Being A Christian Feminist

I was raised by feminists- my mother, father, and both grandparents made sure I knew that being a girl was something to be cherished.  When I was very small, we worshipped at home, led by my grandfather, a pastor, so as a young child I was never exposed to mainstream Protestant ideology.  I remember my mother and grandmother going through our collections of children’s Bible stories, crossing out all the masculine pronouns and replacing them with gender-neutral or feminine ones. I never imagined God as male: as a little girl, I envisioned Her as a regal, beautiful princess; as I grew up, She matured into a wise old matriarch.

When I was seven, we moved away from my grandparents and joined a "real" church, and I quickly became disillusioned as to the mainstream gender recognition of God.  He didn't seem like a God I even wanted to worship; He was violent and messed around with innocent people's lives, love, and faith.  Nevertheless, He seemed to be everywhere in Christian theology, and by the time I was 15 and it was time for me to be confirmed (to affirm my baptism now that I was old enough to make my own decisions). I was seriously considering another, more Goddess-friendly religion, like Wicca, or maybe the worship of Asherah, the female (and therefore "pagan") aspect of the Hebrew God.  I sat back to consider my options.

The truth of Christianity, as the name would imply, is in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, a wonderful and exquisitely human person who taught universal love and high moral standards.  In terms of His gender, it's important to remember that Jesus died for humankind, not mankind.  A few years ago, Edwina Sandys made a Crucifix sculpture with Christ as a woman.  To me, that simple, yet mind-blowing image epitomizes Jesus' message of love, and reminds Christian women of their history in their religious institution, of how they've been intellectually and emotionally crucified, further tying them to Jesus Christ.

I worried that Christianity would take me away from the community of feminists, so I did research into "the feminine" in Christianity, and discovered the worship of Sophia, or Wisdom, as the female aspect of the Judeo-Christian aspect of God by some Roman Catholics and Gnostics.  I also found a multitude of Virgin Mary-centric traditions that extoll Her emotional perseverance and ultimate feminine strength rather than the passive and "obedient" image promoted by the patriarchal Church. I realized that being confirmed would actually open to me my birthright as a Christian feminist.

So I was confirmed, and as my pastor, mentor, and the parents and grandparents who had taught me the value of my femininity placed their hands on my head and welcomed me into the Christian faith, I had never felt more a part of the Goddess’s creation.