In a recent conversation with my brother I used the word feminist, and he asked disdainfully, “Why do you have to use that word?”
I fell silent in my shock and fury. This is the conversation I wish I could’ve had.
“Why do you have to use that word?” he asks me.
“Feminist Christianity.
It’s loaded, divisive, and unnecessary.”
And it clearly makes him uncomfortable, so we sit in the discomfort.
“I hear you,” I start.
“Trust me, I wish I didn’t have to use it.
I wish there weren’t centuries of feminine subjugation and devaluation to overcome within the Christian tradition.
I wish that women were always welcome at the table, that we had a voice when the rules were spoken, that we were a bigger part of the early church’s formation.
I wish that, in every church and every denomination, women were seen as equals.”
“Hm,” he nearly rolls his eyes and asks, “but isn’t that what the Bible says?”
I’ve heard it a thousand times, so it isn’t with shock and fury that I rebut the claim.
I breathe into the simplicity of the matter at hand:
No one has ever told him any different.
And so, with compassion, I explain:
“In the same way that we used ‘that’s what the Bible says’ to defend our subjugation of black bodies with slavery…
In the same way that we used the Bible to defend going to war and killing people because they held different religious beliefs and land that we wanted…
In the same way that we’ve historically manipulated scripture to exclude, exile, and even burn to death those with whom we felt threatened or disagreed…
We’ve done the same to devalue and subjugate women.”
I pause.
There is no arguing with our history.
It is not the first time the Bible has been misused.
And while most are actions for which we’ve repented and turned far, far away, our history remains:
We are not above manipulating scripture when it suits us.
God help us.
I continue, “I’ve noticed that most modern Christians don’t know that, before patriarchy infiltrated the Christian movement, women were everywhere.
And Jesus was the one who modeled women’s equality in ministry.
They were leaders and counselors, friends and faithful servants.
They were Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and more.
At this time in Jewish culture, women were obligated to household duties, and formal study under a rabbi like Jesus was a male role.
And yet, we see Jesus addressing women among his disciples.
They were there, even though they weren’t supposed to be.
They were there, choosing Jesus over what was expected of them.
They were there, even if they would never be formally recognized as disciples like the twelve.
The women were there.
What Jesus did for women was revolutionary not just within Jewish culture but under the Roman Empire, which occupied Galilee and Judea during his lifetime.
Women were a distinct but equal part of the movement of Jesus.
And in the years after, women worked alongside the apostles as a part of the early church.
Euodia and Syntyche worked with Paul, and Philip’s four daughters prophesied.
We meet Tryphena, Tryphosa, Thecla, Phoebe, Chloe, Persis, and Junia, a woman who Paul claims was in Christ long before he was.
Women were everywhere, and they were leading.
Have you heard their names before?”
“I haven’t,” he says.
Another moment of silence.
“I thought so,” I tell him.
“Why do you think that is?
Why do you think that these women, who are named in the Bible as important figures in Christian history, are little known, hardly studied, and rarely referenced?”
Hope swells in my chest because I can see that he’s getting it.
“Because our faith tradition was born at a time when patriarchy ruled.
Women were sub-human in early patriarchal cultures, and that heavily affected the stories we told and how our tradition developed.”
I pause again, knowing that patriarchy can be just as off-putting as feminism.
But he doesn’t flinch, like he knew it was coming.
“When Christianity was adopted by Constantine three hundred years after Jesus, the influence of a firmly patriarchal Roman culture was infused into a faith movement that had been predominantly egalitarian.
After this, the efforts of the empire intermingled with a belief system that was formed despite it.
And women weren’t welcome at the table anymore.
Women weren’t there when men were forming the traditions and doctrines that would become the foundation of Christianity.
They weren’t asked to contribute to the writing of our history.
Their voices and perspectives weren’t heard.
Their influence was lost.”
My eyes drop in thought.
What would that have been like for these early Christian women?
How would it feel to play such an active role in the church and then to be asked to leave the room?
I can feel their pain across generations.
And most of the Christian men I love have never heard this part of the story before.
They were never taught about the women who played a role in the movement of Jesus and the early church or how drastically the roles of women changed due to patriarchal influence.
The Christian men I love have only been given the out-of-context, over-simplified summary of a few New Testament scriptures to understand the place of women in the church.
I can tell that the injustice of it strikes us both.
All of this is new to him, and so I move forward with compassion.
He is not responsible for what he was and wasn’t taught.
“Jesus didn’t set the tone with patriarchy.
In fact, Jesus chose women despite the threat of patriarchy.
It wasn’t until much later that our gender marked our curse.
These limiting beliefs about women were man made.
So when you ask me why I still have to use the word feminist…
It’s simple.
Feminist Christianity is a reaction to the injustices women have endured for centuries due to patriarchal influence.
And we’ll stop using the word feminist when pastors stop weaponizing scripture to devalue women.
Like the verse in Genesis that you’ve heard preached.
When God uses the word Ezer to describe the woman as the helper.
Men have used this verse to preach a God-facilitated superiority of their gender for centuries, but God himself is described as our Ezer in times of trouble and need over and over again in the Old Testament…
And if God isn’t devalued and made secondary when he is called Ezer, why is woman?”
He pauses in the wake of this new information, just one example of patriarchal influence on our understanding of scripture.
I smile, he does too.
All he needed to move from discomfort with the word feminist to becoming one was a little history.
I smile bigger.
“Trust me, I’ve experienced the tension between Christianity and feminism.
I’m told all the time by feminists that our faith is the problem.
That Christianity is a religion formed by men for men…
That this fight is futile when the man next to me in church doesn’t care for change.
In some ways, they’re right.
But women were always supposed to have a seat at the table.
And there are plenty of Christian men alongside us who are tired of it too.
We’re working together to return to the origins of our faith, one that is wholly egalitarian and true to the nature of Jesus.”
I can see that he’s listening deeply now.
“Do you know what my prayer is?
That the devaluation of the feminine within the Christian church will be a mere history lesson for our granddaughters.
That they will never be inferior because of their genitals.
That they will never feel like their gender is a curse.”
He nods, “I hope so too.”
“In the meantime, we still have to use that word.
But one day, maybe a few decades from now, we can drop the feminist altogether…
Because the egalitarian movement of Jesus can simply be called Christianity again.”