Is it possible to be a good Christian at the same time as being a feminist?

Take care of yourself, summer.

I'm not getting all of it either, but I think this is the first proper thread I've seen where we've discussed feminism and Christianity and the thread has still been relatively civil and not full of 'yer all deluded innits' by page 2.

curlew in the law anology, the ordinary woman in the pew might be a litigant or someone who sticks to the speed limit, it's not just lawyers and judges who use the law.

Italiangreyhound , thanks for your kind words, that has given me something to think about. Without wanting to hijack the thread, the churches here are generally very very conservative and there are these massive issues about things that just don't seem to matter that much to Christian churches elsewhere. e.g. drinking alcohol. Its such a massive deal to a lot of people here that I know people who will drive 30 miles from home to buy a bottle of wine because they daren't be seen by anyone they know, as drinking alcohol is such a massive taboo. Divorce is another. I have a female friend who was dismissed from her role in her congregation because her marriage broke down. And there would be no question of a church agreeing to, for example, baptise a child if the parents weren't married.

Even though I am a believer, I struggle to even call myself a Christian, because I can never live up to these standards. I was raised in an evangelical Baptist church and plainly remember being taught as a child that if I even thought, for one moment, to question what I was being taught, that it meant the devil had a hold of me and was taking control, and I was destined for hell, and that was all there was to it. I was probably about six years old. It messed with my head and even now in my late 30s I struggle with the idea that there might be different viewpoints.

I don't think I understand the lawyer analogy. I suppose it applies if we're talking about women becoming priests and bishops. but how is it relevant to the position of the ordinary woman in the pew?

daft - yes, I can follow that ... that makes sense.

This is a really interesting debate, btw. summer thank you, and I hope it's helping you.

Emmeline I get your point, maybe we can just agree to disagree. I would never say there were not women and men of other faiths or no faith doing great things. There are. But I just know a lot of Christian ones.

Summer that is lovely that your church is so welcoming and understanding.

treaclesoda I am so sorry for you that that kind of teaching still prevails. I am sure there must be some churches somewhere teaching something different, but I have not been to Northern Ireland so don;t know that! It is also very easy to box ourselves into a corner and say we are the true lot and the rest are wrong etc. I wonder what Jesus will say, when he comes back, about how petty minded we all are! Actually I tend to find if you can find something you are passionate about, which you feel God is passionate about, like ending poverty or slavery or FGM or fighting for prisoners of conciounse etc then you will meet others, if you go to a Christian group for that thing, from other churches and may find 'hey, I have more in common with these guys from different churches than my own chruch because we all feel passionate about the same thing and are trying to do something about it." I am an evangelical and when I meet catholics who are very community minded I find I just click with them a bit even though my 'theology' and their 'theology' might be very different. It doesn't mean we need to all run out and leave our churches, (IMHO) but maybe when we put out toe into something different it sends ripples out! Good luck funding people who think more like you.

FairPhyllis if we did not have free will then submission would be pointless, as we would already be cowed down as slaves. But we are free and we willingly submit. I don't think of it as a terrible or bad thing, and sometimes I don't even do it! I think of it like submitting your head of hair to the hand of a friend who gently grooms it for you. I think there is a lot of free will in living as a Christian. More and more as I get older and maybe more liberal in my old age I see God giving us choices and we make them. Sometimes we start out doing stuff we do not want to do (like doing a chore) and end up enjoying it. It is very different to be forced to do something evil, cruel or violent, it is more about (IMHO) being ready to embrace things God has for you.

Curlew lots and lots of people in the church want women bishops, it's not that women are not wanted.

jothehot not sure how you can hav ethe authority to say people must choose?

Emmerline you see the innate sense of justice to me indicates intelligent design concerning our biology and that of animals.......

LRD perhaps I should of said our potential to understand what is truth rather than being hindered by our interpretation of it is difficult without external references. Although in Christianity it is more complicated because we internalise God.

YY, totally agree with the way you put that dogs.

And curlew, going back to my earlier post, you could certainly have said the law was intrinsically misogynist 100 years ago - indeed there's a good case to be made that it still is. Should women therefore have said they wouldn't be solicitors, barristers or judges till the law was reformed?

Hear hear LRD. I don't believe that Truth-with-a-capital-T is accessible to any human person, and I run a mile from people who think it's been revealed to them, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I think most things are open to individual interpretation.

I don't think things 'become' relative as our perceptions of them differ, and frankly I find it an odd idea to presume that this is a statement of fact, when it stems from an ideology that distrusts statements of fact.

I am sure all Christians perceive God differently, but that doesn't mean God is different. Just our perceptions. God doesn't become 'relative'.

Even with external references everything is open to individual interpretation. Just read back through this thread.

I think ethics stem from our biology. Humans aren't the only animals to display behaviour in keeping with a moral code and experiments show babies may well have an idea of justice long before they could be taught the idea by adults.

The fact we don't all agree doesn't mean it all falls away and is meaningless any more than the fact Christians don't all agree automatically means Christianity is meaningless.

But that's only true if you are a postmodernist, daft.

The relevance is that without external reference everything is open to individual interpretation. Everything becomes relative as experiences and our perceptions of them differ.

I do not claim to be post-modern and I don't see how it is even relevent to what I have posted.

Don't worry its a daft name any way

curlew - I'm not sure it is intrinsically misogynist - or, I suppose, it's as intrinsically misogynistic as our society as a whole.

If your own sect can be non-misogynistic, so could (come the revolution) a church be.

It seems to me that being religious and a feminist is going to bring you precisely the same issues as being any kind of social creature and a feminist - you can be feminist as all get-out in isolation, but we all have to interact with a world structured by misogyny.

(Not related, but I can't fucking stand postmodernism. Overexposed passe shite.)

I think our biology is amazing and we have great potential. However there are lots of flaws we get ill etc. Hubris and all that...

daftdame I'm really sorry I've just realised I've been misnaming you. It was not intentional and I hope it did not offend or detract from the conversation.

What is wrong with our biology daftme?

If you do not use any external value set for reference, you are merely a victim of your own biology, no more than a collection of impulses and synapses.

People can go mad when left in isolation cells, even their vision can be altered and they may start to hallucinate.

If you are truly post modern and believe all is subjective and relative everything begins to unravel...

But Christianity as defined by the Bible and 2000 years of history is intrinsically misogynist. You can follow your own personal sect which isn't, but once you sign up to any particular church, you are signing up to an institution which has misogyny at its heart.

FairPhyllis- please don't tell me I'm angry when I'm not!

daftme your response to me at 16:34 is what I'm talking about when I said earlier that Christians can describe their faith in ways that sound like an abusive relationship. You define the boundaries of your life in accordance with an external value set, tie yourself in knots trying to adhere to it and accept the grace of being saved from your failure to do the impossible by the entity who created all the rules in the first place. It sounds fucked up.

You say "If you view God as being synonymous with good and what is right" and here is the crunch - why do you give up your view of what is good and right and replace it with another's? This is part of submission - not simply attempting to be "good", but accepting those values, placing them above your own. That isn't liberation.

dogs - we just need a lesbian and we're onto a good thing.