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?

[curlew]

"You should have told the minister to fuck off!"

Well, probably not at someone else's wedding.......

[SummerHoliDidi]

Tubemole I don't think I would have been welcome at the rest of the wedding and probably would have lost a number of friends in the process if I had actually told the minister to fuck off.

After a lot of the thoughts on this thread I'm beginning to see that I can actually follow the basic beliefs of Christianity without compromising on my feminist beliefs. I can safely say I'm not going to join the church the wedding was at, but I'm also not going to turn my back on the very welcoming and open-minded congregation that I am part of already.

The Catholic church as a whole is making very small steps forward (when I was a child, girls weren't allowed to be altar servers, but now there are more girls than boys serving on the altar in a lot of churches) and I hope that it will start to make progress a little quicker, but it is limited in that it is very much a global religion and would meet a LOT of resistance to women taking a more active part in the church in various countries. I'm thinking of my time in India, much of society over there would be horrified to see women as priests (unless there have been major societal changes I haven't heard about in the past 15 years). I would imagine there would be similar problems in various African countries.

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

curlew - not in the UK, is it?

I think to be honest, there are few places you would be able completely to disengage from the Church.

We've discussed this sort of thing in separatism threads - how far can anyone get away from society?

I'm afraid I think that is much more like 'special pleading' - you're trying to make out religion is some kind of optional structure in society, when it quite obviously isn't. You may want it to be, and I get that it must be intensely annoying to feel this is a load of bollocks, but I don't see how you could simply pretend it isn't there.

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

I don't feel as though I've got a huge amount of choice about engaging with the church in practice. I believe in God, and I have the kind of personality that is nourished by formal liturgy and church music. I can't very well start my own church, and in any case what I want already exists in high Anglicanism - why can I not claim that as mine because I'm a woman?

You also have to distinguish between what's happening in parishes and what's happening in the hierarchy. My own parish is inclusive and egalitarian: I feel properly at home in it, not there on sufferance, or as though the institution doesn't want me. All of us, male and female, do a lot of eye-rolling at some of the pronouncements from the centre.

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

LRD makes a good point - we have an established church here, which means no-one can completely avoid it. There's an argument to be had about whether the church should be disestablished, but until it is, everyone in the UK lives in a parish and is entitled to be baptised, married and buried in the parish church. Lots of people still exercise those rights, so unless you have a very homogeneous circle of friends you're bound at least to go to a few church services in your life.

[curlew]

"I'm afraid I think that is much more like 'special pleading' - you're trying to make out religion is some kind of optional structure in society, when it quite obviously isn't. You may want it to be, and I get that it must be intensely annoying to feel this is a load of bollocks, but I don't see how you could simply pretend it isn't there."

I don't pretend it's not there. And of course I go to the occasional hatch, match, dispatch or Church Parade. And I am constrained by laws enacted in part by unelected Bishops (but that's another thread!) But being a spectator is very different from being an active member. Being an active member of something is, however much people deny it, endorsing it, giving it legitimacy. The hierarchy can say " we have X number of women coming to church every Sunday-we can't be that misogynist"

[Frikonastick]

Fantastic thread

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

Ok, I think I see.

Do you feel you're giving misogyny in the law 'legitimacy' when you get a parking ticket?

Or do you imagine that when you go to someone's wedding, everyone knows you're secretly disdainful?

I mean, that's the issue, isn't it? You know how you feel inside. You know you don't want to legitimize misogynistic power structures. I know I don't. But we live in them. It's hard to know how to do that.

[curlew]

As I said, there is a difference between being a spectator and being an active participant.

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

What's the difference?

And how are you not an active participant if you go to church?

[FairPhyllis]

I think what people who aren't Christians usually find utterly impossible to get is that you can't choose to not engage with the church and still be a Christian. It's not a case of you can be a Christian all by yourself by believing in xyz and following rules pqr. It's not a religion where you get a membership badge by fulfilling x number of commandments or whatever. It's a corporate (in the sense of belonging to one body), relational religion - you can't be a Christian except in community with other Christians, because sharing in the Eucharist is so utterly central to Christian identity.

If I were marooned on a desert island by myself, I could still pray and I could still say the creeds, and possibly obtain grace through some means. But that wouldn't make me a Christian, because without the Eucharist I am not part of the Body of Christ.

[curlew]

I don't go to church.

The law is an essential part of our society. It is misogynist, although it is better than it was. I am not endorsing the innate misogyny by accepting a parking ticket!

However, the women who go to church regularly-making up, in many places, the vast majority of congregations- allow the church hierarchy to carry on as it is.

[pommedechocolat]

There are many reasons why I have never come close to believing in a god.

The fact that the church represents oppression of women is just one of them.

So, no, I don't think it is possible to be a feminist and a 'proper' christian (by this I mean fully believing, not just going to church because they always have/like the social aspect).

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

You don't go to church but you go for weddings, funerals and christenings?

You do go, surely.

I don't think an anthropologist studying our culture in 200 or 500 years time would interpret this as not participating in religious culture. It's just not really possible.

I can totally see why it's desirable for many people to extricate themselves from Christian culture, and I'm not saying that this culture is pervasive because I think that's necessarily a good thing - it's just the case. Making a distinction between that and something like the legal system is only making a point about different positions on a spectrum.

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

fair - I'm not sure I agree. I think if you were marooned, you'd still be Christian, and I think some brands of Christianity wouldn't place the emphasis on the Eucharist being something you have to receive regularly (in DH's religion you go maybe twice a year, for example - regular attendance is only a thing in the West after about 1215).

I know what you mean about it being a corporate religion and I totally agree, just not sure that it is as rigid and rule-bound as you'd suggest.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

The bible says loads of stuff no-one takes any notice of (except those of Jewish faith perhaps) ... not eating prawns, not wearing clothes made of mixed fabrics, are two I've heard mention of.

So, funny really that this small verse in a letter from Paul, very much bound by its cultural context, still seems to have legs !

I think much of Christian faith and tradition is quite sexist. One thing that drew me towards the Quakers who at least aspire to equality

[curlew]

You and I will have to agree to disagree, Lady- I think you are profoundly wrong on this point, but I don't seem to be able to express myself in a way your understand.

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

I wish I knew more about quakers. They were also pro gay marriage long before lots of other denominations, weren't they?

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Hi LRD. Yes, we decided to seek ways forward towards "equal marriage" for same sex and opposite sex couples at our Yearly Meeting in 2009 - was great to be a (small) part of that, and good to see all the progress that's been made towards this since then.

I'm sure we've talked about Quakers before LRD? - though I have a shocking memory for these things !

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Am surprised FairPhyllis doesn't think she could be a christian if marooned on a dessert island and unable to take part in the eucharist. That's an interesting viewpoint.

Quakers have an idea that many or any moments in life can have a sacramental quality to them - which I like a lot.

I think holding my babies in the first moments after birth had a sacramental quality to it, or looking out at the view having climbed a mountain!

We're basically a very wooley, liberal, and possibly heretical lot. But we don't care! (I speak, like all Quakers, for myself there )

[curlew]

Quakers in my experience are very good at recognising the transcendent.

[LRDYaDumayuIThink]

We certainly have talked quakers before, juggling, I just remain sadly ignorant!

That's a beautiful description of sacramental qualities. I love that.

It would be fascinating to think what the sacraments in the old Church would have been if woman had had a more active role, wouldn't it?

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

Quakers are very interesting, though not all Quakers would describe themselves as Christian. They are indeed pro-gay marriage (the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act expressly provides for Quakers and liberal Jews to marry same-sex couples, because they made it very clear when the legislation was drafted that that was something they would want to do), and I'm pretty sure they've had women in leadership roles from the beginning, although it isn't a hierarchical denomination so no-one has a formal title.

My problem here is that a lot of people on this thread are saying that Christianity is inherently misogynist, and therefore incompatible with feminism, but without any argument to back that up. Yes, the institution has frequently been misogynist and has supported non-religious social structures that were also misogynist (although, for example, marriages in which the woman is treated as a chattel have been around a lot longer than Christianity, so we can't blame that exclusively on religion). Yes, you can quote Biblical texts that appear to support a misogynist worldview - but then, you can prove more or less anything by quoting Biblical texts, and I'm not a Biblical literalist anyway: it's a collection of human documents written in a particular time and place and to a particular audience.

The church is like any other human institution: it evolves and changes. There are still plenty of misogynists around, but so there are in law and medicine, and any other institution you care to name. That's the nature of living in a patriarchal society. I don't buy that the church is any different.

If what you're saying is a slightly refined version of 'it's all bollocks and I can't see how nyone with a brain believes it' then that's a legitimate point of view. But you must see that for anyone who does believe, ignoring the church because it's an imperfect institution is not an option, and that only leaves sticking with it and trying to change it from within, as feminists are in academia, politics, the law... It's a frustrating process, but it's not an avoidable one.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Yes, I often think the established church could have gone in different directions. For example during the last supper Jesus is recorded as saying ... "Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me" ...

So, we could remember Christ's life before we eat - is that the origin of saying grace ? Or especially whenever breaking bread or drinking wine ?
Perhaps that's more what he had in mind ? Who knows really ?

Also at the synod of Whitby early in the church's history I gather a decision was made to go more with the Roman church rather than the more feminine and linked to nature Celtic church ? Would have been interesting to see that decision go the other way.

I'm very fond of Celtic spirituality such as the old galic blessing ...

"May the road rise to greet you, may the sun be always at your back, may the rain fall softly on your fields, and til we meet again may God keep you in the hollow of his hand"

[DogsAreEasierThanChildren]

Also a lot of people are posting about 'Christianity' as if it were a monolith, when it's anything but - a Roman Catholic, a liberal Anglican and a Quaker might have in common a belief in the Trinity, but that's about it. We don't agree on what the sacraments are, never mind who's entitled to conduct them.

I don't think being a headship-believing conservative Evangelical is compatible with feminism, for the record. But some people are posting on this thread as though that's the only kind of Christianity there is, and like so many other aspects of life it's a lot more complicated than that.