In the back of of the book Jesus Feminist you will find discussion questions meant to facilitate small group discussion or to be used as journal prompts. This week guest contributors will tackle some of these questions in guest posts to the blog of Sarah Bessey, author of the book. 

Bessey is calling April 21-27 Jesus Feminist Book Club Week. I recommend that those of you reading the book or even those of you considering reading the book check out these posts this week. I'll be back at the end of the month to share my thoughts on the book as a whole. 

Jesus Feminist Book Club Week kicks off today with Sarah Schwartz responding to this question: 

Does it seem radical to you that God thinks women are people too? 

Later this week we'll hear from Osheta Moore, Tamara Rice, Zach Hoag, Jerusalem Greer, and Amena Brown.

Let's support these writers and Sarah Bessey by reading and commenting on these posts. 

In the first chapter of her book Jesus Feminist, Sarah Bessey declares, "Jesus made a feminist out of me." 

Later she defines Jesus feminist for anyone left perplexed by the term: "I call myself a Jesus feminist because to me, the qualifier meant I am a feminist precisely because of my life-long commitment to Jesus and his Way." 

I am not a Jesus feminist, but I want to be. 

I am a Christian and I am a feminist, but I am not a Jesus feminist, at least not according to this definition. I am not a feminist because I am a Christian. In fact, I've spent the past decade declaring that I am a feminist despite the fact that I am a Christian, or vice versa. I've spent the past decade wrestling like Jacob with the angel trying to reconcile these two belief systems that are at the center of almost all that I do. 

But I am tired of the battle. 

And this battle is a silly one. 

Jesus is my favorite feminist. Reading the Gospels, it's clear that Christ saw women as people. He didn't treat us differently from men. As Bessey writes:

We weren't too precious for words, dainty like fine china. We received no free pass or delicate worries about our ability to understand or contribute or work. Women were not too sweet or weak for the conviction of the Holy Spirit, or too manipulative and prone to jealousy, insecurity, and deception to push back the kingdom of darkness. Jesus did not patronize, and he did not condescend. 

Bessey, a Canadian, didn't grow up with many of the ideas about gender roles that prevail in America, especially in the Southeast where I live. She didn't face these issues until later in her Christian life.

Ironically, even though I'm a Southern girl I didn't grow up with gender stereotypes either. My parents always taught me I could be whatever I wanted to be. Period. But I'll never forget the day when, excited by a sermon I'd just heard, I remarked that the preacher got me so interested in the Bible that it made me want to go to Bible college and be a preacher one day myself. I was quickly corrected by a well-meaning elder: "Now, you know women can't be preachers." 

Disillusion and disappointment have marked much of my church life due to attitudes regarding gender, race, sexuality, class and more. I've even gone through periods where I've stopped going to church altogether. 

But as Bessey writes, quoting Sara Miles, "You can't be a Christian by yourself." 

So as I continue to re-read Jesus Feminist I will continue to deal with my doubts, my questions, and my hurts. I will continue to, as Bessey suggests, lean into the pain, trusting that there is a balm in Gilead. 

If you are reading Jesus Feminist along with me, please leave your thoughts on chapters 1-3 in the comments section. 

This month I'm kicking off the Writeous Babe Book Club with Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist.

I want to discuss this book online and hope to even start a Jesus Feminist small group at my church because I believe in the power of women sharing their stories. As author Rachel Held Evans says in the foreword to Jesus Feminist: "For women who bear the stories of patriarchy, freedom begins with the telling; it begins with those first tender words spoken out loud or written down on paper: 'When I was a little girl,' 'I remember,' 'Once.'"

I appreciate that Bessey opens this book with Idelette McVicker's "Let Us Be Women Who Love." Even in the 21st century feminism is often equated with anger and hate. But in truth feminism, especially Jesus feminism, is all about freedom and love.

She invites us to metaphorically join her on a beautiful beach to talk about "womanhood, church, the labels, and where we go from here."


In my eyes she also invites us to rest, which I appreciate because I'm tired.

I'm tired of being defensive. I'm tired of  trying to "right every wrong and defend every truth, refute every inflammatory blog post, pontificate about every question."

Bessey admits in her introduction that years ago she struggled with these things too, that she "practiced anger and cynicism like a pianist practices scales, over and over."

As women in church and elsewhere we often exclaim that we just want a seat at the table. This can cause us to resent both men and women who've already pulled up a chair.

Bessey offers a new idea:

"And someday -- I really believe this -- we will throw our arms around the people of the Table as they break up the burnished oak. We'll be there to help them heave it out the windows, smashing every glass ceiling" the transparent, mirrored, and stained glass-- all shards of broken lies now." 

I invite you to join me on this journey. During the month of April let's read Jesus Feminist and discuss it here once a week on this blog. For those of you in Birmingham I'd also love to get together to discuss the book as a whole at the end of the month.

I'll be back next Tuesday (April 8) to discuss chapters 1-3.

I hope you'll join me.

In the meantime please leave your thoughts on the foreword and introduction in the comments section.

Happy reading!

Hey babes!

Last week I announced that I want to start a book club.

But this week I've been so stressed out I've been having facial muscle spasms, headaches, and dizzy spells. Thus this book club of mine needs to be as laid back as possible. So here's the deal: each month I'll read a book and post about it weekly. I would LOVE for you to read along with me and share your thoughts in the comments sections of the book posts or even write about it on your own blog and share the links to your posts.

For those of you in Birmingham, we'll get together at the end of the month to discuss the book IRL and nosh on snacks.

To kick things off I'm re-reading Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist in April.

Today happens to be Bessey's 35th birthday and to celebrate she's giving instead of receiving gifts: she's offering the Kindle and Nook editions of her book for only $1.99.

Get more details at SarahBessey.com.

If you plan to read Jesus Feminist with me next month, leave a comment to let me know.

At the launch party for my online magazine -- with my man by my side

"Can you be a feminist wife?"

Apparently this is a question some people were discussing one night last week on Twitter. I believe this conversation was taking place in the wee hours of the morning, but I'm a 30-something English teacher which means I am in the bed (not on Twitter) in the wee hours of the morning. But I awoke Wednesday to find that a male friend of mine (who knows I'm a feminist and a wife) had tweeted me about this topic, wanting me to comment.

My response was simple. It had to be. This is Twitter we're talking about. I simply replied: "Yes, you can be a feminist wife. Anyone who says you can't doesn't understand what feminism really is."

But here's what I would have said if I had had more than 140 characters with which to respond…

Yes, a woman can be a feminist and a wife and, quite frankly, husbands should want their wives to be feminists.

Just so we're all on the same page, feminism is not a movement about hating men, marriage, motherhood and makeup. Feminism is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Period. Now, things get complicated when we start discussing how women (and men) go about living out feminism in their everyday lives. But if we always come back to that notion of equality, we feminists can always find common ground.

According to feminism a woman is equal to her husband. I realize some men may have a problem with this notion but, fortunately, I didn't marry a man with such issues. I married a man who doesn't want me to shrink myself down so he can puff himself up. We build up each other.

In my marriage, my husband and I are partners. We make decisions and plans together. We respect each others' gifts and goals.  We support one another always. And our marriage and our lives are better for it. I could not be the strong and supportive partner that my husband needs, wants, and deserves if I didn't view myself as his equal, if I didn't view myself as a full and complete person worthy of freedom of love.

As British suffragist and journalist Rebecca West famously said, "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

As a Christian, I know that the implication that we women are not, in fact, people -- the implication that the wife is somehow beneath the husband --  is loudest, unfortunately, in the church. Men and women alike love to trot out Bible verses about women being submissive to their husbands and the need for women to basically sit down and shut up. People who use (abuse?) these verses tend to ignore the cultural context of these verses and, in some cases, even ignore the other verses that follow.

Yes, Ephesians 5:22 says "wives submit to your husbands," but just a few lines down in verse 25 the Scripture reads, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." When you put these verses together they do not produce an image of a tyrannical husband lording over his weak doormat of a wife. These verses paint a beautiful picture of two people -- both created in the image of God -- living a life of love and mutual submission.

I put my husband's needs before my own. My husband puts my needs before his. And God is the spiritual head of our household. Our relationship isn't perfect. Sometimes we get selfish, mess up, and step on each other's toes. And then we forgive, forget, and keep dancing through life, hand in hand.

When reading Sarah Bessey's book Jesus Feminist I was brought to tears as she described her feelings for her husband because her words perfectly described my feelings for the magnificent man in my life:

I trust my husband completely -- with every bit of our life and with myself. My trust is not because I must, not because I believe God commands me to submit without question to his leadership because I am easily deceived or weak. I submit because I am walking in the Way of Jesus. As a man of God, [my husband] serves me, too. 

Men, don't you want your wives writing words of such beauty and grace about you? Or do you want your woman to simply shrug her shoulders and say, "Well, I just let the man be the man."

My hope is that one day conversations about feminism and marriage would not focus on who's in charge and instead shift to a discussion of how a husband and wife can uplift each other and use their talents and strengths for the benefit of their relationship, their family and the world around them.

Bessey, of course, explains this best when she writes:

If a woman is held back, minimized, pushed down, or downplayed, she is not walking in the fullness God intended for her as his image bearer… If we minimize our gifts, hush our voice, and stay small in a misguided attempt to fit a weak and culturally conditioned standard of femininity, we cannot give our brothers the partner they require in God's mission for the world. 

What are your thoughts on feminism and marriage? 

Ani DiFranco

“We need to stop turning people into icons” – that’s a statement a friend of mine made on Facebook recently with regard to the outrage and disbelief experienced by many Ani DiFranco fans after the feminist folk singer announced that she’d be hosting her upcoming feminist songwriting retreat in Louisiana on the grounds of what was once a cotton plantation.

DiFranco has since canceled the retreat.

My friend didn’t elaborate much on her statement about icons, but her words reminded me of the importance of not elevating a person to an idol-like status.  Humans are imperfect. They will screw up and when they do you could become disillusioned with everything they represent.  This happens in churches all the time when parishioners begin to idolize their pastors. The pastor cheats on his wife and then young members of the congregation turn their backs on Christianity.

I am a huge Ani DiFranco fan. She's even part of the inspiration for the name of this blog. I started calling myself “Writeous Babe” not only as a play on the old phrase “That’s one righteous babe” but also as a nod to DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. Ani’s lyrics have helped me define my feminism. But I can honestly say I've never elevated her to any sort of idol status. I disagree with her on plenty of issues ranging from makeup to religion. But I've mastered the art of being able to accept and even admire something or someone in spite of disagreements. I had to -- I'm a black liberal Christian feminist who lives in (and loves) the South. 

Nonetheless, I was one of those people disappointed by Ani. I initially gave her the benefit of doubt. I live in the South and I know that down here it's pretty difficult to find a building that wasn't built on the backs of black folks. Also, I've visited plantations as a teenager and the groups with which I took these trips managed to transform the visits into an opportunity to honor the slaves who had once lived there. We did research on the black people who worked those very grounds and paid homage to them. I remember one moment standing in silence in a wooded area surrounding a plantation and thinking about how terrifying it would be to run away into the unknown and how brave the men and women who did that had to have been. These experiences brought me to tears and made me appreciate my freedom in a way that no history class ever could. 

Unfortunately, Ani's released statement revealed that there were no formal plans to acknowledge the history of Nottoway Plantation. She just hoped the conversations would "emerge organically."

So, yes, as an Ani fan, I am very disappointed. But I'm not disillusioned with feminism because while I admire Ani she's not my feminist icon. 

Thinking about this I began to wonder -- do I have a feminist icon? 

I realized I do not. At least not yet. 

I'm currently in the process of making Jesus my feminist icon. Let me explain. 

I’ve identified as a Christian nearly all my life and for the past decade I’ve identified as a feminist as well. And for the past ten years reconciling these two parts of myself has been a constant struggle. And I’m tired. Sarah Bessey, author of the book Jesus Feminist, says Jesus made a feminist out of her. I can make no such claims, but I wish I could. No longer do I want to be a feminist in spite of my Christianity, I want to be a feminist because of my faith.

I said that Ani was part of the inspiration for the name of this blog. But I also decided to play on the word righteous because of the dictionary definition of the term – “morally good; following religious or moral laws.”

I don’t just want to be “writeous,” I want to be righteous too. I want my actions and my words to be pleasing in God’s sight.

I want to be a Jesus feminist.

No, we shouldn’t make people our icons because they will mess up. But we can put our trust in God.

And if you’re not sure why Jesus should be a feminist icon, I leave you with these words by Dorothy Day:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man – there has never been another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronies; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.

Sarah Bessey

I have a new girl crush, y'all.

Meet Sarah Bessey. She's the author of the new book Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women. The book is all about the process of reconciling one's Christian faith with feminist ideals -- something I've wrestled with for a decade since I started identifying as a feminist in my early 20s. 







I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but you can be sure this is how I'll be spending most of my weekend. 

So how am I crushing so hard on this Jesus Feminist when I haven't even read her book? Well, it's all thanks to Bessey's interview with The Hairpin. In her interview she had this to say: 

For me, I was in my early 20s when I began to self-identify as a feminist. I loved having women pastors, seeing women on church boards, seeing women pursuing any life they wanted. So it became a natural thing for me to say I'm a feminist. But then, in the church, when I said it, people would be surprised, and ask these questions—“Do you not want to be a wife and a mom? Do you hate men?”—and they’d ask me what “kind” of feminist I was. I just sort of cheekily started saying that I was a Jesus feminist, a feminist because I love Jesus. It's from my faith that I treat people with equal value, not the other way around.

Amen! 

So if you're wondering how to be a Jesus Feminist or wondering how a woman can be both Christian and feminist, I believe Bessey has summed it up quite nicely and flipped the question: How you can a woman be Christian and not be a feminist? Jesus teaches us to treat people with equal value and that's what feminism, at its core, is all about. Period. 

And this notion of equality applies to marriage too. In the interview Bessey remarked:

With marriage, of course, everyone does it differently, and finds what works for them. But we believe in something called mutual submission, where we submit to each other, and Jesus is the head of our household. 

That statement by Bessey made me want to cry and do a praise dance and kiss my sweet husband who yesterday wrote an article for AL.com about our "nontraditional" marriage, a marriage in which my goals and dreams are just as important as his, a marriage in which I'm not considered a bad wife because I don't have dinner waiting for him as soon as he walks in from work.

So I'm thinking of doing something crazy. I'm thinking of coming out as a Jesus Feminist at church. If you read this blog regularly or know me IRL you're probably well aware that my feminism practically oozing from my pores. But my feminism isn't something I talk about much around my church community, especially since feminists had been criticized in sermons on more than one occasion.

But I have this idea: Next year I want to lead a church-based small group for women during which we will read and discuss Bessey's book. I'll need to read the book before deciding if this is something I really want to do, but leading a Christian feminist small group would be a dream come true!


Are you a Jesus Feminist?