The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, 2 Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 6 O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.
— Jeremiah 18:1-6 KJV
In The Shared Essence Cane Caldo argues that the Pro-Life movement’s horror at the idea of punishing women who seek abortions stems from viewing women as divine:
Pro-Lifers, a multitude of whom are professed Christians, are hiding their belief that, on the issue of babies, women are like God. They believe that the child belongs to the mother as its creator, just as Christians believe we all belong to God as our creator. They believe that because women give birth, women–like God–have power over life. They believe that therefore we must not trespass on a mother’s power to kill their creations.
My theory of their belief is consistent with the Feminist belief that a woman’s body is her temple to herself, and whatever is within is hers to do with as she will…
[There is an] essence shared by both the Feminist and Pro-Life movements. That essence is the desire to worship women.
Cane expands on his observation that modern Christians are worshiping women in follow on posts The Shadows Cast by Goddess Idols and It’s Like an Amen.
While the Pro-Life movement’s terror of holding women accountable can be sufficiently explained in more simple terms, Cane is definitely on to something here (as is Zippy). The Pro-Life movement very openly acts as if women are on a higher spiritual and moral plane, and that men must not interfere with women’s ability to do what would be a crime if done by anyone else. When the Trump abortion scandal first came out, Ted Cruz explained that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with whether a particular woman chooses to kill a particular child or not, and should instead be in awe at the fact that as a woman she holds the power to bring life:
Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.
This kind of woman worship (or at least quasi-worship) is so common now that it goes by entirely unnoticed, and Cruz’s bizarre argument didn’t even cause a minor controversy. Of course we should focus on a woman’s power to bring life into the world and not trouble ourselves with details which are above our spiritual pay grade; does the pot question the pot-maker?
We see the same pattern in what I have termed wife worship, and the worship of women doesn’t just happen after the marriage ceremony. Recently Christianity Today caused an uproar over a classified ad* they ran for a father seeking a husband for his daughter. The controversy surrounded the father noting that his daughter was a virgin; but there was no controversy around the fact that the only stated requirement for the future son-in-law was that he recognize that he was unworthy of marrying such a goddess:
Her: godly, gorgeous, athletic, educated, careered, humorous, travelled, bilingual, 26-year-old virgin.
You: unworthy, though becoming less so daily.
You can see the same issue with the common terminology we use for Christian women. Christian women call themselves “daughters of the King”, as Mary Kassian does in her sermon on the true meaning of 2 Timothy 3:6-7:
God doesn’t want His girls to be wimps. A daughter of the King is not wimpy and weak.
Again, this is something that no one notices because it is normal. There is also a head-fake here, as this is not about setting Christian men and women aside from other men and women as God’s children; it is about setting Christian women aside as divine royalty. It is used to distinguish Christian women from Christian men.
*H/T Darwinian Arminian
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