Gender and Faith

I just had a thought that intrigued me immensely. I have been reflecting quite a bit lately on my journey with God since childhood, and the faith I've found: a faith that liberates me, a faith that restores me, a faith that promises me wholeness, love, and acceptance. However, a few months ago, a fellow woman at my church requested that the female members of our church write out a little vignette on what it has meant to be a woman in our life experience--particularly in the context of our faith.

Now, I also believe that my "womanness" embodied in the gender that God assigned me to plays a central part in my understanding of myself, which includes the faith in which I wish to fully embody me. My journey through understanding how my gender interacts with my life in Christ, mostly with the Church (which historically has not been necessarily very hospitable to women). Until I received the above request from my friend, I haven't been compelled to reflect on what it means for me, as a woman, to believe in God and live out that belief in the ways of Jesus the Christ. Not only as a member of the body of Christ, but simply as a person who has chosen the life of faith.

I understand that there are a vast array of perspectives when it comes to both faith and gender, but I can only operate from my little enclave of experience and therefore bias--which is there are true genders, that are not entirely socially contrived, which affect our experiences in life and our senses of self. Therefore, I really wonder: how do our experiences as men, women, and everything in between, affect our perspective of faith in God--or our choice to not believe?

I am well aware of the typical gender stereotypes that exist surrounding the interaction of both men and woman in the Church, which I would actually like to circumvent, if possible (though I know it is near to impossible to divorce God and Christ in God from the Church in which He is embodied on earth). Like I said, I am more interested in our experiences as individuals who believe. Individuals who experience those quiet moments when we find ourselves knowing Someone whom we know we are incapable of ever fully knowing--those moments that solidify our reasonings behind the illogical and rather crazy leap into the abyss that we've chosen to make. Those moments when we are know and are known.

When we stand before, sit with, lie down next to, run along with, walk towards, play with, delight in, be delighted in, love, or rejoice in God, how do we understand ourselves in the context of being gendered bodies and gendered people? How have our experiences as men, women, and anyone in between, affected our faith in God?