Day 10: worldly women

It seems that each day I find myself writing abuot a different form of independence.
The one that comes to mind today is spiritual independence and freedom of thought.

Short Background Info: I wasn't raised very religious but went to a very Evangelical Christian high school. Since we hadn't been raised in the Evangelical/Republican tradition, my brother and I found ourselves on the outer fringe in a lot of class discussions. I rebelled then, and I rebel now.

One of the first papers I had to write in high school was an opinion piece to answer the question "Should a woman be able to be President?" I wasn't really sure how to write an entire paper on it without filling the page with "yes"es. The struggle that I faced in high schol to maintain my identity and independence as a young woman is one that comes up almost every day when I log onto facebook and see what the Evangelicals on my friends list are posting about.

Someone I went to high school with had a feeling from God during church one day while watching the pastor get ready. She wanted to be part of that world, so she informed us all that God wanted her to be a pastor's wife. Not a pastor. Though she would have made an excellend reverend, the culture she had grown up in simply did not allow that possibility. Why? Because she was missing a Y-chromosome.

Someone else I went to high school with was a victim of statutory rape. She, the victim, got in school suspension for it.

My busy life in Albany involved a lot of different music industry related hobbies: from being in a band to managing a band to booking shows and promoting bands, I loved the independent music industry. When I toured with an Evangelical choir one summer, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the sound boards so I attempted to be one of the volunteers to help the (male) director with all the cords and microphones. Apparently, electronics are a man's world, because only tenors and basses were chosen after I expressed an interest.

During Sunday school one week in high school, a family friend whose kids often rode to school with my brother and me was teaching. He expressed a point of view that I vehemently disagreed with. After I spoke my objections and debated with him for maybe fifteen minutes, backing everything with scripture that I knew from memory as every good Christian girl does, the man never made eye contact with me again. He likes his women to keep silence.

It hasn't at all been a struggle to break away from the Evangelical world, because I so disagree with almost all of its outward expressions of faith. The one that bothers me the most, though, beyond its politicizing of religion and vice versa, is its degradation of women. The reason it bothers me so much is because I still have so many friends who are still in that world who will never question their value as a human being because they've never known any different.

In that culture, feminine independence means lack of faith. The norm is to go to college (preferably Christian) where one may or may not get a degree which she will likely never use because her reason for going to college is not an education but to meet her husband. College is where we create our futures; for Evangelical men this means finding a career path in which to serve God, and for women it means finding an Evangelical man whose career path and serving God she can support by marrying him and making him babies. To break this norm is seen as an anomaly, and the woman is often seen as being less of a servant of God than her married, babymaking peers. Single women past the age of, what, 20? 21? are a hard nut to crack in Evangelical circles. Is she divorced? Sinner. Maybe she's a lesbian, which would be even worse. She wants to be a pastor?? HERESY!!

I see intelligent, promising, down to earth women falling prey to what can only be called mind control, to use a phrase I hate. I toured with and went to high school with so many women who could have contributed to the world as lawyers, doctors, counselors, ministers, or entrepreneurs. Instead -- and, please, make no mistake, I do not at all oppose the idea of housewifery as a valid life choice if in fact it is a choice that one makes for oneself -- they marry young and don't work, relying on their husbands to do everything for them. If anything were to happen to their husbands, do these women know how to take care of themselves? Do they have resumes to give potential employers?

I dont believe that everyone's life choices should mirror my own. I certainly don't believe that everyone should subscribe to my particular breed of faith mixed with cynicism. However, I do believe that everyone should get a chance to experience life. And I think everyone should get a chance to see what's out there before deciding that their career choice will be wife/mother. Granted, my sole ambition in life is to be a mother, so maybe I'm being hypocritical. But to be taught without being told outright tha tyour only use as an adult is to marry and make babies causes a few negative consequences.

First off, it, combined with the Augustine-sanctioned ban on premarital sex (although the Evangelicals swear it comes from misinterpreted scripture and don't even know who Augustine is), causes Evangelical women to marry much too soon and much too young. When your mindset is that the first nice Christian boy you meet will be your soulmate, you don't get a chance to see what else is out there. You might force yourself into an abusive relationship because you just don' tknow any different. And you certainly won't leave because you can't do anything else.

Second, and most important (i'm only going for two on this), it takes away our independence as women. It takes away what so many of our predecessors, whether they were Christian or not, fought tooth and nail to give us. India has had a female prime minister, as has England. Why not the United States? Because half the nation is Evangelical.

This is why, regardless of her political leanings, i say KUDOS TO SARAH PALIN. Regardless of how you feel about her politics, you have to admit that she did a great thing in coming into the limelight during the last presidential election, whether she realized it at the time or not. She gave Evangelical women someone in the public eye who shares their same values and has made more of herself than just being a housewife. I hope that she may be a catalyst for some of those women I mentioned to take a moment to be able to see themselves in the same light, as independent and capable of making their own decisions.

I know I have.


Supplemental Reading:

Katelyn Beatty's piece about women in the evangelical "faith"

Alisa Harris's reaction