Feminists can be Christians, too [View all]
Why do people assume any woman who has something interesting to say must be an atheist?
Kristin Aune
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 January 2012 09.00 EST
Recently, I discovered my name on a blogger's list of "100 interesting atheists in Britain who aren't old, white, privileged straight men". Nice as this was, I'm a Christian, so I felt like a rabid carnivore finding herself on a list of vegetarians. It got me thinking. Why do people assume any woman who has something interesting to say must be an atheist?
As a feminist and sociologist, my faith often surprises people. When I became a Christian as a teenager my mother said: "Intelligent people aren't religious."
Religious institutions have rightly attracted bad press for their record on women's rights. Often, religion justifies women's subordination by cloaking it in theological language, and teaches gender-differentiated roles to keep women dependent on men.
But this isn't always so. Religion also has a good record on social welfare and religious organisations have at times been in the vanguard of social change (for example, liberation theology in Latin America).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/29/feminists-christians?newsfeed=true