Jennifer Garcia Bashaw

From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw – Fortress Press Roman-occupied Judea was a place of suffering for most of its inhabitants. The Roman imperial world operated as a coercive hierarchy, a militarized agrarian system in which the government owned and controlled all the land they conquered. The conquered …

We don’t keep the social and economic background of Jesus’ ministry in our minds Read More »

From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw By the twelfth century, ecclesial writers had begun to allot differing roles to rich and poor. The duty of the rich was to give alms, or charity to the poor, and the duty of the poor was to pray for the salvation …

These medieval mindsets persist in American Christians today Read More »

From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw – Fortress Press Sally Gallagher, a sociology of religion researcher, has studied the complementarian ideas in evangelicalism for years. She argues that the majority of evangelicals cling tightly to the delineation of men and women’s roles not for biblical or theological convictions …

Male headship Read More »

The most recent attempt at relaying foundations for the scapegoating process in America can be found in a Christian movement called complementarianism. Formerly known as “hierarchicalism” (some form of which has been practiced since the Constantinian era), this system relegates women to traditional roles in society and maintains a power imbalance within the family and …

Complementarian Christians Read More »

It is tempting to look back over the history of scapegoating women and breathe a sigh of relief: “Whew! It is a good thing we don’t live in those archaic times! We have moved beyond the misogynistic ideas and structures of the past. The last century has brought great advances for women in America – …

Anti-scapegoating work remains to be done Read More »

It may not seem obvious to all who read this passage that the woman saved from stoning is, in fact, a scapegoat. One could read it as simply another attempt to trap Jesus or an example of what happens when keepers of the law hold a criminal to the letter of the law. But such …

Women have always been sexual scapegoats for society Read More »

Society continues to separate women out as scapegoats by consigning them to gender-role stereotypes – the virgin, the shrew, the wife, the widow, the whore, the witch, and many more. Such categorizations work to dehumanize women by reducing them to one-dimensional caricatures and forcing them to play limiting and (usually male-) prescribed roles in the …

Women as Scapegoats Read More »

Christ-followers today might be at a loss to explain how the church could have even participated in, much less led, the destructive scapegoating of women in the past. Questions abound; How did clergy justify words and actions that were dehumanizing and even deadly to women? How could Christians have strayed so far away from the …

It was easy to abandon the path that Jesus set out for them Read More »