I've been called a lot of things: stubborn, radical, rebellious, and confused. But nothing disturbs people more than when I explicitly state that I love God and I am a feminist. In some Christian communities, claiming both is viewed as a contradiction, bordering on betrayal. They contend that feminism belongs to the world of bitterness, man-hate, and godlessness. Christianity, on the other hand, is portrayed as a religion of obedience, submission, and sacrifice, with women shouldering the majority of these expectations. But what they fail to see is that my feminism did not arise in spite of my faith; it grew from it. From reading of Christ’s tenderness towards women, from questioning why women who filled the tomb and carried the first news of the resurrection must be silent in today’s churches, from knowing that the God I serve does not delight in the suffering or smallness of his daughters.

It's exhausting how people expect you to apologise for thinking. As if thinking for yourself as a woman is somehow offensive to God. I recall once sitting quietly in a women's fellowship meeting, listening as the speaker quoted scripture after scripture to demonstrate that a woman's purpose begins and ends with marriage. She described the Proverbs 31 woman as if she were a ghost from the past, sent to haunt us into silence and service. No one asked whether this woman had dreams beyond her husband's house. No one questioned if she, too, might have been tired sometimes, or lonely, or overwhelmed. I sat there, wondering if it was her faith or her fear that caused her to reduce God's plans for women to recipes, childcare, and being forever agreeable. I thought of Esther, and Deborah—women who led, made courageous decisions, and refused to be reduced to someone's subservient rib. And I wondered again,  when did obedience become a euphemism for erasure. When did faith come to mean abandoning oneself? 

My feminism started in church. In the paradoxes, in the murmurs, in the outright exclusions. It began when I saw how the prayers were always for "the men leading us" and rarely for the women who quietly support us behind the scenes. It all started when I discovered that the language of God was always wrapped in male pronouns, but the labour of love—caring, nurturing, and enduring—fell disproportionately on the bodies of women. It started when I heard pastors warn about the perils of "strong women," as though strength were a disease that could poison the purity of faith. How convenient, I thought, that male strength was leadership but female strength was rebellion. How convenient that God's image is often cited to uphold male power but rarely to affirm female autonomy.

I find it curious that people speak of Christianity as if it has always belonged to men. As though Christ himself was not radical in his treatment of women. As though he did not sit with them, listen to them, heal them, and trust them with truths too heavy for even his male disciples to bear at times. The first person he revealed himself to as Messiah was a woman. The first preacher of the resurrection was a woman. Yet, centuries later, some Christians still flinch at the thought of a woman speaking from the pulpit. They will say feminism is worldly, is Western, is dangerous, is prideful—but they will not say how convenient it is for them to hide their fears behind theology. They will not say how tradition often masquerades as scripture, how culture often wears the mask of righteousness.

For me, feminism does not imply abandoning my faith. It is about questioning how my faith has been handed to me—wrapped in patriarchal ribbons, laced with silence, and sewn together by generations of women who were told to bow their heads and swallow their questions. It is about asking whether the God who gave me a mind expects me to abandon it on the altar of tradition. It is about believing that justice, compassion, and dignity are sacred, rather than secular virtues. It is about knowing that God's love does not diminish in the face of my questioning. In fact, I believe he welcomes it. Didn't Christ sit in the temple as a child, asking questions? Did he not question authority, demand improvement, and insist on more humane ways of being?

People like to imagine feminists as women who have abandoned softness, who have turned their backs on love, who have chosen anger over grace. But I know better. I know that feminism makes room for tenderness, for vulnerability, for faith. It is not feminism that teaches contempt for others—it is patriarchy, cloaked in sanctimony, that fosters disdain for those who do not fit into its narrow mould. My act of feminism does not ask me to hate men. It asks me to love myself enough to demand respect. It asks me to love others enough to fight for a world where no woman must justify her existence, her choices, her dreams, her voice. And what is Christianity if not also a call to love courageously, to speak against injustice, to uphold the dignity of the least among us?

I will not apologise for my feminist beliefs or for my  love of God. I do not see these as two distinct altars at which I kneel. They are on the same path—one towards freedom, towards truth, and the other towards wholeness. The God I serve is not threatened by my questions, nor diminished by my objections to oppressive systems. He is a God who liberated women from humiliation, who restored dignity, who redefined worth not by marital status or reproductive function but by the courage to believe in something greater. To serve such a God while rejecting feminism would be, to me, a betrayal of the very justice and mercy he embodies.

When people ask me how I reconcile my faith with feminism, I tell them I do not. Reconciliation suggests they were once at odds. I've never found them to be. What I've found to be at odds is the human desire to interpret God through the narrow lens of power, to twist scripture into chains. What I've found is fear disguised as holiness, control disguised as compassion. My feminism protects me from these distortions. It reminds me that my body is not a battlefield, my voice not a trespass, my dreams not a sin. It reminds me that I belong fully to myself and to the God who created me, and no human institution has the right to say otherwise.

I know that some will read these words and still call me rebellious. They will still pray for my salvation as though my feminism is a stain that needs scrubbing out with fervent intercession. They will still sit in their pulpits and their pews, shaking their heads, refusing to believe that a woman who speaks of equality speaks also of faith. That is their burden to carry, not mine. I have long stopped seeking approval where I know there is only suspicion. My walk with God is not up for debate. My feminism is not up for apology. I stand at the intersection of both, knowing that this place—this uncomfortable, contested space—is holy ground.