Feminism and the Warrior Christ
by David A. Yeagley
Originally published at FrontPageMagazine.com | July 3, 2001
Are women holier than men? Ask someone involved in a Christian Women’s Ministry, and she might just say, "Yes!" Through such ministries, feminism and leftwing theology have made unexpected inroads into the conservative Christian heartland.
I recently found myself at a women’s ministries seminar, where I had been invited to play the piano.
The main speaker was Carla Baker, a southwest regional leader for this particular Christian women's organization. She spoke on women and their natural tendency of low self-esteem, their conscious dependencies, and their deep feelings of helplessness. But women’s weaknesses are really Christian virtues, she said. Only those who are humble are in a position to approach God. Only those who are desperate, on the last edge, can expect to be received by Him.
So far, it sounded like conventional Christian theology, not so different from what I had learned as a graduate divinity student at Yale. But then it took a strange twist.
Carla went on to imply that women have a special "in" with God, because they are naturally the "weaker vessel" of the human race. Because women must be protected, nurtured, and provided for, their whole disposition is much more suited to the religious experience, particularly the Christian experience.
In short, women are holier than men.
I listened to all of this sitting in the front pew, the only man in the church. Carla’s eyes roamed this way and that around the room, never seeming to alight on mine. I had a feeling she was uncomfortable about my being there.
My thoughts took me back to Yale, and the "Liberation Theology" that was pushed there by some professors. Letti Russell of Yale Divinity had promoted the so-called "Theology of Revolution" movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Ultimately, it served as the inspiration for real-life revolutions throughout Latin America.
The poor were made to feel that God was on their side in their efforts to rise up and make war on those who were not poor. Weakness and victimhood became the ultimate badge of divine favor – even a license to kill in the name of God.
It was strange to whiff the ominous scent of Liberation Theology among these conservative Christian women. But there it was, unmistakably. The glorification of the victim.
My Comanche people – like most Indians – always had an ambiguous relationship with Christianity. The evangelist will tell you to pity Jesus, to feel sorry for this poor, broken man whom our sins have caused to suffer.
When Indians were introduced to Christ on the cross, they saw Him differently. They saw Him as a great warrior, a man who could endure pain and torture, like the Plains warriors who tested their manhood in rituals of self-mutilation.
Those early Indian converts admired Jesus for His strength and self-control. They saw Him as the Supreme Warrior.
My mother, an old Comanche woman, never indulged in the women’s ministries theology, though she is a Christian. I’ve never known her to be self-pitying. I’ve never known any Indian woman to manifest this disposition. My mother is a warrior, from a race of warriors.
Of course, she’s also from a past generation, where virtually everyone seemed to have strength of character beyond what is comprehensible today. Divorce was rare. Many never remarried after losing their spouses, but lived the rest of their lives alone.
Marriage meant something back then.
To the feminists, adultery is a red badge of courage, a sign of woman’s liberation. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne is portrayed as a feminist heroine in the latest Hollywood version of The Scarlet Letter.
Yet Hawthorne’s original 1850 novel carried an opposite message. It was devoid of forgiveness for Hester. When all was said and done, Hester had nothing left but the strength to endure.
Speaking of Hester’s final lonely years, Hawthorne said many people came to her seeking counsel and solace, especially women. "In the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion, or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought," they came to Hester for understanding of their misery.
Hester prophesied that one day a beautiful, pure woman, made wise not through grief but through joy, would teach how sacred love should bring happiness. It was through virtue, not sin, that woman would find liberation.
My Christ is not an exhorter of class warfare and adultery, like the feminized Christ of modern theology. He is a warrior, stern and fearless, who calls us to be warriors like him.
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