Centering the Voices Our Government Is Trying to Silence

Hello dear readers,

Thank you for exploring the theme of Quaker Women with me this month and for your wonderful query responses.

The rights and safety of women and people with marginalized gender identities in the United States are in a precarious place. Women’s right to bodily autonomy was revoked with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, leaving a hodgepodge of inconsistent and ambiguous state laws in its place. Now under the new administration, transgender and nonbinary people are being targeted, with their very legal existence being erased by executive order. That’s why I felt it was critical to spend this month centering the voices of people our government is trying so hard to silence.

We started the month exploring Quaker women in history. We learned that there probably would be no Religious Society of Friends today without the spiritual gifts of Margaret Fell, that Quaker women were leaders in the struggle for women’s rights, and that they continue to be on the forefront of movements for social change today. We read about ways traits traditionally associated with femininity and motherhood enrich a spiritual community for all and that framing the Divine as genderless or feminine can make Christianity more accessible. We also heard from nonbinary Friends about ways we can make our meetings and churches safe places for everyone.

Tomorrow we will begin a month on the theme of Peace and Nonviolence, learning from great Quaker activists of the past and present. We will read about how the testimony was formed in the earliest days of Quakerism, how Friends have struggled with it, and personal journeys of Friends in wartime. I hope that stories of resistance and successful nonviolent activism will give us inspiration in these times.

In friendship,

Maeve Sutherland
Editor of the Daily Quaker Message

Reader Responses

How does patriarchy within the Bible and traditional Christianity affect your relationship to the Divine?

When I was in high school I was asked to take a leadership position in my local church. I was having difficulty because I remembered that the apostle Paul had said that women should not have a voice in the church. When I told my pastor that he looked at me and said "Oh Dorothy, if we had paid attention to that, there would be no church today. What would we do without women in the church?"

That made all the difference and I never again thought about the patriarchy as having a hold on me but that I was a child of God and as such I had as much right to be here and to do is anyone else. That was 65 years ago and I haven't stopped leading.

Dorothy G., Portland, ME, USA
The Australian Friends use the word Godde to include both masculine and feminine. Sounds the same as God but looks bigger.

Maggie Moon O., Black Mountain, NC, USA
In the 1990s I got into reading feminist theology. When I read that the Greek word "diakonos" was translated as "minister" for a man and "servant" for a woman, I got angry. I decided that if that is Christianity, it's not for me. But the New Testament scholar, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, pulled me back with her declaration that the Bible is our history, too. I began to discover the little noted agency of women in the Jesus movement. I was knocked over by the passage in Luke (8:1-3) about the women "who provided for Jesus and his disciples from their own resources." Wow! The women were financing the operation! Who knew?

I have come to allow space for those men and women who find comfort in masculine images like "God the Father" and "Lord" and "almighty." I find comfort in "God is like a mother bear" and "God is like a mother eagle" and the story of a woman who lost a coin and swept her house that follows right after the story of the lost sheep in Luke 15. We're in the story. We just have to look for the women and to celebrate what we see as just as valid as the masculine images.

Patricia M., Newtown, PA, USA
The image of God as father can help us recall loving acceptance or comforting guidance and wisdom. The same is true for mother or brother or sister. But what if these familial relationships are corrupted or strained?
All gendered relationships carry this burden if we apply them as figures or symbols of the divine. We could eliminate God as person but you would be left with a being without feeling or sympathy.

Fathers especially carry a great responsibility for modeling the love of God because so many religions present the deity as male. Will your ability to respond to God be tainted or enhanced by the kind of parent you were given by chance?

Kim David M., Boston, MA, USA
Masculine language no longer affects my relationship to the Divine - Hindu and Sikh languaging helped because they both have female names for some aspects of the Divine. What the masculine language continues to affect is my relationship to Christianity which seems largely impervious to any thought of admitting how limited to the dated social structures their ancient representations of the Divine are.

How about instead of talking ABOUT the Divine, we admit our confusion and ignorance, and limit ourselves to talking TO the Divine, in which case "YOU" is the only name we need!

Peggy D.-C., VA, USA
I am trying to connect to the Divine as feminine as well and yet feel that I am angering a male God when I do so.

Sandra Y., Ottawa, ON, Canada

This Week’s Messages

Mon Apr 21

The Holy Ghost Herself

“Suddenly she was there, the Holy Ghost herself, looking less like a soft breath than anything I have ever seen: a lightning flash of living love, she leaped straight to the center where she lit and spun in flaming red. Tall, with red hair and red shoes, a red and blue gown, every slim inch of her outlined in flame, I knew she had leapt straight from the heart of the sun, from God Himself, to pirouette before me. Every move was pure ecstasy.” …
Tue Apr 22

Where Did Christ Come From? From God and a Woman!

“‘Den dat little man in black dar, he say woman can’t have as much right as man ‘cause Christ wa’n’t a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?’ Rolling thunder could not have stilled that crowd as did those deep wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eyes of fire.” …
Wed Apr 23

The Annoying Masculinity of Religious Language

“There has been growing recognition that the religious language of the Judeo-Christian tradition is over-weighted with masculine symbolism. It took shape in an era of patriarchal domination, first in Hebraic and Jewish society, then in the Roman Empire. As women today become aware of their femininity as a major style of being human, they quite properly resent this. Male theologians have pointed out that masculine pronouns are used for God simply because some pronouns have to be used; the statement is annoying, if also reasonably correct.” …
Thu Apr 24

The Difficulty of Naming the Divine

“I’ve yet to find a term that describes how I feel about the divine. ‘The Spirit’ comes close, and so, sometimes, does ‘Goddess’. ‘G-d/ess’ attempts to convey the difficulty of naming the divine. The dash is an old Jewish practice meant to show the impossibility of confining the divine in a word. The single ‘d’ and feminine suffix are to show that I don’t experience the goddess as different from or inferior to what folks generally refer to as God.” …
Fri Apr 25

People Who Think That Women Have No Souls

“The notion that ‘God in every man’ applies equally to women stems from the earliest days of Quakerism. As early as 1646, George Fox wrote in his journal: ‘I came upon a sort of people who held that women have no souls, adding in a light manner, “no more than a goose.” But I reproved them, and told them that was not right; for Mary said, “my soul doth magnify the Lord.”‘ Not long after, he challenged a priest who would not permit a woman to speak in a church. ‘For the woman asking a question, he ought to have answered it, having given liberty for any to speak.'” …
Sat Apr 26

There Is So Much Yet to Be Done

“If I could live another century! I do so want to see the fruition of the work for women in the past century. There is so much yet to be done, I see so many things I would like to do and say, but I must leave it for the younger generation. We old fighters have prepared the way, and it is easier than it was fifty years ago when I first got into the harness. The young blood, fresh with enthusiasm and with all the enlightenment of the twentieth century, must carry on the work.” …

Banner image: Rebecca Hoenig

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Author

  • Maeve Sutherland

    Maeve Sutherland is a communications professional who never recovered from her wonderful childhood at a Quaker elementary school. She has spent her career helping nonprofits share their stories, from schools and universities, to museums, to radio stations. As a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Maeve spent a year living in “Peaceable Kingdoms,” pacifist intentional communities around the world, where she learned that everyone has a role to play in shaping a better world. She worked as a freelance social media manager before joining Thee Quaker Project. After returning to Quakerism as a young adult, Maeve now attends Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Philadelphia.

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