An edited excerpt from
Faith and Feminism, A Holy Alliance
By Helen LaKelly Hunt
Religion
As a political movement, feminism seeks to transform society by challenging and changing social institutions. Religion, on the other hand, seeks first to transform individuals through a personal relationship with God, which then results in a desire to work for the transformation of society. Religion and feminism share many common ideals.
From my study of the early feminists, it is clear to me that religion was far more to them than a source of comfort. It offered a process for integrating disparate experiences and provided a source of empowerment and transcendence that made these women giants. On a personal level, these early feminists overcame being called misfits and heretics by recognizing that, in the larger view, they were extremely important to God. In them, self-examination and self-acceptance occurred in the same moment. They presumed themselves to be incomplete, but they knew they were accepted in their incompleteness and loved anyway. And this is the optimum mind-set for anybody who wants to undertake the hard work of social change.
As the women in this book show us, faith and feminism can work together to achieve the same ends. Both Christianity and feminism offer a prophetic vision for the future by inviting the transformation of the individual and of society. The two may be experienced differently, but they point us in the same direction.
This understanding was brought home to me at an annual fund-raising breakfast for the New York Women's Foundation, one of over a hundred women's funds that make up the Women's Funding Network. After the program, Florence Pert, an associate minister of Marble Collegiate Church, approached me. "You know what's really going on here, don't you?" she asked. "This isn't just about coming together to pool resources for women's causes, the way it's talked about. This is about church."
Whenever we act for the common good, we are engaging in spiritual action. Feminist activism fostering justice, equality, and love embodies the prophetic, powerful verse in Scripture: "Let justice roll down like waters..."