{"id":66,"date":"2014-04-01T23:37:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2014-04-01T23:57:19","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:57:19","slug":"christian-feminist-and-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/christian-feminist-and-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian, feminist and church…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

originally posted in 2010<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My friend and our non-resident theologian, Dr. Monica A. Coleman, recently visited a feminist church at a conference at which she presented. \u00a0She then posted an idea on facebook inviting all feminist churches to hook up. \u00a0I snickered and posted back, “What, all two of us?”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There may be more but we are so far apart and disconnected that it is hard to find one another. \u00a0On some level we may not believe that the other exists. \u00a0And then there is the question of what makes a spiritual community feminist.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>First of all, there are a lot of understandings about what it means to be feminist (among feminists as well as outside the feminist community). \u00a0After lengthy discussion Circle of Grace distilled our understanding down to a short paragraph:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Circle of Grace is a feminist Christian worshipping community.\u00a0 We are non-doctrinal and seek to re- imagine understandings of language and stories, symbols and metaphors.\u00a0 Our commitment is to inclusivity.\u00a0 We honor each one\u2019s truth and each one\u2019s journey and feel called into community as a way of faithful response. \u00a0We understand feminism to be a critique of power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Spelled out it means:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a01-we don’t all have to (nor do we) believe the same things. Nothing is written in stone. \u00a0For us the journey of the spirit requires a certain fluidity (uncomfortable at times). \u00a0Theologically, members of our community range the gamut of understandings. \u00a0Biblical authority, atonement, – you name it. \u00a0This hooks up with the last sentence in our statement: we honor each one’s truth and each one’s journey. \u00a0As in, I can’t tell you what your experience of the Sacred is, nor will I try to dissuade you of it. \u00a0Need I say that making room for many truths is a challenge? \u00a0But we are committed to this endeavor because It is\u00a0central<\/i>\u00a0to feminist thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>2- \u00a0Our images, stories, symbols and metaphors are not limited to the images, stories, symbols and metaphors available in the biblical text, though we do ‘re-imagine’ those in ways that, we hope, opens us to new understandings of Godde. \u00a0As feminists, we find any symbol that becomes rigid and\/or absolute to be unhelpful and sometimes harmful to the journey of the spirit. \u00a0It is one thing to say Godde is like a father (or mother or eagle or bridegroom, etc.) and quite another to say Godde\u00a0is\u00a0<\/b>father,etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>3- \u00a0We feel called to community as a way of faithful response. \u00a0All of us at Circle of Grace come together because we believe or intuit that sharing spiritual community both grounds and grows us. \u00a0It is the challenge of being (or trying to be) who Godde calls us \u00a0to be in the world and with one another that draws us together in worship, prayer, meals, time, relationship… \u00a0 \u00a0 It is faithful (and feminist) to build community that is radically inclusive. \u00a0It is faithful (and feminist) to live our one’s journey of spirit informed by those who are not like us but offer new wisdom, insight, challenge and hope. \u00a0 For me, at least, and others I believe, the call to community is the call to kin-dom living, the call to embody the kin-dom in real time as a beacon of hope for the world. \u00a0Each week at Eucharist we say something like this to one another as we pass the wine, “Drink in and\u00a0become<\/i>\u00a0the promises of Godde.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>4- We understand feminism to be a critique of power. \u00a0We also understand the Way of Jesus to be a critique of power. \u00a0They go hand in hand. \u00a0As feminist Christians we speak a critique of the power of the institutional church. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>So for Circle of Grace being spiritual feminist community is about opening understandings of the Divine to include many images, it’s about making room for all kinds of differences and it’s about living out our understandings (and our struggles to understand and our inability to make sense) together. \u00a0It means that we get comfortable with not having all the answers. \u00a0It means that we make room for one another. \u00a0It means we critique power used and misused in both the culture (patriarchy) and the institutional church (with love…).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>So here’s a shout out to all the other feminist spiritual communities\/churches out there (they are there, right, Monica?) – “what does it mean to you?” \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>And isn’t it great that it can mean so many different things?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

originally posted in 2010 My friend and our non-resident theologian, Dr. Monica A. Coleman, recently visited a feminist church at a conference at which she presented. \u00a0She then posted an idea on facebook inviting all feminist churches to hook up. \u00a0I snickered and posted back, “What, all two of us?” \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0There may be … Continue reading Christian, feminist and church…<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7,5,13,8,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}