The title already implies a point that I’m not really trying to make. It sounds from the implication of the title that I’m having trouble reconciling Christianity with feminism. The truth, I’m afraid is that I’m far more ignorant than that. I just don’t have a solid grasp on a) what feminism really means in the here and now, and b) how that interplays with people’s faith.
Basically, I’ve run into a few people (both in the blogging world and the real world) who self-identify as feminists, and I’m not really sure what that means for them. And to tell you the truth, I’m partially interested because I’m not sure that I wouldn’t identify as a feminist myself - if only I knew what that really meant.
So the question is out there: what does it mean to be a feminist in 2007? How about a Christian feminist? How does your faith interplay with your thinking around these issues? And finally, as someone who is at least interested in exploring feminist ideas: are there any books/blogs/whatever that people could recommend.
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I used to identify as a feminist. I stopped using the label when I realized that most of the women (that I was familiar with) who were calling themselves feminists were actually just man haters. They weren’t interested in equality, they were interested in ‘restoring the matriarchy.’
In all fairness I don’t think the word feminism should be given up by those who can identify with it without the baggage. After all, I haven’t given up the word ‘Christian.’ Perhaps one day I shall feel ok about calling myself feminist the way I do with calling myself Christian.
Julie, at onehandclapping, is a feminist and a Christian. I highly recommend reading her blog. She certainly puts it better than I can.
I should clarify that although I don’t use the word feminist, I certainly qualify as one. I believe Jesus showed, by the way he was surrounded by and by the way he treated women, that women are equal in God’s sight.
I’m going to respond in a separate post on my blog because my comment was way too long hehe.
If people want to see Makeesha’s reply you can find it
at her blog here
I would suggest feministsforlife.com, which provides a rich history of American feminism in the context of being pro-life and a feminist in today’t time. I think you’d find lots of useful information there.
Geoff, it’s posts like this that get me excited, but in the same breath make me feel awfully tired at the thought of sitting down and putting in the effort needed to write about feminism. It takes a lot of effort… it’s complex.
Makeesha’s post is brilliant btw!
At the start of last year some of the units I took in my Midwifery degree required us to keep a reflective journal on various womens issues: feminism, sexuality, body image, sexual/physical abuse, the double shift, pornography, aging, female genital mutilation, the list goes on.
We were asked to answer the question, “Would you describe yourself as a feminist?”
My answer turned out to be yes, but it took a lot of digging to come to that answer. Feminism is made up of so many different branches and streams many of which disagree with each other (sounds like the church hey!). ‘Feminist’ is not an easy label to pick up and give ones self on a whim. Baggage comes with it, baggage to be dealt with.
So I sat down and out lined all the streams of feminism I could find so I could identify what I agreed with in each and what I didn’t (I’m sure I’ve got it some where on my computer and I’ll send it to you, Geoff, when I find it).I came to the conclusion there was no way I could not call myself a feminist.
Being a feminist to me means that I’m concerned about gender inequalities and discrimination against women, and oppression of women. I think that women are oppressed by a society built on patriarchy, but that the solution does not present itself in the form of matriarchy. We are people, it’s a human problem, a sin problem not solely a gender problem.
Patriarchal influence and dominance affects women’s psyche, and life experiences. I’m very concerned about this in the health sector (being a midwife I’m highly passionate about this stuff). I’m also very concerned about heavy patriarchal influences on the Christian faith. How we see God, defines our experience of God.
A year ago I realized I thought of God as being a certain gender: God was a ‘He’. Actually God is beyond gender. Yet gendered language gives us clues about the character of God and the role God has in our lives. We are created in the image of God, male and female. As a feminist I’m concerned about the language we use to describe God. I am happy to call God, ‘Father’, but in the same breath I also happily call God, ‘Mother’.
In seeking out the feminine part of God (which I believe is only perfect because God is also perfectly masculine) I think our relationship with God changes drastically. Earlier I felt a male God could only ever understand my life experience as a woman by playing a distant role that had some how created women. When I see God in a female capacity I realize my experiences as a woman, physical and otherwise, are actually a small reflection pointing to the larger more amazing nature of God.
Complex is really the only way to put it… reading back over these last few paragraphs, I know some feminists would take issue with my use of the word gender. Which just goes to show you feminists don’t even agree amongst themselves.
Perhaps I’ve run down a little bit of an alternative tangent, but at the moment this is how feminism is affecting my walk with God.
I have never really liked that word. I dislike it almost as most of the “christian” labels that are out there.
That being said I know there is a place for a feminist in the church. I believe Jesus was the first feminist. Jesus put women at the same level as men. He treasured them.
For me that is being a feminist. Knowing that we are equal in God’s eyes and that we are treasured beings.
So I follow a link from Makeesha’s blog to find people talking about me, that’s just weird.
Feminist is a hard word because it is usually used a a negative label that is applied as a means to ridicule and dismiss. I’ve been in groups where generally open minded people actually say things like “well, I don’t think anyone here would go so far as to call themselves a feminist…” As if being a feminist is the most extreme out there thing one can be.
I do understand that there are various streams/waves of feminism and while I have serious issues with some of the (the ones that hate men or think that sexual openness means equality), I am not willing to give up the entire history of the movement because of some fringe views (kinda like I feel about Christianity). I am a feminist because I am a Christian. I believe all people are created in the image of God and are therefore worth as imagebearers. We are all called to serve God in the ways we are called (in ministry, work, the home, school…) and to say otherwise is to stifle the will of God. Since it has been women who have generally been seen as inferior, I think feminism is necessary to overcome that lie.
In many ways, I would rather be a “peopleist” and work for all people to be allowed to be the people God made them to be. Men and women should not be fit into the molds of gender stereotypes and should be respected for who they are. But I think the goals of feminism still have a long way to go to just get basic respect for women established.
i don’t call myself a feminist but if it is about equality and chosing to not allow my position as a white male to allow me to push to the front of the queue but actively seek to invite others in front of me because that’s where they deserve to be regardless of gender, than i guess i am one in practice…
Geoff, I have just blogged on this, also. My post links to Julie’s post which is a response to yours. Thanks for asking such good questions.
Greetings! Found you through a link in the Emerging Women blog. Great questions.
Being a Christian feminist means to me:
1. Women are fully human, created in the image of God.
2. Women are justified (made right in God’s eyes) through Jesus Christ, not through marriage, childbirth or anything else pertaining to correct performance of a gender role (Timothy notwithstanding.)
3. It’s important to pay attention to the vast inequalities between women and men. Not paying attention just helps inequalities continue, which is a failure to love our neighbors as Christ has instructed us. In some ways we’ve advanced over the years (women getting the vote) and in some ways we’ve gone backwards (global poverty, media images that reduce women to being pretty bodies.)
As long as the vast majority of the world’s poor are women with dependent children, I will be a Christian feminist.
Peace, Heather
Wow Heather,
Y’know in reading this topic I hadn’t stopped to remember how important this stuff is for the third world. In the west the hardest part is over… but there’s a whole majority of the planet still suffering all kinds of oppression.
Thinking about some of those communities who have been taught old fashioned christianity throughout the world… with all its baggage and prejudice is a scary thought! I have a friend who worked with UNICEF on an island in the pacific where women were really controlled, and that as a part of the bundle of western christian world-view they recieved as “help” from missionaries.
Especially in societies that were originally matriarchal, missionaries have perpotrated gross injustice without any awareness or cultural sensitivity, for hundreds of years. Many of them are held up as old heroes in their churches in the west.
What scares me most, is that sometimes the families we ’send out’ as missionaries even now… at least in my experience in a certain nameless denomination in Australia, are the socially awkward, somewhat backward ones.
Is the Gospel really enough justification for these abuses?
I’m not saying this stuff to have a go at christianity as a whole… I might as well poke myself in the eye… but I think its important we take responsibility for learning from our past mistakes.
It has been a few months since anyone posted here. I ran across this blog posting because I’d apparently bookmarked it some time ago.
It’s refreshing and such a relief to see people actually talking about the words “Christian” and “feminist” in the same context. I live in an area that’s not friendly to the discussion.
Geoff, you originally asked about what it’s like to be a feminist in 2007, ok, 2008, and how that interplays with and informs Christian faith.
While it’s all complex to explain to someone else, it is simple in my own head: Feminism advocates the fundamental equality of men and women. I haven’t found any Christian, whether male or female, “liberal” or “conservative,” who is willing to disagree on that point. So I guess we have a lot more Christian feminists than we thought.
Where disagreements begin, of course, is on functions/roles. I observe that this is why many Christian women (and men) aren’t willing to self-identify as feminists–because they believe in traditional roles.
To me, that’s an incredibly open confession that indeed, prescribed gender roles do indicate a belief in the fundamental inequality of the sexes.
Ahhh, to clarify a point midway through my last posting above–”I haven’t found any Christian, whether male or female, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ who is willing to disagree on that point”–*that point* being the fundamental equality of women and men. I do find that conservative Christian men are eager to reassure me of their belief in the equality of the sexes.
(We probably all know fringe groups who are much more open about “no, women are not really equal to men,” but in general, I observe the above.)
To my way of thinking-the idea of being a feminist is: that as a female you regard yourself as an equal to your male counterpart, and no less a person as the patriarchaL society both in the Church and in civil life has seen and treated women in centuries past. I am firmly a christian, and can easily equate the christian principles with a feministic approach to life as a whole.The idea of keeping the female under stems from the theory that families are necessary, and that women could rise up and be counted if they are not under the thumb in marriages which Church laws have particularly targeted in history. Ways have changed, and the modern mman in the 21st.century goes into marriage with the express idea of helping his partner achieve her goals in life,as she does his. To me being feminist is about choice. We in Australia have not had that choice since Federation. I am from World War 2 time in Australia, and know a little about the discrimination that occurred from that time as far as women in the work force were concerned. It was enivitable that sooner or later 50% of the intelligence would step forward and say-Hey what about us? I am sure it would suit many men emotionally to keep feminism from rearing it’s ugly head, somewhere in there is the desire to have someone to replace ”mummy”.The idea of the little wife at home seems to be gone forever, in these days of expensive home mortgages, electronic advancement, holidays etc.. So-if we are expected to help carry the load financially, then we must be treated as equals in order to do this without breaking society down, and beginning again at the start. Jesus had a great love for women-He always treated them with resect and spent many hours conversing with them. He obviously had a lot of time for them, and did not seem to regard them as subservient. It is only since the institution of marriage-which has not been that long ago-that the Church stepped in and provided parameters for women which became the society norm. Being feminist is not necessarily coming from a militant standpoint-it is every woman’s right to be the best person she can possibly be-and I believe Jesus would applaud that. I do not think it is possible for a man to be a feminist, although it is eminently possible for him to understand it’s origins,and not to fall into the trap of treating women today as any less than themselves-which would undoubtedly be un-christian!
Judy.
I’ve always been a Christian (as far as I can remember). I grew up in a large youth-oriented Presbytarian church with a Pastor father. When I was 18 my family stopped going to that church and we started a house church instead.
I’ve labelled myself as Feminist since the first time I actively thought about it - when I was 16 - and my school teachers were a huge influence on me: they must have been more or less “Feminist” themselves, I never got many bad impressions when I was younger about Feminism. I was told, and I still believe, that feminism is simply (without a hidden agenda) about gender equality. Everyone is for gender equality, so I couldn’t see why anyone could not call themselves feminist.
Since “coming out” about being a Feminist to my family I was shocked to find that people - particularly males - particularly Christian males - were much less receptive of Feminism. My mother called herself a Feminist. My brothers and my father did not: they said they couldn’t see society was balanced against women any longer, they thought our society was gender equal. I disagree but won’t discuss this here, except to point out that women are more likely to notice sexism than men because it affects them most, and men are less willing to notice sexism because if it exists then it says something bad about men. I think men who are quick to dismiss arguments that there is still gender inequality in society should consider this. Even if our western society is no longer gender unequal (both in the law, and in women’s actual experiences and choices, and in people’s attitudes) the world as a whole is certainly gender unequal. Taking the world as a whole, life tends to suck more for women than for men. In many countries women have extremely few legal rights; and women are much more likely to live in extreme poverty than are men.
Anyway, personally I struggle to see how anyone can not call themselves a feminist. We all believe (in the West at least) in gender equality.
A major reason for some Christians calling feminism “evil” is the ‘anti-Christian value’ stance that some strands of feminism take on certain issues. Feminism as a concept or philosophy is fine (gender equality). But when some feminists (although not others) act in the name of feminism in can tarnish the idea of feminism and being a feminist. The exact same thing goes for Christianity. We should not let a few arguably ‘bad’ stances that some Christians/Churches take on some issues (eg. women obey men/contraception is bad) tarnish the image of God and of Christianity as a whole. Some ‘bad’ Christian stances and some ‘bad’ Feminist stances on certain issues do not mean Feminism or Christianity themselves are inherently bad. For every bunch of feminists who say “pro-choice” there are another bunch that say “pro-life!”, for every bunch of Christians that say “women shouldn’t teach scripture” there are another group that disagree. So within Feminism as within Christianity there is division over certain issues (and unity over other issues).
It surprises me how people only see that bad in some strands of feminism - not the good in feminism. It surprises me that so many Christians can declare feminism absolutely “evil”, but are presumably glad about some of what feminism has accomplished: for instance, that women now have the vote; that the law has recognised battered women’s syndrome; and that marital rape is now illegal (as of 1991 in England).
It is surprising that Christians can take some modern feminist issues to heart and be offended (eg. feminists who are “pro-choice”, or promote casual sex) yet don’t acknowledge that other strands of feminism are on the same side as Christians: against porn and against prostitution.
What does Christian Feminism look like? Feminism is Christianity, really. It is just a term in my view that expresses a particular area that we as Christians need to focus strongly on (gender equality), among other issues. A Christian should be basically a feminist (even if they don’t chose to label themselves as such). Jesus was a feminist. WWJD? Particular areas of the church/Christianity that need to be changed in my view are:
1. God viewed as as much female as male. This will help us broaden and deepen our understanding of both God and women/mothers. Right now it appears as if women/mothers are less like the image of God than men/fathers are because God is refered to exclusively as male/father and so many Christians think it is heresy to do otherwise. Christians usually agree that God is both male and female, but many prominent Christian men unfortunately seem to disagree: the following is found in the preface to the gender-accurate (inclusive-language) 1996 New Living Translation of the bible. The preface discusses why the translators chose to use gender-accurate language to refer to people in the bible (eg. “people” instead of “men”), then goes on to justify why the translators (12 men and 1 woman) thought gender-accurate language wasn’t appropriate for God: “We believe that the essential traits of God’s revealed character can only be conveyed through the masculine language expressed in the original texts of Scripture”
2. more female translators: women encouraged into bible college and into bible translation training… I think more women on the bible translation teams would result in bibles that were more accurate. The NIV (1989) and TNIV (2005) and NLT (1996) translation teams were made up of 92-94% males. The NRSV (1984) translation team was 86% male. All of these translations (apart from the NIV) use gender-inclusive language. However they forgot to do this at times: all of these translations inexplicably use the phrase “Son of Man” to refer to Jesus, instead of the phrase “Son of humankind”.
3. strongly encourage women to become preachers, bible college lecturers, and church leaders. I often prefer hearing a sermon delivered by a woman as I can relate to her life experiences best and can thus internalize better what she is teaching me. She is also a role model for me.
4. Christians need to be very aware of the common understanding of Christianity and the bible as being “sexist”. I have many friends who believe this. I agree with them, in many ways. Christians can’t just overlook this secular critique of Christianity. I have friends who are scared of getting involved in Christianity or of reading the bible or of identifying with a male God because they see Christianity as sexist, and women as marginalized and somewhat subordinated within Christianity. The Christian labelling of feminism as “evil” is very ironic after Christianity has roundly been accused of sexism. It doesn’t help displace this image at all.
Big apology for the lengthy post! In my defense: you did not ask an easy question with a simple answer…
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