Not your mother’s feminist
January 9, 2010
Both before and since I’ve had children, few things have driven me as crazy as the debate over “motherhood VS. work.” Seems that our polarized nation of Democrat/Republican, stay at home/work outside the home, feminist/NOTfeminist language forces us too often in one camp or the other. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt alone on one side of the discussion around women’s roles.
Post college, I could not get enough Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe, not because I agreed with everything they preached in their new wave of feminism, but because they were talking a language that was relevant to my generation. They had a refreshing honesty about female independence. Yet it seemed completely devoid of any faith perspective.
Then I met Lilian Calles Barger. Not only did she bridge the world of intellectual feminism and faith together for me, but she refused to be trapped into all the big church-based questions that so many in my world got stuck on — “Can women lead in the church?”, “What is their proper ”role’?, etc. She rightly pointed out that so many in the faith community are navel gasing and talking amongst themselves — yet have nothing to offer to the broader academic community when it comes to feminism and its tenants. She dared to ask, “Why would (or should) we recommend wholesale rejection of feminist ideals without engaging thoughtful feminist academics on the basis of ideas?”
It’s Lilian who’s worked tirelessly to create a third way of feminism and faith discussion that avoids preaching, platitudes, and easy answers. Classic Lilian….in one of her blog entries from the summer:
“ Why can’t we get beyond this dicotomy between motherhood and work? Women, like men, have been created for two God given purposes, relationships and creative work. They are NOT mutually exclusive.”
Since she founded the Damaris Project in 1997, she has launched salons across the country to create forums for open, honest discussion about culture and feminism. Lilian has also gone on to write books on our view of the body and the role or experience of Christian feminism. I love her unending quest for Truth.
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