Overview
Today on the podcast, I got to talk to Dr. Sue Russell, Professor of Mission and Contextual Studies at Asbury Seminary. Prior to coming to the Seminary, Dr. Russell was the Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Biola University. And before that, she spent 17 years in cross-cultural ministry and field research with Wycliffe Bible Translators in S.E. Asia, where she worked with a committee of national pastors to complete the translation of the whole Bible into the Tagal language.
We talk about a lot of things, including her call to ministry and her book Relationshift: Changing the Conversation about Men and Women in the Church. This book focuses on relationships, specifically brother-sister type relationships that are based on love, humility and mutuality, rather than specific roles. We talk about what that means and what that can look like in our context.
Let’s listen!
*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.
Dr. A. Sue Russell, Professor of Mission and Contextual Studies at Asbury Seminary
Before coming to Asbury Seminary, Dr. Russell was the Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Biola University. Prior to that, she spent 17 years in cross-cultural ministry and field research with Wycliffe Bible Translators in S. E. Asia, where she worked with a committee of national pastors to complete the translation of the whole Bible into the Tagal language.
Her educational background provides the interdisciplinary foundations for bridging New Testament studies and missions. Her research, which focuses on the integration of the social sciences and Biblical theology, has contributed new insights to New Testament studies, Anthropology of Christianity, and Contextual studies. Her research interests are Christian Origins, Social-Scientific Criticism, Anthropology of Christianity, Contextualization, Language and Identity, Gender, and Social Justice. She is passionate about equipping people to live missionally in their global context.
Sue and her husband, David, moved to Wilmore in the summer of 2014.
Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast
Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.
Guest Links
Transcript
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you, who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need.
Heidi Wilcox:
Today on the podcast, I got to talk to Dr. Sue Russell, Professor of Mission and Contextual Studies Asbury seminary. Prior to coming to the seminary, Dr. Russell was the Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Biola University. And before that, she spent 17 years in cross-cultural ministry in field research with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Southeast Asia, where she worked with a committee of national pastors to complete the translation of the whole Bible into the Tagal language. We talk about a lot of things. We talk about her call to ministry, and we talk about her book, Relationshift: Changing the Conversation about Men and Women in the Church.
Heidi Wilcox:
This book focuses on relationships, specifically brother-sister type relationships, that are based on love, humility, and mutuality, rather than specific roles. So we talk about what that means, and what that can look like, in our context. Let’s listen.
Heidi Wilcox:
Dr. Russell, I am so glad to get to talk to you today. Thank you so much for being on the Thrive With Asbury Seminary podcast. Even though we’re doing this remotely, it is so good to see your face through the video feature. So thanks for being here.
Dr. Russell:
Well, thank you for asking me, I enjoy being able to talk and I get excited about things that God is teaching me. This is fun. Thank you.
Heidi Wilcox:
We’re here to talk about other things. But one of my burning questions is, I want to know about your time as a forest firefighter.
Dr. Russell:
I kind of stumbled into that. When I was growing up, I had three goals. I wanted to play professional baseball; I didn’t know that girls weren’t allowed to. But I wanted to play professional baseball, I wanted to be a firefighter, and I wanted to be a mountaineer instructor. How I got that, I have no idea. I grew up in the middle of Southern California, big urban center, but I always loved the mountains. When I was in college, I was a forest management major. I always wanted to be outdoors, so that made sense to have a career that was outdoors. And part of being a forest management major is, we have opportunities to work for the Forest Service. I don’t know if it was the first year or it was very new. Around title nine, things really opened up for women. And so it was the first time they were allowing women on the fire crew.
Dr. Russell:
I was one of two women on 20-person fire crew. There was a little bit of pushback from some of the guys. They were okay with us doing the day-to-day stuff. We did a lot of… Once people had a timber cut, we would come in and we would clean it and get it ready for burning. But one of the things the guys would say, especially the older guys would say, “Women shouldn’t be allowed to go on project fires.” Project fires are fires that are larger than 1000 acres and they usually last more than one day. You’re usually on the fire line several days. He just thought women didn’t have the capacity to do that. During the summer, we got called to one of those project fires, except it wasn’t… We got called to an area, they had a big lightning strike, one of these dry lightning. And we arrived, our fire crew arrived in the fire bus. So we don’t know if we have 10 or 1000 fires.
Dr. Russell:
We just spent the day running around putting out small fires. And we watched as the fire crossed the ridge, grew bigger and bigger. And that was our project fire. So we were sent over there was up to 6000 acres. When you’re on a fire, you’re on 24/7. On a project fire, then you’re on usually 22 hours, and you then go back and eat and sleep and then back on the fire. So usually in the early morning hours they calculate where they need crews. It’s just exhausting work and you’re on the fire line. Sometimes you’re sleeping on the fire line. For 10 days, we were fighting this fire. At the time, there was probably 1000 fire crew total in the room, maybe 30 women. So it’s quite unusual. But after we got done, I kept up with the guys, the other gal kept up with the guys. If the guys carried 80 pounds of water up the hill, I carried 80 pounds of water up the hill. In fact, I outlasted a lot of the guys just because I had done hiking and that kind of stuff.
Dr. Russell:
After that, the same guy, he came up to me and he’s like, “Well, some women can be on project fires.” But it was like, “Okay, we have proved ourselves that we could keep up, we weren’t a burden, we actually were helping.” My other fun thing is, we had a crew from the south. Because again, we had very high burn season. I was working with another guy, and we had the portable fire truck. We had 500 gallons of water and four-wheel drive so we were driving to different hotspots and putting water on them. There was a southern fire crew that we were going to and there’s maybe a little four-inch sapling in our way. And so, I just got out of the truck, grabbed the axe and chopped down a couple strokes and got back in the car and we got to them and got the water. About four hours later, we came back around to them and their fire busters saddled up to me and said, “I just want you to know that my boys gave you an A+ on that.”
Dr. Russell:
It was fun. And again, I had never been in a situation where my gender, if I could do the skills, ever prohibited me from… Now there was skepticism, “Can the woman do the job?” And once you demonstrated you could do the job there was… I mean even as a fire management major, there weren’t very many women. Of a class of 50 there’d be two of us. And I always told people, “The guys were really polite.” They would open the door as long as you were carrying the equipment.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Russell:
Yeah. So during that, and even then, I was able to go to National Outdoor Leadership School and actually do mountaineering for 30 days in the Rocky Mountains. And it was a school and that’s where I wanted to be an instructor, and I was asked back to come back to their instructor school. Again, my gender, it didn’t hold me back from being asked to come back and do the school to become one of their instructors. I even played on the boys’ baseball team in high school. Again, the guys were like, they’d come up to me go, “Yeah, you’re pretty good for a girl.” So in my life, I have participated in things that once you demonstrated you could do something, there wasn’t a barrier.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What changed for you because your Associate Professor of Anthropology and chair of the… And Asbury Seminary, Do I have that right? If I don’t….
Dr. Russell:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Correct me. But yeah, you’re a professor at the seminary now. So what changed your mind? Because that’s a completely opposite career path.
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, well, my fourth year of university, actually she came out the third year, there was this new kid on our softball team. I’m still in contact with her, but she was this little squirt. She was going out for my position and what she didn’t know as I was the all-conference catcher, and so she wasn’t going to really get my position. But my coach asked me to train her as my backup if I got injured. She so impressed me. I mean, she worked harder than all of us. And she wore this exthuse on her shirt. But she just loved all of us. I mean, she just loved us. And I remember thinking, I got to find out more about this person. And so we just had these long conversations, she never shared with me, she told me she was just too intimidated. As a catcher, you have to be kind of intimidating. And she was just too intimidated of me. But she told me later that, she and the director of Campus Crusade used to sit outside my dorm window and pray for me.
Dr. Russell:
The next year we became roommates because we’re staying up till all hours talking anyway. And I just remember… She started this Bible study called 10 Steps to Christian Maturity, but she skipped the first one. And I being very competitive decided I was going to do the same Bible study, but faster and better than her. I started with the one that she skipped, which was How to Know Christ Personally. So there in my room all by myself, she had gone. I just was overwhelmed with Christ’s love. And I just asked Christ into my life then, and so it just transform me. And I found myself reading scripture and then her name at the time was Genie Bograph, is now Ganzel. Actually, we’re still friends after what 40 years.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.
Dr. Russell:
She discipled me. Here I am, a tomboy and she was like the Barbie. And God just sent her into my life, and she just loved on me. She’d come to every home game. She didn’t know a thing about softball, but she’d to every home game. And do you know by the end of that season, half the team were Christians? Just because this loving presence. Never preaching, but loving presence. Just discipling us, just being there. She even learned rock climbing because that was my thing. And so we had this little discipleship group and is like, “Okay, who’s going to teach us how to do rock climbing today?” So I took them all out and showed them how to do some stuff with ropes. Anyway, that was fun. But it was during that time that God really… I sensed this, I just kind of I have a pause? I wanted to use my gifts and talents and my interests to reach people.
Dr. Russell:
I mean, I thought as a forest manager, we were training before strangers. I wouldn’t really have a lot of contact with people, which was my original idea of being a forest ranger. Just being out in the forest, on a horse and by myself enjoying nature. I began to really pray about what the Lord would have for me. I really felt that God was three criteria. I wanted to be involved in evangelism discipleship. I was a crew baby that’s what we did. I loved doing it. And I wanted to use the gifts and talents and training that God had given me. I figured my passions and training and stuff. And then I really wasn’t interested in going overseas. I’d never been overseas. I mean, Tijuana on the border, but that’s it. But I had discipled a Chinese girl from Tijuana. I said, “If you are going to send me, I think China?” So I just laid those before him and I looked at different things, even like management. And, “Should I do business management, a Master’s?” I dismissed Bible translation because I hated languages. Now, though, I’ve had to-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, the irony.
Dr. Russell:
I know, just don’t ever do that. But I happened to be in our house, and I lived with seven other women, other people involved in crew. And I never seen it before, but she got the Wycliffe little magazine, and it had this big thing on. It said, “Lost.” Somebody had gotten lost at jungle camp and they had to do a search, and I’m reading and going, “Oh, my goodness, they’re doing it all wrong.” I had been trained in search and rescue. And I thought, “Well, maybe they could use someone like me who could train missionaries how to do wilderness stuff and search and rescue and surviving in the wild,” because I love doing that. I sent in the coupon into Wycliffe for more information. They sent me all this stuff back. I began reading I thought, “What a great way to do evangelism, but to go up to someone and say, “Just read John 3:16.”’? And then, “What a great way to do discipleship, but to go through the whole New Testament with somebody. Verse by verse as you’re translating and discussing.” I thought, “Okay, but I know, I know. I don’t do languages.”
Dr. Russell:
So being obedient, I had a friend in church whose daughter was in Wycliffe. So I said, “Can I have lunch with you? Talk more about Wycliffe. I figured God would close the door.” And in the middle of this lunch, out of the blue, the guy asked me, “Are you good at math?” And math had been my best subject. I loved math. And he said, “If you’re good at math, you’ll be good at the linguistic analysis that’s involved in Bible translation.”
Heidi Wilcox:
And you were like, “This is [crosstalk 00:15:16]
Dr. Russell:
Oh no, no. I knew China. Wycliffe was not working at China at that time, right? So I’m going, “I’m safe.” Spring Break first time in six years, I went back to Southern California. My roommates were coming down here. So I went, and since we were only a few miles from then the Wycliffe headquarters, I asked if I could interview. I mean, I’m pursuing this until God completely shuts the door. So I interview and find out more, he says, “Would you like to come to chapel?” I’m going, “Sure I’ll come to chapel.” And who should be there, but Kenneth Pike, returning from his trip from China and discussing the possibility of Wycliffe working in China in the near future. So off I went, sending my stuff. I knew nothing, that’s as much. I didn’t know you took three semesters of graduate linguistic training. I thought one semester, I get to go the field.
Dr. Russell:
So within two years, we were on the field. I was one of those I was really involved in our churches, so I didn’t have to go raise support. People came to me and the churches, I had been involved in churches. And that’s the thing I tell students, I said, “Be involved in churches.” They knew me. I was their new Christian, I asked all the questions as new Christian. Within three years, then that includes language school, we found ourselves in Southeast Asia. And we both felt like we wanted to work with a group that were already Christians, because we felt that we should be more facilitators. And this is before people were talking about partnership or facilitation. This is early ’80s.
Dr. Russell:
There was a church who had been Christians like 40 years and still didn’t have translation, they were their largest of the language family. And we just felt called to that. So we started our language and culture learning and spent a couple of years. Then my colleague had been corresponding with somebody she met. So anyway, she left to get married. And that’s when we had a sponsoring agent she said, “We’re going to fund this.” And so I went back. Realize, I had only been a Christian, what, three or four years before I went to the field, right? And so I’m working with all these amazing elders and Christians. So because we were in a closed country, a sensitive country, we were there working under the State Museum. And we could translate things of high moral value. But we were working on linguistic and anthropological projects for the museum, doing what we call language development. Recording the language, writing it. I was doing literacy in the village and doing things like preservation of language and anthropological studies.
Dr. Russell:
There aren’t very many categories for a white Westerner Christian in their culture, so they wanted to call me missionary, I’m going, “No, no, no, you cannot call me that.” And so they want to call me pastor I said, “No, no, no, you can’t call me that.” So they came up with Ali. Ali means younger sister. I had to learn to become a younger sister. These guys were my older brothers. And so as a young single woman, even just young single, I had no say in that culture. And my resources were used by the elders. I had to learn how to work as a younger sister in that culture, which meant I wasn’t in charge. And that’s a whole another story about just the committee bringing revival to the area and it became a community. The translation committee was able to pull the resources of the 60 little village churches right over 15-days hike. And God used them to bring revival and to complete translation.
Dr. Russell:
I got to be socialized by these amazing Christian. My Christianity was very different. I saw things through their worldview. One of it was like the spirit world where healing… I’ve never noticed how many times Jesus healed somebody by casting out demon until I’m living in a culture that heals people by casting out demons. Their question is, “Who’s going to protect me from the spirit?” So I got to watch them burn the black magic kits and baptize people. And also it’s very community-oriented. Your resources belong to the community. When I came back with my first doctorate, they all sat around. These elders, they’re all talking. And the conversation was, “What are we going to do with our doctorate?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, no individualism whatsoever?
Dr. Russell:
Well, you do have individual, but I mean, you are part of the community. This is a resource that you contribute.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. That’s what I mean, it’s not… Sounds very different than-
Dr. Russell:
It’s not my resource, it’s our resource.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. That’s really awesome.
Dr. Russell:
Anyway, so that’s the background. And we completed that. I’ll go on to how I ended up in the States and married to David. We do yearly planning because we’re out in the village. Our directors want to see what we’re doing in the year. And I was doing my yearly planning and discovered I was done. Old Testament was drafted, New Testament had been completed. I’m like, “First time, I don’t have a long-term commitment.” 15 years. I no longer have a long-term commitment. I’m thinking, “God’s going to do something new.” I had met David while I was doing my doctorate. And we liked each other, but he wasn’t called to overseas, and I just thought… During that year, my mother became critically ill, so I flew home. And the day after she was out of critical care, one of the professors who had mentored me, had a heart attack.
Dr. Russell:
I had been his TA, and it was two weeks before school. I jumped in and finished up his grades. And the day I finished grading, I was eating a pizza, and here comes this guy. David comes by. I mean, he’s way across campus, I’m supposed to be 10,000 miles away. And that moment, this is my last day on campus. I’m leaving, here he comes. And he’s like “What’s you doing?” It’s like, “I finished. I’ll be finishing up.” He had finished and turns out, he didn’t want to date a missionary because he wasn’t called, and he didn’t want to say that because he didn’t want me to… so he had just disappeared. But he heard finished. He’s like, “You want to go out?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, I love that. He heard finished and he heard “Let’s get started.”
Dr. Russell:
It really put David in a dilemma, because I didn’t want to go back until my mom was out of the hospital. She was doing long-term physical therapy. And so poor David didn’t know if he should pray for my mom to get well or pray that I would stay longer. Anyway, after that two months, I went back to the field because I was a senior member. I had a lot of responsibility that I needed to train people into. Part of the conversation is, “How do you say goodbye after 15 years to people who have become like family?” So I asked if my husband would consider buying my elder brother a water buffalo. Imagine you are there and I’m here, right? And you’re going, “A what?” That’s exactly what he did.
Dr. Russell:
Anyway, long story short, he came out and we went out to my village and he paid the full bride wealth for me, that was customary for Christians. And as soon as he paid bride wealth, the expectation is I would go back to his village because that will also… It was just an amazing way to close a 15-year ministry with that community. And David was an honorable person for paying bride wealth when he didn’t have to. So that closed that, but the impact on my worldview as a Christian, I tell people I may look American, but I’m not. I’m a Tagal Christian. That’s where I was socialized as a Christian. It did give me a different view of culture and scriptures. Kind of gave me bigger prism. It gave me different ways of looking at scripture.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right, and your book Relationshift: Changing the Conversation about Men and Women in the Church. It seems like it would pull a lot from that because you talk about developing brother-sister type relationships. Basing things on gifts, not gender. Or not us versus them type mentality. Why did you and Dr. Rose choose to right Relationshift?
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, I began teaching at Biola. It is in Southern California and my students would say things to me. I taught gender, I taught anthropology of gender, and I taught women and development. I’ve had students come into those classes and say things, and I’m going, “Where did you come up with something like that?” I began to track it down. And that’s the first time I discovered this whole complimentary, egalitarian debate. I had never heard of it until I came to that Christian College. So I began reading, that began my journey of reading. And I’ll be honest, as an anthropologist, I would see them start biblical and then slide into a cultural explanation. Something that we’re saying was biblical, was really cultural. And they would be talking about roles.
Dr. Russell:
As an anthropologist, we have very distinct ways of talking about roles that are attached to status. I looked through Scripture, and I didn’t see anything that really talked about roles in the way that I understood them. I was reading scripture, not only through a theological, because I was doing my MDiv and ThM. But through a Tagal and an anthropological view, and just seeing this whole debate not making sense. And just saying, because each of the sides, I fully affirm women in ministry, but the egalitarian and the compliment, both deal with changing structure. In other words, if somebody came and taught complementarian to the Tagal church, they would have to completely change the ways that they were doing things, because it was a matter of gifts and talents, not gender. If you had the gifts and talents, you did it. And a lot of the women had less obligation, so they went to Bible School.
Dr. Russell:
They were the teachers but they also if they were young, were under the elders like everyone else. The elders had this resource of somebody with Bible knowledge. It was just very odd to me to see this debate. And so I began to do papers on it and trying to sort out some of this, but I just didn’t find a satisfactory way to talk about it. Because when you look at it, it seems contradictory. Galatians 3:28 and then Ephesians, Paul seems to be contradictory and some people reject Ephesians because, “Oh Paul could’ve written that because it…” I’m like, “No, there’s something going on.” Because I was involved in this anthropology and Biblical Studies conversation, I felt like I needed to get my doctorate in Biblical Studies. But I also wanted to include my anthropology and turns out that the person who had headed up the history of early Christianity program at UCLA, was one of the founders of what they call the Context Group. And that was the group that was using anthropological models and New Testament studies.
Dr. Russell:
I went and talked to him and he was really excited to have a trained anthropologist in the program. I thought I would write on gender, but classical studies, to really do it right like Cindy West, some of these people who really have studied classical texts a long time, that was a young person’s game. I did some papers and explored some ways of looking at it and just never came up with something. I’m sitting in a seminar class. And Dr. Partchi talked about the values in an honor and shame culture, and he listed all these values. And then he looked at Pauline values for relationships, and for again, men. And I looked at those two lists. I thought, “I’ve seen those two lists before.” And those two lists were what anthropologist called Victor Turner, used when he was talking about rites and passage. I have to back up, in rites of passage those are the transitions. Like it would be marriage, would be a rite of passage.
Dr. Russell:
And what they discovered is that there’s three stages. There’s a stage where you’re separated from society, so you leave your former status. Kind of when you’re engaged, you are no longer single, but you’re not married. You’re engaged. It’s this is weird stage. That’s what he called Liminal. It’s this between and betwixt . This is where you get to know each other. But what he found in rites of passage, that’s where status doesn’t matter. So wealthy, poor, they’re all the same. And they have a different kind of relationships. It’s a mutual based on person, relationships. It’s called communitas. And then in rites of passage, you have then another stage called reincorporation, so you go through the marriage ceremony and the last thing the pastor does is turn you around, say, “I’d like to introduce to you the new, Mr. or Mrs. Russell.” That is, your reincorporated now, you’re in society with this new status of married.
Dr. Russell:
And so it was this liminal period, so what Turner does in these two ends when you’re in status, is called structure. You relate by status. For instance, we’re in status in Asbury and churches too. For instance, I can walk into a fellow faculty, Stevie Brole, I can walk into his office, we can give off, no appointment necessary. If he’s there, I can just walk in. Now, with the Dean who has a different schedule. I mean, he’s open to it, but there’s an appointment. However, with the president, because of the status, there’s a different way you behave, that’s called structure. That we behave based on these relationships of our statuses. Whether it’s wealth or educate… In class students call me Dr. Russell. Outside, I mean, people here don’t call me Dr. Russell, because we’re in the same structure. So there’s certain behavior based on the structure that Ren expected.
Dr. Russell:
Victor Turner calls that structure. Anti-structure is where those statuses no longer matter. We relate. It’s kind of the Galatians 3:28. And for me, it was like, “Oh, my goodness, it’s both and,” We talk about these dual identities in Christianity. And for instance, we talk about the kingdom being here, but not yet. It’s a temporal duality. We’re living in the new, but also living in the old, we’re doing it both, and for a time. And same with our spirit. We have the Holy Spirit, but still in the old flesh.
Dr. Russell:
And Paul talks a lot about that, but we’re going to get something else when the resurrection or we die. It’s the same thing on the social level. We are to live these new types of relationship that Paul talks so much about. He talks so much about how to live with one another, how to love one another. How to… Look at all the one anothers, that’s this mutual relationship. Paul has a lot of one anothers; love one another, care for one another. That’s the Galatians 3:28. In Christ, there’s not free or slave. We relate one anotherly that no matter what our status is. However, we still have to live in status.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. So how do we do both?
Dr. Russell:
We have to live a new way, within our status. What we do is we redefine. So what Paul was doing in Ephesus with a household code, he wasn’t reinforcing the household code, as complementarians would argue. He was redefining it to one of mutuality within a hierarchy. So hierarchy was transformed from power and exclusion, to service and inclusion.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, so we have to use our gifts and our status to help other people.
Dr. Russell:
Right. For instance, talking about privilege. There’s a lot of talk about privilege. And people are going, “Well, I’m going…” No, don’t be afraid of privilege because what privilege means is you have access to resources and stuff that others don’t. How can you use your access to include others? I have benefited so many times from my male colleagues saying, “Hey, the person who you need to contact is Sue Russell.” “Hey, she is the one who’s an expert on this.” A lot of my writing comes from male colleagues who’ve invited me and opened doors for me. My mentor, he opened the door into the Context Group. Anyway, the book.
Dr. Russell:
The first thing was my dissertation, which I look at this concept from Jesus. And it’s fun to talk about Jesus, if you look at him, there’s often these opposites in status. My favorite one is the sinful woman and Simon the Pharisees, where Jesus is over at the meal. And you have Simon who is high status; he’s male, he’s pure, he’s a Pharisee. And you have this very low-status woman who, all we know is she’s a sinner. The opposite of purity, sinner and a woman. So opposite status. But look at what they do. And often in that story, we focus on the forgiveness aspect. She comes in and wets his hair and wipes it with her tears and puts oil on his feet. And what Jesus rebuked Simon for doing is basically, this goes into all honor and shame stuff. But basically, Simon did not honor Jesus at the meal. He didn’t give a kiss, he didn’t give oil, he didn’t wash his feet.
Dr. Russell:
So here’s somebody who has high status, who dishonored Jesus with his actions. Here is somebody who would have a dishonorable status or low status, who acted honorably toward Jesus. And who gets forgiveness? It’s a person with low status. And we see that contrast all through the stories in Jesus, where you would have somebody who were expected to be honored because of their status but acts dishonorably towards Jesus. Anyway, that was my dissertation. And I saw this duality. It’s how we behave, how we treat one another within our status, we can’t escape our status. And even in the early church, you had rich, you had poor, you had women, you had men, it wasn’t bad to be wealthy. You were to use that wealth for the church. And just as Jesus was like, “What are we going to do with our doctorate?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. One of the things you mentioned in your book is that women, at least in Bible times are put into a category rather than seen as individuals. And so although Jesus never directly talked about relationships between men and women, how did his interaction with women change their status?
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, absolutely. Let me back up a little because it’s part of a broader narrative. So in Genesis, actually it starts in Genesis this whole us-them. When God creates the woman, what does Adam say? The first thing he says is, “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, she’s one of me.” But what happens in the fall?
Heidi Wilcox:
“This woman you gave me.”
Dr. Russell:
That’s right, all of a sudden, the woman is the other. And then we also see that Cain and Abel, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What sin does is make us, them. And what happens when society gets more complex? These become classes of people. We talk about, “Those women.” I was in a church fellowship when I heard that women are more… When somebody was giving an explanation about why women shouldn’t preach while women are more deceived and dah, dah, dah. And so here I am sitting in with three doctorates going, “Am I more deceived with somebody than maybe has never read scripture?” You wonder. My thought was, would you say, “Sue is more deceived.” If you can’t say that about an individual, you shouldn’t be saying it about a group. What Jesus did in his… No, go ahead.
Heidi Wilcox:
No, I was just going to say and it’s not just gender, but it’s anytime it’s us-them kind of language. If it’s not all, then don’t say it about all.
Dr. Russell:
That’s right. Talk about individuals. And what happens is we can easily dehumanize people by talking about categories. We have a lot of people who are unhomed here. And if we talk about homeless, they become a problem. They’ve been given a category. And all of a sudden, they’re not one of us. But if we talk about somebody who’s lost their home, man, aren’t we all just one major emergency? Many people are just one major emergency, a loss, mental health, tragedy from losing their home. But when we put people in category, and we say, “Those people, those homeless people.” You can put whoever you want in that category. The moment you put people in category, you’ve dehumanize them.
Heidi Wilcox:
And that’s a scary place to be.
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, yeah. We talk, and I could go into social identity theory and how we do that in our narratives. So in our narratives, we create otherness. So we talk about people in terms that make them less like us, if we want to exclude them, or more like them. So a lot of the narrative in the complementary dialogue is to make women more or less like men, make more distinction between men and women. Now there are, but to be honest, how that’s perceived is various culturally. So there are differences between men and women, absolutely. But if you’re making a point to make an other, you’re going to make women so very different than men, so that you can make your point about how men and women are different therefore.
Dr. Russell:
In our book, Jackie actually came and found me. I had kind of presented these ideas and figured I was done with them. And she actually tracked me down. I mean, she spent a year tracking me down. I’m not much on social media, but she managed to find me. And she asked me to come speak to… She has a podcast with her Marcella group, which is Empowering Women. She does amazing things on that and talks about… Right now she’s talking about body image and very powerful podcast. We got to talk and she asked me to speak. And then the women, I talked about what we call the big word social dimension of integrated eschatology and how… Galatians 3:28, we didn’t have to be complimentary. It’s not either or. So women in hierarchical structure, you don’t have to dismantle hierarchy, but you transform hierarchy, you change the meaning of hierarchy. It’s very difficult. It is, power relationship.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Dr. Russell:
What’s that?
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s always tricky. I was just gonna say, because your book, one thing I found interesting is your book is neither complementarian nor egalitarian. It turns it all on its head.
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, no, it comes from my perspective, the Bible doesn’t talk about roles, it talks about relationships. And so we come from that perspective, how should we behave towards one another? What does that look like? Like I said, Paul talks so much about one another. And then if you understand Paul, he’s very missional as well. So often, the places where there are prohibitions with women, it’s in context where the church is very public. And that’s how I approached even the Timothy passage. I approached it, actually, Dr. Long’s, Fred Long had a paper that really helped with that. But I had to ask, Paul is missional. And often, when he talks about women, it’s for a missional purpose. So the the question I had to ask when I approached Timothy… I did, I laid out my assumptions. Here are my assumptions. Paul is missional, there was something going on, that would distract from the main message to the church again, right?
Dr. Russell:
So when I’m a missionary in a culture, in some places in Tagalog culture, I could never wear shorts. I could never wear short sleeves, you just don’t because that would be a distraction. So there are things I didn’t do that I had the freedom to do. But I didn’t because it was inappropriate in that culture, wearing long sleeves in other cultures, how I behaved in government office with officials. We did things that were missional because we didn’t want anything to distract from the message of the gospel. And we still do that, right? We still do that. Well, I had to ask myself what was distracting? What was the problem in Ephesus, because Ephesus was a crazy place. So I asked what was distracting from the missional outreach of the church? And that’s how I approach that passage. Because you have to interpret it based on the whole of Scripture. And all the scripture where we see relationships are important. So how is this disrupting the relationships in the community or in the church?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I really appreciated your approach to all of that, because I’ve heard different people talk about Paul, and some like him, some don’t like him at all. He just kind of gets a bad rap, sometimes I feel like, but the way you addressed what you called the prickly passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, I found especially enlightening, as you talked about it from the lens of culture, and how Paul is trying to help take people from where they were to what he believed was God’s hope for humanity. So how do Paul’s writings reflect an understanding of liminality or living here, but on the way to somewhere else?
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, I think the household codes are a really good example of that. He wasn’t dismantling that household code, right? He didn’t say, “Okay, now you’re going to…” But he completely transformed it. So the household code would be, “Women’s submit, children submit, slave submit.” But now there’s this mutuality, “Submit to one another.” He spends a lot more ink on men, on the husband, right? I want to get a T shirt for my husband love, serve, die, because basically that’s what he tells him to do, “Love, serve die.”
Dr. Russell:
And so Paul was showing in this very hierarchical culture, how to relate one another and transform it. So now, hierarchy was not domination, but one of service. So the more power you have, the more people you serve. I love this. One of my friends became Dean. I always pictured him as a golden retriever, just one of these really nice guys. And I’m just thinking, “Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe you did that,” for him to step into the position of Dean. A brilliant scholar too. So I was just like, “What are you thinking?” And he was a good friend, so I could ask him this. But I asked him, I said, “What were you thinking?” And I’ll never forget his response. He said, “I have been served by the Dean for so many years. And we just felt that it was our turn to serve the faculty.”
Dr. Russell:
I thought, that’s the answer you want from your boss. Right?
Heidi Wilcox:
For sure.
Dr. Russell:
“I took this position to serve.” That just transforms hierarchy, right?
Heidi Wilcox:
It does.
Dr. Russell:
So how do I apply it to my life? As a professor, as I’m thinking in my courses, I’m thinking, “How am I going to serve my students?” So in the assignments, “How’s this assignment going to serve my students in their professional development?” So not busy work, but there’s really thought into, “How does this serve my students?” Because professors, we kind of set the what we’re going to do for assignment. And I love it. When I was interviewing at undergraduate my first job, the President asked every single faculty in their interview, “How will students know that you love them?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Dr. Russell:
And that transforms our job, right? How am I going to love and serve my students? Now, that doesn’t mean like, “Oh, yeah. You can turn in papers late and that kind of stuff,” because that doesn’t serve you well, right? That’s not serving you well, but it is. It transforms how we view when we’re in a position of, say, power over people. God gives us those positions, because we’re ready to serve more people.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. What would it look like if individuals and the church started applying, not that they’re not, but started applying these principles even more?
Dr. Russell:
I think then it kind of transforms what pastors do on its head. Again, Paul talks about equipping the saints. So it’s saying, “How are people in my church serving their community? And how can I serve them to serve the community?” Like all the teachers, how can we as a church serve you so you can do your job better?” Say health care professionals, “How can we serve you, so that you can do your ministry better?” And is also looking at vocation as missional? So God has called us into these vocations. I mean, that’s one of the things I had to look coming from mission field that my calling had changed to make disciples, my vocation changed. But I’m still making disciples.
Dr. Russell:
So our vocation may change. So how are people in different vocations? How we can we help them make disciples? How can we serve them? So I think it’s just, again, when you have access to resources, when you have access to privilege, if you will, I mean, that kind of gets tossed around. How do you use that to serve others? So like for me, how can I serve my students? When I know there’s conferences and things that I have opportunity to invite students into those conferences, trying to do those kinds of things, “How can my networks help serve my students?” I’m not a pastor. I’ve never had been, I’ve always been academia. So even when I was chair, chair of the anthropology department, I made sure I figured out how to serve my faculty. I have one of my faculty, he’s brilliant. I mean, he still is brilliant, just totally brilliant. So he did really well in these very technical upper division courses. So I taught all the lower division generalized courses, so that he could teach where he really, really excelled.
Dr. Russell:
And neither of them really like doing the advising, so I did all the advising. So I did kind of all the things to free them up to do what they did best. So it was not like, “Okay, you guys are going to do the advising, I’m going to teach these.” It was like, “How can how can I serve this person so that they can use their gifts and talents that God has given them?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One of the other things that you mentioned, because we’ve talked about using privilege to empower others, sharing our gifts, respecting other people. But I want to talk, one of the things you mentioned, is not fearing our sexuality as we live our lives. Can you expound more on that? And what that means, and how we can do that?
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, in this culture it’s very difficult. When I was teaching undergraduates, I would ask them, their programs that they were watching, and I’d watch them, because people are learning more about sexuality from media than they are from the church. And so, what media says is you can have sex with everyone, right? Love’s not an issue, just one night stands, whatever, whoever, male female, just so sexual attraction is the big thing. The scriptures are just the opposite, right? If you’re viewing every man and woman as brothers and sisters, we do not have sex with… There isn’t even an idea of sex with a brother and sister. So if we’re looking at men and women as our brothers and sisters, then we have incest rules, right? We have rules that say you cannot have sex with your sister and brother. And that’s what I’m seeing. If that’s how we view one another, versus a potential sexual partner, which our media is teaching us that everyone’s a potential sexual partner. Right?
Dr. Russell:
Marry, not marry, young, old, whatever. That’s the opposite of what Scripture is teaching us.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. And I like the story that you told in your book about… Maybe it was Dr. Rose who taught that, but about being in class and needing a ride to class. Tell us, briefly-
Dr. Russell:
It’s really her story to tell, and she tells it so well. But the hesitation when you’re the only woman. Now, to be honest, I faced it more in Christian circles than I did in secular circles. I worked with men on the fire line. I worked with men, and I don’t know why it was never a problem. Again, that’s a little bit 40 years ago, there wasn’t so much sexualization of our culture. I mean, you watch any program today and it’s basically everyone’s a potential sexual partner. Again, but we have this kind of danger, women are dangerous. And we have this in our culture, in our Christian culture. So if you’re alone with a woman, oh my goodness, there’s potential for…. And so when she was asking for a ride, nobody wanted to give her a ride because they’re all afraid to be alone with a woman, right? She’s like, “I don’t want to have sex with you, I just want a ride.”
Dr. Russell:
And sometimes we have to state that, but it does hurt women, this whole idea that every woman is a potential sexual partner, because that means you can’t be mentored by men. Again, you have to be wise. I tell my students, okay… I teach undergraduate students, and they’re like, “Oh, it just happened.” I’m like, “Look, if you’re out in a public place, it’s not going to just happen. It’s like, be wise guys, if you’re alone in a dorm room… Come on.” Again, I learned that from the Tagal, where they didn’t expect people to have personal boundaries. So there was always a chaperone whenever there were a youth group. And that was the big thing is like whenever the youth were going to do the questions parents asked, “Who are the chaperones?”
Heidi Wilcox:
Interesting.
Dr. Russell:
Again, it was external boundaries as how they kept… Usually, if there was any kind of premarital sex, the parents were like, “Oh, it’s our fault, because we didn’t chaperone them well enough.” In Western culture, we expect to have this internal boundary. And so I tell students, “Look, if you’re in public, nothing’s going to happen.” But I did learn about, again, learning from the Tagal that what kind of positions we put ourselves in to. So meet with a couple of women and couple of guys, if you want to mentor, or if that’s an issue, because there is a reputation because everybody assumes everybody’s potential sexual partner. I remember the first time again, it was the same friend. I had just come back from the field. And I was in his office and the door was closed. I’m like, I had to physically say this is okay, because I would never be alone in a room with a man in-
Heidi Wilcox:
In the Tagal…
Dr. Russell:
Yeah. I mean, if I was going somewhere with Jimmy, there was always one of his kids with us. So what would I say? Again, I think, mentally, this is where we really need to be so counter cultural, and just say, unless God is really leading you into a marriage type relationship, then everyone else is not a potential sexual partner. And if you’re married, you don’t even consider it.
Heidi Wilcox:
But if we’re all brothers and sisters, we have more freedom.
Dr. Russell:
Absolutely.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So Dr. Russell, this conversation has been a delight. We’ve talked about so many things. I have one question I asked everyone. But is there anything else that you’d like to say that we haven’t already talked about?
Dr. Russell:
No, I appreciate being able to just talk about this. Again, for pastors listening there realize I have been more in academia. And so they’re going to have to translate it contextually to their church, their work, because I appreciate all of the people because it’s such a difficult time and such a difficult just in this culture, and discipling people on. So my prayer for folks is that we could start this new conversation. We could start looking at, be aware of how we talk about groups of people in groups. So it’s a good lesson for me too, I have to be continually reminded about it. No, I love Asbury because this is a great environment to talk about some of these things.
Heidi Wilcox:
Well, the one question we ask everyone, because the show is called the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast, what is one practice, one thing you’re doing that it’s helping you thrive in your life right now?
Dr. Russell:
There’s two things. One is spiritual one is physical. One of the things I do is I train for Iron Man’s , so that kind of makes a commitment for me to stay physically active. Again, having been an athlete in college is kind of just when I get trained. The other thing I did for myself is I wanted to go on a deeper spiritual journey. So Dallas Willard has always impressed me. Dallas Willard and I’ve just been spending the last two years together. And that has been rich. So just finding somebody that I really resonate with him. He started some of the spiritual formation movement, at least in Southern California. That’s been really rich. So those two things, especially in the COVID time have allowed me to thrive. And connecting with friends.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, even if it’s virtually.
Dr. Russell:
Yeah, can’t be willing to say, “Hey, do you want Zoom?” I had a long Zoom conversation with one of my students. It was just fun.
Heidi Wilcox:
Well, I love that. Thanks so much, Dr. Russell for being on the podcast today. I really appreciated it and enjoyed our conversation.
Dr. Russell:
I did too. It’s good to see you.
Heidi Wilcox:
It’s good to see you.
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Dr. Russell. I just always enjoy getting to talk to her and catch up with her, and today getting to share that conversation with you. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did as we seek ways to live our lives in ways that are witnesses to Jesus. So thank you for listening. And as always, you can follow us in all the places; on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.
