How I became a Christian Feminist.

Feminism- the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.

When I was a little girl and the boys told me I couldn’t play sports with them, I ignored them and played anyway. I would run just as fast as they could, and beat them at their own push-up contests.

Around middle school, my church started teaching me about the differences between men’s roles and women’s. I first learned how important it was to “remain pure” and to “dress modestly” so I wouldn’t cause boys to lust after me. Then, as I got older, I was taught about women’s roles, that essentially we were to mothers and housewives, and that it wasn’t right for women to teach men or be leaders of them.

That rubbed me the wrong way, so I would often push back and ask questions. When my questions weren’t received well, I stopped pushing back. I was at an age when my need for acceptance drove out my need for understanding.

In college, my church had an associate woman pastor who preached, when she did, I remember some of my male friends remarking on how it wasn’t right. One of them would just get up and walk out when she preached. It didn’t sit right with me at all, but, again, my need to be accepted drove out the justice in me.

Throughout high school and college, I had a few Christian men pursue relationships with me that clearly defined their expectations of what a Christian woman “should be.” I remember having conversations with them about how they envisioned their future life: after working a job they loved, they would come home to clean house and a nice dinner, where a stay at home wife who took care of the children would greet them with a kiss at the door. But I was too wild for that, I dreamt of traveling the world, speaking, and leading, staying at home cooking and cleaning all day sounded like a way to suck the soul right out of me. More than that, I felt God made me that way.

Maybe that’s why I was perpetually single.

I suppose, there’s always been a little feminist in me, afraid of revealing herself lest she be called “unchristian.”

When I graduated from college, I went to a Discipleship Training School with YWAM in Australia. While there, we had dozens of women leaders, and I was introduced to a book called “Why Not Women?” by Loren Cunningham. It was the first book that I read that used scripture that made a case for women teaching, preaching, and leading.

Afterward, I became a silent feminist. I believed in and empowered myself, but feared speaking out about it because I feared the pushback I would get if people in the church knew.

It wasn’t until I went on the World Race and witnessed the severe oppression of women around the globe that my feminism expanded and I began to get outspoken about my beliefs.

In Kenya, I met dozens of girls who had their external genitalia removed with no medical equipment or anesthesia at the age of twelve. The practice, known as “Female Genital Mutilation“, is performed on millions of girls worldwide in the name of tradition and in an effort to control women’s “sexual urges.” There are no known benefits to the procedure, but women often suffer recurrent infections, painful intercourse, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, and sometimes even more severe side effects like the inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth, and fatal bleeding.

When I asked why this was done, I was told it was “ancient tradition,” but it felt like more than that. It was a way of literally cutting women down, to keep them from being fully empowered. I noticed in the same culture that girls were dissuaded from getting an education, because of what use would it be when they were to stay home and raise children. The girls I met complained about how they fought to go to school, and sometimes told me about the rape and abuse they endured at home.

After hearing their stories, I couldn’t stay silent, and I began to blog about it. I hoped to bring awareness, and find someone out there could get it to stop.

A few months later in India, I worked with women who had been trafficked from Nepal into the red-light district. These women became the property of pimps and were raped dozens of times a day in a room with dozens of filthy beds separated by curtains, for two dollars a session. If the women had young children, they would hide under their mother’s beds while their mothers were raped.

Some women had bruises all over their bodies where clients had beaten them, others had scars on their wrists from where they had tried to end their lives, and about half of them had HIV, and were fighting for their lives.

It was clear that the men who purchased these women placed no value on their lives, or on the fact that they were humans. They were bought, sold, and traded as if they were nothing more than cattle.

So again, I wrote about it. This time I stopped holding back some punches. I was angry, how could people possibly treat one another this way?

Several months after that in Thailand, women danced on stage where men would watch and decide whether or not to purchase them for the night.

And I wrote again, hoping to be their voice.

In Malaysia, all women wore hijabs and I learned from young boys that rape was viewed almost as a right if a woman showed more skin than expected.

And again, I wrote. This time, for the first time, coming out as a feminist.

And on and on it went, month after month, I saw women facing injustice after injustice and somewhere I finally realized the root of it all: inequality.

The simple fact of the matter was that you do not buy a woman unless you view her as an object, you do not abuse her if you view her as an equal, and you do not prevent her going to school unless you want to control her.

Even though the specific injustice was unique to the region, one thing was not unique: and that was women were viewed as lesser. Some men bought them, others treated them as property, nearly all of them told a woman who she should be, how she should dress, and how she should act.

In seeing the severe oppression of women, I found the voice God gave me. And that voice was undoubtedly fighting for the equality of women, in a word, feminist.

Still, I encountered a lot of pushback from members of the church when I used this word, so I did even more research. I read books like Powerful and Free and Jesus Feminist and just about every other book I could find that talked about women’s powerful role in the church, and how scripture actually supported equality between the sexes, expanding the traditional roles that women held.

I began to follow women like Jen Hatmaker, Adriel Booker, Sarah Bessey, and Rachel Held Evans, carefully observing the way they spoke truth with grace. I loved the way the boldly called themselves feminist.

This knowledge invigorated me, I proudly claimed the term “Christian Feminist” and it drove me forward to speak up, if not for myself, then for the countless women in oppression around the world.

Some people stopped talking to me, others questioned if I could be a Christian and a feminist, and others refused to listen to my story of how I got to where I was. I should have expected the pushback, but it still stung.

Nevertheless, I persisted, I kept talking and found that many women reached out to me thanking me for what I was writing, because someone needed to say it, and they were thankful I could. They often told me that they feared speaking up themselves, fearing the relationships and sometimes even jobs that they might lose.

Their messages and encouragement further stoked the fire. I would remember them and the women as I met around the world when I wrote, I would speak up for those who couldn’t. I eventually quit my job so I could do this full time.

And this brings me to where I am today, blogging and writing a book about the women I’ve met around the world and the injustice they face. A book about inequality, about voices that were silenced and roles that were prohibited. But a book about ultimately about hope, about how God came to lift up the most downtrodden and marginalized among us.

The definition of feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, and it’s a cause I proudly put my name behind. It may have gotten a bad reputation, but, heck, so has Christianity. Does that mean we abandon the term?

And still, even after all of this, some of you might be asking: how can you be a Christian and a feminist? But maybe the better question is: how could I have experienced and seen the severe oppression of women and not be?