Skip to main content

God, Feminism and Fathering


How does a feminist married to a stay-at home Dad relate to Father’s Day? What does being a Father mean in contemporary society and what can the Christian God, who we so regularly address as Father, tell us about Fathering?

This is a difficult and complex subject to approach for so many reasons. Human fathers leave, abuse, die, love, hate, nurture and encourage their children. None of us has a neutral relationship to the concept of fatherhood and our own particular experiences of our own fathers, or their absence will have had a deep impact on our lives.

Think about your own relationship to the concept of fathering, based on your own personal experiences. What would an ideal Father be like? Are there memories of hurt and failure that you can ask God to heal, today? Perhaps you are a Father who is struggling to live up to that ideal?

God meets each of us in the middle of our messy and difficult lives and gives us that stability and continuing presence that no earthly Father can live up to. And yet, He also inspires men to be Christian fathers, intent on loving and nurturing their children and as far as possible loving and nurturing the mother of their children. Good family life is based upon the love of two people of whom the product of their love is children. Of course that ideal is often smashed apart by life’s difficulties, divorce, death, illness and so on. The Church as God’s Christian family should be a place of healing and restoration. It is in the Church where, as God’s children, we can be commended to one another. A person whose Father was a constant disappointment may find a new Father figure in Church and we can be present to one another in healthy ways as Fathers, Mothers, Sisters and Brothers in the family of God’s Church.

Jesus Christ was born into a family that began with the fear of unfaithfulness, but through trust, hope and faithfulness that family persevered and flourished. In God’s arms and in hope, trust and love we, as God’s children, can be re-united in love. God’s family is full of sinners, but in His love we become holy through new relationships formed in the arms of Jesus Christ, our true brother and friend.



Comments

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rugby

It has been just over three weeks now since we have arrived in Rugby and it feels like a world away from South London. If I was used to being in what is generally thought of and written about as a post-Christian secular world then Rugby looks and feels very different. There are a proliferation of churches across Rugby which are very active in working together for the good of the town. There seems to be a genuine Spirit of God's love working across Rugby in impressive ways that I'm not sure what century I am in! It is surprising to find a town that works so hard in regenerating and reinvigorating all that it is and it feels like an enormous privilege to be here.  Not that South London was any kind of spiritual desert! It was also a great privilege to work there and see how God can still be so central to people's lives in the 21st century. If the image we get from the newspapers and national media is that God is redundant in the modern age it seems that the reality is very ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Identity, belonging and holiness

Sermon for 2nd July Doubting Thomas - Ephesians 2:19-end, John 20:24-29 In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we see classic Pauline theology in action – Paul is explaining to the Ephesians (Gentiles) that they are fully accepted into the household of God and full members of it. The implication is that they are unsure about their place. Paul is clear that their tradition and history is rooted now not only in the Patriarchs, but also in the Apostles and with Jesus Christ as the corner stone. It is the Apostles in Jesus who invite them to full membership. No longer is holiness and worship centred on the Temple in Jerusalem but, rather, the individual believers are spiritual temples and the group of believers an ‘habitation of God’. Paul, as we know, had been fully committed to his identity as a God-fearing Jew; his life and ritual practice confirmed his sense of superior identity before God. He was saved because of his birth right and due to his strict adherence to the Law. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

'I know why the caged bird sings'

When I was studying festivals and rituals in Renaissance Venice as a post-graduate, evocative paintings full of religious processions and miracles, one thing that struck me was how the public space was highly ritualised and controlled. Most of the time women were prevented from taking part in the public rituals and had to watch from their windows (see above). When they were out in public space, their appearance was strictly controlled.  'Being part of the governing structure of Venetian life, civic ritual was a male domain. A woman’s world was a distinctly smaller one than a man’s, while men made forays into the political and economic centres of the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto and further a field to the East in merchant galleys and the terraferma , women remained in small communities at home. Dennis Romano argues that a woman’s neighbourhood was the parish of her residence and perhaps one or two adjoining parishes, adding further that ‘generally speaking, men did not want t...
Post a Comment
Read more