Excerpt from Permission to Matter: Reclaiming Women’s Humanity and Authority at the Invitation of Jesus – From chapter 9, “Don’t Go Back to Sleep: Remaining Human-Sized”
The Temptation to Hand Over God
The journey of faith that coincides with a female awakening is not for the faint of heart. As I reflect on the last decade or so, I notice how God and I have traversed a vast terrain. At times God has felt like a close companion, and other times, despairingly distant. My working God image has shifted—sometimes male, sometimes female, often gender-neutral, and every once in a while, simply Spirit or Fire or Life (all biblical images, by the way). My relationship with Jesus has been particularly disorienting at times. I have needed to give myself permission to ask hard questions about his maleness, and to re-establish the contours and dynamics of our relationship as I move out of knowing him from the vantage point of a “cultural daughter.” I still have more questions than answers, but my certainty has grown in my experience of God as a
good and expansive container. No amount of doubt, disorientation, disappointment—or even disdain—can push us outside the parameters of God’s love.
In some seasons, I’ve found solace in church. In others, that very same place has felt like a stranger, or more accurately, I have felt like a stranger within it. Asking and exploring “Who am I?” will always beg a bigger question: “Whose am I?” In other words, Where do I belong? Unfortunately, the church has a well-earned reputation for being not-so-female-friendly.
Most church spaces (both conservative and progressive) don’t have a category for the unique female spiritual journey. When a woman begins this path she is often met with fear, resistance, and even rejection. Women are seemingly faced with a choice: stay and suppress the self or go and say goodbye to God. Recent research is revealing what choices they overwhelmingly make. Women are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers.iii It pains me that the price for full humanity is an almost inevitable exit from church. And it’s deeply disconcerting that the burden to resolve this tends to lay on the women who leave rather than on the church.
The truth is that most women aren’t leaving the faith when they leave the church. Our spirituality remains intact, as does our longing for God. We are resourceful and scrappy and go searching for what we need. The problem is that when you begin the hunt for spaces and content friendly toward exploring the female journey, you very quickly step outside the Christian world. There is nothing inherently wrong with this or these spaces. I can attest to the amount of wisdom and goodness out there (that Christian spaces ought to be learning from). I mean, shoot, even St. Augustine believed that “All truth is God’s truth.”
But there’s a problem with this. When we step outside of the Christian spaces we have known, we might begin to believe the message of those we are leaving behind: the Christian God is limited, not like us, and definitely not for us. Slowly, we acquiesce. We take them at their word, and we hand God over, as if they have ownership of the God of the Bible. In doing so, we reinforce some sort of man-made hierarchy that believes those at the top hold all the power. It may be empowering (and your necessary next step) to walk away, but do not be deceived. If in your walking away you hand God over to them, you are still giving away a piece of your authority. Don’t give away what is rightfully yours.
I don’t mean to make light of the disorienting reality many women (and others) face as they step away from religious communities and affiliations. I no longer officially serve as a pastor, but I increasingly find myself pastoring women who have exited the church. Our conversations often revolve around how to sift through and allow the good, true, and beautiful parts of their faith to remain, while discerning what junk needs to be thrown out. And these days, there’s a lot to throw out.
If you find yourself in a season of sifting, I implore you to remember this: the God of the universe lives in you, looks like you, loves you, desires connection with you, and uniquely designed you to represent the Divine in the world. You may not be able to control how someone else stewards this immense privilege, but you can control how you choose to. It is possible to say, “good riddance” without having to say, “God riddance.”
**************************************
iii Daniel A. Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond, “Young Women Are Leaving Church in Unprecedented Numbers,” Survey Center on American Life, April 4, 2024, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/young-women-are-leaving-church-in unprecedented-numbers/.
Editor’s Note: Content taken from Permission to Matter by Bekah Stewart, ©2025. Used by permission.
