Last week my friend and I broke a rule. This rule is, for many evangelical Christians, a big one. According to them, breaking this rule is a huge no-no and something that God definitely frowns upon. Before I reveal the rule, allow me to briefly touch upon what we did that was so egregious in the eyes of a large number of conservative American Christians.

It was my friend’s birthday last week and my friend requested that I set aside some time to celebrate the big day. After a few text messages to firm up the details, it was decided that I would make my friend a birthday lunch and we would watch a movie together. The day before the birthday shenanigans, I went to the grocery store to buy some food for the meal. I grabbed some grass fed NY Strip steaks as the main course and some organic potatoes to make mashed potatoes. The menu was rounded out with some organic green beans I had in my freezer. After shopping, I did some house cleaning so my house would be clean and hospitable on my friend’s celebratory day.

On the day of my friend’s birthday I gathered the ingredients to prepare the meal. Potatoes were cubed haphazardly, as is my wont, and tossed into my Instant Pot with some water to pressure cook until soft. I began heating my large iron skillet until the heat started to rise from its surface at which point I threw on the steaks. I’m kind of an intuitive, fly by the seat of my pants cook, so I watched the steaks carefully, and turned them whenever it seemed like the right time to flip them over. While the steaks were sizzling in the iron skillet and the potatoes were being pressure cooked, I grabbed a sauce pan and loaded it with frozen green beans. Then I grabbed my phone and made an order for some chocolate peanut butter cup cupcakes from the fantastic cupcake bakery in downtown Lancaster aptly called Lancaster Cupcake.

At what seemed the appropriate time, I removed the steaks from the skillet and placed them on a plate to rest the meat. I grabbed the butter and put a liberal amount on top of the steaks to melt and covered hem with a lid. The potatoes wouldn’t mash themselves so I poured out the water, grabbed my potato masher and mashed away until they seemed almost whipped by an electric mixer. Before mashing I added raw milk, organic butter, salt and pepper. At about that time the cupcakes arrived and I had to go to the door with oven mitts on to retrieve them which brought a smile to the delivery guy from Door Dash. Just as the beans finished cooking my friend arrived. Perfect timing.

My friend and I sat down to a lovingly, if imperfectly prepared meal, to talk about life as we ate. We both did ample justice to the viands on offer as we ate the grass fed, organic goodness before us. After eating the meal, we adjourned to the living room to watch the movie Interstellar starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jon Lithgow, et al. I had not yet seen it, though my friend had seen it previously. It’s quite the film, and due to its length required an intermission for cupcakes and a bathroom break. After the nearly three hour movie ended, we talked about what we had just watched – it’s definitely a thought provoking film – and then my friend had to leave. A quick hug, another “happy birthday,” and then my friend left to walk home.

That is a completely faithful summation of what happened that day which might leave readers wondering where was the alleged rule breaking? Was it because we watched a “secular” movie or because we didn’t say a prayer before eating? Nope. It’s because I am a single man and my friend is a married woman. We spent about four hours alone together in my home and in so doing broke the “Billy Graham rule” – so named because the deceased fundamentalist evangelist made the rule back in the late 1940s during meetings with other white, male evangelical pastors. For Graham and his fellow Baptist pastors all appearance of impropriety should be avoided so he refused to meet with, travel with, or share a meal alone with any woman who was not his wife. Mike Pence is a proponent of the rule and I have seen many fundamentalist men on social media insisting that people should follow it. I have even seen it taken much further by another fundamentalist preacher who insisted women should not be friends with other women lest they succumb to the temptation to become lesbians. That guy clearly has no idea what he’s talking about, but I digress.

Because I grew up in the evangelical/fundamentalist world, I believe that behind this rule is latent misogyny and sexism. For centuries there have been Christian men who have proclaimed that women are the ultimate tempters, they are Jezebels out to destroy the lives of men by tempting them to lust, in order to ruin their homes and reputations. They claim that this is true in part because it was Eve who was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit and then succumbed to the wily serpent’s words, or as early Church theologian Tertullian claimed that women are “the devil’s gateway.” They likely claim it too because of the story found in Luke 7:36-50. Though no sin is expressly mentioned in the gospel story of the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet, it has often been claimed without evidence that the woman in the story was a harlot. This is a blatant example of misogynistic eisegeses.

As Dr. Karen Swallow Prior notes, Jesus had meaningful friendships with multiple women, including the sisters of Lazarus, Mar and Martha, as well as Mary Magdalene. (1) The latter was present when Jesus was tried and executed as an enemy of the Roman state. Mary Magdalene was mentioned in all of the Gospels as being present at the tomb of Jesus after the crucifixion. If Jesus had friends of the opposite sex, why then do fundamentalist men insist that men and women cannot be friends? I think it is in part because these men do not truly see women as anything more than sex objects or see them as someone whom they should control because they are not men. The latter stems from the absurd notions of gender essentialism and a hierarchical view of humanity driven by the kind of patriarchy that the Apostle Paul attempted to turn on its head during his lifetime. In short, it is because so many evangelical men are sexist misogynists.

My friend Gabby and I have a deeply meaningful friendship in the truest sense of that word. We met in seminary and prior to the pandemic we worshiped together. She was there for me at one of the darkest periods of my life to hold space as I processed the hurt, to provide loving, platonic companionship and laughter, and to just do the kinds of things that friends do together. In a similar way, I was here for her when her then fiance’ was living on the other side of the country for a while. I do not look at her with lust in my heart, and if I did, Jesus provided a hyperbolic cure that is, to pluck my eyes out. He placed the onus for lust on men, not women, because it is most often men who are the predators, abusers, and boundary violators. Gabby’s husband Craig is also my friend. Sometimes we all hang out together and others it’s just me and Gabby. We are happy to break the Billy Graham rule because it is utterly ridiculous, and some rules are simply made to be broken.

(1) https://religionnews.com/2022/09/09/the-scandal-of-evangelical-christian-friendship/

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