This is the last week in a multi-week exploration of the intersection of gender and spirituality. To read the other articles in the series, click here.

So I started this series in part because I was wondering how other Christians felt about their gender in relation to their faith. Things quickly grew to the wonderfully long span of interviews from so many fascinating perspectives.

But for this final week, let’s hear from a wide variety of perspectives on Christianity. Thanks to my interviewees: Brigit, Deanna, and the Rev. Barrington.

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I thought both my interviewees Brigit and Deanna made a good distinction between the institution of Christianity and one’s own personal belief in Christianity. It’s a critical distinction that people participating in a belief system or any organization for that matter need to make for themselves. Many Christians thinkers make the distinction between the capital-C Church as a bureaucratic (and often political) institution, a church as a local building some Christians choose to worship in, and the collective church as a community of Christians across the globe.

Brigit as a Roman Catholic feels that the Church is “very patriarchal” considering the lack of female leadership. She also noted Vatican City is “the last nation in the world that hasn’t given women the right to vote”. She sometimes feels “uncared for or unwanted by the Church as an institution” because of its stance on many women’s and LGBT+ issues.

However, as a younger person, Brigit didn’t realize the extent of institutional patriarchy because of the proliferation of female Catholic role models in her life. There were many female teachers and nuns in the Catholic school she attended as well as her mother and her extended family.

Deanna, as a Protestant woman, feels that “Christianity is neither matriarchal nor patriarchal” but “Christians are often stuck in a toxic, patriarchal church environment”. Because of this, Deanna has chosen to experience more of her faith in an academic setting “taking Bible courses and Biblical Hebrew” and reading the Bible on her own than in a communal worship setting.

Here is Deanna’s brilliant response to “What does it mean to be a Christian woman?” quoted in full.

“Being a Christian woman means I will always have to struggle between whether I am a Christian woman or a female Christian. Which is the adjective? Which is my priority? Being a feminist has brought me in trouble in the Christian community, because of course many Christians enforce and believe in the patriarchal gospel. So I always have to assess if it’s worth it to even fight against the status quo even if I may be helping my gender to do so. But then I remember Deborah, who led Israel into battle and governed the nation as prophetess and Rahab, the courageous prostitute who helped the Israelite spies. I remember Esther who defied her husband, and conspired against a courtier to save her people. God’s chosen women are rarely obedient, so why should I be?”

In sum, many people consider Christianity a patriarchal institution in one aspect or another. In some of my other interviewees, Christianity is THE default patriarchal religion in their minds. For others, the patriarchy of Christianity affects them because of the widespread Christian privilege and influences that permeates the culture of the United States. For more, here’s a detailed article from Everyday Feminism (CW: religious bigotry).

For some Christian people, leaving the faith, changing the community they worship in, or experiencing their spirituality in another way makes the most sense. The other option is to try to change the Christian faith from the inside out.

I’d like to introduce the Rev. Tom Barrington, an Episcopal Minster. I had the pleasure of speaking with him on a Boston street corner during the Women’s March. He had decided to wear his clerical collar to the march as a visual symbol that white, Christian men of privilege like himself need to help dismantle privilege and the oppression that comes with it. I include the Rev. in this series as a reminder that the issue of gender and spirituality is less about specific doctrine and more about how society views a particular gender or religious identity. As the Rev. Barrington said “it’s so easy to rest on privilege.” And it is so important that we don’t.

In an ideal world, all gender identities and all spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof) would be regarded as equally valid by society. We all have some work to do, which begins with listening to others tell their stories. That’s what I’ve tried to achieve with this interview series.