Given Deborah, Jael, and Judith, Why Shouldn't Women Serve in Combat?
Amanda Duffy
Editor's note: The Associated Press reported today that the Pentagon is removing its 1994 ban on women in combat.
Men Are Fitter
Owen Strachan is a contributing writer for the Gospel Coalition and executive director of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
Recently, the Marine Corps Gazette published a bold op-ed on a hot topic: women in combat. This essay was not written by a patriarchal jarhead, however. It was authored by Katie Petronio, Marine captain.
Petronio, a former college hockey player, shared that after five months on the frontlines in Afghanistan, "I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change." Eventually, Petronio lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. She concluded, "There is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside."
This experience confirms the fears of evangelicals who have concerns about women in combat. Scripture teaches that woman was made from man, a truth that grounds her dependence on him (Gen. 2:21-22). It details how Adam failed to own this responsibility and protect his wife. For this reason, God addressed him first after the forbidden fruit was eaten: "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9). Adam was a self-crippled man.
This tragic pattern continues in different places in biblical history, leaving courageous godly women like Deborah and Jael to lead in place of men. When Barak quails at the thought of battle against the Canaanites, Deborah promises that this abdication "will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman" (Judges 4:9, ESV). We hear her scorn loud and clear, even as we hear the pounding of Jael's tent peg into Sisera's skull (4:21).
David, whose kingship begins with his stunning defeat of Goliath, is supported during his reign by his "mighty men," something of an Israelite SEAL Team Six (1 Chron. 11:10-47). David's sacrificial valor anticipates the warrior-savior, Jesus Christ, whose death on behalf of his people was an act of war against Satan (Isa. 53; Eph. 4:8). Jesus was a self-sacrificial man.
Men receive their marching orders from this Christlike example. Paul teaches that husbands "ought to love their wives as their own bodies." In these and other texts, we see that the Bible consistently shows men protecting women, whether in home, church, or broader society.
The Bible teaches textually what common sense tells us naturally—and physiological study confirms scientifically. According to scientists Anne and Bill Moir, authors of Why Men Don't Iron, men are generally larger, stronger, and faster, and have greater lung capacity, a faster metabolism, and roughly 11 times the testosterone of women. God's design for men and women is good. We ignore it at our own peril.
If men will not own this responsibility, then women will be forced to take it on as did biblical women such as Deborah and Jael (and the extrabiblical figure Judith). Many modern men fail to mirror Christ in leading, providing, and protecting. In the cries of fatherless children, the strained voice of working mothers desperately seeking "work-life balance," and the Marine Corps Gazette, we hear echoes of the Bible's first question, addressed to a self-crippled man: "Where are you?"
Gender Doesn't Matter
Jan McCormack, USAF Chaplain, Lieutenant Colonel (retired), is director of the chaplaincy and pastoral counseling programs at Denver Seminary.
Star Trek Into Darkness
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Paul Nus
On Ash Wednesday 2013, the joint voters meeting of Trinity Lutheran Church-Millersburg Iowa and Calvary Lutheran Church-Deep River, Iowa *unanimously* adopted the following Resolution (http://on.fb.me/12BEBeT) as our own position and our recommendation to all pastors and congregations in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: "To Condemn and Renounce The Employment of Women in Military Combat". Note: our reasons are *theological* and based upon Scripture. Many pragmatic arguments can be made (I graduated from West Point in 1984), but those are not for the Church to make. We are to say "Thus saith The Lord", and He *has* spoken clearly and directly to this issue. In fact, it might be said that the original sin (always known as the sin of *Adam*, not Eve) was the employment of a woman in combat. I'd prefer to say, however, that it was a sin of omission: our Lord gave Adam His Word, and Adam failed to speak it, and to interject himself between the enemy and his wife.
Edward Murray
This article is flawed by one major assumption: Deborah, Jael and Judith were second best and had there been men of appropriate faith and courage men would have been chosen instead. This flawed assumption underlies the thinking of much of the rhetoric on gender and Christianity. There is no indication in any of the texts associated with these women that they were chosen or used by God only because there were not men who would do the job. Having said that, I don't think we can adequately and correctly apply these three women and their experience to the question of women in combat in modern warfare. None of their examples are correctly used for this argument. The bigger question is the involvement of Christians in combat in general.
Ed Tracey
For those of you who may not be aware of the DoD's ability to confuse the language, I will privide some observations to better inform your opinions: To argue from the point of view I see in the previous 39 entries, the question should be, "Should women continue to serve in combat?" There was no rear area in Iraq and there isn't one in Af'stan. Women have served as crewman aboard attack aircraft, MPs on potrol in hostile areas, gunners and drivers on supply convoys, field inteligence teams, etc. In all of these instances, there has been no question of their abilities to perform their duties. What the DoD actually did was remove the exclusion from women serving in certain combat specific specialites they were previously barred from. Based on the aforementioned history of women in combat, this is more of a carreer equality issue (mostly for officers) than a paradigm shift, that occurred with the last changes in 1994, allowing women in combat aircraft and other direct engagement roles.