Between Hell and High Water – A Christian Feminist Defends Belief
By Jessica Glaser
All right. I’ve read this article twice and the condescending overtones are still driving me batty.
I’ve picked this up before in arguments by Dawkins, et al over the sexism in most religions. The educated white man takes off his glasses and stares at me, saying, “Why on earth would you want to subscribe to a system that treats you like dirt?”
To some extent, he’s got a point. Why do I stick around in a religion that has historically seen my embodiment as some kind of hindrance, proof of my own unworthiness, or source of evil in mankind? Why do I stick around a religion that seeks to control my body, treat my sexual desire as something dangerous, denigrate my mind because of my embodiment, and that in some denominations would deny my call to the ministry altogether? Why stick around when I hear that churches refuse to address sexual abuse and rape of their female and male members, even by members of the clergy? Why stick around when my questions regarding the feminine side of God are met by statements like “Nobody cares about stuff like that” or “That’s just idolatrous”? Why stick around when my religion has chosen to exclude my fellow queer friends and exploit the marginalized?
According to the article, it has something to do with my crazy woman brains. And my desperate need to have babies and be accepted by society. And the fact that I’m just not as enlightened as the rational men.
I…wait, what?
Did I just hit a time warp?
I get angry in church when some white guy stands up and tells me that I should believe something because he knows what is good for me and his genitalia somehow gives him direct access to God’s mind. I get just as angry when other condescending people pat me on the head, tell me that there might be scientific explanations behind my belief in God, but that I should evolve beyond it because that’s what enlightened men are doing, and they know better than I do what is good for me.
Neither one accepts my own agency as a spiritual being or respects the fact that I might have some darn good reasons for believing in God and being a Christian. And being a Christian woman, I MUST be oppressed, because liberal religion that might affirm women as something other than the tools and servants of men doesn’t actually exist! Never mind that I might be able to carve out a space for myself in my church, or that I might use my own understanding and rationality wedded to my studies and experiences to find a place before God that is my own and cannot be interfered with by any institutions, or that the teachings of Christ might affirm me. Such things are inconceivable in this enlightened age, when religious people are often equated with being ignorant fools.
Furthermore, the arguments are terribly reductionist and reminiscent of so many of the nature trumps nurture arguments that have been used against women seeking their own personhood since…forever? They remind me of almost anti-feminist screed I’ve ever read: that due to our own biological weaknesses, we don’t know what’s good for us and must have someone tell it to us. It’s for our own good.
Look, I’m not going into the history of women in the church or women and the church; there are a lot of books out there that will do so in a more coherent fashion than I can here. I know there are problems. I’ve listed some of them above. But I ain’t going nowhere. In fact, I’m going further into the institution. God(dess) help me. Christ’s message speaks to me. It gives me meaning. It gives me understanding. It gives me a challenge. It gives me love. It doesn’t discriminate, no matter what people have done with it since it was uttered. I love it enough to ask that his church mirror his love for me and others by asking for our inclusion.
In implying that women should accept discursive erasure of their spiritual experiences in order to be liberated, those outside of church are performing the exact same violence that those inside the church have been doing for centuries. Guess what? Y’all both need to knock it off.
Jessica Glaser is a fierce mainline/emergent feminist affiliated with University Park United Methodist Church and House For All Sinners and Saints in Denver. Her writings can be found at http://aredhel72.blogspot.com/.
Tags: Christian feminism, Jessica Glaser
October 21st, 2009 at 7:50 am
“In implying that women should accept discursive erasure of their spiritual experiences in order to be liberated, those outside of church are performing the exact same violence that those inside the church have been doing for centuries. Guess what? Y’all both need to knock it off.”
About 1/3 of the way through that’s exactly what I was thinking … can’t these guys be a little more creative for heaven’s sake
October 21st, 2009 at 8:28 am
Excellent observation Jessica. Thanks for pointing this out.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:48 am
Who is arguing for the erasure of anyone’s spiritual experience? The issue that skeptics raise is what evidence, if any, such experience provides of religious claims.
October 21st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Good points. Your questions, “Why do I stick around in a religion that…” were causing me a lot of unconscious stress in my spirituality. I felt so much relief and joy when I went to an Episcopalian church and was ministered to by a LADY pastor. Gasp of shock! A woman, leading prayer, to our heavenly parent! Ha! Suck that, patriarchy!
Full disclosure, I’m an atheist, for entirely different reasons than the [perfectly good] reasons of feminism.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:22 am
From everything you said their central argument is still valid: why do you stick around an institution that treats you as less than a man?
You can take all your spiritual tachings from Christ, read the Bible, believe in God, all that, without going to a Church.
As far as I can see churches are mostly social places and that’s why people go there to worship together. But the church, whatever brand you choose, has someone interpreting the owrd of God for you, giving you their insights, not in a friendly way but in an authoritarian way. If you believe in the Bible and Christ’s teachings then gain your own interpretation, don’t be spoon fed by a person or oganisation that is, however benevolently, pushing their own agenda.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Amen, sister!
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Ugh. I hate hate HATE all that evo psych crap. Grump.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
keddaw, what it comes down to is that I find niches for myself in the church that do affirm me, and I want to make sure that those niches exist for other people, and can be expanded. If we are the Body of Christ, we have to hold one another accountable, and that means reforming the church, not abandoning it.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Jessica, I am all for reforming the church (more than you’d know) but which one? While Catholicism has a fairly large base and well known head the other Christian faiths tend to be more limited affairs. However, to change the Catholic church is nigh on impossible (especially for a woman) and to change any other Christian denomination makes a very small dent in what is a huge problem.
I appreciate you have found yourself a niche, but if that is your faith, your salvation then do you not think you could do more if you were allowed more scope, more than a niche?
My problem with your view is that you hold your Church to be the correct Church and yet proclaim it to be wrong and so you want to change it. Either it’s right or it’s wrong…
October 29th, 2009 at 12:12 am
I also hold my government to be the correct government yet acknowledge that it needs reform and that I want to change it. What’s with the sudden right or wrong binary? Women didn’t overthrow the government or leave the country when they didn’t have the right to vote, they worked until they got the right to vote.
We will see how much of a scope I get. My churches are a lot more liberal than most, luckily, so my work will be more welcome there.
I’m sorry you see this as an impossible task, but I really don’t understand why abandoning a community I love when it is starting to make these changes in earnest is going to make a better difference. Christian churches have a habit of splitting over every minute change of detail, and for once, I’d like to not choose that route.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:00 am
This is a typically American problem, when your community you love gets bound up in a church setting. The community is still the same; can you not see these people for some of the 167 out of the 168 hours in the week they’re not at church? In Europe the church is no longer the central focus for a community, it may be that the large distances in the US forces people into cars and makes the church a convenient meeting place. It is unfortunate that this is one fo the few places that happens and even more unfortunate that you have to profess a faith in one brand of religion to join in.
You cannot compare government with church. No-one has ever said that a politician was the perfect, and only, person able to run the country/city/town and they cannot be wrong. Politics is about opinion and compromise. Church is patently not about opinion (other than theirs) or compromise (it’s their way or the highway).
I like your governmental system, I like the Constitution but I hate the way politicians are so affected by lobbyists and pressure groups rather than representing the people (their job!). So I agree that it needs reform, even the politicians know it needs reform. However the government doesn’t put itself forward as the perfect way to run a country, the founders insisted that each peoples had to find their own way but that they’d offer any assistance if requested.
Churches, by comparison, assert that their way is correct. Even the most liberal Christian churches will only go so far as to point you towards another Christian church “as long as you accept Jesus as your saviour” that’s alright. How can people not lose faith in their church when it reforms on matters of dogma? When your church changes its opinion on gay people, female clergy or divorce, how can you not wonder what other issues it is wrong on?
I understand you wish to keep your community, that’s important, but the church isn’t. If you can find your own path to Jesus (I’d rather you didn’t) or morality and happiness (that’d be great) without your paternalistic, authoritarian church then perhaps you could encourage other people who have some doubts about church dogma and start your own meetings. Perhaps a community getting together to discuss their feelings and faith without someone to tell them what’s the right way or the wrong way to worship would make for a better community that could also encompass different faiths and people of no faith at all.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:16 am
While some of the churches I have attended during my life behave in that “we’re right, if you’re not with us, you’re not right” way, and that church doctrine may state that, the reason I AM comfortable in some of these churches (and yes, I see these people outside of the church context regularly) is because they DON’T behave in this manner. Each individual church is made up of people, all of whom have myriad personal beliefs that may or may not line up with the official doctrine, but who come together for community and often to be part of working together to have a positive impact on the larger community. The Christian church in general has many of the negative attitudes I talk about, but parts of it are changing. I want to be part of that change.
From what I can see, you’re not really acquainted with the ways in which mainline churches make decisions and doctrine changes. Maybe these systems are peculiar to the US, but when the ELCA decided to endorse gay marriage and clergy in same sex partnerships, it was an intense but democratic process similar to a town hall in which people voted, got to introduce resolutions, and got to speak their opinions. The assembly meeting reminded me of the ways in which the Democratic Party chooses candidates, what the party platform is, etc. The United Methodist Church and Presbyterian Church USA also have similar processes. Furthermore, the church I attend does a lot of interfaith work; we acknowledge that there is more than one path to God, and have more than one type of worship service. If someone attends a nondenominational church, I think they can find the lack of set doctrine or dogma liberating, but I don’t know how church accountability works in those situations.
Some people do lose their faith in the church when it changes dogma, and they leave and find somewhere else to worship, or stay and understand the changes. It’s a matter of humility and understanding that we aren’t perfect, that ultimately we have to recognize that enlarging the space for others isn’t our task: the space is already enlarged through the love of Christ, for all people through grace, we just have to recognize it.
The church has always been reforming and reshaping itself, even the Catholic church, throughout history. Even if it is about God, it’s a human institution, and therefore has human flaws. I can see that, many Christians can see that, the people who seem to see that the least tend to be the people on either end of the atheist/fundamentalist spectrum, and it puzzles me.
October 30th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Jessica, my experience is mainly with the Catholic church so I am not au fait with the exact structure of your church(es?).
I cannot speak for all doubters, but my main problem with churches changing doctrine is that they originally sold themselves as having all the answers and, in the catholic faith, being infallible (or inflatable!). So when someone says “stop thinking, I know everything” and then they change their mind (which is a good thing!) then I have to doubt what they originally claimed.
The thing that always puzzled me though is that you seem like a nice person, you have a group of people you like and who like you, yet you all gather round an institution that you disagree with on some fundamental issues.
The need for something bigger than yourself I understand, but why not make that your country or humanity? Why the need for something beyond, something you cannot change and which cannot* change you? You have an opportunity to change your country, to delve into humanity and discover a set of ethics for the betterment of everyone, not just the chosen or the saved. Surely that is a much better use of your time than listening to some (male) pastor tell you that contraception is wrong (a pope decided that) or that homosexuality is wrong but eating shellfish is okay (the Bible forbids both).
The idea that you get your beliefs from a book is fine, many great thinkers have written books, but be able to defend the ideas you personally hold. Have knowledge, empathy and reason at hand to say why women are equal to men, or not; explain your position on abortion without resorting to one man’s interpretation of an ancient man’s writing; explain and convince others of your views without resorting to authority, without saying “the creator of the universe decided this, who are we to argue?” This will further the human condition and make you a better person, and you can still believe in life after death, reuniting with your dead loved ones etc. if you so choose.
*I know some people claim god changed them, but not in any objective sense, it could just as easily been democracy or communism that caused the same change if they beoeved in it enough.
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