Shawna Atteberry

Photo credit: Diverse Generations by adispo.ch

In 2006 when I started this blog, I had just married and I was still part of the Evangelical Movement. I was an ordained minister, theologian, and writer. I was convinced I could show the world that women were made in the image of God and God called us to the same lives she called men: pastors, teachers, theologians, etc. There are only eight verses in the Bible that limit women’s roles in the life of their specific churches. These eight verses stand in contrast to all of the stories of women leaders we have in the Bible: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, Junia, and many other women. I even wrote a book about how these eight verses should not be used to strip women of the callings God placed on their lives: What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down. Just two years later, I realized I was going to be fighting the same the battle my entire life if I stayed in the Evangelical Movement. My previous denomination also viewed my LGBTQIA+ friends to be committing sin, and I could no longer tow that party line. In 2008 I resigned my credentials and started attending an Episcopal Church. I was confirmed later that year.

In the Episcopal Church I did not pursue ordination. My call is to preach and to teach, and the church had lay preacher certifications. Since then I have been a happy and content Episcopalian who preaches and teaches in her home church. I also discovered other Christian women who decided that motherhood was not for them. I went from being the only woman in a church who didn’t want children to one of the many. After the shock wore off, I was so happy to be part of a church where women were not defined by our wombs. It didn’t matter we weren’t mothers: we were still treated like adults, and no one questioned our decisions. That was between us, our spouses, and God.

Just Sit Down and Be a Good Little Girl

I have spent my entire life fighting against what society and church tells me a woman should be. “Boys don’t like smart girls.” “No man is going to marry you if you’re smarter than him.” “Stop being so aggressive: it’s not ladylike” (I grew up in the South). “You’re a girl/woman: you’re not suppose to be talking. Paul said so.” “Stop being so ambitious: no man wants an ambitious wife.” “God doesn’t call women to preach.” “God talked through an ass, so I guess he could use a woman too.” “A woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother.” “No one is going to marry a women that doesn’t want children.” Ad nasuem. For the record I did find a man who was fine with all of this and all of me. I never fit the cookie cutter mold society and the church thought I should be in. And more importantly: I did not want to. (Everything in quotes are things people said to me or was preached from the pulpit of the church I grew up in.)

Now I’m a little more jaded and cynical than I was 18 years ago because I keep seeing the same cycles go around in society. Once again women are being told we shouldn’t want to pursue education or careers because we’re just going to get married and stay home with our children. We’re told women who are child-free or childless are the enemy, and that we’re all sad, angry women who want to take out our anger on society as a whole. No one bothers to ask us why we chose not to have children. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be any empathy for women who tried for years to have children, but could not. Having no children is not always a choice.

Biblical Family?

Once again I also see the definition of family being made smaller and smaller. Once upon a time step-children and adopted children were included in family, but now one vice presidential candidate has made it clear he does not consider those kinds of family to “real” families, just as my husband and I are not considered a “real” family because we did not have children. The American nuclear family is touted as “biblical marriage” and “biblical family,” when the Bible does not even recognize such a small definition of family. Biblical families were multi-generational clans. The reason Jacob had to sneak off with his two wives, two concubines and 12+ kids is because he was not the head of his family. His nuclear family was part of Laban’s clan, and Laban was the head (see Genesis 31).

When we get to the New Testament, we discover that Jesus doesn’t seem to think much of biological family: nuclear, clan, or otherwise:

[Jesus’] mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him. They said, “Look, your mother and brothers and sisters are outside looking for you.”

He answered, “Who are my mother, sisters, and brothers?” Looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Look, my mother and sisters and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my sister, brother and mother.” (Mark 4: 31-35, New Testament: The Divine Feminine Version [DFV]

Biblical literalists conveniently ignore these verses just as they do The Beatitudes and Jesus’ command to love our enemies. Jesus didn’t mean all of this, literally, right?

My response always is: What if he did? It has been close to three decades since I lived close to my own nuclear family. These verses have always given me great comfort because I know that wherever I move to, I will find family there in the church God leads me to. I have never been alone: even when I was single and lived alone. God has always led me to family in every city I’ve lived, and Lincoln has been no exception. Yes, my husband’s family lives here, but I have my church family too. One of my favorite psalms says that God places the solitary in families. She has placed me in families over and over again, and they are families I am not biologically related to.

Family is so much richer and more expansive than the anemic mom, dad, and 2.5 kids of the the so-called American dream. Family is biological, married into, adopted, and found. There is always room for more family, more mothers (and fathers), more sisters, more brothers, more aunts and uncles, more nieces and nephews and more love and acceptance.

The God of All Families

In the end that’s what bothers me the most about these limiting views of both women and family. It’s all about bringing the fences in, making homes smaller, and limiting our view of how God works in the world and WHO God works through. The older I get the less I limit God. I’m on the other side of 50, and I know how very little I actually control. I know how very little I know. I only see a very tiny slice of what is going on in this world and universe. And I am not going to reduce the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God of the universe to a small, sectarian vision.

God works through women and men and all of the genders between those two poles. God works through all sorts of people and families. God works through the multi-generational households, the tribal clans, the nuclear families, and those families (like mine) that aren’t “traditional” according the the middle class American definition. I want a bigger God than that. I believe in a bigger God than that. I obey a bigger God than that.

This blog has been on life support for quite a few years, but as we come into another cycle of circling wagons and once again decrying everything we don’t agree with as un-American and not “real” Christianity, it seems like a good time to start writing again. After all, I’ve done this once before almost 20 years ago when I started insisting that women were also made in the image of God and my family WAS a family, even without children. It might even be fun to revisit what I’ve written across the years. I’m sure there will a whole lot of updating. There will new writing too because there will new research, new stories, new ways of looking at the Bible and society, and most important of all: I am not the same person I was 18 years ago. The way I look at the world, read the Bible, and see and interpret society have all changed. What are the words and vision we need to hear now? What are the words and vision I need to write about now? I’m looking forward to finding out.