An Action Plan for Conservative Christian Women
By Penny Young Nance
For you Esthers out there hoping to impact the culture and speak truth into our messed-up world, the importance of recognizing where things stand today is critical. Even more important is what we choose to do with that information.
Hear me when I say this: your perspective as a conservative Christian woman is desperately needed. As believers, we understand our value as women, because we have experienced it powerfully and transformatively through the sacrifice and redemption of Jesus. As women who know the Author of love, we are equipped to speak authoritatively about true love and self-respect.
So buck up. You can do this! Your sisters need to hear words of truth and, most important, words of grace. God loves us and wants to provide us a life’s banquet of filet mignon, so we need to stop settling for pig slop.
Christians have a message that we should be blaring from the rooftops when it comes to what is happening in our culture in regard to sexuality and what is portrayed as normal and appropriate behavior.
Speak Up about Our True Value
First we have to start with the ultimate truth about our value: we are God’s masterpieces. He created us, is pleased with us, and has raised us up for his glory. As he told the prophet Isaiah: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (43:6–7). Did you catch that? He formed and made us. He is the perfect Creator, and we are his precious creations.
This is a beautiful message for those of us who know God. It might not have the same oomph, though, when we’re speaking with nonbelieving friends. Unfortunately, in an increasingly secular nation, we have less ability to use biblical teaching as a reference point. We can’t just pull Scripture out of our back pockets and expect the world to be persuaded. But the Word of God is transcendent, eternal truth, and often people still recognize truth when they hear it. Our call is to point them toward that truth.
Though we might choose different words, the message is the same: you are God’s magnificent creation, and you were meant for more than phony love.
Every woman is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14) by a God who loves her. The world recognizes this fact. Look at art through the ages, from the Venus de Milo to Degas’s ballet dancers to Ruben’s exquisite, full-figured women. The female form has always been recognized as something beautiful and unique.
Music too has sung of love and female beauty across the ages; consider the love songs of Rumi and King Solomon, the troubadours of Europe, even the tunes of more contemporary eras like Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” or Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” Women are incredible creations and have always been seen as such, whether the world perceives God’s hand in it or not.
By gently speaking the truth about our worth as women—God’s crowning creation—we can encourage others to reject the unfulfilling lies of the media, Hollywood, and even damaging strains of feminism. We are uniquely and beautifully female, and God has given us certain qualities that we should embrace.
We aren’t just men with different plumbing; we are an entirely different and magnificent creation! Science supports what we feel intuitively: men and women differ hormonally, chemically, anatomically, and physiologically. Women typically have larger orbital frontal cortices than men, for instance, which may allow us to identify our feelings faster and better express emotion. (Well, that explains a lot!)
The truth of our distinct differences frees us from feminism’s claim that we have to be tough, protective, aggressive—basically, masculine. By appropriating the worst male behaviors and attitudes in our desire to protect ourselves, get to the top in the corporate world, or gain sexual empowerment, we detract from the unique identities God gave us as women.
Hold Ourselves to a Higher Standard
We are God’s masterpieces. That’s the most important truth to get across to women in our culture today. But we must also realize that as God’s masterpieces, we are meant for more. He created us for his glory, not for our own pleasure. The reason to abstain from pornography, promiscuous sexuality, or anything else that demeans the masterpiece God made is because we are not our own. Paul told the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
Wow. As a believer, I need to remind myself that it’s not just about me. I belong to God, and therefore how I treat my body, what I choose to say, and the media I consume matters. Any trash I put into my mind that demeans me is an affront to my Maker.
We must be ever vigilant to protect our hearts and minds, and in today’s world, that’s not easy. Our culture has pitted men against women, women against men, and even women against one another, and boiled down our relationships to their most base and selfish versions. We must be the ones to raise the bar. We must be the ones to declare truth and exhort beauty because we know what real Truth and true beauty look like.
We can’t settle for a world of men versus women or accept that women will always be demeaned as objects for sexual use and subsequently discarded. No, together we must demand something different. Together we are a living testament to God’s love for the church and Christ’s sacrifice for her. Together we are more, not less, and we must insist on that principle and embrace it ourselves.
Consider Jesus’ prayer for all believers: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity” (John 17:22–23). We are called to unity, and when we embrace this call, God can and will work through us for his glory.
Offer Alternatives Worth Emulating
As we work together to proclaim the truth of God’s love for us, we can also gently point out that the truths by which many people order their lives today simply don’t satisfy. For instance, in our hypersexualized society, women are promised more—more sexual empowerment, more freedom, more love or attention from men, more satisfaction. But in reality, we feel like we have a lot less. We aren’t happier or more fulfilled; we’re the opposite.
Rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise; one in four women today take antidepressant medications. And a 2009 study by Wharton professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found that over the past thirty-five years, women’s happiness has steadily declined—both in comparison to where we were thirty-five years ago and in comparison to men. Clearly, something isn’t working.
Part of our role in discussing these issues is to help women recognize that the world’s lies are just that—lies. But more important is that we offer them an alternative, a redemptive message that speaks of their own unique value. What does work is a life where God’s view of women takes center stage.
hen we embrace the truth about who God says we are, we find a lot more contentment than when we’re trying to live up to all of the wild expectations of the media or society.
We were meant for more. We need to encourage each other to stop looking at the Kardashians as role models and look to our grandparents, our mentors, real-life women who embody the kind of love that does satisfy.
All around us, especially in our churches, we have beautiful examples of true women and true love—lasting and agape (God-sized) love. There are beautiful couples who have loved and sacrificed for each other for more than fifty years, not fifty shades.
I witnessed this kind of love up close in the lives of my great-uncle Robert and his wife, Carolyn Young. Robert was a part-time pastor, and they owned a small country store in the mountains of North Carolina. They persevered as life partners through infertility, war, illness, and even the Great Depression. Carolyn’s health was fragile for decades, but Robert lovingly cared for her even when he was elderly.
Finally one day she became so ill that she lapsed into a coma. He took her to the hospital and stayed until the staff made him take a break and go home. While at home, he sat down and simply died. I believe it was because he couldn’t face life without her. A few hours later she too was gone. The homecoming in heaven must have been glorious and unexpected. What a gift. They are strolling the golden streets arm in arm as they did on earth.
We need to celebrate relationships like theirs, ones that value women as treasures and view true love as a reality, not an unrealistic or outdated trope.
Include the Key Ingredient
One last point. It is crucial that we speak about these issues from a place of humility. Whether speaking with our Christian sisters or non-Christian friends, the only way we’re going to get anywhere is if we remember that we are all sinners, and that the reason Christ died was to redeem us all from our fallen state.
The apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans should always be at the front of our minds: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). We aren’t arguing to score a point or prove ourselves right; we are speaking truth because God has called us to, and because through us, others can encounter the incredible message of redemptive love.
At the end of the day, we are surrounded by a world that embraces promiscuity, violence, self-degradation, vulgarity, transgenderism, and shallow, materialistic definitions of beauty. Too many women have fallen prey to this culture, attempting to embrace it as a way of self-empowerment or self-protection—but as we’ve seen, it doesn’t work.
We need to realign our perspective with reality and focus our efforts on becoming the kind of women God has called us to be. Let’s work together to become brave women whose primary aim is to glorify God, who recognize that our femaleness is a unique gift, who speak wisdom and truth, who enjoy sex in a way that honors the Lord, and who know that we are perfectly made in the image of God.
When we align ourselves with this image of womanhood, we will be truly empowered—able to stand up as role models for the young women around us, able to speak truth to the lies that come from every level of society and government, able to give women a voice that demands respect and has the power to bring about change.
It is time for us to get off the sidelines. It is our time to stand up to a world gone crazy. Will you join me?
Adapted from Feisty & Feminine: A Rallying Cry for Conservative Women, by Penny Young Nance. Click here to learn more about his book.
CEO and president of Concerned Women for America Penny Young Nance is ready to change the way women today engage the culture.
“Today’s conservative women are intelligent, well-educated, compassionate, accomplished, funny, and fearless,” says Nance.
Feisty & Feminine takes an honest and transparent look at what it means to be a conservative Christian woman, with thoughtful commentary on the real issues confronting you right now.
Conservative Christian women have never fit neatly into stereotypes. “We’re not the humorless, dim-witted ‘church ladies’ Saturday Night Live has made us out to be,” says Nance. “In fact, we have an opportunity like never before to offer words of redemption to a world gone mad.”
Are you troubled by this nation’s decreased emphasis on the sanctity of marriage and the abuse of women around the world? Are you concerned that the values of this great nation are slipping away from your children?
The time is right for this book, and for conservative women—like Esther of the Bible—to stand up, be heard, and make a difference in our culture.
Penny Young Nance is CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), and is a recognized national authority on cultural, children’s, and women’s issues. As the CEO and president of the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, Penny oversees more than 500,000 participating CWA members across the country, over 400 CWA chapters, 26 Young Women for America College Chapters, and 400 trained leaders. She is also the president of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee and Concerned Women for America Political Action Committee and serves as the principal spokesperson for all three entities.
