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Holy Woman: Louise Omer’s search for answers

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Louise Omer’s Holy Woman began as a search for answers about whether women can be holy in patriarchal religion. This is what she found.

Louise Omer was a Pentecostal preacher and faithful wife. But when her marriage crumbled, so did her beliefs. Haunted by questions about what it means to be female in a religion that worships a male God, she left behind a church and home to ask women around the world: how can we exist in patriarchal religion? And can a woman be holy?

Here Louise shares with us some thoughts about belief, travel, and confessional writing, as well as some excellent reading recommendations.

Holy Woman began as a search for answers about whether women can be holy in patriarchal religion did you always hope it would become a book or was it primarily about the personal journey?

I left home (Kaurna Country) to ask women around the world what it means to worship a male god. I set off determined to write about my investigation, but imagined a very different book – I was still Christian, and wanted to find answers within that paradigm.

What happened was very different.

I went to Ireland to meet a goddess and a saint, Mexico to go on pilgrimage to the Mother Mary, and Sweden to experiment with a non-binary god; by the time I was in Bulgaria researching the historical origins of Christianity, I discovered that the bible was not the direct word of god, but was created by men in the 4th century Nicean Council. This meant it grew from the social context of patriarchy.

Feminist scholarship says that thousands of years ago, humans in various parts of the world worshipped goddesses, but over time the mother was dethroned so the father god could reign. In response, I killed the father god in my mind, refused to pray to him any longer, and began the long and difficult task of untangling the psychological consequences of worshipping a patriarchal god.

My writing is, therefore, intertwined with my search for a personal truth. If you begin a journey like this, you have to ask yourself: am I willing to be transformed?

You questioned your faith when your husband questioned your marriage, but how much did your own feminism sit at odds while you were still a strong believer?

My feminism was always at odds with Christianity.

I came to the church as a teenager, and always felt dismissed by the models of femininity – women onstage were often thin, pretty, and unlikely to be in official leadership positions, unless a children’s Minister. While this culture slowly evolved, it always felt limiting and sexist, and often shadowed by the 1 Corinthians 14 verse where Paul tells women to be silent in the church.

In my early twenties, I followed a pastor to help build a new church centred on progressive values and social justice – we campaigned for rights for refugees and the LGBTQI+ community. This community vocally encouraged female leadership. However, I still felt disgruntled with the foundational philosophy – why was God a man? Why couldn’t I see myself in the image of perfection and power?

I read feminist theologians – Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza – who highlighted Christianity’s inherent hostility to women. I clung to liberation theology: Jesus Christ was a socialist radical who transcended patriarchal norms, and sided with the oppressed. But that was not enough to temper the religion’s androcentric mythology and symbolism.

And so what does it mean for women to worship a male god?

Worshipping a male god has wide-ranging political implications: it is male supremacy, which naturalises men’s authority, and creates the image of perfection as white and male. Christianity, in its symbols and myths, creates an ideology of hierarchy and domination. This mode of thinking is responsible worldwide not just for gender inequality, but racism and environmental destruction.

Did you make any decisions about the extent of content you were happy to share with your readers?

The nexus of the book is when I go to Morocco to interview the feminist Islamic scholar, Dr Asma Lamrabet. In Tangier I end up in a relationship with a man, and choose to write explicitly about our sexual encounters – in which consent is murky.

During the process of writing, I was reading queer theory – Marcella Althaus-Reid (The Queer God), Paul B Preciado (Apartment in Uranus) and McKenzie Wark (Reverse Cowgirl) – writers who found embodied knowledge through the flesh. Through this line of thinking, I learnt to interrogate my desire for markers of the doctrine I was trying so hard to shake off.

The casual sex that I encountered, and its proximity to violence, is the logical conclusion of the internalisation of patriarchy, which demands and eroticises male domination and female submission. Carol Christ wrote that worshipping a male god puts women in a state of psychological dependence on male authority. The “confessional” passage in Morocco shows just how deep this goes.

What was the strangest piece of religious history you discovered on your travels?

Legend has it there was a female pope in the 9th century: Pope Joan. She disguised herself as a man and rose through the papal ranks before reigning in the Vatican. She took a lover and her identity was revealed when she became pregnant and gave birth on a procession between the Coliseum and St Clement’s Basilica. Different stories give different penalties for her transgression – she was exiled, imprisoned, or tied to the back of a horse until her body was a bloody mess.

Most historians say this legend is untrue, that it was a story designed to undermine papal legitimacy. But some sources say the episode caused a medieval tradition – when a new pope was crowned, they were made to sit on a chair with a hole. Someone received the honourable task of reaching up through the hole and checking for papal testicles.

Where do you feel freest on your travels?

By the ocean, or swimming in a body of water. This is transcendence, an embodied encounter with both unending mystery and deep inner knowing. Karen Armstrong wrote that all sacred traditions attempt to describe that which is indescribable; the divine is impossible to contain in image or word. Perhaps the enormity of the ocean is the closest expression of the great spirit.

What next in your own path of spirituality?

I’m exploring goddess traditions and what it means to be a witch; I am a student of contemplative traditions, of Buddhism and yoga philosophy – all within the realms of non-dualism, which knows the divine exists in all things. I seek liberation. I try to be of service. I dedicate myself to exploring the inner world.

For anyone who loved Holy Woman, what other books/podcasts/blogs can you recommend?

Feminist theology

  • Carol Christ – the 1978 essay ‘Why Women Need the Goddess ‘
  • Mary Daly – Beyond God the Father
  • Gerda Lerner – The Creation of Patriarchy
  • feminismandreligion.com
  • Susan Carland – The War on Hislam

Feminist & queer theory

  • Audre Lorde – Your Silence Will Not Protect You
  • Mona Eltahawy – The Seven Deadly Sins for Women and Girls
  • Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory

Women leaving/subverting religion

  • Tara Westover – Educated
  • Carol Christ – Laughter of Aphrodite
  • Monica Dux – Lapsed
  • Miriam Therese Winter et. al – Defecting in Place

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