the bechdel test & the bible

(sermon preached at St. Andrew's by-the-Sea, 22 December 2024 - Advent VII)

If you are a movie buff, you may be familiar with the Bechdel Test. The idea for this test originated from a cartoon strip published in 1985 by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. 

In the cartoon, two women are going to see a movie. One says to the other - I’ll only see a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. 

One - it has to have at least two women in it, who - two - talk to each other about - three - something other than a man.

Finding no movies in the theater that pass the test, the two women decide to go home.

These three requirements, published as a joke in a queer feminist newspaper, have taken on a life of their own as the Bechdel Test. You can go to bechdeltest.com to see a list of over ten thousand movies, with a little green check next to the ones that pass the test, and a red x next to the ones that don’t.

Looking through the list of more recent movies, you probably won’t be surprised - Barbie passes, as does the new Wicked movie. The new Deadpool movie does not pass, neither does Oppenheimer, the newest Indiana Jones movie, or the Elvis movie from 2023. 

Of course this test does not determine the overall quality of a movie, or whether it’s a story worth telling. 

Its purpose is to point out a systemic truth that is easy to miss - women historically are portrayed in fiction as flat, one-dimensional characters, who primarily function in their relationship to men.

One of the funniest results of the Bechdel Test is a clip you can find on YouTube that has all the moments in every single Lord of the Rings movie that has two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.

That’s a total of 9 hours and 18 minutes of movie, and do you want to know how much of that movie passes the Bechdel test? It’s a clip about two seconds long of a young unnamed girl saying to a woman - where is mama? and the woman shushing the girl.

That’s it. Over nine hours of movie, and that’s it. Now of course, we could have a whole conversation about why that is, or argue about how Lord of the Rings is still a story worth telling, and I’m not disagreeing with that. 

But this little test, these three little requirements, speak volumes about a piece of writing or film. It speaks volumes about women, about how they are viewed primarily - sometimes solely - in terms of their relationship to men. 

They are not people with complex inner lives and ideas and struggles - they are daughters, wives, mothers - people who matter only in their relation to men; people whose stories lie flat on the page.

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf reflects on the portrayal of women in fiction. In 1929 she wrote, “all these relationships between women…are too simple. And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.”

Almost one hundred years ago Virginia Woolf noticed this pattern, and we continue to see it today. 

And it’s important to bring our attention to this - what stories are our children growing up with? What unspoken directives are they being taught by the culture they’re surrounded with?

We must bring these same questions to the stories we tell our children in church; we must bring these same questions to the stories we revere as holy, important enough to be passed down over thousands of years, the ancient stories that still are alive today in our Christian community.

And so, as Carrie Bradshaw did before me, I wondered - does the Bible pass the Bechdel test? 

I did a little digging, and - to no one’s surprise - there are very few stories in the Bible of two women talking to each other about something other than a man. 

In the book of Exodus, Miriam leads the victory song after the Hebrews escape Egypt. 

The book of Ruth passes the test, but just barely - most of the conversation between the two protagonists, Naomi and Ruth, are about securing their safety by finding a husband. A notable exception is Ruth’s passionate promise to Naomi - where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay, your people will be my people and your God will be my God. A famous verse often used in weddings, although many people don’t know this vow was uttered not between a husband and wife, but between two women who commit their lives to each other.

Flipping to the New Testament, there’s a moment in the gospel of Mark when the women have come to tend to Jesus’s body after his death and they murmur to one another, “who shall roll the stone away?” Not quite a conversation, and technically about Jesus, a man, so that one’s flimsy.

And then, we have our gospel story for today - the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, this moment of rejoicing and prophetic power, a tender and cosmically important moment shared between two women.

The Rev’d Sarah West | visiolectio.com

How precious is this moment, then, with these two women - who have names, who are quoted in scripture, who are talking to each other about world-changing ideas?

These women - Elizabeth and Mary - they stand out in the legacy of scripture, and we get a peek into their inner lives in ways we don’t with any other female characters. 

And while Mary’s song - commonly called the magnificat - is very well-known, I think it’s less well-known that she sings it in the presence of Elizabeth, in the presence of another woman who is also experiencing a pregnancy outside of the norm, another woman who is doing the deep work of bringing about God’s liberation.

You may say - these two women are talking about their pregnancies, so does this really pass the Bechdel test? 

But just listen to Mary’s song - here stand two women, one too old to have children and the other unmarried - boldly prophesying about the day when the mighty will be cast down from their thrones and the hungry will be satiated. 

Just listen to Mary’s song of resistance sung over these two unborn children, who grow up to be John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, teachers and prophets who call out the hypocrisy of the world and whose Way of Love is a threat to those in power.

Think of how subversive this moment is, how subversive each of these women’s stories is. Elizabeth, past the age of fertility, already gone through menopause, and hasn’t been able to bear children (which, of course, was the one job women had at the time, the one thing that gave them worth). An angel visits her and tells her she will bear a son, and when her husband Zechariah doesn’t believe it - he is unable to speak for the duration of her pregnancy. 

This is some cosmic humor - a man silenced throughout his wife’s pregnancy. In a world in which the voice of men was of infinite more worth than the words of women, I love that the action of God was to silence Zechariah. 

What was Elizabeth able to say, I wonder, that she now had space to speak? In the story of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, it’s clear that Elizabeth is the faithful one, the one who understands the call from God and is the most important part of the story. 

It subverts typical gender roles, and puts her in a position of power.

And then there’s Mary’s pregnancy, the virgin birth, a conception that - somehow - had nothing to do with Joseph.

Whatever you do or don’t believe about the virginity of Mary, it’s obviously radically different from the typical pattern. Somehow the birth of God into the world through the body of a woman had nothing to do with the agency of a man - and how subversive is that? 

It’s clear that in God’s story, it is the outcasts, the women, the foreigners who pass down the subversive message of God’s Love. It often subverts traditional gender roles, often prioritizing the voice of the widow, the child, the eunuch. If we read even a little bit between the lines in the Bible, we will uncover a wealth of powerful women whose conversations with other women may not be recorded, but whose lives speak loudly.

Ruth, Naomi, Deborah, Jael, Elizabeth, Mary - these are just a few of the women of the Bible who embody the radical message of God’s Love that has the power to overthrow oppressive systems for the sake of liberation. 

Listen to Mary’s song, listen as she speaks into existence the radical overturn of the systems of the world. Listen as she sings her song of resistance to her friend Elizabeth, over their unborn children who grow up to change the world. 

Listen for fragments of Mary’s song in John the Baptist’s teaching. Repent - he says - you brood of vipers, who take advantage of people for your own gain. Repent - turn back to the truth that we belong to each other, that every life is of infinite worth.

Listen for echoes of Mary’s song in the teaching of Jesus, in his very life, in his death.

Listen closely and you will hear the magnificat woven throughout Jesus’s life, and you will realize that the radical message of God’s Love has always been passed down by women, prostitutes, widows, the poor.

This is the legacy into which we are baptized:

This promise that even though the systems of the world are loud and seem all-powerful, Love actually is the truth; Love will have the last word; self-giving Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

Thank God for this story that passes the Bechdel test - for these two women whose subversive, strange pregnancies bypass the dependence on men.

Thank God for these women, who are the main characters of their own stories.

Thank God for the songs of resistance they sing to each other, for the lullabies their children grow up to embody.

Thank God for a radical, subversive Love into which we are baptized; a radical, subversive Love after which we pattern our lives - 

a radical, subversive Love that has the potential to change the world.