Why I Gave my Daughter a Strong Name

Why I Gave My Daughter A Strong Name
by Julie Clawson

I gave my daughter a strong name. I wanted her identity to include a symbol of a woman who pursued what was right and followed her dreams even when it defied her society’s expectations for women. So my daughter carries the name Eowyn after the warrior princess from Lord of the Rings. Despite obstacles, Eowyn chose to make a difference for good. She feared her life becoming a cage until she grew old and became content with the fact that “all chance of doing great deeds [was] gone beyond recall or desire.” To have that choice, to be encouraged to make a difference, and to have that freedom to live fully no matter one’s gender is my dream for my daughter as she grows.

During my own childhood my heroes were women – Molly Pitcher, Susan B. Anthony, Sacajewea, Marie Curie. I devoured the series of biographies written for youth that I discovered at my school library, especially the ones about women. I read about women who were strong and fought to achieve their dreams of making the world a better place. And in school the message I received was one of encouragement. I could do whatever I wanted with my life. My options were endless – astronaut, writer, teacher, President, scientist – all were encouraged, all were possible. I was affirmed. I was given role models. I was in a healthy environment.

Then there was church.

Women did not seem to have many options in the world of faith. Never were women up front as leaders and teachers. The Bible stories I heard seemed to reduce women to only their bodies. They were praised for their beauty (Esther), blessed for their wombs (Mary), or cursed for their assumed sexual exploits (Mary Magdalene). The healthy encouragement and role models I saw in the public schools were never present in church. As a child this disconnect didn’t bother me, mainly because I kept church and “real” life strictly separate in my mind. It wasn’t until I began to examine my faith and make it my own that I began to hear the strains of dissonance.

One incident in particular forced me to examine those views of women. I went away to a Christian college and began attending a popular local church – one very similar to the church I grew up in, but even more restrictive of women. In that church, women couldn’t serve anywhere but the nursery (lest they sin by teaching 5-year old “men”); the pastor managed to weave the issue of women’s submission into his sermons on a weekly basis; and letters from people who questioned the pastor’s teaching were read aloud and ridiculed to the whole church. And I was okay with it. Well… truthfully, I hated it; but I made myself be okay with it because I had been taught that it was sinful to question the church.

Then, one Sunday when the college pastor was away, instead of a sermon, we had a time to openly share our testimonies. It was a refreshing and uplifting experience that particularly touched me. Unfortunately the college pastor didn’t agree. The next Sunday when he returned, he solemnly addressed the group and informed us that we had a serious problem. Because more women (7) than men (5) had shared during the testimony time, it meant that women were “leading” our group. And since that was obviously a position that God didn’t want them in – nor one that women themselves truly desired (according to our college pastor) – our group was in sin and needed to change.

That was my last Sunday at that church. I had been unwilling to question the church’s rhetoric against women, but in this instance I was appalled that the church would dare restrict the testimonies of God’s work in people’s lives. At the time, I saw the incident as having little to do with defining women’s roles and everything to do with quenching the Spirit and denying the power of God. If the story of God’s work in my life would be denied the right to be heard, then I finally realized that this was not a place that would allow me to be fully who God made me to be.

The choice to leave and find a new church seemed like a small step, but for me it was the turning point. I had left a church because I knew what they were doing was wrong; and that one choice changed everything. Perhaps that is why I had always been taught it was sinful to question or leave a church; because it does lead one to unexpected places. But from my perspective I had found a new freedom. Freedom to question, to think, to learn, to explore, to be myself as a follower of Christ, and to merge my talents with my faith. This was not a quick or painless process, but it was one that formed me as an individual and as a believer more than anything I had ever experienced before. I could finally dream, as a women and a Christian, of how I could serve God and be who I was created to be.

As I accept that I am free to follow God fully, my desire is for other women to discover what that same freedom looks like for them. I gave my daughter a strong name in hopes that her life will not be lived in a cage. I want her to experience a faith that encompasses all areas of her life and doesn’t offer conflicting messages about her worth as a woman. This is my dream for her and for all women in the church, and I will work to make that dream a reality. I will call for the voices of women to be heard alongside the voices of men. I will educate and encourage. I will help women learn, serve, and lead. I will help women be free to be who God made them to be.



Julie Clawson is a mother and an emerging church-planting pastor in the Chicago area. She enjoys being involved in Emerging Women activities, promoting social justice causes, and reading good books. She blogs at One Hand Clapping and she can be reached at ShalomMJC@msn.com.

The Feminine Side of God

The Feminine Side of God
by Julie Clawson

At lunch the other day a women who has shown up at our church a few times, and who I am just beginning to get to know, confessed to me that she had recently started to explore her identity as a woman in the church and that it had led her to think about the feminine side of God. She then asked me to not run away from the table because she was a heretic. I didn’t run. I smiled and told her that I had been thinking about the same things.

While my mainline friends shake their heads and tell me they have acknowledged the feminine side of God for years, this is still a big deal in the evangelical world. It’s a taboo that must not be violated; a subject that is not to be explored – at least publicly. But as my friend demonstrated, I am discovering that many evangelical women encountering the freedom and permission to ask questions within the emerging church conversation arrive at this topic sooner or later.

As women explore their faith and read about topics like “how (not) to speak of God”, they become concerned not only with their identity in the church, but with naming God rightly. They realize that all of our language for God is metaphor. The nature of language is that words are not the thing in itself, but a description or symbol of that thing. Words are finite and limited to our experience. So an infinite God cannot fully be defined by words. But God has been partially revealed in terms that we can understand through our experiences. Metaphors are used – objects, ideas, gender- to describe God. In using the metaphors we are saying that God is a bit like these things I am able to understand.

Problems arise when we latch onto one or two of these metaphors and call them theological absolutes. In doing this, we create an idol, a false image to worship that we equate with God. For many in the emerging church conversation that is where this conversation ends – acknowledging that our language for God is limited. But others, especially women, are questioning the idolatry of our gendered language for God. They want to push the conversation further.

Few people hear, God is my rock, and assume that God is physically a rock. No, we understand that there are certain aspects of God that are similar to certain aspects of rocks and leave it at that. But when we hear God called Father, we often create an idol of God in the image of a male. Combine that with a proclivity to only use a few metaphors for God (Father, Almighty, Lord) and we are left with a very limited conception of God that assumes God is male. Re-enforce that message enough over the years and it cements itself in our minds as true biblical doctrine, which is partially why this is such a controversial issue.

Such male-centered language not only implies that women aren’t created in God’s image, but it limits God. God is neither male nor female. We need to be reminded of Deuteronomy 4:15-17, therefore watch yourselves carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourself an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or woman…

The call to speak of God rightly has awakened in many women the need to reclaim the feminine metaphors for God. God is of course neither male nor female, but in the image of God both male and female were created. God’s image is reflected in all of us. To use feminine metaphors for God is not a call to swing the pendulum to the other side and think of God as exclusively female, as much of the Divine Feminine and Goddess talk has recently called us to do. It is merely a call to balance our perceptions and rightly name God.

Women are discovering that the use of feminine language for God is not without precedent. Scripture contains many references to God using feminine imagery, and writings from church history contain some beautiful feminine conceptions of God as well. As women study and explore the theology and history of the feminine side of God, it often leads into a journey of self-discovery. They see that our names for God should not exist merely as head knowledge, but that it needs to be translated into heart language and into action. If we have an intellectual understanding that God can be described using multiple metaphors, but we still continue to use our default gendered names for God, we are in essence shoring up the idols. It takes effort to broaden our language and let our words affect our faith practice. I’ve even heard it suggested that some people may need to “detox” from our male image of God by using exclusively female names and metaphors for a time. It is a process that takes being aware of how we address and refer to God and examining why we do so.

As women take the journey of seeking to know God and name God as correctly as they can, they find that they feel more at home in their faith. They feel an integral part of a family that loves and welcomes them as women. They can finally claim to actually reflect God’s image and not be afraid to do so. Contrary to what they expected, they have discovered that it is more heretical to limit God and create idols than it is to explore the multitude of ways we have to catch glimpses of the Divine.

Julie Clawson is a mother and an emerging church-planting pastor in the Chicago area. She enjoys being involved in Emerging Women activities, promoting social justice causes, and reading good books. She blogs at One Hand Clapping and she can be reached at ShalomMJC@msn.com.