Under-recognized for their participation in feminism, Christian women played an important role advocating for women’s rights between the 1970s and 1990s. While the Vatican opined on feminism’s “lethal effects” and Protestant churches debated the respectability of the feminist movement, many Christian women saw opportunity in the women’s rights crusade. These opportunities manifested in women’s fight for ordination, the creation of their own religious groups and organizations, and advocacy for women’s equality within the churches, marriages, and communities. Further, Christian feminists argued for the churches to embrace the feminine side of God to reinvigorate the faltering churches while also challenging the engrained gendered hierarchy of these male-dominated spaces. This presentation offers a close reading of newspapers, church papers, and materials from groups like the Women’s Inter-Church Council to argue that Christian women, rather than rejecting feminism as a radical affront to their faith, embraced feminism’s tenets of gender equality, recognition, and bonding. In doing so, they challenged the hierarchy of the church and the “naturalness” of Christian women’s subordination while embracing new meanings of Christian sisterhood. This research challenges notions of church life as oppressive while centering women’s advocacy.
Presenter: Dasha Guliak, University of Saskatchewan