In the closing of his sweeping book on the influence of Christianity on Western culture, Tom Holland writes:
I have written much in this book about churches, and monasteries, and universities; but these were never where the mass of Christian people were most influentially shaped. It was always in the home that children were likeliest to absorb the revolutionary teachings that, over the course of two thousand years, have come to be so taken for granted as almost to seem human nature. The Christian revolution was wrought above all at the knees of women. (Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, 535).
I write this essay near the anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s death. Like Tom Holland’s godmother, she “saw in the succession of one generation by another something more than merely the way of all the earth” (Dominion, 535). As discussed in a series of essays on Covenant focused on “pro-natalism,” the sexual revolution and feminism have gone hand in hand. Most people see many of the outcomes of feminism as a good thing, as I and many other women enjoy its benefits. As Tom Holland argues, feminism is indebted to Christianity. I must wonder if the way we have championed women’s rights in the church, influenced by both the sexual revolution and feminism, opposes pro-natalism and the status of women and children that Christianity originally afforded them (see Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity). By some measure, we too have been duped by the cultural feminist and sexual narratives that, contrary to what we have been led to believe, have not turned out well for women (see Louis Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution).
Feminism has given much to Christianity. It has brought to light the significant contributions of women to the church, including those Christian traditions that have come to ordain women to pastoral leadership. Marion Taylor has written much on this topic. When considering pro-natalism, however, it cannot be considered apart from women’s bodies and their God-given ability to give birth (even converts are born of women). When the feminist movement first began, it tried to persuade pagan society to value women’s bodies and work as equal to men’s. This was a hard sell, and the results were mixed. The way the church has adopted the culture’s sexual ethic has inadvertently, if not covertly, contributed to a diminishing of the value of women’s bodies and their God-given ability to give birth and offer care, nurture, and discipleship in the home and the church. Catherine Sider-Hamilton’s essay in the series makes the case. In other words, the uncritical adoption of the wider non-Christian secular culture’s sexual ethic has resulted in devaluing childbearing, childrearing, and the spheres in which these occur.
This shift has been gradual and not always obvious, which is why we might not recognize it. One of the ways we see this is in the shift of women’s status from childbearing and the home to that of the working professional. The career-first mentality of the feminist movement is now taken for granted. Staying at home with one’s children is becoming increasingly desired among Western women, but is either unaffordable or not worth the stigma. One might consider an essay in The Guardian. (“I want to be a stay-at-home-mum, and feel angry society won’t let me” September 20. 2-24). Feminism was not the first movement to disrupt family life. The privatization of the domestic sphere in the wake of the Industrial Revolution first removed fathers and then, eventually, mothers from the home (see Nancy R. Pearcey, The Toxic War on Masculinity).
One area in which the shift from domestic to the “professional sphere” has had a profound effect is women’s spaces in the church. At one time in the church’s life, one could enjoy influence and status as a woman by being part of a guild or women’s group in which church traditions and faith were passed along between generations. Today, the days of Anglican Church Women and Mothers’ Unions are well behind us in the West, in part, I believe, due to feminism. We see this in two ways.
First, fewer women in the home means fewer disciples to prop up these organizations and their causes. It also bears mentioning that as two-income households become a Western necessity, there are fewer women from middle- to upper-income backgrounds with free time to devote to the church.
Second, the advent of women’s ordination had a distinct effect on the perception of gendered spaces, including women’s organizations. Influenced just as much by the culture as theology, women could now do the work as members of the ordained, a traditionally masculine class, with status. The status of women has transferred to the “working professional” sphere and increasingly away from other women’s spaces. This is especially evident in child-adjacent spheres such as the home and Sunday school.
Already perceived in most denominations as an entry-level church job (a disturbing proposition for many reasons), women’s ordination only put teaching children further down the cultural hierarchy. Women’s activity and the domain in which it occurs remain higher in the hierarchy of status through the “cult of the professional,” in which everything in society has to be done by, if not in consultation with, an expert. From mental health to parenting to teaching the faith, this has resulted in parents, especially mothers, believing that they are not capable of the very task for which they were created (see Abigail Shrier, Bad Therapy). This only further diminishes women and women’s spaces.
Churches, following along with the sexual and feminist cultural narrative, have continued to devalue women’s bodies and their natural abilities and instinct to bear and raise children and the spheres in which these God-given tasks take place. Regarding my tradition, the Anglican Church of Canada, one wonders if we can even have a meaningful conversation about pro-natalism when the goals of feminism and the culture’s sexual narrative render childbirth and childbearing contrary to their objectives and goals. Can we have our cake and eat it too?
I was raised in an evangelical denomination. When I was single, my grandmother, whose sainthood I spoke of earlier, would often ask me when I was going to start “real life.” “Real life” meant getting married and having kids. The idolatry of the family in more conservative Christian circles is certainly real and deeply problematic. The equation of “real life” and “adulthood” not with maturity, responsibility within church and society, meaningful work, academic achievement, or even merely age, but rather with procreation is not exactly helpful.
However, to deny procreation its place in the God-given order of creation is even more disturbing. As I look at the direction of the Anglican Church of Canada, I think my grandmother was not entirely wrong. The growth of any church is the work of God and not any one woman, yet I believe we need to assign marriage, childbearing, and childrearing the blessed status they once held in the church. Such a status should be equal to that of working and professional women like Lydia, who are patrons of the gospel in different ways. The church must find ways to foster a culture in our congregations and our societies in which both these realities are “real life”—even abundant life. They do not have to be an either/or, but rather can be a both/and.
The Rev. Sarah Holmstrom is a Guest Writer. A priest in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, she studied at Toronto School of Theology and Wycliffe College, Toronto.
