Pastor's Letter

Dear Friends in Christ,

I want to begin our discussions, via these newsletter articles for 2007, by considering the subject of whether there is such a thing as Christian Feminism. I'm hoping that it can be another unpacking of what I mean when I talk about being "progressive" Christians.

You read a lot of articles nowadays about feminism being dead. Young women, we are told, just take for granted the rights won by their mothers or grandmothers and no longer have a fire in the belly regarding women's concerns. I don't know if that is true or not. I have two daughters who seem to me to be quite concerned about issues of rights and gender. But certainly they understand the issue differently than did women 30 or 40 years ago. From my perspective as a Christian, the question is whether the old feminist movement was feminist enough. Did it really succeed in getting us to reconsider gender issues, or did it merely demand that women have the same rights and privileges as men? No one has asked the question more venomously than Christian social critic, Wendell Berry:

It is easy enough to see why women came to object to the role of

Blondie, a mostly decorative custodian of a degraded, consumptive

modern household, preoccupied with clothes, shopping, gossip, and

outwitting her husband. But are we to assume that one may

fittingly cease to be Blondie by becoming Dagwood?

Christian Feminism, as I understand it, is definitely not satisfied with turning Blondie into Dagwood. Instead, it wants to challenge the status quo by including women's experience of life, women's own values and perspectives in the social equation. Christian Feminism wants to challenge some of the assumptions upon which our society has been based. Are consumption, money, and power really all they have been cracked up to be? Has our competitive, aggressive, macho culture really helped us to become full humans or are there significant ways in which it has dehumanized us, even, to use Berry's term, degraded us? What would society, including our commerce, look like if those things traditionally considered to be more "maternal" (rather than patriarchal)--things like compassion, nurture, relationship--were to be seen as being as important as money, power, and getting ahead?

A lot of this, it seems to me, is pretty close to Jesus' love ethic. It is close to what I mean by "progressive, sacramental Christianity." It is what happens, ideally, in a church where the Blessed Virgin Mary and her gentle son are the leading figures. If they inspire our thinking and our living, we will view life very differently from what is common today. This is the Christian proposal, our alternative to this World Order. Jesus calls it the Kingdom of God. You can go there today. Embrace the Love Ethic, adopt a Christian Feminism, walk together with all God's children and the Kingdom will be--right now--in the midst of us. That would make for a truly happy and prosperous new year.

With my best wishes for such,

--Pastor Bastien