Confessions of a Christian Feminist

Like many Americans, I become emotional and especially religious around Easter. I can’t help but reflect on my complicated beliefs as a Christian feminist. Inspired by my new blogging friend Betsy, these are my beliefs.

The Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse

I believe in a Greater Being, an Ultimate Creator, who I call God, and for whom I use feminine pronouns.

I believe this Greater Being is so great as to surpassgender—a human and thus limiting concept—and as a Greater Being beyond gender, both masculine and feminine pronouns are appropriate.

I believe we’re all worshipping the same God, just with different names.

I believe that God created* men and women to be equals, to be partners. I believe that patriarchy is a result of sin.

I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe Jesus was a man because no one would have listened to a woman proclaiming she was the Daughter of God.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I believe in His resurrection.

I believe that accepting Christ and His sacrifice on the cross is the best path to eternal life, but not necessarily the only one.

I believe in a God of love. I believe in loving my neighbor** as myself.

I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, but humanly flawed. I only accept biblical interpretations that promote love and equality, not hate or subjugation.

Today is Easter, and many of us are updating our facebook statuses and tweeting, “He is risen!” 

Today we celebrate the resurrection. 

Today I played a video of Collin Raye’s song, “What if Jesus Comes Back Like That?” for my atheist boyfriend. I know we’re incapable of godly love, but we can do a lot better with our humanly love.

Today I challenge you not only to celebrate God’s love for you, but to celebrate God’s love for all of us. Jesus didn’t die on the cross for only the good, or the wealthy, or the beautiful, or the smart people.

Jesus died for all of us, because we are all sinners.

All of us.

Thus we should spend less time judging, less time condemning, and more time forgiving, more time accepting.

If we all focused on loving our neighbors, and truly treating others as we want to be treated, just think of how beautiful our world would be.

*So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 NSRV.

** “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22:36-39 NSRV.

How I'm "Finding My Virginity"

Confession: My blog is no longer “Confessions of a Virgin.” Not because Beau and I have had coitus—we’re still unwedded, and thus unbedded, in at least once sense of the word. Nor did I change my blog title because I want my writing to be less confessional and more typical.

I am constantly evolving as a person—as a Christian, as a feminist, as a bibliophile, as a girlfriend, as a writer. My blog thus evolves with me. I started by writing mostly about virginity. I expanded a bit to include stories of online dating. I added feminist issues. I started writing book reviews. The central focus of my blog is still virginity, but writing about all these other topics provides context to my own virginity.

From when I was a debutante. Photographer information available upon request.

Virginity is a social construct. I’m aware of that. As a social construct, virginity is tied into sexual purity which is an arbitrary measure of goodness which conservative societies regularly use to control women while enforcing heternormative beliefs. But healthy conversations about virginity can be had, and even a Christian/other religious approach to virginity can be healthy, depending on how we discuss it.

To an extent, the Christian ideals from my childhood and adolescence shape some of my ideas on my own virginity. When my mom gave me “the talk,” she included the Christian perspective of saving sex for marriage. The Christian organization I attended all four years of undergrad—and served in the leadership group my sophomore and junior years—gave sermon series on dating, relationships, sex, and marriage every three years (so autumn of my freshman and senior years). Considering how conservative most of the members were, and the parent Protestant denomination, the sermons themselves were fairly relatable and borderline-egalitarian.

But I also took “Feminist Biblical Interpretation” my senior year, and my senior seminar for my history major was “History on the Margins,” which looked at marginalized peoples during Early Modern Europe. Both of these classes provided a wealth of historical and cultural context to the ideals of virginity until marriage.

Add that to my personal examination of how I feel about sex, all of it. I have literally been questioning my personal beliefs—how I would treat sex in my own life, not how I feel about other people’s choices—for about ten years now. For a very long time my evolving thoughts were theoretical, because I had yet to meet a man with whom I even desired to have sex. Obviously the theoretical became the practical when I met Beau.

I’ve been blogging for a year and a half now, during which I’ve enjoyed a variety of non-coital activities with Beau. That said, I started this blog the day after our first date, after spending months thinking about sharing my “virginal” experiences in some sort of anonymous fashion. Some of my decisions on what I can and cannot do in bed before marriage have changed during the course of our relationship. This doesn’t make me a hypocrite—this makes me human.

I’ve seen the phrase “choices aren’t made in a vacuum” oft-repeated in online feminist discussions. I’m not afraid or ashamed to admit that my desire to wait until marriage to experience coitus with my husband is largely influenced by my religious upbringing. I can make this decision for myself without believing that premarital sexual activity is a sin.

I’m also aware that by calling myself a virgin, I’m partly accepting virginity as a real thing, beyond a social construct. And by drawing the line at coitus,* which can technically only happen between a man and a woman, I’m perpetuating heteronormative beliefs, even though I’m a bisexual woman.

I acknowledge this has been a long-ish and convoluted blog post. It mirrors my journey of discovering what sex and virginity mean in my own life. My journey has been (and continues to be) how I find my virginity.

Hence my new blog title.

This is me, Belle Vierge, 

the demi-vierge,  

Finding My Virginity.

*Beau pointed out that we’ve also drawn the line at anal sex, but it’s not a line we ever intend to cross. TOTALLY fine for other couples if both parties are enthusiastic about the idea, but I have Crohn’s Disease. That part of my body will forever be associated with all Crohnie activities.