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

[SummerHoliDidi]

I count myself as a feminist, and am also a Catholic, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to be both.

I sat through a very Christian wedding (much more overtly Christian than I have ever been to before) yesterday, where there were a LOT of references to the bible passage that talks about women submitting to their husbands but men only having to love their wives. I found myself wanting to tell the minister to fuck off, which is hardly a Christian thing to want to do. The man is the head of the household - fuck off. If a man loves his wife and only wants to do the best for her what wife wouldn't submit? - fuck off. Hearing "obey" in the vows - fuck off. Having children is God's will - fuck off. The bride being "given away" by her father - fuck off.

I appreciate that this particular wedding is not typical of Christianity as a whole, and my friend has actively chosen to have this type of ceremony (she was always very sensible back when we were at uni, but "found God" a couple of years ago and I hadn't realised quite how much she's bought into it).

How do other Christian feminists reconcile both viewpoints, or do you find yourself picking and choosing which bits to take from each?

[SummerHoliDidi]

Rufous that must have been a very difficult and heartbreaking situation to be in. I can't believe that there are many Christians who would condemn you for that at all. Most of us are much more understanding than that and would want to help you through it. I understand your conflicted feelings about it though, it's so hard when your life takes turns that are at odds with the church view on things.

[LaurieFairyCake]

emmeline - a Christian would say that submission to God is liberating

[SummerHoliDidi]

I struggle with submitting to God too. I have done more than my fair share of arguing and fighting against what God seems to want to happen. God is difficult to argue with though, what with being omnipotent and all.

[EmmelineGoulden]

Laurie To me it's an oxymoron that submission is liberating. The more I hear Christians talk about their faith in those sorts of terms, the more I think I'm listening to someone trying to explain why they're in an abusive relationship. I find it a bit heartbreaking. :(

[Italiangreyhound]

I'm a feminist and a Christian (and an evangelical one at that). I promised to obey my husband because I was in love and thought it was nice and actually it doesn't agree with what I believe as a Christian. I am glad/normal/ very lucky in that my dh doesn't want to lord it over me at all, and so my vow in church all those years ago was just a part of our overall marriage, which the Bible tells me is about submitting to each other or as the Message puts it....

Ephesians 5:21 Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.

I believe this is about a marriage relationship and not about how all women respond to all men or men or women to each other. Actually in agreeing to live alongside each other to some extent we have submitted to each other. However, this does not mean either had the right to abuse, ill-treat or rule over the other.

Ruling over someone is the result of sin entering the world.

This may explain it better www.gotquestions.org/desire-husband-rule.html

Christ' work is to destroy the works of the evil one (1 John 3:8) so Christ's desire is not to have disharmony and struggle between the sexes. For example pain in childbirth was one of the results of the fall, yet in Timothy it talks about women being saved or kept safe through childbirth. A reversal of the original consequence of the fall (not a punishment, a consequence). So for me my own brand of evangelical 9and slightly liberal) Christian faith makes perfect sense alongside feminism since both are concerned with a world which will be just and fair for all.

[Italiangreyhound]

RufousBartleby I am sorry for your loss and hope you will get some support if you need it.

Summer how do you feel about not being married and having children with your DP. Do you feel committed to each other and supported? It's an interesting thread, thanks for starting it.

Emmeline I find it heartbreaking that you find it heartbreaking. Submission to God is a very dramatic way to talk about it. It is not an abusive relationship, although at times in the church there is abuse, and that is heartbreaking too. Now it is late and I must submit my body to the mattress upstairs. Sometimes it is actually a rest to be in the place you are meant to be and that is what it feels like with God. Not difficult or troublesome but peaceful and good, and if you see the amazing work of Christian women you would know that they are never ever any less then men. It is cruel historical twist that has led to the church using the Bible to subdue women and it is not (in my humble belief) at all what God intended.

[EmmelineGoulden]

Italian I know you see it like that and I'm not trying to convince you otherwise so I won't go off topic here and argue about whether the Christian God is an abusive character.

I'm simply saying I don't think believing there is a personality who by right is "better" than you and so should be accorded a say over your life is liberation. As such I find it somewhat at odds with feminism. But I don't think that means you can't be a feminist and a Christian. Life isn't perfec, and you can't simply unbelieve. I don't think liberation is served by the idea of some sort of "true path", it shouldn't be a religion of its own!

(And I know there are amazing Christian women doing amazing things. I have seen them. But there are also amazing non-Christian women doing amazing things, We can find power within ourselves too.)

[SummerHoliDidi]

Italian I am rather conflicted about my relationship with dp and the fact I have children without being married. Dd1 is mine from a previous "relationship" (her father and I weren't together long and he has never met her), and dd2 is mine with dp. We are very much committed to each other and support each other through everything. I wouldn't change anything with our relationship at all, I feel like we are a lot more committed to each other than friends and family who are/were married. In the time we've been together my sister has met, married and divorced her exh, so if she's welcome in Church then I should absolutely be welcome in church.

When I had dd1 the priest in my old church was very disappointed in me and didn't have any problem telling me so, I hadn't been attending church for a while but becoming pg brought me back, so it was very hard for me that my priest was so openly disappointed with me. I felt as if he would rather I'd had a termination so that it wasn't obvious that I was a sinner.

I have since moved and my current church is a much more welcoming place for us. I was a single parent when we moved here, not a problem, the priest just introduced me to other families with children the same age as dd1 and asked if I wanted to help with Children's liturgy. We moved in with dp, nobody batted an eyelid. We had dd2, everybody was thrilled, the priest was very understanding of the fact that dp is an atheist and allowed him to take part in dd2's baptism without saying anything he was uncomfortable with. I find this church a much nicer place than our old church (where I grew up), even though both are Catholic, purely because of the welcoming attitude of the priest and congregation.

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

I'm a Christian and a feminist (liberal high Anglican, if that's relevant). The Church gets hundreds of things wrong, because it's a human institution, but then so do others. My college chaplain was an inspirational Christian feminist and is one of the toughest-minded academics I know. She's still a good friend.

I'm also ferociously pro-choice, more so as I get older. It seems to me that the legal question - should abortion be legally available to women - is completely separate from the ethical one, which can only be answered in the individual case by the woman whose body it is. There are circumstances where I wouldn't terminate but another woman might, and that's her choice to make, not mine.

[mummytime]

I am a Christian and Feminist.

The Church is not perfect. The worst wedding I went to the Vicar preached on "Matrimony means the making of Mothers", you can tell it was bad 25 years later I still remember it. The ladies loo was full of women complaining about how awful it was.

Most Vicars and Bishops I know would think exactly the same.
The bit about wives submitting to Husbands is often divorced from the next bit which is about husbands love their wives as Jesus did; which logically means men should be prepared to die for their wives. But that aspect is often glossed over, although I think it was the real message of the passage (as it was the bit that would have shocked people).

SummerHoliDidi I am very pleased you have found a church that welcomes you. The best wedding I ever went to was her second, she'd had 3 children by her first husband, then had 5 more by her DP. Its only when they stopped having babies that they got married. But it was a lovely Church event, held after the morning service and followed by a bring and share reception.

[Bramshott]

Absolutely it is. For me, being a Christian is all about love, kindness and helping those less fortunate. Nothing that conflicts in any way with basic feminism, which is also about love, respect, and standing up for those who are oppressed.

[SummerHoliDidi]

It was a bring and share reception at this wedding too. The minister did talk about both bits of that passage and how husbands love their wives as Jesus did. It still doesn't stop it being fundamentally unequal though, men and women should be held to the same standards, I still don't want to be told that the husband is the head of the household and his wife should trust him to make the correct decisions for the family. Maybe he's a complete fool and she'd make far better decisions than him, but because he's the man she's supposed to trust his decisions - fuck that!

[treaclesoda]

I'm so glad to have stumbled across this thread. This is something I really struggle with to. My church is very adamant that man is 'the boss' and women must submit. As was the church I was raised in. I'm in Northern Ireland and from what I can see, all the churches here are like that. And of course, they argue that any church that doesn't agree with this is in fact not a true Christian church etc, so its a huge struggle for me.

[mummytime]

I'm not sure I'd argue too strongly for the "submit" bit because actually we don't ask our kids to "submit" that much, they can and do question us. I think it is a product of the time.

But then I grew up in a church where we were always being told about how wonderful Susanna Wesley was (mother of John Wesley). And about her disciplining her sons, bringing them up to be god fearing, and her children not approaching her when she was praying. Of course they didn't talk about the fact that Samuel and Susanna Wesley didn't speak to each other for most of their married life after a theological disagreement.

The best verse I think is the "In Christ there is no male or female, no slave or free" which sums up a basic truth.

Unfortunately the church has too often been full of people who get mislead by power, or thinking they are right therefore if you disagree you must be wrong.

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

I didn't describe my wedding in my previous post. No-one gave me away, and Dh and I made identical vows and exchanged rings. The sermon was about marriage as a shared secure foundation from which the couple can go out into the world, together and separately, in ways that might include having children but not necessarily. Was lovely and there was nothing even faintly unfeminist about it.

[grimbletart]

I'm sure many women find a way of reconciling their feminism with Christianity. Religions seem to have so much wriggle room that people will find a way round the things they are uncomfortable with and justify it.

I can't do that. Religion and equality/feminism are to me incompatible.

But for those that can find the wriggle room in Christianity good for you.

Jesus was a good bloke though and from reading the New Testament I like to think his attitude to sexism and misogyny would probably have been the same as his attitude to the money lenders in the temple. Mind you even he chickened out to convention when it came to female apostles.

[FairPhyllis]

I don't understand the relationship Christians have with God as one of submission. It should be a joyful relationship that you enter into freely - otherwise what's the point of having free will?

grimble A lot of Christian feminists though would consider that the Apostolic Mandate was given to both men and women, because women would have been present at the Last Supper too. That's one of the arguments in favour of women priests. There's also a long tradition of Mary Magdalene being called the Apostle to the Apostles, because she first spread the news of the Resurrection.

[grimbletart]

yes FairPhyllis. I understand that. Unfortunately I attended a Catholic School where there were 12 apostles, end of.

I think you point is where the wriggle room comes in......just not for me though.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

I agree with FairPhyllis.

Also feminism has played a large part in the expansion of the role and status of women in the church (well, some churches). It is no accident that the first authorized ordinations of women in the Anglican Communion were contemporaneous with the heyday of second wave feminism.

There is an organization in the US called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, one of whose avowed purposes is to counter the effects of feminism in evangelical churches, which of course is testament to the fact that feminism (or what is often referred to in this context as egalitarianism) is a strong force even in some of the more conservative denominations.

I grew up in the US Episcopal Church and I am still an observant, though agnostic, Christian (I know some would say that is a logical impossibility). I am comfortable in this church as a feminist; it was the first church in the Anglican Communion to consecrate a woman bishop (in 1989) and the first to have a woman primate (presiding bishop, roughly the American equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury), selected in 2006. It has consecrated two openly gay non-celibate bishops, one of them a woman. Needless to say, these actions have been controversial and have even led to schism; one reason I remain active in the church is to support this liberal evolution.

This is a really good thread; I am saving it and sharing it with friends. Thanks, OP, for starting it.

[RufousBartleby]

Thanks all for your kind words. Just hearing the informed views of other Christian feminists is encouraging for me.

Emmeline that information re.abortion is really interesting and not something I knew.

Your points about women still engaging in education and politics despite them being patriachal has made me think that perhaps disengaging is not the answer. I wonder about submission though - if it is not gender specific, surely it is no longer a feminist issue? - although I can see your problem with the concept.

LRD - this might be too wide a question but which passages of scripture do you find best contradict misogynistic theology? - or do you reject it based on the historical context or the gender bias of the early church in selecting the biblical canon?

[EmmelineGoulden]

Rufous I did say when I brought up the submission issue that it was as much about what it means to be human as what it means to be a feminist. To some extent I think it depends on whether you think feminism is sucessful if it simply makes men and women equal regardless of whether that is a matter of everyone being equally opressed, or if you think feminism is women's liberation and needs to be about freeing women from that which binds them even if what binds them binds men too.

[daftdame]

Emmeline If you view God as being synonymous with good and what is right, why would you want to do the wrong thing?

The Bible states quite clearly you have a choice. However one option will be wrong, against God. Would you purposely do something that you knew was just wrong, just so you could exercise choice?

Grace and Faith is what helps us want to do the right thing, make the right choice. However, there is also forgiveness for making wrong choices.

There is also a question of becoming a 'slave to sin', where sin becomes like a physical addiction, difficult to pull yourself out of eg telling lie upon lie and then lies to cover up lies. This is not 'freedom' in its truest sense...

So submit to God (make good choices) or become a 'slave to sin'. I know which is more liberating .

[curlew]

One of the things that I find most difficult in conversations like this is the wriggle room that Christians seem to allow themselves. For example-

"A lot of Christian feminists though would consider that the Apostolic Mandate was given to both men and women, because women would have been present at the Last Supper too"

Would they? Why doesn't it say so then? Why has centuries of Christian teaching been based on the fact that they weren't? Some Christians seem happy to say, when presented with a particularly misogynist bit of Church teaching or passage from th Bible "Oh yes, that is a bit grim isn't it? But I don't think that's what God really meant, so it's OK really" Quietly forgetting that Christian Church hierarchies all over the world continue to oppress and marginalise women in all sorts of ways.

[daftdame]

I think 'wriggle room' is good - it allows for growth... That is what happens in your relationship with God, you grow.

Legalism, zero tolerance, show no mercy type of adherence to 'rules' is what I find difficult - something or someone has got to give!

[curlew]

Well, growth might happen in your personal relationship with God, but it doesn't seem to be happening in the Church.......