Women speaking out

When I first started blogging in the bibliosphere over three years ago, I was not aware of very many other women of my heritage and with similar concerns also speaking out. That has changed drastically. Here are some updates.

Cheryl has posted about Barb Orlowski's upcoming book. I met Barb last year and it was an encouragement to me to benefit from the experience of another woman who had worked through some of the "women's issues" in the conservative church. Cheryl also posts a very touching email she received recently.

Waneta Dawn is someone I haven't mentioned before. She blogs here and has been covering topics which I also went through in detail. I recognize the fervour and agony of deconstructing gender-based authority.

Kathryn Joyce has taken up the cause, writing about the Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome and Quiverfull. Vyckie, of No Longer Quivering, is documenting her journey in and out of patriarchy.

Other names are Danni Moss, Jocelyn Andersen, and Barbara Roberts who recount similar painful experiences. Here is the blurb from Quivering Daughters,

I am a lover of God, a follower of Jesus, a wife, and a writer. I am passionately writing my first book, Quivering Daughters, which offers hope to weary, struggling women oppressed by Christian fundamentalism, authoritarianism, fear, and shame.

Another site is by artist Kathy Isler. Friends of my own site are Adventures In Mercy, A Wife's Submission, Under Much Grace, and many more.

I personally believe that the number of women will grow to the point that we can no longer be written off as the odd unlucky woman who has suffered abuse because of her own character flaws.

In fact, what these women, and myself, are writing is not abuse, not the failure of a relationship, the sorrow of emotional abandonment, sad as that is. No, we are writing about how the teaching of the church attaches our private misery to doctrine and tells women that God will reject them if they do not submit.

To heck with the pain and humiliation of being stripped of human dignity. This is common to humankind. No, the crime is that we were stripped of God.

Now, we deal with it in different ways. Some women have discovered a woman-friendly literalist approach to the scriptures through which they continue in their relationship with the God of their younger years. Other women frankly admit the insufficiency of the scriptures for their own life issues.