Will Religion Complete the Women's Movement?

In my personal life, as I was sitting in feminist meetings, it was ironic that we were invited to bring our "whole person" and our full sisterhood to the table, but if you mentioned your Hindu faith, or your Christian faith, or if you said "I'm in a prayer group," [you were] met with stony silence and embarrassment.

As I went back and forth between my feminist activities and my [religious] roots, I saw how combative feminists were and I felt that was necessary for part of our evolution, but that there was a greater strength. And so, I began to wonder what would happen if feminists got interested in empathy, and instead of challenging men for not including them, asked men what was going on with them, what made it difficult for men to invite women into their circles or give them equal pay. The dialogue piece was missing in the women's movement. Most faiths I know are about interconnectedness. That was missing in the feminist movement.

I feel that faith and feminism have a deep relationship to each other and that both are responses to the deep human yearning for connection and for peace on earth, and that they both have a vision of universal human equity. What this book is encouraging is a more intentional dialogue between faith and feminism because they in fact need each other to complete their respective missions.

I do think that the Jewish tradition and the Muslim tradition also structure their faith in a way that challenges the feminist agenda of women's voice being equal to men's. And it is troubling to me and troubling to many women who want feminism to resound strongly in their faith. I don't think it's more intense with the Christians.

I was very blessed. Both women mean a lot to me, and I was surprised that they were so forthcoming in writing about the book. With Betty, she was never against religion. She was always frustrated that feminists projected that. In fact, of the seven people who founded NOW, two of them were nuns. And when they had their first press conference, Betty said, "Wear your habits." And the nuns said, We don't want to wear our habits because we are here to start a social movement-it's not about a religious thing. And Betty said, "No, I want you to wear your habits for this." And they said, no they wouldn't. And finally Betty said, "Dammit, wear your habits!" She was always wishing that religion would be front and center. She was more like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Betty always felt that religion has to be part of social reform, that the story of religion keeps women subservient, so you have to open up the religious piece and talk about how religion can fuel the vision.

I would be thrilled if the book were presented that way. Letty Cottin Pogrebin is the only other woman who has written a book like this. She put it out a long time ago, and I don't think it got heard sufficiently. She said that feminism invited her into the movement but told her that she'd have to give up her faith. And Judaism told her that she'd have to give up her feminism. She felt schizophrenic. My book invites women to tell their stories-if you start talking about who you are, both your faith and feminism will come out.

In addition to small groups of women coming together to address this in their homes, we need the National Council of Churches or different feminist groups to convene panels on the issues of faith and feminism and have the dialogue going on to establish where the issues are where we can easily converge. It seems everyone is tip-toeing around the fact that there's a great breach, and we can't afford the divide.

I was stunned with the Vatican's

against feminism and an explication about where all the feminists have gone wrong. The Pope does some very worthy things, but he obviously missed his opportunity on this issue. Obviously he has such a narrow view of what feminism is and many feminists have a very narrow view of what religion is. Not until the two forums come together will the convergence happen.

I am involved in a network of women's funds. The Women's Funding Network holds an annual conference. And this year, the theme of the conference was reaching out to three new populations: men, corporate women, and institutional religion. I was very involved in all the meetings around the theme of religion, of course. And it was just fantastic.

These hard core feminists came and said, "The church has hurt me so much, I was raised Catholic, there's no way I can ever go back. The church was so demeaning to me and my goals." There was such hurt expressed, and tears were shed. But we had beautiful facilitators, and the women came together. One ardent activist came up afterwards and said to me, "Helen, I got religion here!" It was very moving.

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