An open apology to inspiring women - and a very belated thank you.

My home church never had women preaching, and I grew up as a teenager believing that women shouldn't preach or lead churches. I understood there were difficulties with that view: at what age does a boy become a man whom I shouldn't teach? Did it apply to say, home groups, or only church services? What if I was sharing a testimony that had some explanation of the Bible in it? What about those women who feel called by God to lead and preach, can they all be mistaken? All the same though, I was convinced that was the right way to interpret the Bible. Men and women were made with different roles, and the challenge for was to work out how to maintain that they were equal while having such defined leader and follower roles.

This was all reinforced to me on the couple of occasions I’d heard women preaching. It seemed that they didn’t pay much attention to the Bible passage they were meant to be speaking from, and instead talked about their personal feelings and journeys, occasionally seemed close to tears and rarely preached the gospel. It all seemed a bit pathetic. Clearly God was right to leave preaching and Church leading to men, they could do it without crying and they knew that the gospel was more important than their own life story. Of course, I found excuses  for the one or two amazing women speakers I heard at events like Soul Survivor. They must have had special training, and the Church couldn’t afford to train everyone to that standard. They were only speaking to teenagers, and that was allowed.

Some things haven’t changed – I do still think men and women are different somehow. For all my musings and puzzling over gender, which I still don’t have many answers to, I think that I think that gender exists in some way which is not purely a social construct. I think “male and female he created them” does mean something, even though it doesn’t mean most of what we’ve taken it to mean. If you follow. Also, I do still think preaching from the Bible and explaining the gospel message clearly are hugely important. When I go to Church on a Sunday, the best thing for me to hear is a part of God’s word, explained and opened up, in a way that helps me hear God through it and think about how he might want to apply it to my life. 

Here’s what did change though – over a couple of years , in sixth form and on my gap year, I started to read for myself some books about those verses, the silencer verses. When dad went to theological college, the hypothetical women who felt called to lead were no longer hypothetical, they were my dad’s friends. One of them (to whom is owed a greatly overdue thanks) gave me a book and lent me another, which started to open my eyes to the possibility that there were people who took the Bible as seriously as, if not far more seriously than, me and yet still believed women could and should be leaders in today’s church. As I started to read about contexts, about language, about big theological concepts and good methods of interpretation and exegesis, my mind was blown. I wasn’t instantly convinced, and I read enough conservative material to keep me on the fence for a while, but by the time January 2010 came around, I was ready to try preaching out myself. Once I stopped reading the entire Bible in the light of one interpretation of a couple of verses (never a good way round to work out what the Bible means!) I discovered that equal really does mean equal to God, without ifs, buts or qualification. It set me free to see what God really thinks of women. 

Ever since I started that first bit of reading in sixth form and allowed myself to see how God can and does use women in amazing ways, I’ve been inspired by so many amazing women, especially in the last few months. So I want to say a huge thank you: to the women I know and those I don’t know, those whose sermons I’ve learned so much from, those whose blogs I read and books I’ve started, to those I get to have breakfast dates and coffee dates with, those who minister to me and teach me every day, those who listen to me think aloud and are patient when I need to work out the same thoughts all over again – thank you, and I’m so sorry I doubted you.

I’ve learned that being a man in no way guarantees you'll be good at teaching the Bible - I've heard as many vague, 'here are my thoughts with little connection to the passage' sermons from men as from women. But far more importantly, I've learned that women absolutely can teach the Bible and explain the gospel, and I’m sorry I ever thought I needed to ‘preach like a man’ if I were to be any good. People like Danielle Strickland, Ali Martin, Becky Manley Pippert and MJ Axelson have left me in no doubt about that. I'm so grateful to role models closer to home who've modelled to me various kinds of teaching and pastoral ministry like Michelle Tepper, Laura Gallacher and Sharon Mac. 

I’ve learned that women’s experiences, their feelings, and their journeys are in no way pathetic but incredibly valuable, that vulnerability isn’t weakness but strength, and it strengthens everyone who has the honour of sharing it. I’ve learnt that it’s not just about women needing to cry all the time, but that men and women all need to share themselves in community, to journey together – and that those words aren’t touchy feely rubbish but a hugely important part of what it means to be gospel-believing followers of Jesus. To see this lived out has validated my own experiences, feelings and journey, and reassured me I'm not pathetic too. 

I’ve learnt that being a woman doesn’t mean being judgemental or closed or bitchy, but it can mean sharing life together in a way I’d never really done before. Friends who’ve stuck around, who’ve dealt with my crap, who’ve shared theirs with me, who’ve talked honestly, who’ve reassured me, who’ve prayed for me, who’d questioned with me, have become the most inspiring people in my life.

I’ve learnt that I want to be like my mum when I grow up. The more of myself I’ve shared honestly with her in the last couple of years, the more she’s taught me about strength, compassion, resilience and grace. I want to share her determination and her humility and her sense of humour, if not her wardrobe. My little sister (who is not little any more but a beautiful and opinionated woman) constantly inspires me too with her stories of how she challenges the misconceptions and ignorance she sometimes hears at school and questions whatever she hears, so as to know her own mind. She even manages to do it without losing friends, which I think is admirable in itself! I hope she keeps challenging me like that for years to come.

I’ve learnt that women really can be funny – since mum bought me “How to be a woman”, and my college mum (if I remember rightly, Rosie?!) sat me down to watch Miranda, I’ve discovered that the experiences and ups and downs that many women seem to share are put into this hilarious kind of perspective when reflected back to you by someone like Caitlin Moran or Miranda Hart. And it makes life that little bit better.

I’ve learnt that women who stand up against misogyny in all its forms are not pointlessly angry, making a fuss over nothing, bra burning man haters. I’ve learnt that feminism is necessary and good, despite the few who give it a bad name. I’ve learnt that it’s definitely not all men who cat-call and grope, objectify and dehumanise women  - but that the ones who do need to be challenged, and there are plenty of women and men doing just that. The Everyday Sexism Project, the Misogyny Overheard at Oxford group, and the No More Page 3 Campaign have all inspired me to join in.

I could go on. There are so many blogs and stories and books I want to keep reading, so many women I want to meet and pick the brains of and listen to and learn from. But even to those I won’t get around to reading the thoughts of or won’t get to meet and have a conversation with, I still owe my thanks. Just knowing that they’re all over the place, getting on with life with grace and compassion and strength and humour is pretty inspiring, and it makes me want to do the same. It’s because of everyone of these people and groups I’ve mentioned that I feel free now to explore my own call to ministry, whatever that might look like, and free to do it as I am, as a woman, whatever difference that might make. So thank you too for that.

I can’t say for sure that there is a causal link between my change of theological position on women in leadership and speaking roles in the church, and my learning so much from these inspiring women. But while I held the difference between men and women to be the most important thing, and struggled to fit some idea of a kind of equality around that, I don’t think I’d ever have listened as closely or been so open to what God could teach me through the words of women.

Final apology – if you see me sending this post to a lot of people on Twitter or Facebook, please excuse the repetition. It’s only that I want to make sure the apology and the thank you reaches those it’s most intended for.

Love, Claire xxx

CUs and women - thoughts on the BUCU fiasco

There are bound to be mixed feelings when conflict apparently arises between two sets of values, people or groups that you care a lot about. This seems to happen particularly for me when Christian groups and Christian principles end up at odds with the values of gender equality that I want to hold to so firmly. There's an instinct for many of us who are committed to groups like university CUs and their mission, to keep the peace, to stop "secondary issues" such as gender distracting from the focus on Jesus and sharing the gospel. But there's got to be a time and a place to stop and think about these issues properly, however secondary they might be - and I think many would say gender equality is an issue which relates to the gospel, both in terms of what difference the gospel makes to Christians, and also in terms of how the gospel is received by others, the reputation it has in society. Both are important things for any evangelistic organisation to have thought about.

The story has been reported by the Huffington Post, the Guardian and the Telegraph as well as student press, and has attracted a fair amount of Facebook and Twitter discussion. There's been a bit of mis-representing, so here's the situation as best as I can make out:

• Bristol University CU, like many other CUs, had a policy against women speaking in its main meetings. Whether this policy was constitutional or not, spoken or unspoken, I'm not sure; in practice though, women hadn't been speakers at CU meetings and events for at least 7 years. 
• There had been a recent discussion and decision made that because the Christian Union is not a church, any perceived prohibitions on women teaching in churches (a view presumably held by some of the exec) did not need to apply in a CU context, and so women were going to be allowed to speak. 
• This decision was opposed by some, including the International Secretary, who could not accept a woman teaching in a CU context. In response, the decision was changed so that women could not speak in the main meetings, and could only be joint speakers with their husbands at weekends away and mission week events. 
• This was still a step too far for some, and the International Secretary stepped down from his position.

What was actually a small move towards women having more active speaking roles at BUCU led to a written clarification, in an email from the president, of what women are and are not allowed to do in this particular CU. It's attracted media attention because it looks like a backwards moving ban, but actually reflects the unspoken situation in many CUs across the country. OICCU for instance, Oxford's CU, has nothing in its constitution about the gender of speakers, and similarly nothing about the gender of the President - but the conservative evangelical culture of many CUs means that women are simply not invited to teach at main meetings and events, with perhaps only a couple of rare exceptions in recent years in Oxford.

When Christians disagree, we're meant to do something unnatural and uncomfortable - show grace and love to one another. We're meant to resist the urge to insult, slander or rage against one another, because we're family. So before I say anything more about how the attitude of a lot of CUs towards gender and division needs to be rethought, here's some positives about the Bristol University CU and what I think they should be commended for in this situation:

• Being prepared to be unpopular and counter cultural, for the sake of their Christian conviction. Whether or not we agree with that particular conviction, it's always hard to go against the grain of popular feeling and opinion, but Jesus tells us we'll have to. "If the world hates you," he says in John 15:18, "keep in mind that it hated me first."
• Seeking God's wisdom on the issue.The President's email stated that they understood it was a difficult issue, and the exec have therefore been looking to God for wisdom on it. 
• Recognising that CU is not a church. This seems to be a key issue in the debate over women's roles in CUs and yet is completely ignored by many - CUs seem to unanimously agree that their meetings should not replace churches, and members are encouraged to be part of local church communities as well as the CU, and yet most people who hold that women shouldn't teach in a CU context do so because of verses specifically about women in churches. 
• Seeking to maintain unity around the gospel. Christian unity is a very difficult thing to maintain where there is disagreement  and it takes courage to keep this as a priority rather than risk infighting, splinter groups and factions. Although the phrase "secondary issue" can be used to brush important discussions under the carpet, BUCU are right to keep stressing that the gospel is the most important thing which Christians hold in common and should stay our top priority. 

All good things which I think a lot of CUs share. Focus on the gospel, whatever other people think. Focus on God's wisdom over people's. Recognition of what a CU is and what it's not. But there are a few questions which to me, suggest that the thinking of BUCU and others on this issue needs an overhaul. Here are a few questions/thoughts:

• If a CU is not a church, why are we still debating this as if it were? Why don't we call on those who oppose women teaching in CU because of verses from Paul's letters which they interpret as prohibiting women speaking in church, to explain why they feel that their interpretation of those verses also extends a prohibition to CUs? 
• Why is it only those who do want women teaching who are seen as divisive on this issue? It seems obvious that opinion is divided, and that anyone who has any opinion on it is part of that split of opinion - we need to avoid the labelling of one group as divisive.
• Why is the offence taken by one group of people more important than the offence taken by another group? The email sent round to BUCU members said that despite a recognition that CU isn't a church and therefore women should definitely be allowed to speak in all CU contexts, "However, we understand that this is a difficult issue for some and so decided that women would not teach on their own at our weekly CU:Equip meetings..." Why is it that those who have "difficulty" with the decision previously reached are important enough to have it completely turned around, when there are loads of women and men who also have great difficulty with the fact that they don't get to benefit from women teaching at their CU meetings? Perhaps it is time for those who feel equally hurt and offended at the lack of women speaking to be a little more vocal so that their concerns are heard within CUs too? 
• If women speaking is a "secondary" issue, not a "gospel" issue, shouldn't we use gospel principles to solve it? Paul's take on secondary issues was that they should always be used to promote the gospel. He had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3) so that the Jews in the area would listen to the message. The priority was the gospel - even though circumcision was a contentious issue, it was unnecessary for salvation, it wasn't the point of the gospel, Paul was happy to adapt on secondary issues so that they gospel could be shared with the most people, and so that  it could be received in the best possible way. Surely all this media attention shows that the gospel will not be received by a world which sees Christians as sexist. If we're to have any hope of sharing the gospel effectively in universities, students need to hear it equally from the mouths of women and men. 

Most of all, CUs need to stop silencing those who want to talk about women's speaking roles in CU. We do need to talk about it! We do need to ask why those with a particular opinion on women teaching in church are also being allowed to apply that to CUs, which are definitely not churches. We need to ask why we're allowing a "secondary issue" to cause such damage to the gospel's reputation and alienate so many people. We need to use this opportunity to get talking about the questions, and get listening to women in every setting - for the sake of the gospel.

Feminism is not a dirty word.

I wrote this to submit to our college newsletter; it will probably need to be edited and shortened  but I wanted to keep my first stab at it here. 

I have a friend from home who went to another university, and managed in her three years to fall into a particularly defined role. She was an activist for many causes like Amnesty International, took action against cuts for student funding and the NHS, occupied her university, has been on more marches than I can count, but perhaps most vocally of all, she’s a feminist. A very loud feminist. She hosts events, writes for her feminist society’s blog, and has made herself such an enemy in a man who has particularly different views to her on feminist issues that she was sponsored  hundreds of pounds to go on a date with him. That’s quite a reputation to get.

So when she asked me about the feminist scene in Oxford, I didn’t really know what to say. I shared a vague view that women and men should be treated equally in society, have equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and so on. I also agreed that it probably isn’t the case yet. But, I thought, there’s not a lot I can do about that, I don’t see any immediate problems I can fix, and I’ll probably be more useful to the world if I just concentrate on getting my degree. That meant, in my mind, I definitely wasn’t a feminist, thank goodness – because really, who would want to be associated with an outdated stereotype of bra-burning, armpit hair and body odour?

Over the last couple of terms, a couple of things have woken me up to the need for our generation of students and young adults to stake our claim on feminism – not the stereotyped version, but the heart of it, to say that the society we are part of and will increasingly shape should be one in which everyone is valued equally. The first thing that woke me up to this was a Facebook group, started last year, called “Misogyny Overheard at Oxford”. On it, I found numerous examples of stories of women being patronised, mocked, groped, and harassed, sometimes in the name of banter from their peers, and often as a result of institutionalised sexism which is rife in an institution as old as ours. From this, and similar communities on Facebook I came across the website “Everyday Sexism”, which recounts thousands of examples of women’s experiences in families, in workplaces and on the streets. The problems of sexism are literally everywhere when you start looking for them. I began reading more, from Caitlin Moran’s “How to be a Woman” to articles, news stories and blogs.  I’ve learned about the huge problems of victim blaming, where as a society we excuse rapists because women were “asking for it” by the way they dress or act. Depressing as some of the statistics and stories are, what I’ve read is encouraging – there ARE people, normal people, working to do something about this kind of inequality. No, they can’t fix everything single handedly, but they’re taking the time to do something, and to gather people onside.

Let me add a couple of qualifiers here – firstly, this is nothing to do with “women against men.” Like with any umbrella term, the name of feminism has been used by those with an anti-men agenda to push. That’s not okay. But it doesn’t mean that everyone who wants equality is anti-men, and it certainly doesn’t mean that men don’t have a very important part to play in bringing it about.  Secondly, this is not meant to downplay the hurtful experiences of other groups who are subject to discrimination and prejudice. It’s not to say that men are not subject to gender discrimination either. It’s not to say that homophobia, transphobia and racism are not serious and important issues. Trying to solve one problem doesn't mean we should ignore the rest, and most people would recognise that any attempts to bring about a more equal society are going to beneficial for all marginalised groups.

So qualifiers aside, what about us at Worcester? I've tried floating the word “feminism” about with friends and the odd drunk person at parties, to see the reactions I get. A couple of people have just walked off, in jest or otherwise. While my friends might have been making a joke about feminism being boring, the attitude is a real one: we don’t need that. It’s irrelevant, boring, and most importantly might challenge some parts of “lad-culture”. We couldn't have that. Some have seemed a little fearful of the word, as if not confident enough to claim it themselves: “ I'm definitely not a feminist but...” followed by some brilliant statement about the need to bridge the pay gap, for instance. Others have looked tentatively excited and surprised to find someone else using this word, sharing these concerns, trying to get people to listen. Could it be that there are in fact a whole load of us, hidden feminists at Worcester, both men and women who agree that actually, we’d like to be part of a society in which people are treated equally, and that that includes women?  If that’s the case, let’s come out of the woodwork and start talking. Start sharing those instances of every day sexism wherever we find them, so they can’t be ignored as a one off. Start calling people out on rape-jokes and find something funnier to say instead. Let’s share ideas, stories and ambitions, let’s start doing those little things that add up to bigger change. If you’re interested at all, if you might want to get involved, or just to listen in on a few ideas, drop me an email.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” There’s nothing to be scared of in that.

Uncertain that... I'm a Proper Feminist.

My mother once told me that she couldn't understand how she'd raised a daughter who didn't call herself a feminist. At the time, I was convinced that feminism was this bunch of angry women who just couldn't accept that men and women are different. They'd be much more content, I thought, if they could accept that God had given us different roles to men, mainly submission in marriage and shutting up in church. Once they accepted that, they'd realise that it wasn't an oppressive, demeaning view of women, but in fact affirming and liberating. My main evidence for all this was a book I read about a woman's heart, the message of which was essentially "As women we want to be told we're beautiful. Men don't always tell us this properly, so we should look to God for it instead." Quite how that message affirmed that we should submit in marriage and shut up in church I'm not sure, but I was so taken by the fact that this book seemed to understand me perfectly, that I believed everything it told me about my station in life too.

Fortunately, I've since moved on. I studied theology better, talked to some wise people, met a few great women, tried a bit of preaching myself, and concluded that maybe God doesn't want women to sit down and shut up at all. With that sorted, my eyes were opened to the huge and very current problems of gender inequality, and I started to see what those feminists had been talking about all along. One read of How to be a Woman later, and I was converted.

Now, there are a good few reasons why I might not be a Proper Feminist. For a start, I've never taken any active protest, beyond talking. I've signed up to all the Facebook groups that make me feel part of the feminist community in Oxford, but I've only contributed a couple of times, and never actually got involved with anything. I've started to challenge casual sexism wherever I see it among my friends, but sometimes I choose to avoid the eye-rolling, or "banter!" retort, and don't. I'm a little scared of calling myself a feminist because the Proper Feminists, who actually do stuff about it and would never let casual sexism slide and go on marches and are far more clear on their opinions about everything than I am, might notice and expose me as a slightly uncertain fraud.

But here's the big reason why I'm not sure that I'm a Proper Feminist.

Feminists have to be Pro-Choice, and they have to campaign for abortion rights.

Now, this is where I get uncertain. On the one hand, I'm clear enough about what I think about abortion, clear enough for myself at least. I am, I think, clear in my own mind that I don't think it's right, in most circumstances, although put me in one of the nightmare situations that people always ask you about ("what if you were raped? What if you were likely to die in giving birth?") and I honestly don't know what I'd do. But in principle, yes, I think it's wrong.

On the other hand, I'm still working out what I think about Christian ethics and their relationship with social policy. There's this bit that really gets me in 1 Corinthians 5 about associating with sexually immoral people. Paul says, if someone calls themselves a Christian and yet is living a sexually immoral lifestyle, don't associate with them. But - and this is the bit he feels important enough to add - he's not talking about people who are not Christians. There is a different standard for people who call themselves followers of Jesus. I think there's an important reason for this, in that as a Christian, I want to live according to certain ethics because I personally know the God who gives us those ethical codes. I want to live in the way that he wants me to, because I know him and I love him and I want to please him and I want to represent him to the rest of the world. When we tell someone the gospel, we invite them into relationship with God first and foremost. The change in lifestyle and a new system of ethics is just the result of that. So, I don't think that it is the place of Christians to be preaching to the world on their morals. That's not what we're commanded to do - it is only once we've made disciples that we're to teach them to obey Jesus, not to teach people to obey before they know or love him. The fact that I think abortion is wrong means that I could not do it in good conscience as a follower of Jesus. But who am I to preach to others on their moral positions, when really I should be introducing them to God, the author of Good.

In theory then, I don't think we should be attempting to hold the world, who don't know Jesus, to the ethical standards that Jesus calls his followers to. In that sense, I'm Pro-Choice. I fully accept that those who don't have a moral problem with abortion, and feel it necessary in their circumstances, should have the right to do so legally, without fear, and without resorting to desperate and dangerous methods.

But on the other hand (is this the third hand now?) - there must be a responsibility to fight injustice and to act of the oppressed, because that's what God tells us he's doing. His business in the world is fighting for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the voiceless. He calls us to advocacy on their behalf. So while there's no place for Christians to preach at others about their moral choices which are irrelevant for people who don't claim to follow Jesus, perhaps there is a place for trying to intervene where there is some oppression and injustice towards the helpless. Abortion seems to be the issue where these two things cross over at the most sensitive and difficult point, and as such, I just don't know what I think.

So I can't support the Pro-Choice campaigns that litter feminist Facebook groups, I can't go and join rallies on the street, and I can't protest against the 40 days for life vigils that have been happening around the country. I do feel the acute sense of the responsibility God gives us to fight for the weak and the oppressed.
But on the other hand, I can't support the Pro-Choice lot, who don't seem to understand how little sense it makes to try to inflict Christian moral values onto a world who doesn't know God. In doing so, they only seem to want to force people backwards into a dangerous world of illegal abortions and fear, shame and secrecy, which is not safe for anyone.

I'm uncertain that I'm a Proper Feminist. But I'd like to be, if they'd take me with my uncertainty.