Three Reasons You Can’t be a Christian Feminist

As a Christian woman, I’ve become convinced that feminism is unbiblical, and I have seen first-hand the damage of this ideology as it eats away at women across the western world.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, feminism refers to: ‘The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes’.

Like many Marxist ideologies, feminism seeks to achieve equality of outcome—and not just equality of opportunity—for men and women in every sphere, which is an impossible task.

If you haven’t already noticed, last Friday was International Women’s Day — or as I like to call it, ‘International Feminist Day.’  Because, clearly, there is more at stake than ‘equal rights’ for men and women.

Significantly, it was co-founded by the wife of communist leader Vladimir Lenin as a way to ‘liberate’ women from traditional gender roles by channelling them into the workforce. In fact, a 1920 issue of Pravda —the official newspaper of the Lenin’s Communist Party — declared:

The main task is to draw the women into socially productive labour, extricate them from domestic slavery, free them of their stultifying and humiliating resignation to the perpetual and exclusive atmosphere of the kitchen and nursery.

The common assumption that underlies feminism is the belief that men and women should be equally represented in every sphere of society, and that until they are, ‘sexism’ continues to exist. However, this saddens me, because while women are striving to be more and more like men, they are discarding the beauty God has given them in their femininity.

Here are three reasons, then, why God’s good design for women is so much better than anything feminism offers, and why Biblical Christians cannot embrace feminism.

First, feminism teaches women their identity is in their career and status: In contrast, the Bible teaches me that my worth is found in God’s love as expressed in and through Jesus Christ (John 1:12).

This was made abundantly clear a couple of weeks back on Q & A when Jordan Peterson highlighted the fact that feminists aren’t fighting for women to be equally represented in lower-status roles — feminists are only concerned in placing women in high-status, high-income roles. This in itself is telling.

But by teaching women to be just like men, feminism undermines the beauty of true femininity. It teaches women that unless they are in positions of power, they are not valuable.

Second, feminism devalues motherhood: Feminism devalues motherhood by compelling women to be economically productive at the expense of their families — discarding our primary responsibility to be homemakers and life-givers to our families (Titus 2:3-5; 1 Pet. 3:1-7). The reality is, God has created men and women beautifully different; not only physically, but also emotionally, spiritually, and mentally (Genesis 1:27).

If feminists were really concerned with women, they would support stay-at-home mums rather than scorn them as wasting their ‘economic productivity.’ They’d also stop complaining about the mythical ‘wage gap’ and start appreciating the men who have provided for and supported them. Of course there is going to be a gap between earnings of men and women if men are the ones who generally provide for their families.

Third, Feminism Leads to Murder: To achieve true equality between men and women, women must have the ‘right’ to kill the baby in their womb, as men don’t have this ‘obstruction’ to career advancement.

While I am not saying that every person who calls themselves a feminist supports abortion, I believe that the very ideology of feminism inevitably leads to abortion as it is the only way to ‘equalise’ the playing field.

Sadly, between 2010 and 2014, an estimated 56 million children worldwide were murdered each year under the mask of a ‘woman’s choice.’ Abortion laws are being pushed on a global scale under the guise of ‘women’s rights’ (Just see here, here and here).

It is not a woman’s ‘reproductive right’ to take the life of the vulnerable child they have been entrusted by God to take care of. In short, Feminism is about rights, whereas Biblical femininity is about responsibilities.

We live in an age in which many Christians sadly continue to identify themselves as feminists. But rather than complaining about the world, it’s important to look at the many great and wonderful gifts you have been blessed with and use this as an opportunity to glorify God. After all, only in the Bible do we see a truly satisfying portrait of what it means to be a feminine woman.