Feminist Christianity

My name is Lisa. I am an agnostic who studies Christianity. I look at Christianity from a feminist lens. I will mostly be focusing on the New Testament. I am very interested in women's role within Christianity. This blog will mostly focus on western Christianity between the middle ages and the enlightenment. I will also post some about the early Christian church.

[eattherich73]

Fun fact Christians have been pulling this fake martyr crap since the beginning. I’m listening to a lecture series on the early Middle Ages and it starts with multiple lectures about the Roman Empire. Roman judges and prosecutors tried to keep Christians alive and their stubborn asses refused to believe in self preservation. After Christians initial trial, judges would have Christians go to jail to try to come to their senses. Prosecutors would plead with them so they didn’t have to kill them. Instead of having Christians make sacrifices to the gods, they tried just having them make a sacrifice to the Emperor. They even said you didn’t have to see him as a god. Some tried to get them to just burn incense but even that was just too much. One of the governors in Alexandria was forced to burn all Christian texts and he told them “you can send me any book that I wouldn’t be familiar with. It’s good enough for me.” They still decided to be stubborn.

Long story short, Christians made martyrs of themselves because they refused to budge when Romans were literally willing to give them an out and tried to keep them alive. They’ve got a 2,000 year old martyr complex.

[catherineaddington-deactivated2]

“More than others you can be compared to the Church. When you are in your room, then, at night, think always on Christ, and wait for his coming at every moment. This is the person Christ has loved in loving you, the person he has chosen in choosing you. He enters by the open door; he has promised to come in, and he cannot deceive. Embrace him, the one you have sought; turn to him, and be enlightened; hold him fast, ask him not to go in haste, beg him not to leave you. … Whoever seeks Christ in this way, whoever prays to Christ in this way, is not abandoned by him; on the contrary, Christ comes again and again to visit such a person, for he is with us until the end of the world.”

— St. Ambrose, in the office of readings for today’s feast of St. Lucy

[manticoreimaginary]

“Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.”

— Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty

[notbecauseofvictories]

so I’ve always sort of liked the idea that within the communion of saints there the Heavy Hitters, the Career Saints who are invoked widely and in situations of grave need—I’m talking your Catherines and Francises and Theresas, the Twelve Disciples and Michael; the Big Time Major League saints who intercede on behalf of so many, and so are always in conversation with the divine, case managers for the sick and dying and hurting and faithful of the world.

but that also means that there’s a bunch of saints hanging around who are just—minor holy women, lesser martyrs, incidental virgins, doctors of the church who never managed to find a publisher. They’re not prayed to very often, and rarely called on to manage the difficult cases; they have a lot of free time.

so what do you do, if you’re a saint with some free time on your hands? You answer all the not-quite-prayers, the “jesus, don’t turn red don’t turn red’ muttered by cab drivers and the “christ, can you just try it to see this from my point of view?” spat out by a furious girlfriend and all the “oh god please let me make this meeting in time” “please don’t let me fail” “I’m so tired I hope I can get home”

or maybe I just like the idea that every time you mutter “god, let me be okay” there’s some girl killed in 9th century for refusing to marry who falls into step beside you—and though no book or chronicle or living person remembers her name, she squints up at you and says with holy authority, “yeah, you’re going to be fine.”

[klainelynch]

#if I were an unappreciated saint that’s what I would do#give taxi drivers a little nudge so they could stay awake until it’s time to clock out#watch jeopardy with nursing home residents and groan when they don’t get the answer#none of those things are breaking the rules of the cosmos#you’re just….there#which makes the difference#I don’t know I like thinking about the communion of saints

[nemophilies-deactivated20190428]

Faith is a torment, did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call.

Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal (via nemophilies)

[hymnsofheresy]

“There is something beyond history. There is something that moves the threshold of matter and time”

— Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love  (via spiritandteeth)

[reclaiming-god]

happy sunday, here’s a reminder that the church’s total focus on achieving salvation and casting aside all worldly ties many times leads to people looking at injustices of this world, shrugging their shoulders, and saying it’s not their problem because god will take care of it

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Do you guys have any bible verse recommendations for transgender Christians?

Hey there! I’ve dug up a few for you; if anyone would like to add to this list, please do so! Also, please keep in mind that it’s best to read any Bible verse or passage in its full context, so the link on each verse in the list below leads to the whole chapter it comes out of.

Galatians 3:26-28 – “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

1 Samuel 16:7 – “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”

1 John 15:18 – “[Jesus said,] ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.’” [i.e., Jesus is with you in your suffering and when you face oppression.]

Romans 8:38-39 – “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

Two Bible stories with special significance for the trans reader:

A spoken word piece by J Mase III that re-imagines Joseph(ine) from Genesis as trans/genderqueer

An article on the eunuch who converts in the biblical book of Acts and how it relates to trans Christians’ stories today

A couple other resources you might find helpful:

A brief post on why being trans is affirmed by God, with links to resources

More links to resources for trans Christians, from info on what the Bible says to testimonies of trans Christians.

Followers, any other good Bible verses for trans Christians? 

[liminalhorror-deactivated201812]

“The word ‘naked’ is a translation of the Hebrew erom, which is used to describe a state of being stripped or vulnerable, and is without sexual connotation. 

[…]

Called out by God, Adam says: ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ His nakedness, erom, merely implies vulnerability. Perhaps Adam and Eve hid from God not because they were suddenly prudish, nor because their disobedience had been found out, but because they realised their fragility and insignificance. They were exposed, not as sexual beings but as mortal ones.”

The Genesis of Blame, Anne Enright

[marysmagdalenes]

“If I’ve learned anything from thirty-five years of doubt and belief, it’s that faith is not passive intellectual assent to a set of propositions. It’s a rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, all-night-long struggle, and sometimes you have to demand your blessing rather than wait around for it. The same is true for Scripture. With Scripture, we’ve not been invited to an academic fraternity; we’ve been invited to a wrestling match. We’ve been invited to a dynamic, centuries-long conversation with God and God’s people that has been unfolding since creation, one story at a time. If we’re lucky, it will leave us with a limp.”

— Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (via queerlychristian)

[myfaithisreal]

I was reading my Bible and I came across this verse:

And all I could think was:

[hymnsofheresy]

“Mary too came to be thought of as a whore, but a repentant whore, domesticated within “orthodoxy.” Her possession by seven devils, mentioned twice in the Christian Testament, has been read as a trace of earlier attempts to dilute her speech, her teaching, and her memory by claiming she had been wild but was tamed.”

— Jane Schaberg | The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene

[hymnsofheresy]

“In the Gospel of Mary the soul is led inward, set free from the Powers and from the fear of death. This work is about courage in the face of suffering. The Savior’s death is real (he was not “spared”), but “there is no promise, of or desire for, a physical resurrection… In the end, [this work] communicates a vision of a world that is passing away, not toward a new creation or a new world order but towards the dissolution of an illusory chaos of suffering, death, and illegitimate domination,” toward matter dissolving into its own proper root… It is a vision one might say, of emptiness, a return to an initial state. But not, perhaps, of annihilation.”

— Jane Schaberg | The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene

[thetime-ishere]

I hope when I have kids one day that I teach them to see religion as a source of comfort rather than a chore or something that they believe because I tell them to

[boykeats]

what are your thoughts on mary magdalene? also i love your blog and your poetry x

resurrection was delivered into the hands of a single woman like. before anyone else, jesus and his wildfire blood came to her to tell her that yes, these miracles do happen, this future isn’t empty, you are saved, you are saved now and forever.

and who was she? mary, from a village by the sea. a girl who grew up singing saltwater hymns while sickness burned in her body. when the messy-haired, sunlight-boned wanderer burst into town with his pack of young rebels, she looked god right in his human eyes and said, “i’m not afraid. heal me.” she watched the romans kill him slowly, and she wept, and she ached, and she spent two nights sitting in the dirt outside the tomb, whispering prayers to the stars like it might be worth something, anything, everything. and it was.

and we couldn’t believe that christ would want to trust a woman before anyone else, so we wrote her down as a sinner and a person of bad character, even though she was neither. we made her name synonymous with prostitution, even though there’s no biblical evidence to support that. history likes to pretend she had little power but without her there would be no witness to the news.

a young woman is the mortal catalyst for one of the biggest turning points in christian theology! a young woman who runs to other women first! that’s who christ placed his trust in above everyone else to bear the sight of the resurrection. isn’t that spectacular?

[hymnsofheresy]

“But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed?”

— Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene

[thedaughterofanneboleyn]

God, Mary Magdelene deserved so much more than she ever received. I wouldn’t say I’m religious, but the history surrounding this so called “Mystery Woman” is astounding. She’s the mother of Christianty and Catholicism, yet she’s written out of most of the gospels, and forgotten. The few lines of text she’s mentioned in don’t give us the real picture of who she was, she was the first Apostle to see the risen Jesus or what she believed was Jesus, and immediately her claims are not to believed unless validated by men. Mary Magdalene was the Apostle of the apostles, she understood Jesus in a way that the men did not, she stayed with Christ until his death, which was very dangerous for her as she could be crucified for doing so, while her male counterparts fled in fear. She came to the burial sight of Jesus and helped his mother Mary and his sister wash his body and prep him for a proper burial, this was very intimate and usually only done by family, this intimacy lay in her washing the body of the naked Christ. She, a women, wrote a Gospel, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which was uncovered and translated recently, and yet her testimony, her intimacy with Christ was deemed unimportant to the religion that she mothered and was swept aside, never to be read or copied ever again. Her male counterparts however, were praised and their stories were shared, whether they were accurate or not, as they were not present at the crucifixion, and Mary’s truth was forgotten. Mary Magdalene became the whore, the sinner whom Jesus saved, and repented, though there is no evidence that Mary and this prostitute were one and the same, she became whatever men of the church needed her to be, and who she really was became smeared in falsehood, the girl from Galilee who followed Jesus, and heard him speak, and cried beneath his cross, who taught the other 12 Apostles the true word of her lord, and who Jesus trusted enough to be the first he appeared to, was discarded. She became a scapegoat for sinners. What I want you to remember, whether you’re religious or not, is that, this woman, a key part of the Jesus movement, was essentially wiped out from the Religion she birthed with her vision of the risen Jesus, all because she was a Women.