Or Punching The Air Whilst Reading Talking Back to Purity Culture... (I Blame Roy Williams)
As Delroy says in Death of England – he’s speaking about how he feels, what he knows. Not saying any of this to offend or get anyone, just this book has stirred up and caused me to reflect on my experiences and well everyone should read it... It’s such a bigger book than the title – really well written and academic, and really about what it means to be a Christian man and a Christian woman. It's so powerful we're living in a sexually saturated culture in which women are things and men are monsters; to be truly counter-cultural we need to start operating as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, relating to each other as image bearers, fully human beings...
I don’t think I really know what it means to be a Christian woman. I don’t think I’ve ever been taught anything per se. I think most of the gender/relationship teaching has either gone to married couples, students or 20 somethings – I’ve always missed out by virtue of being unmarried, the wrong age or part-time student, (mature) and not qualifying as a true student! I was a socialist feminist when I became a Christian in my 20s, my dad was a violent alcoholic and very unkind to my Mum, tho they did love each other in a co-dependent, quite unhealthy way and outwardly we presented Middle Class and that everything was fine. I had a lot to learn and a lot to unlearn and well, I’m still learning; there’s been a lot of hurt, anger and muddle to work through. What I have learnt has been quite scrappy and makes me scratch my head when I look at the Bible and then I look at culture, particularly Christian culture. I've struggled to fit in to see where I belong, if there even is a place to fit in and it's led to a lot of unhealthy comparing with others, jealousy and bitterness on occasions,
I’ve experienced the Billy Graham rule – tho no-one explained it to me, it just happened. I still don’t think I really know what this means and I struggle because it seems to be so culturally inherent for so many that it doesn't need explaining. It made me feel discriminated against and that the leader in question preferred the company of married men and men generally to unmarried women. I felt discriminated against for things I couldn’t change, short of drastic plastic surgery. I’ve been in places where women seem to be divided into the datable and the marriageable and the ugly, the undesirable, the unmarriageable; where the married get asked to serve automatically and the unmarried have to push their way in or aren't seen.
Some friends’ husbands have well-meaningly, and maybe even jokingly (but it's hit me hard) told me *fact* that I like to wear the trousers or be in control or dominant, or hinted that they don’t want to be around me if it’s just myself, them and their wife. I’ve struggled because on one hand, I’ve felt like a Christian minger – undesirable and un-datable and on the other hand some kind of incendiary temptress, an exploded dangerous bomb about to go off. And yet I’m just myself – I’ve tried really hard to respect my friends' marriages and well any marriages; when co-leading a group with a married man to always bring his wife into the conversation and remind people that she exists, to be a sister not a slut. As a woman with a chest and curves, I’ve struggled with body image – the Christian ideal seems to be super slim, flat chest, Rapunzel hair, floral, not really saying much, very serious; I’ve struggled with cat calls from building sites, white vans and random men on the street (generally when I’m completely covered up which has added to the indignity of it all). Yet I’m not an oppressed, persecuted MeToo-er, I haven’t experienced some of the horrors that other sisters have; I’m not perfect, I’ve behaved badly at times and not well at others; I need to watch my tongue and my words big time, and I've had to work out where boundaries are, what healthy friendships and relationships look like, what is flirty and playful and what is too much, what is friendliness from guys and what is stalking; who to hug and who to handshake, and who to not be tactile with at all. For a while I must admit I kind of stopped trying because it felt so difficult, almost impossible to talk to Christian guys at all. (COVID has removed so many of these dilemmas!) Finally, I am happy to ignore my bros well-meaning comments and say yes I am Beyonce – loud and proud – I’m not who you think I am, but I am a strong woman who’s had to be independent cos otherwise who is going to drop the dollars for me and pay the bills and cause me to eat? (Or in my case, pounds sterling?) I’m conscious that in my forties I’ve experienced a lot of bullying behaviour in my 20s and 30s from forty something female bosses, I don’t want to be that woman doing that to other women, especially younger women. As a strong feisty woman with a brain and lots of #IMHO, I need to be careful about how I present myself and the platforms and influence I use; sadly I’ve also been left to fight my own battles and work it out for myself, whether with a male housemate verging on sexual harassment or how to be a woman in the Church, when people feel able to step in and dump labels on me (unasked!) unhelpful comments unwanted attention and social/cultural invisibility – the lack of women’s teaching disturbs me, as does the menopause being more a joke than something that is discussed. The church/Christianity being female-centric or lacking peers my age doesn’t help – I can’t be the new Sam Allberry, but I can be me – Beyonce but with bigger, sparkly costumes! I’m grateful for the many brothers, the positive and kind male friends, my first boyfriend and now best friend, in my life who are restoring the male image to me, modelling much healthier ways to relate and be, and that I need to fight and replace the critical Father voice I still carry around with me. I also like fashion and I feel pushed into being frumpy; now I think I need to work on self-care more as I have not always made the best of myself, partly from these conflicting viewpoints and lack of teaching and guidance. I’ve struggled with make-up and fashion culture, partly because I didn’t want to be vain, partly because I felt ugly and partly because of lack of female guidance and examples in my life – my Mum didn’t really and kind of left me to get on with it and bring myself up; I was a mini adult in my family far too early. I’ve struggled to find female Christian role models to emulate and am grateful for the women who have imputed into my life.
In my 20s and 30s I fought through sexism, now ageism, the non-existence of women over 35 in mainstream UK churches (unless you're married with kids or in a defined ministry role - looking forward tho to 60 when I automatically become 'wise') and very narrow views of life are thrown into the mix - not to mention where are the dating seminars for those over 40 if society is really as battered and broken as pulpits make it out to be? I am grateful for churches and Christians who haven’t done this though, for those who saw me as a daughter, a sister, a friend...I was saved at around 20 so missed out on the purity culture movement – I have encountered dribs and drabs of it, mostly through what to wear/what not to wear; more and more I think this is cultural and a huge grey area, that we turn legalistic., out of good intentions and motivations. I also think much of mainstream church is stuck in the 20th century - I recently heard a pastor say that a man and a woman shouldn't be in a room together late at night because temptation...! No context was given such as dating or intimacy, just male and female watching a film - really?!!! Having read the Aimee Byrd Why Can't We Be Friends book too, the way to fight lust is to be family and friends - to stop objectifying and obstacling each other and making opposite genders so other that we can't relate unless we're dating/married....It's also about untangling personality and gender so that we have a wider range of expressions of what it means to be emotionally male or female within the Church, while still being recognisably embodied and gendered.
Yes to the invisibility of the unmarried and to being so much more than our status/role. I struggle because I don't have the luxury of easy mixer Bible studies or organised social events - I'm lumped together by age with married people with multiple kids and told to get on with it, and like it! It's hard as an unmarried forty something woman to be seen for who I am; it's like all Christians want to see is my job, what I do, my status, and not go any deeper to what I'm about or interested in. I reject the labels coming from the front about being old/mature/senior/a finished, perfected product ready for retirement and death! I don't know why, I think it's easier as an unmarried man to be seen and noticed in the church and taken into families; I've more been left to get on with it. It's also being a walking status - it's like you're an unmarried forty something woman (worst of all being described as a 30-40s singles niche by a pastor when I challenged how isolated I was within the church), and that's it - there's no assumption that it will or could change, no help to help it change or help to deal with it if it doesn't, or interest in me as a person beyond a job. Even house groups for the over 35's sound naff with the promise of 'support; whatever that means rather than Bible study, meals and mixing! I know church isn't a social club, but for 18s-30s, it really is and forcibly encouraged to be so. I've had to mostly stop talking to my married friends about how I feel - partly once their kids get to school age, it just seems to be harder to meet even though I'm self-employed so I have flexibility; partly because marrieds only seem to know marrieds or try to thrust some crazy needy guy on me cos clearly I want to be someone's carer, mother or both, and if I object, told how fussy I am, which kind of reinforces that they see me as the ugly friend and not worth very much, and clearly they were not fussy at all in their choices! The whole be grateful I found you a living Christian man with a pulse is an attitude I find odd given how serious and sacred marriage is, and that they know about my dysfunctional family background, and I wonder if this is an effect of the purity culture - better to be married to any Christian at all than unmarried and waiting. Not being able to speak (or only in certain ways - singleness, lonely, alone (even horribly linked to suicide at times) and all the hidden unacknowledged ageism in the church has made me pull back from helping at summer/Bible camps (partly cos I don't really get what they're about; coming from a non Christian background they're out of my tradition and other churches I've been at didn't have such a push to going to this type of thing) and partly the feeling of being irrelevant/not fitting in and fear of unwanted pestering attention has made it easier to drop out of church than to go. I'm older and bolshier now, but also I hope becoming kinder and gentler, and I hope I can find places where 'older' and 'younger' (spiritually and situationally) women do minister to one another and talk to each other. I struggle to talk to female friends, partly because our life stages don't match up, neither does our busyness and rest, and partly cos I'm at a John Frame stage whilst they're in a Francine River stage! Again the push seems to be to disciple younger women or married women than every woman! Ditto ministry training. Long term I think the way ahead for me is to move to a bigger city and out of mainstream church...It saddens me how much many mainstream churches don't value men and women at all stages of their life, not just the stages that are promoted or fashionable - in a very UK way I've been so grateful for black and brown brothers and sisters and working class brothers and sisters who seem to be able to see me more as a person than a label and life stage...
Yes also to the unhelpful of waiting terminology - friends have observed that I always seem to be busy or happy with my singleness but what do they expect? I am wary of using FB as a counselling session, plus as you say we need to live our lives with gusto at every stage... It's harder to find people to do things with, and to have the easy fellowship that 20s-30s seem to be encouraged to have (even their own church FB group - I think, purely because I don't have children, I've not been included in my friends' childrens' birthday parties generally, maybe also my friends think as an unmarried I'm not interested in their lives - I love being an aunty. I've had to learn to do my own thing! I have also avoided big birthday celebrations where it seemed to be all couples because although I'm an extrovert - it's awkward. Yet it shouldn't be so. Wow also to having value and being seen now, rather than in what we do or achieve in the future.
It is also personally experiencing the loneliness or perhaps invisibility/perceived uselessness of the long term unmarried which grates. I find myself seen by my status, role or any number of labels - yet I am not a walking label, I am a human being, sinner and saint. This book highlights very much our need to see each other as fully embodied human beings not types. And this is more challenging and more vulnerable, more honest and more long lasting than perhaps much of what we currently do as fellowship and Church.
Yes also to the unhelpful waiting terminology - to needing better theology, to have a better all round theology of listening and waiting than giving out advice or needing to say something for the sake of saying something - we don't know why, let's acknowledge that....We gloss over what deserves to be mourned and we cannot sit comfortably in silence alongside the hurting...We don't need just to change the goalposts in terms of lifelong purity, who does it and what it looks like (purity and holiness are often confused by Christian culture), but rip down the goalposts and start again.
So much in here from rape culture and how we support and view those who experienced abuse or rape as well as the perpetrators in local and national church, even about sex itself. Seeing now that church which has felt so unsafe for me at so many points is and should be the safest place for me - not sure how we turn the culture around, but by God's grace and mercy, I hope we will...
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