In the beginning, it’s Easter Sunday, and I’m sitting ankles-crossed in the pews with my new boyfriend. He grew up on homeschool Bibles and Walmart parking lot sermons, and the last time I prayed in earnest was for a parking spot in Chesapeake. By comparison, the arches, the choir, and the linen tablecloths are lovely.
And I wait for the catch. For the reverend, mid-Genesis 3:16, to point at me and ask, “Who’s the Jezebel in the cheap sundress?” For the congregation to attack, yelling lipstick! She’s wearing lipstick! Burn the witch! That would be dirty misogyny, and a clean victory. They’d be so wrong to misjudge me. (Or, they’d be so right, and I’d quit trying to be the prettiest girl at Sunday morning mass.) The relief never comes.
Instead, the friction is subtle. Margaret, Helen, Linda, and Father John are delighted to welcome my strapping young boyfriend, who towers over them. It’s not The Second Coming, but it’s good enough. And I get it. It’s hot when he asks questions about penance in that low voice of his.
I stick my hand out to introduce myself. The best I get is a sideways glance and, “Oh, remember when we could wear heels like that?”
My plain black, 3-inch pumps. Oh no, they think you look like a stripper. And it’s clearly not meant as a compliment.
I shift tactics. I compliment Father John on the sermon. We stand eye-to-eye. My winning grin, his blank stare. I wonder if the Buddha would care. We move on.
The cognitive dissonance follows me for many Sunday mornings. Why on earth do I, a perfectly self-posessed woman, keep subjecting myself to not quite fitting in? Trying to find God, sure. I’ve heard good things about him.
But I’m a feminist… I think. I’m a New England girl. I take up space. I wasn’t raised religious— I grew up believing that, whatever I was, it was the opposite of the Good Christian Girl. God was just another one of the men that the Pussycat Dolls taught me I don’t need. But here I am now, every Sunday morning, fumbling between the Book of Common Prayer and the hymns, watching the other women for my cue to kneel, to sing, to fall silent.
Over the weekends, I adapt. I trade my heels for my white sneakers, I don a soft cardigan, and I finally memorize the Our Father. Confession— this is a costume, not a conversion. Confession— I wear it well. I like the nods of approval better than the squints of confusion.
Confession— feminism was, to me, the consolation prize I accepted as a young, slightly ugly, very neurodivergent little girl. Feminism was all the power I had, compared to the other girls on the playground. If I were messy, loud, smart, shameless, feminist— I didn’t have to be liked. I didn’t need to be chosen by the pretty girls, the girls who got it, the girls looking like the ones in the pews in front of me now. I grew up thinking they didn’t need feminism like I needed feminism. They had the rulebook. They had each other. They had the church. They had God.
I thought I had God, too, but I knew our Gods weren’t the same. Mine meets me in the light pouring through forest canopies, in the roar of city nightlife. The God in church, the God who is all-loving and all-wrathful, the God who wants me less for my stubbornness and more for my submission… I don’t know how to reconcile with that. Nor the weapon God has been turned into— the justification for making women into pure, modest mothers; for turning away immigrants; for killing trans kids. All in the name of sanctity. This couldn’t possibly be the God I’ve been ditching my heels for.
But the women in these pews don’t come to church to sacrifice their ideals and dignity on the altar. Church, this existentially claustrophobic thing for me, works for them. They find God here in ways I don’t. They find peace. They move into the world with love and service. Hell, they’re probably better feminists than me. I have to actively fight my internalized misogyny about these women who are better at church than I am. Only occasionally do I feel the urge to lead a women-only Christian nature hike and lift the veil, to say don’t you see there’s so much more out there than what the church has taught you? until they all become born-again agnostics and join their local CPUSA chapters.
So, again—why do I keep coming back? To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out. I come on Sundays; I let myself concede, rebel, fail, and question. In no small part, though, it’s because I still feel for God and for the congregation at coffee hour like I felt for the girls on the playground when I was eight: I would like to love you. I would like to belong in your life. Please let me.
I often wonder whether God thinks the same of me. We can’t quite make heads or tails of each other, it seems.
I ask God daily how I can hold feminism and faith in my hands at once. If he knows, he has yet to say.
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