violating this rule. Yet as we have noted above, neither the revelation of God nor the proofs of hard reality can penetrate a heart and mind blinded by the lies of the devil in the form of feminist ideology.
So the first thing we must do is to carefully examine our own minds to discover where we ourselves may have been affected by the pervasive worldview of egalitarianism. Any compromise with a lie is a lie, and the fruit will be destruction and death over the long term. Christian men and women must strive not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, taking every thought captive to Christ (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 10:5).
Then, having our minds filled with the truth of God’s Word, we must seek to implement that in everything we do. This means embracing the distinctive callings of men and women first in our own hearts and homes. But it also means taking a stand for truth in the public square, resisting the attempts to overturn God’s order in our civil life, particularly in this matter of women in combat.
When I see Pfc. Jessica Lynch being rescued and now returned to safety in America, I don’t blame her for having been on the battlefield. She was just following an opportunity that was held before her as desirable. I blame the men of America, and particularly the Christian men who should know better, for not having taken a stand against the movement of women into the armed forces. The violence against Jessica Lynch is a tragedy, but it points to the greater tragedy of feminized men who have abdicated their role as protectors of women.
Let’s not allow ourselves to watch the media reports of women in combat and simply become further desensitized to this abomination. Let’s reflect on the cultural sickness of which it is a symptom and recommit ourselves to the battle to restore our homes and our nation to health. This healing can only come through a return to biblical patriarchy, a course of life rooted in the nature of God Himself and in His design for the human race.