There’s one question I’ve never asked in church, partly out of a well-honed sense of (fundamentalist) Christian self-preservation (i.e. say nothing that might indicate leanings toward gay rights, abortion, or pro-evolution), partly out of a genuine fear at what the answer might be. I’m afraid to ask about Christianity and feminism because I don’t want to find out their differences are irreconcilable.
This reticence may be because of where I grew up – Ohio, while not flat all over like Kansas, isn’t always so different in values – or because of the churches I’ve frequented. Or maybe it’s just the people I know: most of the few Christian women I know who are feminists are unavowed feminists (acting as feminists but not preaching, so to speak) or are deeply conflicted about their disjunctive beliefs.
My feminism stems in part from my personality. I’ve always been branded as “gifted” as well as independent (and obstinate). And while I know a lot of singularly intelligent men now, until I was in my teens I didn’t know any man I respected for being smarter than me. Why does this matter? It means that I grew up unconvinced of any masculine superiority and, watching my mother become a single parent to eight children, I felt confirmed in the idea that not being a feminist was a sign of an uncomplicated life or an unoriginal mind.
So I am a feminist, and I have also made an intellectual commitment to the idea. It’s difficult to define feminism in a way that men actually care about, just as it is hard to define it so that people don’t think you mean that women are better than men. And all of that is complicated by the waves of feminism, with modern feminism circling somewhere around Third and Fourth Wave. I call myself a feminist because I passionately believe in the equality of women and men not only politically, but also culturally, intellectually, and sexually; that sexism is prevalent and must be opposed; that being a feminist is important to living my own life. I even read feminist blogs. (Hopefully that won’t sound too much like a manifesto because these ideas have caused a lot of inner wrangling incompatible with the certainty of a manifesto.)
But I am also a Christian, and I don’t want to be a feminist Christian in the vein of “feminine divine” thinking popularly represented by people like Sue Monk Kidd. I don’t want to keep pretending that the Biblical passages about feminine submission don’t exist. I want to be a feminist Christian without moving to the West Coast. So I am asking publicly the same question I have always been afraid to answer: Is it possible to be a feminist and a Christian?