I got the shirt in college, when I first started taking gender studies courses, when I was all fired up about shattering the glass ceiling and getting rid of the stigma around issues of sexual assault. I got the shirt when I first started experiencing the conflict between my gender studies classmates and the religion I so adored. I was just beginning to discern my call to ministry at that point, and I was nervous about how people would treat me.
When I told my classmates about my call and my aspirations to become an ordained pastor, they asked how I could be part of such a misogynistic institution. Why, they asked, would I want to work for people who had historically devalued women, and many of whom still pray to an angry father god saying "thank God I am not a woman"? I explained to them over and over again that the church had, at times, adopted harmful social trends, but that it was precisely my faith and the Bible that had taught me that God made all humans in God's image: male and female. I explained that I wasn't willing to surrender faith and Christianity to a history of misogyny, that I would stand up as a woman of faith and fight to make the church better. And, while they often did not share my faith or understand my decision, they respected me for it and affirmed me in pursuing it.
At the same time, I found myself debating gender issues with some of my more conservative friends. I brought up issues of rights and dignity and equality. And the discussions were civil and enlightening when they were purely academic. But when I told them I was called to ministry, most of them abruptly ended their contact with me, telling me I must be mistaken. Only one continued to talk to me, and he told me that he thought God might be calling women to ministry now because many men refuse to go. I was shocked to discover that he saw women as God's backup plan.
At that time in my life, when I was engaged in those debates, I was so impassioned. I'd wear my feminism shirt to church events just to push the envelope. It felt like rebelling, in a way, even though my church had no problem with women's ordination and, on the whole, was pretty good with gender issues.
I'm still a feminist, still passionate about gender issues, but it takes a different form now. I haven't worn my feminism T-shirt outside my apartment since I took this appointment. But I avoid masculine language for God and I try to bring different images for God into the life of the congregation. I've learned to tolerate being called cute as long as people still respect the authority my call gives me in the pulpit and around the meeting table. And I hope that women outside the church, feminists who see the church as patriarchal, misogynistic, and irrelevant, will see me, a young feminist woman in sanctioned leadership in the church, and will take a second look at faith. Maybe they'll see in me a counterbalance to the pink, gender-stereotyping books that dominate the religion sections in bookstores.
As I seek to live as both faithful and feminist in the local church, I read a lot of spiritual memoirs by women. I love them all, from the mystical words of Julian of Norwich and Theresa de Avila to Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamott and Lauren Winner. I admire both the strength and the deep faith they display in their writings, and I draw inspiration from them to stay strong. I also love that they are different: they don't follow the stereotype paths the pink faith-for-women books prescribe. They are authentic in their depictions of the struggles and messiness of life and faith.
Perhaps one day I'll write my own spiritual memoir, inspiring women of the next generation to be faithful anf feminists. If I do, I think I'll entitle it "This Book Is Not Pink", just to remind those who see it that there is room in the church for feminists. I can prove it, too, because I know there is room in the church for me.
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