tittle@ics.UCI.EDU (Cindy Tittle Moore) (05/01/91)
In writing up the review for The Gospel According to Woman, it
occurred to me that this might be of interest to some of you out
there. I wrote this last year sometime when I was going through a
process of reconciling feminism and Christianity. I call myself a
Christian now, but I rather suspect that many Christians wouldn't so
term me (certainly not fundamentalists). At their most charitable,
I'm probably more post-Christian than anything else.
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I have been a feminist for some years now. To me, that has meant
striving for legal and social equality. It has meant learning to
embrace "traditionally feminine" traits in men and "traditionally
masculine" traits in women (a completely artificial distinction
between different traits, btw). It has meant recognizing that
"traditionally masculine" traits are not automatically superior to
"traditionally feminine" traits; that each set of traits has both
strengths and weaknesses. I am still in the process of discovering
the implications that these have for me; I do not pretend that I "have
all the answers" or that I have the definitive definition of feminism.
This obviously has a significant impact on my perception of
Christianity. To begin with, Christianity is steeped in a
heirarchical mode; which isn't unreasonable in terms of God and
People, but is, in my view, when that heirarchy is expanded to include
Man and Woman. And it very often is. In the Bible and in the works
of many (male) theologians, the comparison is explicitly made: as the
church is submissive to God, so is the woman to the man. Put together
with the fact that God is traditionally viewed as male, the human male
is essentially set up as a god to the woman.
Note that I don't believe that this is the way the Maker intended
things to work out. I find it significant that in the first few
centuries Christianity was much more egalitarian than it is now and
far more so than its Jewish roots; women had full privileges as men
did, there were female theologians and prophets. I find it
significant that in many cases when you look through an interlinear
bible (one with the original text and a word-for-word translation
underneath it, with no effort to make it into "real" English), you
find an incredible amount of interpretation -- from a heterosexual
male dominated point of view. I find it significant that the Bible
does not comprise ALL the scriptures; the Bible has been edited
significantly over the centuries, and who knows what things written by
women in the early years of Christianity have been lost, destroyed, or
deliberately omitted? Remember, Christianity was very radical in its
day. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Jesus today would be
booted out of many churches.
However, it would be silly to deny the reality that, for the most
part, the past has been dominated by men. Men were the ones that
people listened to, men were the ones who generally had the education
to write and edit the bible and set down their religous thoughts.
They were the ones who were generally in the power structure, so they
formed the rules of priesthood. St. Paul was very much a product of
his times; unfortunately his prohibition on women speaking in church
reflects his cultural heritage, (IMO) and he failed to rise above this
(and of course he was not the only one to do so) consistently (there
are other passages that are much more egalitarian -- Yes, Paul,
egalitarian). I'm not positing a conspiracy here, or trying to assign
blame but to describe what has happened as I see it.
I make a distinction between religion and churches. In my mind,
churches are the socially organized constructs to practice a religion.
And as social constructs, these churches are inevitably influenced by
the cultural values of the society that constructs them. Thus the
culture finds acceptable the notion of strict monogamy, for example,
but ignores (or even destroys) any egalitarian messages. It is my
firm belief, for example, that the New Testament is incomplete.
When I see the extent of interpretation that has taken place, from
biblical translation to deciding what was meant by some parable; I
find that I have very few qualms about making my own interpretations.
I do find, though, that many church services leave me cold. Mostly
because they are freighted with the particular interpretations I find
objectionable.
Christianity appeals to me for several reasons. The first is that I
can see the aspects of egalitarianism that I would love to see
flourish (and I think is, especially in some protestant religions).
The second is that the ethical system is by and large in agreement
with my own (you may argue that this is a result of the cultural
values I grew up in; this is probably at least partly true).
Christianity terrifies me for other reasons. The fundamentalist type
of person who insists that all of the centuries of interpretation of
Christ's message is not interpretation, but literal fact. It
terrifies (and angers) me because if this were true, I would have to
believe in a God that sanctioned the systematic and routine oppression
of women. I would have to believe that God approved of gaining
members through fear and coercion ("you'll burn in hell if you don't
repent," etc). I would have to believe in a God that regarded people
as so much sinful cattle which, if well enough behaved, might merit a
more pleasant afterlife. I believe that the hierarchical mode that
the church has fallen into has encouraged the sort of view of a
relationship between a person and God as solely submissive to
dominant. While God must necessarily be superior as a Creator, a
relationship in which God treats the person as an individual is much
different than a relationship in which God treats the person as one of
so many faceless sinners.
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