I am a Christian feminist libertarian. While many words describe me, if I had to choose the three that best describe my beliefs, values, and politics, Christian feminist libertarian is the most apt description.
Not everyone understands how these three identities can intersect. Usually those people are either close-minded, judgmental Christians, or they’re feminists who have only met close-minded, judgmental Christians. Sometimes those people are libertarians who know very little about feminists, or they’re feminists who have only met the libertarians who intersect with misogynistic assholes. Every group has a few assholes, unfortunately, including Christians and feminists.
This post is not meant to serve as an in-depth, academic-level explanation for why I am a Christian feminist libertarian. This post is merely an introduction to the intersections of faith, feminism, and freedom in my own life.
Christianity
I believe in a Greater Being, the creator of Heaven and Earth, a religious entity so big that She is beyond our limited human understanding, a God of Love. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross to save our sins.
Feminism
I believe that women are human beings with equal worth and equal potential to men. I recognize that we live in a patriarchal society that promotes toxic ideas of masculinity and oppressive ideas of femininity, rather than allowing for individual differences and unique expressions of gender identity. I understand that privilege and discrimination are not limited to gender.
Libertarianism
I believe in a limited government and in individual freedom. I believe in the right to life and the right of free speech and action.
My Duties as a Christian Feminist Libertarian
As a Christian, I believe it is my duty to demonstrate the love of God through my own actions and to spread the Gospel. As a libertarian, I believe that all individuals have the freedom to worship as they please, and freedom FROM religion is even more important than freedom OF religion.
As a feminist, I believe it is my duty to raise awareness of gender inequality and other forms of discrimination. I work actively both to educate others on specific forms of inequality still present in our nation and to lessen or eliminate discrimination.
As a libertarian, I believe that my duty is to vote in all elections, including small ones, and to support libertarian candidates. I believe that spreading Christianity and feminism are primarily, although not exclusively, personal duties and not the government’s responsibility.
Becoming a Better Christian Feminist Libertarian
I am not the perfect Christian, the perfect feminist, or the perfect libertarian. I will always have room for growth and improvement. I strive to learn more about my faith by studying the Bible and reading a vast variety of religious writers. While I know a fair amount about male privilege and gender discrimination, I am still learning more about other forms of privilege and discrimination by listening to marginalized peoples. I need to be more involved with politics on the local level, and I need to stay better informed of local and state issues, which I can impact more than I can impact national or global problems.
This is just scratching the surface of my belief systems as a Christian feminist libertarian. Balancing three sets of ideals is not always easy, and in practice, I often have to choose a balance between just two, not all three. The more Christians, feminists, and libertarians who realize their shared goals and interests, the better America will be.
Did you link up for the #FaithFeminisms synchroblog? I would love to read your own thoughts and feelings on the topic!
Linking up for Share Your Stuff Tuesdays.
Bravo, Brita for boldly holding on to your views and daring to make them public. In this “dog eats dog” world the most difficult thing is to be honest about oneself. I keep the people who dare to do so a notch above the rest of humanity. You fall in that ‘enhanced’ category. Keep it up!
That honestly one of the kindest compliments anyone has ever given me. Thank you! I will continue to try and be myself, online and in the “real world.”
I’m far from being a libertarian, but you’ve definitely made me re-think a lot of assumptions I hold about libertarians. So thank you for that! And I love how clearly you explained your stance in this post and how your beliefs inform, rather than contradict, each other. I don’t know if I could make such a clear venn diagram for myself, but I think I’d be somewhere between Catholic/Democrat/Xicana/feminist. I’ll have to keep thinking about it 🙂
Every group has its assholes, including feminists (think TERFs) and liberals (the brogressives and “ironic” sexists). The asshole libertarians are pretty loud, especially online, but I try to be a voice for positive change!
Occasionally my belief systems do contradict, but only because the majority of each group will believe one thing, and I’ll believe another that’s still within the overall boundaries of Christianity/feminism/liberty. Or I believe in both an idealistic vision that works with all three, but I accept a pragmatic approach that only combines two.
Let’s be honest. Life is messier than ideals. 🙂
I enjoyed reading this description of yourself! I would say we’d agree on all the big points (I’d probably quibble that freedom from religion and freedom of religion are “just as important” rather than one being more important than the other, but that could perhaps be because I’ve been experiencing and witnessing more oppression against religion than I’ve seen the opposite way). It’s refreshing to find someone who’s not ashamed to be outspoken about religious beliefs in the travel, lifestyle, and political blogging spheres!
As someone quipped to me recently, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion!” I’m very vocal about my faith and feminism. I’m a bit newer to libertarianism. I’ve described myself as “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” since high school, but didn’t realize a party suited my ideals until about seven years ago. Even then, I didn’t know much about the Libertarian Party until I started dating Dan.
On a purely idealistic scale, I’d agree freedom from and of religion are equally important. But in America, the scales are heavily tipped in the favor of Christians, to the point that federal holidays include our largest religious celebration. Non-Christians don’t really get much freedom FROM religion in this country, and too many entitled Christians are still acting like they’re persecuted here. We desperately need to try to realign our ideals, because minority religious people, atheists, and agnostics don’t have true freedom FROM religion in the States.
I was just wishing that I could understand how these things come together for you and then I stumbled upon this post! It helped paint a much clearer picture of What a Christian Feminist is (something I am still seeking to understand fully). One thing you didn’t mention under Christianity is where you stand on the Bible (although you mentioned studying it along with other writers). Would you be willing to expand on that a bit further on that?
Can you be more specific?
I mean, I could dig up the research paper I wrote defending women’s ordination based on biblical and historical evidence.
You could read Jesus Feminist, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Damaged Goods, all books by Christian feminist authors. I mostly agree with all of them.
Sure. I am just wanting to know what you believe about the Bible as a whole. Do you believe the Bible to be the inerrant, inspired word of God? Or would you say it is more of a historical work…an excellent resource but not inspired? I am just trying to get a better feel for where you stand.
Those are two fairly rigid viewpoints. I believe something in the middle. To understand how I view the Bible, you must first understand how I view people.
The only human who was ever perfect was Jesus. Not only did He not sin, but He also did not err. I might make a typo when I write or drop a dish and break it, but those aren’t sins, just mistakes. Even the most selfless, loving, Christ-like of humans will still sin, and will still err.
Based on my understanding of humans, and my understanding of history (I double-majored in History and in French, and I minored in Women’s & Gender Studies), there’s no way I can just accept the Bible as inerrant.
Inspired by God? Absolutely. Impervious to the sinful and flawed human nature of both the men who put pen to paper and the men who decided what would be canon? Absolutely not.
Then when you start to study the history of translations and the history of biblical interpretation, you really start to notice the problem with assuming the Bible is inerrant. Centuries of male translators erased Junia, a female apostle of great esteem, and recreated her as Junias, a male apostle. They did this even though the name “Junias” literally does not exist as a person’s name in any ancient writing.
When I interpret the Bible, I can’t ignore historical context. I study as much of the Hebrew and the Greek as I can from writers who know more than I do. I question everything, especially the biases of anyone teaching the Bible. All of us are biased. Any writer or speaker who claims to be objective is lying or arrogant. What does a person have to lose or to gain by interpreting the Bible a certain way?
After all, even in fairly recent history, Americans used the Bible to defend slavery. In fact, if we go back just 50 years or so, people used the Bible to condemn interracial relationships.
Thank you! I appreciate hearing where you are coming from! It’s so fun to get to know others viewpoints and get a glimpse of who they are!