Letha Dawson Scanzoni, pioneer of evangelical feminism, dies at 88

Letha Dawson Scanzoni an evangelical author who gently but persuasively argued that the Bible viewed women as equal to men, inspiring a wave of Christian feminism and, perhaps inevitably, a backlash against it, died on January 9 in Charlotte, NC. She was 88.

Her death, in a skilled nursing facility, was the result of congestive heart failure, her son David Scanzoni said.

Betty Friedan's “The Feminine Mystique” was already a bestseller in the mid-1960s when Ms. Scanzoni began writing for Eternity, an evangelical Christian magazine that often challenged conservative views on social issues. She had the same questions as her secular sisters: Should women be submissive to their husbands and stay out of leadership roles in the church, as many fundamentalist Christians believed?

Ms. Scanzoni believed that the Bible did not support these views—and cited Scripture to prove her points in articles published in Eternity, such as one titled “Women's Place: Silence or Service?” and another on egalitarian marriage.

The articles did not receive too much opprobrium at the time, although the editors did ask for a photo of Mrs. Scanzoni and her husband at the egalitarian wedding piece to show that he approved of her position. And there were a few indignant letters to the editor. One reader wrote: “Madam. Scanzoni's article is one of the main reasons why the apostle Paul told women to be silent.”

But as the women's liberation movement gained momentum outside the church, Ms. Scanzoni felt that Christians were sitting on the sidelines, aside from some mild whining about society's decline, and decided to tackle the subject in a book. The result was All We're Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation (1974), which she wrote with Nancy Hardesty, who had been an editor at Eternity.

The book became a manifesto for evangelical feminism, using a hermeneutic analysis of the Bible, interpreting the text by noting the context in which it was written and extrapolating its teachings to modern life.

Eternity magazine named it “the book of the year” in 1975, and Ms. Scanzoni became a sought-after speaker at Christian organizations and a founding member of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (now called Christian feminism today), a networking and social justice group for the movement she helped start.

The response was immediate, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a Christian historian and author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Are Corrupting a Faith and Destroying a Nation” (2020).

“Conservatives redoubled their opposition to women's rights,” Ms. Du Mez said by phone, “making male leadership and female subjugation the hallmarks of modern evangelicalism. Letha posed such a threat because she presented her case for feminism in evangelical terms, making it difficult for critics to portray feminism as a wholly secular movement bent on undermining traditional Christianity.”

Letha Marion Dawson was born on October 9, 1935 in Pittsburgh and grew up in small Mifflintown, in central Pennsylvania. Her parents, James and Hilda (Koch) Dawson, owned a gas station-cum-restaurant and other small businesses. Her best friend was the daughter of a preacher, and because her parents worked a lot on Sundays, Letha accompanied her friend to church. When she was 11, she had a conversion experience during an altar call and committed herself to Christian service.

Letha was a talented musician and an excellent student, and after graduating early from high school, she enrolled at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where she studied trombone. There she joined a Christian youth organization and had another revelation: there were many hypocrites in the group, she saw, and in her eyes one jerk: the director of the group, who kissed her without her consent and who was racist and anti-Semitic made comments while telling Kendra Weddle and Jann Eldredge-Clanton, authors of “Building Bridges: Letha Scanzoni and Friends” (2018).

She transferred to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where she met John Scanzoni. They married in 1956 and lived for a time in Oregon, where Mr. Scanzoni became pastor of a small independent church before earning a doctorate. in sociology. Mrs. Scanzoni had left school to care for their two young sons and began writing. Her first book was a dating guide for Christian teens.

The family was living in Bloomington, Indiana, where Mr. Scanzoni was teaching at Indiana University, when she and Mrs. Hardesty decided to write “All We're Meant to Be.” Mrs. Scanzoni used her research for the book to create her own independent curriculum in religious studies and received her bachelor's degree from Indiana in 1972. The couple divorced in 1983.

In addition to her son David, Mrs. Scanzoni is survived by another son, Stephen; her brother, Robert Dawson; and five grandchildren.

In the mid-1970s, Ms. Scanzoni began collaborating with Virginia Mollenkott, an evangelical English professor and Milton scholar, on a book on Christian ethics and social issues. Ms. Scanzoni would tackle homosexuality and Ms. Mollenkott would take on divorce and censorship. But then Ms. Mollenkott, who had lived in the closet as a lesbian, shared her secret with Ms. Scanzoni and watched in horror as her writing partner turned out to be in shock.

Despite writing theoretically about homosexuality for years, Ms. Scanzoni said she had never consciously met a homosexual before.

Later, Mrs. Mollenkott wrote to her friend: “It is terrible to be one who has news to share that could bring the blood to the blood from the face of a dear friend.” Ms. Scanzoni wrote back — in tears, she said — that she was not condemning Ms. Mollenkott but coming to terms with new knowledge about her.

They scrapped their book on social issues to focus on another book, one that dealt entirely with the now more pressing topic.

That book: “Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?” (1978) showed in painstaking, scholarly detail how the Bible, long used as a cudgel to bash gays and women, did not support the creed that homosexuality was a sin. It explored the suffering that belief had wrought in the world, and brought together the social sciences to demonstrate the complexity and scope of sexual orientation.

“It is simplistic to assume,” they wrote drily, “that when homosexuals become Christians they automatically become heterosexual.”

Their publisher at Harper Collins described the book as a “counter-market” title – meaning it probably wouldn't sell very well (he was wrong) – but said he was proud to publish it anyway. While many evangelicals condemned its authors as heretics, many young gay Christians told Ms. Mollenkott and Ms. Scanzoni that the book had saved them from suicide.

Ms. Scanzoni was the author of nine books. Her most recent, “What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage” (2006), was a collaboration with David G. Myers, who writes about faith as a professor of psychology at Hope College, a liberal Christian institution in the West. Michigan.

In 2006, Christianity Today magazine included “All We're Meant to Be.” the collection of 50 books that have shaped evangelicals, along with touchstones like CS Lewis's 'Mere Christianity', and Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time'.

“For better or worse,” the editors wrote, “no evangelical marriage or institution has been able to ignore the ideas in this book.”