Friday’s HERetic of the Week : To the Sis­ters & Broth­ers Who Have Left

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Roy­alty Free photo by D. Cas­trique of Stock Xchng
text added by me at Pic Monkey

I have been kick­ing around the idea for some time, this notion of hav­ing a set theme that I write about on a reg­u­lar sched­ule.  I blogged about this and put up a poll, ask­ing read­ers for input in what topic would be of inter­est.  The results were clear : write about those who are cham­pi­ons of equal­ity for women in the world of church. (you can see the poll HERE)

I’ve writ­ten much already on the issue of Chrisi­tanized dis­crim­i­na­tion in faith com­mu­ni­ties. I even wrote a book about it, Unla­dy­like: Resist­ing the Injus­tice of Inequal­ity in the Church.  I’ve def­i­nitely struck a chord with many women  who leave me their  com­ments about their expe­ri­ences as well as many emails from those who’ve read Unla­dy­like. It is an unfor­tu­nate real­ity that in the 21st cen­tury misog­yny is not only alive and well in all kinds of churches, but it is also defended as a bib­li­cal value.

It is my com­mit­ment to con­tinue speak­ing  up,  to tell it true and tell it strong. I will con­tinue to speak out against  the injus­tice of the treat­ment of women in the insti­tu­tion of church.  One way I will do this is by spot­light­ing the sto­ries of those who are resist­ing Chris­t­ian sex­ism and  dis­man­tling  the patri­ar­chal strong­hold that is deeply entwined in the church’s DNA.  Such cham­pi­ons are often deemed as out of the bounds of scrip­ture if they insist on an egal­i­tar­ian view of women. The label heretic or heresy is inferred when some­one chal­lenges a tra­di­tional Bible inter­pre­ta­tion. I want to use the word heretic by claim­ing it as a badge of honor, as well as a play on words, Thus, HERetic of the Week has been cre­ated and will be posted every Friday.

Today, I ded­i­cate the first post of HERetic of the Week to my sis­ters and broth­ers in the faith who have left the church.

These are the women and men who could no longer pre­tend that all is well. Once they began to see the inequity between their broth­ers and them­selves a deep dis­quiet began to develop. It’s not a dis­con­tent­ment with men or ambi­tious lust for power and influ­ence. No. It is the heart­felt desire for fair­ness, for men and women to be in true part­ner­ship rather than hier­ar­chi­cal ranking.

I applaud you, my Sis­ters and Broth­ers of the faith, who found courage to break off from the church sys­tems that demean your personhood.

I com­mend you,  those women AND MEN who  have left your churches with your rep­u­ta­tions under fire and your  integrity chal­lenged… Sim­ply for ask­ing : Does not scrip­ture sup­port women in all roles in church?  Your  lead­er­ship shunned you and mar­gin­al­ized you when you  began ques­tion­ing the ancient patri­ar­chal struc­ture that churches long ago embraced.  But you  kept dig­nity.  You remained poised and gra­cious even as those who once praised you for your dili­gent ser­vice now won­dered if you had fallen upon the slip­pery slope of bib­li­cal error.  Those who have left out of a mat­ter of con­science—You Inspire Me. 

Your will­ing­ness to endure hav­ing your beliefs ana­lyzed and your char­ac­ter inspected just for stand­ing up for the full equal­ity of women is a gift to the Church. Change comes when those who are will­ing to buck up against tra­di­tion do so. It costs some­thing. I know many of those who left their churches in a spirit of protest had to work out their own doubts and fears.  Am I crazy?  Am I being too harsh?  Is this a big deal, worth leav­ing my church over?  Is equal­ity of women a worth­while bat­tle to wage?

To those women and men who have wres­tled with the injus­tice that swirled around them in the churches that they loved, I want to thank you for doing the hard thing of leaving.

I do not wish any­one to leave their church. “Pam, I’m sad to see that your book is caus­ing women to leave their churches,” said a friend.  “I’m sad about that, too,” I replied, “It makes me sad that the mis­treat­ment of women goes unchecked in many churches and that women are forced to aban­don the church sys­tems they once held dear. It does sad­den me.”  But it would be even more sad­den­ing if women con­tin­ued to make nice with inequal­ity and left that as a legacy to the next gen­er­a­tion of daugh­ters com­ing up behind us

To my church refugee sis­ters and broth­ers who are blaz­ing new trails in search of expres­sions of church where equal­ity is a value and not a debate,  I nom­i­nate you as HERetics of the Week with tremen­dous grat­i­tude and admiration.

Your spirit of change is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence that will likely not be real­ized within your life­time.  But know this when you feel dis­cour­aged: You Are the Change!

 

 

***What about you?  Are you a heretic? Male or female, have you left a church due to inequal­ity or some other injus­tice that you could no longer remain com­plicit with?  What do you think of the term heresy?  Does it carry any weight anymore?  

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Friday’s HERetic of the Week : To the Sis­ters & Broth­ers Who Have Left — 25 Comments

  1. I haven’t been in reg­u­lar atten­dance, or even irreg­u­lar atten­dance, at a local church for about twenty years. For most of those years, I fought des­per­ately to deny that I was, in fact, a Chris­t­ian. I tried to be Bud­dhist, Pagan, generic New Age crunchy gra­nola neo-​​hippy, and athe­ist. But I finally began com­ing to accept that I am a Chris­t­ian. For bet­ter or worse, in sick­ness and in health, til death do us part. I was born to a par­son­age and grew up the preacher’s daugh­ter. I come from a long line of fun­da­men­tal­ist Evan­gel­i­cal min­is­ters, male and female. I watched my male rel­a­tives get burned by Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics in min­istry after min­istry, my female rel­a­tives worked their asses off with­out credit and eas­ily dis­missed along with their hus­bands. Despite my fas­ci­na­tion with wear­ing that back­wards col­lar myself, I knew from my preschool days that my only hope was to marry into a pas­torate. Until then, my vis­i­ble pres­ence in church min­istry was lim­ited to “spe­cial music”.

    But, as feisty as I got over “women’s issues” in the church, fem­i­nism was not why I left. My hereti­cal ques­tion­ing of the­ol­ogy is broader and much more encom­pass­ing than whether I could preach a ser­mon or shep­herd a con­gre­ga­tion. I began leav­ing the church over the nature of God, the apoc­a­lyp­tic pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, and the worth­less­ness of human life to the Church’s rai­son d’être. I could no longer accept the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of a wholly good God car­ing less for his crea­tures’ human­ity than their creedal assent.

    Five years ago, I devel­oped a yet-​​undiagnosed hys­ter­i­cal ill­ness that has become a call­ing to embrace my own inher­ent spir­i­tu­al­ity and acknowl­edge my place in the reli­gion of my ear­li­est for­ma­tion (not the place they wanted to give me, the place to which God has designed). I first had to under­stand that Chris­tian­ity and my own under­stand­ing of spir­i­tual real­ity are not anti­thet­i­cal – though it required an embrac­ing of the pos­i­tive place of heretics in an ide­ol­ogy. And an accep­tance that heresy can be a dan­ger­ous place to take a stand.

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  2. Pam,
    As a “HIMetic” I applaud your words! It’s rough out in the dark fron­tier but with­out dark­ness I couldn’t see the stars. My faith has got­ten stronger away from the insti­tu­tional church. I can hear God’s voice a lot clearer and don’t have to come away mad when I do church at our rehab min­istry! Thanks for being a voice for those of us that strug­gle out­side the “church”. God bless you!

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    • HIMetic. Love it Michael!!

      I think I’m about to expe­ri­ence what you ate describ­ing. We left the IC in Nov. start­ing next month we will begin to have Sun­day din­ners and will have folks over to the house. No pro­gram. No per­mis­sion. No pro­to­col. Just life and life with­out an agenda or a brand to preserve.

      I am a lit­tle giddy.

      Thanks for read­ing and com­ment­ing. I’m totally gonna steal HIMetic!!!

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      • Pam,
        Steal it, steal it, steal it! (I for­got to copy­right it any­ways :)
        My wife and I keep bump­ing into chris­tians who are tired of church. We want to start a group but I am still try­ing to re-​​imagine church. Hav­ing din­ners with folks is a great idea. I have been pray­ing for years about what to do for more fel­low­ship. (I hate that word “fel­low­ship”, it sounds so chris­tianese. I’m gonna have to find another word – how about “togeth­er­ness”? Oops talk­ing to myself again) Thank God that I have you, Kathy, Karl and Travis to talk to online. I defi­nately need some hangin time with believ­ers who are in the same boat face to face. We are plan­ning a fish fry in Octo­ber – some­how food gets folks to come to my house. Any­ways, love what you are doing. I’m in the midst of get­ting our min­istries newslet­ter together. So, since I’m the main writer, I gotta get busy. Presently I’m writ­ing a arti­cle called, “Min­istry is Messy”. One of my favorite say­ings. Then I need to update my blog. I com­mend you on all the writ­ing you do. That’s a lot of work! Blessings!!

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  3. Thank you, Pam, for your heart and gra­cious­ness in the midst of such a needed and impor­tant fight. I am a recent heretic LOL… I am just join­ing this con­ver­sa­tion this week, and I agree with you about the inter­net being a help­ful accel­er­a­tor. I had googled “heresy” along­side other key­words, know­ing that there are many pop­u­lar writers/​preachers/​bloggers out there who throw that word around as they slam oth­ers! So yes, the word “heresy” still car­ries some weight, if none other than to know where a per­son in the blo­gos­phere stands…and which blogs to hurry and go check out :)

    Again, I appre­ci­ate your kind spirit. I watched the video promo that Rachel Held Evans posted, and I sense an atti­tude of respect for oth­ers even while you share what is on your heart. That is very refresh­ing and serves as a good reminder to me to be pas­sion­ate, yes, but still classy.

    Also, the sad­ness you men­tioned def­i­nitely res­onates with me. I feel like I’m griev­ing this week while look­ing for a new church. Griev­ing even though I feel so free in Christ and grate­ful to Him for His ways of love and mercy. I’m griev­ing that there are so many out there that are so viciously shout­ing sub­mis­sion and patri­archy as absolutely Bib­li­cal, that Chris­tian­ity is mas­cu­line, etc. My hus­band and chil­dren are won­der­ful and sup­port­ive, and they are very open to this new con­ver­sa­tion we are hav­ing at home. But there is no doubt this is strange, scary, and car­ries immense weight for the masses sit­ting in the pews — and more impor­tantly, the women and girls that are oppressed around the world. I am absolutely con­vinced that the way most churches oper­ate shouts out that women are expend­able, there­fore in every coun­try they are traf­ficked, abused, sold. Please pray for what to do now in regards to sound­ing the alarm in my sphere — in how oppres­sion in the church trans­lates to all kinds of oppres­sion, hor­rific and life threat­en­ing in so many ways. I know this next thing is point­less but I’m griev­ing for lost time in stand­ing up for my sis­ters who are suf­fer­ing. I am sur­prised and appalled at how long I and my fam­ily have bought in to this church hier­ar­chi­cal sys­tem that sim­ply put, looks noth­ing like Jesus! That being said, I’m think­ing I’ll lay that down now and focus on look­ing for­ward, eyes on Jesus…and to action some­how :)
    (p.s. I cur­rently min­is­ter to for­mer traf­fick­ing vic­tims, pre­cious girls walk­ing in the love and strength of Christ, the One who makes all things new in His mirac­u­lous, pow­er­ful ways! The action I speak of now is how to share this “heresy” to our extended fam­ily of two youth pas­tors, a church organ­ist, and a dea­con, all ingrained and vocal in Pauline doc­trine. Prayers needed for this side of the battle!)

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    • Hi Lau­rie
      So glad you found me and this post! In the cir­cles I now run in, the word heresy is like a “badge of honor.” Many heretics have paved the way for new under­stand­ing of God, church and scrip­ture. I’m glad I live in this cen­tury, though, for in past cen­turies a woman such as myself could have been arrested or exe­cuted for spread­ing hereti­cal ideas. Imag­ine that!

      I grieve with you. Wis­dom and God’s guid­ance to you as you search for a new faith com­mu­nity. If you can’t find one, con­sider what some of my friends and I are doing : table fel­low­ship. Sit­ting with oth­ers around the din­ner table and doing life together. This is my new “church.” Expect some blog posts about this soon.

      I feel for you Lau­rie. Here in Port­land I am sur­rounded by women and men who are fierce about equal­ity and part­ner­ship between the gen­ders. I can­not imag­ine being in a city or town where such sen­ti­ment is scarce. I hope you find your tribe right where you live, but if you don’t, there is the great big vir­tual world of blogs and forums and twit­ter, etc…where many dis­placed women are find­ing new con­nec­tions and belong­ings. I call such women my Wilder­ness Sis­ters. We once housed our beliefs nice and tidy in a pretty lit­tle house. But then, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, we became dis­placed, our beliefs scat­tered all over the front yard like fallen laun­dry. Now where do we go? As I’ve wan­dered around the out­lands for a while now, I keep meet­ing up with new peo­ple who are also wan­der­ing, and as Tolkien famously said, Not all who wan­der are lost. We are each find­ing our way and I trust that you will find your way, too.

      Please stay in touch and con­nected here. I’d love to hear your thoughts on other things I’ll be post­ing through­out the rest of the year. I need women like you to process life with!!

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      • Thank you Pam so much for your prayers and encour­age­ment! I will stay in touch, and I’m grate­ful for peo­ple like you to do cyber-​​life together. Yes, we are Wilder­ness Sis­ters, and we are find­ing our way. I have for­warded your Unla­dy­like Man­i­festo to all my girl­friends and sisters…the con­ver­sa­tion is on! Thanks for using your gifts to con­cisely and beau­ti­fully gather those verses together. Much love from our table to yours :)

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  4. Came here from Jeff Goins’ site. This is so refresh­ing :-) In the UK I think churches are gen­er­ally more accept­ing of women, but the charis­matic evan­gel­i­cals can some­times be more ‘tra­di­tional’ (they would call them­selves more ‘bib­li­cal’). I am hop­ing to see the first female bishop in the Church of Eng­land within my life­time. I may even become ordained myself… but I’m not second-​​guessing where God is leading.

    I agree with your thoughts on the his­tory of slav­ery and how that relates to atti­tudes towards women (although I do believe that fem­i­nism went wrong when it insisted women should be able to be like men, instead of insist­ing that women, and in par­tic­u­lar moth­er­hood, should be respected as equal to male roles).

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    • Hi Zoe (love that Jeff guy!!)
      Thanks for read­ing and for your com­ment. Inequal­ity of women in the church is uni­ver­sal and his­toric. But we def have come a long way from 100 years ago and 1000 years ago. I like to think that accel­er­ated change is hap­pen­ing with the onset of the Infor­ma­tion Age and the inter­net. Women are lis­ten­ing to each other and empow­er­ing one another. This is encour­ag­ing to me!

      I hope with you that the COE will see it’s first female bishop in our lifetime.

      Thanks for com­ing by. I hope to bump into you some more!!!

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  5. “Pam, I’m sad to see that your book is caus­ing women to leave their churches,” said a friend. “I’m sad about that, too,” I replied, “It makes me sad that the mis­treat­ment of women goes unchecked in many churches and that women are forced to aban­don the church sys­tems they once held dear. It does sad­den me.”

    I think this is AWESOME. To be sure, the respon­si­bil­ity needs to be placed firmly where it belongs. Instead of blam­ing the women who leave over gen­der injus­tices, blame the church that cre­ates the injus­tices in the first place.

    Great post!

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    • HI Erin,
      I was think­ing of you and a few oth­ers while I wrote this post. So glad you have paused to chime in here!

      Yep, so easy to lay blame on the one who is dis­con­tent for not mak­ing nice with their sit­u­a­tion. That is much eas­ier to do than exam­ine the real­ity of how women are gen­er­ally treated and rel­e­gated to helper/​submissive roles through­out the body of Christ. Women are noted for our abil­ity to endure and adapt. So to me, when a woman does make a stand-​​such as leav­ing a church when she rec­og­nizes church­wide dis­crim­i­na­tion of women – she is demon­strat­ing valor, her con­science as well as a degree of courage. We all want a place to belong. We want to be In, not Out. The woman, and the man, who decides to opt out as a form of protest to reli­gious injus­tice is the Change that I like to think is gain­ing momen­tum through­out the body of Christ. What new forms of church will be born from those who would not endure any longer the inequitable forms they have known all their lives? This to me is an excit­ing tran­si­tion filled with possibilities.

      Blam­ing our change agents for press­ing for­ward for change is an old story. They used to kill the prophets. Jesus was killed. At least that doesn’t hap­pen any­more (at least in the West for rogue Christ followers).

      BTW, best of luck for your next term of school!!!! I live vic­ar­i­ously through you!

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  6. I was in church dur­ing the worship/​ song ser­vice when a picture/​thought popped into my head. What if the walls of our meet­ing place were made of one-​​way sound­proof glass? How would our pos­tures, handrais­ing, or other move­ments appear to a per­son observ­ing from out­side of the meet­ing place? If a per­son couldn’t hear what was being spo­ken or sung, would they even know that we were ‘wor­ship­ping, pray­ing, tithing…’? A per­son would have to phys­i­cally enter our spe­cial space to be con­sid­ered a believer who knew what to do when. All of it seemed absurd at that point. If being a Chris­t­ian depended on loca­tion and actions then who could blame those who left ‘church’ for what­ever rea­son. Jesus, Him­self, moved across the coun­try­side, in and out of syn­a­gogues and the Tem­ple speak­ing of life with our Father so why shouldn’t we do the same? There is still a part of me that enjoys gath­er­ing at spe­cial times and in spe­cial places but it is not the end all and be all of my faith.

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    • Hi Fran, I love your imag­i­na­tion! In my fall series, What If… I’ll def­i­nitely be explor­ing the ques­tion, What if churches didn’t meet in build­ings? This ques­tion seems almost hereti­cal in that meet­ing in build­ings, OWNING build­ings, etc… is so sta­tus quo for faith com­mu­ni­ties. I do not say it is wrong, and I do not hear you say­ing that either, yet it def­i­nitely stirs up the imag­i­na­tion of what church can be like and look like if we cast off tra­di­tion­al­is­tic think­ing and open up our­selves for cre­ativ­ity. For women, who are so innately cre­ative, our lead­er­ship and voice has never been needed more. The Church is in tran­si­tion, I like to think for bet­ter, and the influ­ence and strength of women along side our broth­ers on point is cru­cial. I strongly believe this!

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  7. ““Pam, I’m sad to see that your book is caus­ing women to leave their churches,” said a friend.”

    Even this state­ment is demean­ing. To say the book is “caus­ing women to leave” sug­gests that women can’t think for them­selves and need oth­ers to tell them what to do. There is a good chance that Unla­dy­like is just that one last lit­tle bit of encour­age­ment that some peo­ple needed to do what they already were plan­ning to do. Or, they are read­ing the book AFTER they leave, because they are look­ing for some hope that they are not alone.

    I am not one of the HERetics you’ve described above – I’m not yet sure why I left – but the church’s view of women is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for a long time. (BTW, I’m soooo happy you talk about Dorothy L. Say­ers’ “Are Women Human?” in your book. I love the way Say­ers thinks and writes.)

    My hus­band saw my review of Unla­dy­like on Goodreads. He says he is sad that I feel that the church is not fair to women. He agrees that many churches teach oppres­sive views of women, but he does not agree that his church does, even though the lim­i­ta­tions that are placed on women are clearly writ­ten in the book of church order, and even though he believes the Bible teaches the com­ple­men­tar­ian view. In my mind, that church doesn’t look oppres­sive only because no one is mak­ing a fuss.

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    • First of all, thanks for post­ing a review on Good Reads. I need to look it up. I’m going to cre­ate an Unla­dy­like page on this site with links to reviews, resources, etc.… Had hopes to cre­ate a sep­a­rate site but ain’t hap­pen­ing. Any­way, I digress!

      I appre­ci­ate your sen­ti­ment that Unla­dy­like doesn’t make any­one leave church. It has informed women who make up their own minds. I just offer a per­spec­tive that hap­pens to res­onate with many bewil­dered women who are not sure if they are per­ceiv­ing accu­rately the injus­tice around them. Unla­dy­like helps assure them that yes, Chris­tian­ized sex­ism does indeed exist in our beloved churches.

      Thanks for this com­ment. I’m about to go to work but intend to read your review when I get off tonight! !

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  8. I am not sure about the term heresy anymore…it often seems to mean “you just don’t agree with my inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture so you are a heretic.”

    I haven’t actu­ally left a church because of the issue (though I did have an email con­ver­sa­tion with a pas­tor at one regard­ing it) and I actu­ally did attend a church even thought we dis­agreed on the issue of women in min­istry because there were a lot of other pos­i­tive things about it. I only left that church because we moved.

    Now I’m attend­ing a church that denom­i­na­tion­ally is sup­port­ive of women in lead­er­ship, the 3 [male] pas­tors are sup­port­ive, and they are try­ing to push the con­gre­ga­tion in that direc­tion (cul­tur­ally it just hasn’t been done here). In light of that, I’m going to be teach­ing a Sun­day School class ten­ta­tively called “Women Lead­ers in the Bible” start­ing in Jan­u­ary and so I’m hard at work on writ­ing it now.

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  9. I would have as dif­fi­cult a time being part of a church that restricted lead­er­ship and offices and min­istries and func­tion­ing in the Body and meet­ings to one gen­der (except for the few things that might really actu­ally or best require doing so) as one that did the same based on race or nation­al­ity or income.

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    • Eric! I am on the same page. I often tell peo­ple to swap women with blacks to see how a doc­trine “fits.”. “no women can be elders.……no blacks can be elders.….”. It’s absurd, right?

      There was a time when the Amer­i­can church was divided over slav­ery. Now we no longer are. I am hope­ful that the time is com­ing when the same will be true for women!

      Thanks for your comment!

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        • It is a com­mon one. I was con­cerned that I was being extreme when I first started voic­ing it, but felt so val­i­dated when in the book, Why I Changed My Mind about Women in Lead­er­ship, sev­eral of the con­trib­u­tors said the exact same thing. (great book btw!!!)

          Thanks for com­ment­ing Val!!! (is this the same Val I’ll be Skyp­ing with next week??!)

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    • It was hard in some ways being a part of that church just because of the knowl­edge that women couldn’t do cer­tain things. But there also wasn’t much of a choice – it was a small town! Plus, I saw some baby steps being taken dur­ing my 2 1⁄2 years there, so I see some hope.

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