A new hope

A new hope November 20, 2012

(May 22, 2008 – Source: Paul Kane/Getty Images AsiaPac)

Today, I checked my phone compulsively for tweets from Connor Park and Dianna Anderson, who were updating the Twitter world on the status of the Church of England’s synod on whether or not to ordain women bishops. Today, I thought that there was no way women could lose this battle. No way.

But I was wrong.

Today, I sat in the student union, and a couple of men (who I can only describe as “dudebros”) sat down near me. As I received the disappointing news via Twitter that the Church of England had decided not to ordain women bishops, and had to fight back tears of anger and discouragement, these “dudebros” started a conversation about–what do you know?–women.

Or should I say “hot bitches who give them boners,” since that’s how they described the women they were discussing.

I’m not a part of the Church of England. In fact, I’m not really a part of any church. And I wasn’t one of the “hot bitches” that the dudebros next to me were looking at on one of their iPhones.

But those events, especially  how they happened to coincide, were reminders…

Today, I cried in public because I wondered if my voice mattered at all. I cried because I even though I often feel men’s eyes on me, I doubt they really see me. 

They hear, but they don’t listen.

They gaze, but they don’t see.

It would be so easy to give up, and I know that’s what they hope for. They hope for a day when the oppressed follow their rules and stop preaching and prophesying. They hope for a day when the oppressed give up trying to be human, and settle into their “roles” as sex objects.

They hope…

But we hope for something different.

“Let justice roll down like waters…”

This isn’t an area where we can agree to disagree. This isn’t a place where both sides are valid.

This is a case of justice vs. injustice.

For our hope to be realized, we must live in antithesis to their hope.

We must speak.

We must preach.

We must minister.

We must affirm our humanity.

We must demand respect. 

We must call our oppressors out of the way that leads to death–the death of half the church, the death of the humanity of both men and women–and invite them to a new hope. 

Don’t give up, women.

“The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” 


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