God and the Feminine

Today at work, The Huguenot was in rare form. Normally, I'm able to ignore him and do my work, but today he wanted to share his "unique" brand of evangelical conservative christianity. He sees that the church is troubled, and that the trouble is based on what he sees as the "feminization" of the church.

This isn't about the emergence of iconography in the Protestant sects. It isn't about the return of saints of the church to Protestant culture. It isn't even about the "Mary movement" or the exploration of Mary's role in the Nativity. What he's upset about is his perception of the "touchy-feely" turn of hymns, sermons, and church culture. To combat this, he wants more of an emphasis on what he perceives as the masculine: self-sacrifice, pain, and giving of the self for others.

First, he assumes that the church has become feminized. I don't see that as being true. The church as a whole still functions in a male role, meting out rules and regulations. Christianity is still male-structured, especially in comparison to Eastern religions with their focus on how members can help each other and help the community. Second, he assumes that a feminization of religion is a bad thing. For me and for many other women, the lack of the feminine in Christianity was a big stumbling block. Only with the introduction of the saints and the return to the ungendered God could we truly understand the divine.

And what could be more feminine than self-sacrifice, pain, and giving of the self for others? Is that not the definition of the feminine? What could be more self-sacrificing than mothering? More painful than childbirth? More dangerous than labor? I know that as feminists, we want to deny the traditional role of women because, historically, it has been exploitative and dangerous. Childbirth is beautifully self-sacrificing when it is entered into freely, but often it is a decision that is either forced upon a woman or is something that just "happens" to her. Caregiving skills can be exploited, especially with lower income and minority women. Nurturing capabilities can be used as an excuse to prohibit women from obtaining leadership positions, because we are obviously not "tough enough" to make the difficult decisions. Putting that all aside, the dual problems in both arenas (feminist and non-feminist) is that the traditionally gendered female is devalued. We as women are so focused on being "the same" as men that we forget that it is difference that makes us valuable. This is not to say that all women are giving and nurturing, or even want to give birth, or that all men are not self-sacrificing or giving. In fact, that is the problem--this dichotomy of either/or, male/female, giving/selfish, caring/cutthroat. Things are never that easy, but we often fool ourselves into believing that they are because it makes classification easier.

And limiting the holy to either masculine or feminine is a mistake. God is bigger than that, wider and more capable. At the same time, forgetting that there is so much both feminine and masculine about the divine ignores the believers who need all those qualities to worship and live fully. Whether it's at a certain time in the life course that one might need a more feminine than masculine god (or vice-versa) or whether it's that a feminine divine speaks more clearly to you in general, this cyclical gendering of the divine is as over-simplified as it is dangerous.