The Gauntlet is Thrown

by Douglas W. Phillips, Esq., April 18, 2003

Vision Forum Ministries presents a forum of scholars, theologians, and journalists in opposition to the idea that a free people can survive while sending mothers and daughters to war.

The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. (Bradwell v. Illinois, U.S. Supreme Court, 1873)

If certain federal lawmakers have their way, your eighteen-year-old daughters will be registered for selective service and drafted for combat by the next war or U.N. “peacekeeping” operation.^[1] Should she find herself engaged in an overseas military exercise of any kind, you will be expected to accept as part of her duty, that if captured, she may be shot and gang raped. You will be told that this is the price of freedom which must be equally borne by men and women alike.

If this future seems far-fetched, then you may be blind to one of the single greatest socio-cultural changes to occur in the history of West for more than 2,500 years. Not since the legendary defeat of the Amazonian warrior women by the Greeks in the battle of Themiscrya have Western societies emerged to willingly tolerate the notion of the woman soldier, of mothers going into battle alongside men, or of females with field command over males.

The gradual acceptance since WWI of women in the military, first as WAVES, then as WACs, and finally as warriors, must rank as one of the single most important events of the last century. One cannot understand the emasculation of the modern man and the consequent demise of the family in America, without seeing the profound spiritual implications for the men of a nation when they cease to be the protectors of women.^[2] We are watching history before our very eyes, not on foreign battlefields, but in our recruiting offices.

Nor are the implications and atrocities of a feminized military any longer an academic discussion. American female soldiers have been raped by their captors;^[3] the mothers of young children have been shot and killed while defending the men of their homeland;^[4] and the U.S. military has, on more than one occasion, behaved itself like an overseas brothel, as thousands of men and their “field wives” transform our great system of national defense into a modern-day Roman Legion divorced of the moral character which must be present if we are to receive the blessing of God.^[5] And should we be surprised that this is happening overseas, when the seeds of such behavior are planted in our co-ed military academies?^[6] This is the dirty little secret of the modern military, a secret that we are not allowed to discuss, because to do such would be unpatriotic and politically incorrect.^[7]

Boys and Girls are Different

Today, key women’s rights activists are claiming that their battle to achieve one hundred percent “equality” of the sexes in the United States Military is a fait accompli. They argue that conservative and Christian resistance to the idea has all but vanished. They are correct. For the most part, Christian leaders have readily conceded the battle without even firing a shot or offering a mere whimper of resistance to the idea of a feminized military. Yes, there are some notable exceptions. But sadly, far too many pastors and politicians were embarrassingly silent on this issue in the days leading up to the war against Iraq. This silence spoke greater volumes than the horror-desensitizing, Hollywood-type television images of victorious female Marines near the front lines of combat.

When confronted with the registration and drafting of girls, and the real possibility that such women will be shot in combat or raped if captured, many Christians will express concern. When the time comes, they may even publicly oppose policies that advance the cause of sexual equality in the military. But unless there is a fundamental change in their thinking, most Evangelicals will have little persuasive to say against such policies because long ago they conceded the principle that boys are different from girls.^[8]

Incredibly, the United States Supreme Court once emphasized this very point:

The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood.... The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based upon exceptional cases. (Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873)

A powerful statement, but how many of us can bear it without wincing to hear such words.

The problem is that the typical modern Christian suffers from an intellectual schizophrenia. On the one hand, he embraces as quaint and cute the idea of a boy holding the door for his sister; but on the other, he deems oppressive the notion that the military should remain the exclusive domain of those whom God has decreed are the qualified candidates to wage war — men. It is precisely this type of double-mindedness which, if left unanswered and unchecked, will render our daughters slaves and our sons molly-coddles.

That is why it is my intention today to pick a fight.

Judgment Begins in the House of God

My fight is with any and all Christian men who have lost the ability to shudder in utter revulsion at the news that our nation just sent the mothers of young children to die in Iraq. My argument is with my beloved fellow pastors who have quietly watched or actually encouraged young ladies on their way to the Marine Corps. recruitment office with a blessing from the local church. Today, I seek to provoke unto righteousness those denominations that have remained silent as we have sold our manhood cheap for a mess of pottage before the altar of political and partisan expediency. In short, my fight is with my friends. It is with anyone and everyone who calls themselves Christian and yet would embrace the spirit of infidelity personified by those men who fail to provide leadership, protection, and provision for their households (I Tim. 5) by allowing women to fight their battles for them.

The way I see it, the doctrine that men are to defend women and children is one of the last great bulwarks of Christendom. When it falls, so too falls our civilization. Behind and interwoven into this doctrine are ten thousand principles of law and life crucial for the health of the family, the church, and the state. And all of these doctrines flow from the very Creation order itself and the person of Jesus Christ who modeled for men everywhere in all times that the groom, not the bride, is called to sacrificially die for his loved one.

It’s Not Just About “Women in Combat”

Those Christians who want to carve out “some” place for gun-toting women in the military, without conceding their role in active combat, have already lost. We now understand what we should have known from the beginning, namely, that any involvement by women in the military is a commitment to place them in harm’s way “should duty call.” Distinctions between combative and non-combative roles may appease some, but in the world of modern warfare, such distinctions are increasingly arbitrary and invalid. If you doubt this, ask Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Tragically, you will never be able to ask her roommate, to whom such distinctions meant even less. Pfc. Lori Piestewa, a Hopi Indian, was a twenty-three-year-old mother of two who was shot and killed in the line of duty on March 23, 2003, when her convoy was ambushed near Nasiriya, Iraq.

The Gauntlet

If we aspire to see the preservation of the character of our Christian men and women, we must refuse to concede this fight. That is why Vision Forum Ministries and other Christian comrades in the battle for the family are today throwing down the gauntlet of God’s Holy Word. With this gauntlet we proclaim that it is biblically impermissible and a profound judgment upon our nation for men to abdicate their role as protectors and warriors by permitting and perpetuating the practice of women in the military. Today we argue that women in the military is not simply a bad idea, it is a categorically unbiblical idea. We further argue that the issue is not simply women in combat, but women taking up arms at any level as members of the armed forces. We argue that the military is for warfare, and warfare is for men.

The vehicle we have chosen to communicate this message is an editorial forum. We are grateful for theologians, scholars, and journalists, each of whom brings to the table a unique perspective. We are thankful for those churches and denomination with the guts to make formal statements on the subject, some of which are posted on our Web site.

Together, we stand on the rock Christ Jesus and His Holy Scripture. We formally challenge church leaders to pick up this gauntlet by opposing those politicians who will perpetuate the feminization of the military, and by governing their own churches with clear opposition to the idea that any woman “bought with a price” would exchange her femininity for an M-16.

We realize that many will chafe at the gauntlet we have thrown. But we challenge the advocates of a female military to build their case from Scripture. We do not believe that such a case can be made without tremendous harm to the integrity of God’s Word.

Today, you and I have the luxury of engaging in a gentleman’s debate on this issue. But there will be nothing gentlemanly about the response of many fathers, when some future government regime decides to register, draft, and send America’s daughters to the latest war against the Islamic Jihad de jour.

Sooner than you realize, this issue will become very personal to all of us who are the fathers of young ladies. We will fight this noxious doctrine now at the roots, or we will be uprooted later by the loss of our militarized daughters.

I am the father of three precious girls. That means something to me. I cannot remain silent. Can you?

Sincerely, in the Bonds of Christ,
Doug Phillips

1. Congressman Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) has introduced just such a bill, and has correctly argued that a nation that concedes the principle of women in the military must also concede the principle of women in combat. Consequently, when and if the universal conscription or the draft becomes a reality in our nation, Congressman Rangel and others like him insist that it must be approached on a non-discriminatory basis.

2. In terms of producing an effeminate impotent modern male, the acceptance of women in the military ranks right alongside the toleration and glorification of homosexuality, the widespread promotion within the Church of techniques for men to “cut off their seed,” and the rise of promiscuity and no-fault divorce.

3. During the Gulf War, seventeen women soldiers died and three were taken prisoner. The rape of such women was discussed as simply another “occupational hazard.” For example, great efforts were taken to delay the public release of the whole story of Major Rhonda Cornum, a POW who was raped by Iraqi soldiers during Desert Storm. When the story finally reached the press, a carefully coached Cornum commented: “Getting raped or abused or whatever is one more bad thing that can happen to you as a POW. There’s about four hundred bad things I can think of, and it’s not the worst of them.” At the time of her rape, Mrs. Cornum was a thirty-eight-year-old wife and mother, weighed 110 pounds, and had broken arms and a bullet in her back.

4. Pfc. Lori Piestewa, a Hopi Indian, was a twenty-three-year-old mother of two who was shot and killed in the line of duty on March 23, 2003, when her convoy was ambushed near Nasiriya, Iraq.

5. CWA Ret. Blaine Pendleton, who has flown armed reconnaissance missions for twenty years for the Army, told attendees at the 2003 Christian Boys’ & Men’s Titanic Society dinner that the problem of cohabitation between soldiers in our male/female army is at epidemic levels. The male soldiers describe the female soldiers with whom they cohabit as “field wives,” and the problem is so widespread that scores of pregnant overseas soldiers are sent home to the states daily.

6. Evidence of widespread date rape, pregnancies, and abortions in our military academies is on the rise.

7. I remember like it was yesterday when, upon entering the Army Reserved Officer Training Corps., my first directive was to go through political sensitivity training in which we were instructed that no one was allowed to voice opinions or intimate disagreement with the idea of women in the army.

8. Nineteenth century theologian Robert Louis Dabney commented on the ever-downward trend of unprincipled “conservatism” with the following observation:

It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at the last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward toward perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always — when about to enter a protest — very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip.

About the Author

Doug Phillips is the director of Vision Forum Ministries, a discipleship and training ministry that emphasizes Christian apologetics, worldview training, multi-generational faithfulness, and creative solutions whereby fathers can play a maximum role in family discipleship

“If we aspire to see the preservation of the character of our Christian men and women, we must refuse to concede this fight.”

Vision Forum Ministries®