Women of faith tell how they remain spiritual while fighting misogyny

GERMAN philosopher Karl Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses and the sigh of the oppressed creature, meaning it induces a false and unrealistic sense of contentment among believers. And many people, including Christians, understand his views, especially as they deal with concerns about how the Church deals with issues of women’s and children’s rights — often embracing misogyny, even while not holding males accountable for their behaviour, and using biblical text to justify crimes and sins perpetrated against women, including wives, all in the name of headship.

And yet the women stay in the pews.

Because dissonance with the Church is one thing, what happens when your relationship with God is important to you, including the need for fellowship, but you also want to distance yourself from the misogynistic elements of said religion? It’s a topic that came up recently in a Zoom meeting on women and faith attended by close to 100 women.

“I focus on my personal relationship with God while just blocking out everything that bothers me or that I don’t agree with,” Carla said. At 42, and a committed Christian for eight years, she said at first she swallowed every belief at her church, despite niggling doubts.

“It was my teen daughter who started having questions about God that changed my perspective,” she said. “It just aroused the same issues I’d had as a teen too, and later in university. I started questioning things too, and I truly believe God understands. Now I just have a personal relationship with Him — I don’t necessarily believe in things like hell, and certainly not that the man is the head of the house, and I’ve walked out of church when a guest pastor was preaching about gay conversion therapy and what we should do if our kids were gay, as I thought he was talking nonsense. I just go to church for the fellowship and I will participate, but I think I’m on a different level where blind belief and acceptance are concerned.”

For Shaine, 23, who has been a committed Christian since she was 12, finding the right church was important.

“I’m very avant-garde, but I like the safety and the solace that belonging to the church brings to me. I feel secure in the warm environment and in the family I have there. But there are a lot of things I don’t believe in, and my pastor is very open to alternative opinions,” she said. “As a student of history, I can ascertain that more than likely biblical writers were men with an agenda, and even modern men can’t understand this. God doesn’t care about gender or gender norms — a lot of what we believe is just ridiculous and invented by men. So I just distance myself by maintaining my own relationship with who I know is a loving God, and I’ve found a church family that’s also willing to think outside the box.”

Said Andrea, who’s been a Christian for five years: “Reading the text for myself was refreshing — if you actually follow what the Bible says, you will realise that a lot of things people think are in there actually aren’t, and other things have been manipulated by people trying to take advantage of others. That perspective helps me maintain my faith, while I can laugh at all the misconceptions out there.”

The 30-year-old added: “In truth and in fact the Bible is actually very pro-feminist — think Deborah the prophetess — and much of the misogynistic practices attached to religion were created by men for their own benefit rather than having been rooted in real Christianity.”

Other women who participated said they chose denominations that were Bible-oriented instead of preacher centred; still others gravitated to churches with female leads, or with majority female membership.

“If you’re au fait with the scripture and aren’t easily led astray by leaders with their own agendas, you’d realise that Jesus’s life and teachings were remarkably forward-thinking in regards to women, and if you focus on being a good person and not a puppet or a sheep, you’ll be alright,” Sharon, 45, and a 20-year committed Christian said.

“The point of having faith and building that faith should be so you have guidance to find spiritual and mental wellness in your life. Accept that many denominations are just a microcosm of society, so it’s up to you to understand what God’s desire for the Church was. When you understand that, you will realise that the same things that make you uncomfortable with or annoyed by the Church now, are the same things Jesus couldn’t stand about Christians in his day either.”