New posting returns.
A reader named Mercy (I have a few with that pseudonym, it seems) writes after participating in this discouraging discussion at Christianity Today. Mercy, a young committed evangelical, youth leader, and feminist, asks in an email
How do you deal, as a Christian feminist, with Christians who seem to still believe women are an after-thought of creation, who deny any feminine qualities of God, who think that because birth control wasn’t accepted by a church until 1930 it’s still evil….I could go one and on, but how do you do it? How do you reason with these people? How do you make them see you’re not a pagan, not renouncing Christ, etc, etc.? How do you live your beliefs?
I told Mercy that I could indeed identify with her, and promised to respond publicly.
She raises two of the three issues that Christian feminists routinely face:
1. Hostility from more traditionalist Christians who question one’s theology, one’s hermeneutic, one’s commitment to Christ, and — not infrequently — one’s salvation.
2. The difficulty in getting conservative Christians to consider feminist criticism not only as valid, but deeply congruent with the spirit of Christ and with the Gospel.
Mercy doesn’t raise the last issue:
3. Bewilderment on the part of secular feminist allies who assume that Christianity is antithetical to both reason and egalitarian values, and who wonder how such an otherwise well-informed and committed activist could hold to beliefs like the divinity of Jesus and the promise of eternal life.
I’ve written before about reconciling faith and feminism — see here and here. I have no hesitation about identifying as a Christian and as a feminist (though I do sometimes use the term “pro-feminist” in certain contexts). I’ve lived a long time now with both labels; I don’t need to share the convictions of every other person who embraces either term in order to feel that they describe me accurately. To sum it up in one sentence: I believe in the unique role of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, my Savior; I believe that the multiplicity of gender identities, like the multiplicity of races, is a sign of God’s delight in diversity rather than evidence of a plan for different roles. And just as no race is to rule over another, so too no sex is to rule over another. Galatians 3:28 is Christology, but it’s also a political statement about how the world should be ordered and how the law ought to treat difference.
Mercy’s real question, it seems, is how to live as a feminist in a community of conservative Christians; how can she push past the cognitive dissonance that some traditionalist evangelicals feel when she proposes reconciling radical egalitarianism with a radical commitment to Christ? Of course, part of the answer is that she’s gonna need to understand that there is nothing she can say that will win everyone over. I assume Mercy already knows that, but it’s worth repeating: being an effective witness for either feminism or faith requires a willingness to be misunderstood and mislabelled and dismissed. And if you’re an outspoken woman in a conservative religious community, the chances of being rejected are excellent. That needs to be okay; as we learn from Jesus, if you’re rejected repeatedly in one village, you need to shake the dust of that place off your feet and move on down the road. That’s true in both forms of evangelism.
Of course, Mercy can point her evangelical critics to sound sites like Christians for Biblical Equality, for whom I blogged for a while. CBE is an evangelical organization; it does not hold what might be considered liberal theological views. (You might want to go to their conference this summer.) CBE’s short statement on biblical equality is here. This statement of radical egalitarianism has been endorsed by many evangelicals (see the list below the statement — hardly a bunch of raving liberals.)
In the end, however, one’s credibility as a Christian and a feminist is going to be rooted less in what you profess and more in what you practice. A relationship with Christ is, as we evangelicals like to stress, liberating. A feminist life is liberating. When those who know you see how you live out your commitments day-to-day, in public (and for those closest to you) in private, they’ll begin to sense that you aren’t deluded or a walking oxymoron for proclaiming the Name while sharing the Good News of abundant egalitarianism and flexible gender roles for all. The key to living as a Christian feminist is being comfortable with both labels to the point that you can embrace them both publicly and simultaneously; that comfort is an inside job. And you share your faith, gently, with your non-Christian friends who ask; you share your feminism with your Christian brothers and sisters. Enduring ridicule and suspicion is part of the package deal, though it should be noted that at some point, it may be necessary to break off relationships with those who cannot and will not accept that these two central commitments can ever be reconciled.
I can argue for feminism; I can make “the case for Christ”. But in the end, most people don’t care much what I believe; they care how I live and they care how I feel about them. My faith and my feminism provide me with a code for living; they provide me with a sense of how it is I ought to interact with other living creatures. And my credibility hinges less on what is professed and more on what is practiced in my relationships with friends, family, and the world.
And if, behind my back or to my face, my Christian friends think I’m too swayed by secular feminism; if, behind my back or to my face, my feminist friends think my faith is evidence of some failure to reason correctly or of some deep psychological lack — so be it all.
Hugo,
Thanks for the post! This is tough stuff all around – the labels I mean.
How about instead of “identifying as a Christian and as a feminist” or as a “pro-feminist” one simply keeps loving other people and simply continues practicing non-discriminating feminism? Didn’t Jesus suffer under many labels? And didn’t Elizabeth Cady Stanton recall how “Letters and newspapers poured in upon me, asking all manner of absurd questions, until I often wept with vexation. So many things, that I had neither thought nor said, were attributed to me that, at times, I really doubted my own identity.”?
The problem with rejecting labels is that in some instances, labels are useful; coalitions for justice need labels for the sake of unity and coherence. It’s all very well to say “I don’t like labels”, but usually, what we mean is “I don’t like the stereotype associated with that particular label.” The key is to reclaim the label from the stereotype, and we do that by embracing rather than rejecting them.
Wow, Mr. Schwyzer. Awesome post. I am so thrilled to read it.
“And if you’re an outspoken woman in a conservative religious community, the chances of being rejected are excellent. That needs to be okay; as we learn from Jesus, if you’re rejected repeatedly in one village, you need to shake the dust of that place off your feet and move on down the road. That’s true in both forms of evangelism.”
So true. Good advice to stop “beating a dead horse”, so to speak, and move on. I never even thought of that analogy with Jesus.
“But in the end, most people don’t care much what I believe; they care how I live and they care how I feel about them.”
Excellent! I love the point about how both radical belief in Christ and feminism are deeply liberating. And how you have to live your faith, not just talk it….that holds for every Christian, whether they consider themselves a feminist or not, but it’s a fantastic point.
Such an encouraging read–thank you!!
“Bewilderment on the part of secular feminist allies who assume that Christianity is antithetical to both reason and egalitarian values, and who wonder how such an otherwise well-informed and committed activist could hold to beliefs like the divinity of Jesus and the promise of eternal life.”
It is hard, you know, to “get.” I’ve read most of the Bible, and I don’t see how a person can manage to hold feminist beliefs and beliefs based on the Bible simultaneously without doing a lot of cherry-picking of the contents. However, since I lack perfect consistency in all my personal beliefs and mores, I find it hard to jump down somebody else’s throat on that basis. Also, I tend not to march into other people’s personal spaces and demand that they justify themselves. eeek, no!!
Embracing rather than rejecting sounds nice. I’m all for that.
But what do you think about this?
“When I say ‘I am not a feminist’ the glances from the room full of women suggests only my ignorance, and lack of knowledge, superseded by the argument that society is the culprit for my misguided and socialized understandings of feminists as angry women. As the discussion develops, the group insists that, indeed I am a feminist, reluctant of the name because of societal repercussions.
Reluctant? No! It has nothing to do with societal feelings and everything to do with . . . .”
from http://www.womanist-musings.com/2009/04/living-purple-in-lavender-worldits.html
I don’t get conservative religious feminists either. I mean, I do see how if one believed there existed a powerful deity with a discernable will, nothing else would matter very much, but beyond that abstract level it’s really a mystery to me. Despite several years of reading FMH! It would be an interesting series, Hugo, if you were to help us explore this, maybe with a few guest posters. I just don’t see how these things can be reconciled, and don’t have much respect for people who just shrug it off.
You’re a Christian and a feminist, and if you were still pro-life, I’d take you more seriously in trying to fuse the two.
And what’s up with your lifestyle? When we ran into you, you and your wife and (admittedly gorgeous) baby were getting into a brand-new Mercedes GL450.
Did you buy carbon offsets for the car?
You are a kind man, Hugo Schwyzer, and were a good teacher to me: but you have layers of hypocrisy laid on layers of hypocrisy.
Re: You’re a Christian and a feminist, and if you were still pro-life, I’d take you more seriously in trying to fuse the two.
Indeed, Avery. I don’t see how one can be a Christian and also be pro-choice without some serious intellectual dissonance.
The real question for Hugo is this: when Christianity conflicts with feminism, which it very often does, which do you think is more important?
Avery and Hector,
One of the critical aspects of Christianity is forgiveness. An important lesson Jesus taught is that only those without sin are qualified to throw stones (yeah, I’m paraphrasing a bit). Are either of you without sin?
Now, if it’s a matter of pointing out errors that another person is making, fine. However, don’t do it with a snobby attitude.
Re Avery: “You are a kind man, Hugo Schwyzer, and were a good teacher to me: but you have layers of hypocrisy laid on layers of hypocrisy.”
Who doesn’t? Don’t *you* have layers upon layers of hypocrisy? I sure do…much as I try to get rid of them. We’re only human.
Hector, my faith informs everything in my life — and it is deeper than my feminism, deeper than my commitment to my family, deeper than anything. It is a personal relationship with God, and in particular, with Jesus.
That said, my feminism is just as important to me as my relationship with historic Christianity and with the Church; Christ is present in and outside of His church, in and outside of tradition. Faith comes first. But though I am a Christian, my faith is something richer and deeper than a relationship with a congregation or a text or the story of the relationship between the faithful and God.
And I do have my layers of hypocrisy, it’s true – and I work hard at reconciling them.
You would have a field day with vox day (Theodore Beale) – who writes about how he’s a male, Christian libertarian, but thinks that women in all manners of speaking are inferior to men, because ‘men have been the drivers of society’ – then these same men are baffled about how feminism pushes women to get ahead in their careers. Anyway, it would be interesting to see him interact with you, a male, Christian feminist. Hell, it’s just interesting on the whole, I’m tired of running across pages and pages of sites devoted to blaming feminism for everything, including the Virginia Tech Massecure, as well as the Rihanna/Chris Brown incident. You should probably tell your young friend that no matter what, some people just can’t be changed in their views, no matter what.
I”m also a little vexed as to how people think that women weren’t oppressed before feminism.
“You should probably tell your young friend that no matter what, some people just can’t be changed in their views, no matter what.”
I like that. Sound advice, Silverarrow. Very sound.
Re: “You’re a Christian and a feminist, and if you were still pro-life, I’d take you more seriously in trying to fuse the two.”
I have a few religious friends who are also very passionate about being pro-choice. I don’t think the position of being Christian/Buddhist/Muslim/any religion and being pro-choice is incompatible.