Interview with Mary Kassian Part 2

[This is Part Two of my interview with Mary Kassian (Part One here). I'm grateful to Mrs. Kassian for taking the time to do the interview.]

I have a few Christian friends who consider themselves Feminists. Is it possible to be a Christian and a Feminist? 

This depends on your definition of feminism. Personally, I regard feminism as a worldview that is antithetical to Christianity. I do not believe that an individual can be a Christian and a feminist (in the true sense of the word) at the same time.

When I walk into a typical Evangelical church today, what is one of the most glaring impacts of Feminism I will see? What damage is it doing?

The most glaring impact is in people's "default setting" with regards to male and female roles. In the past, people believed that the husband assuming spiritual leadership in the home and the wife submitting to/supporting that leadership was both proper and good. It was believed to be the natural order of things. Nowadays, the "default setting" is that a gender-specific inequality in role/function is improper, bad, and goes against the natural order of things. The majority of youth in our churches today do not have a clue about what the Bible teaches about male and female. The relational damage is incredible. Statistics demonstrate that church-goers are no more successful than the world-at-large in sustaining healthy marriages. Instead of being salt & light and offering God's healing to a fractured world, men and women in our evangelical churches are copying the pattern of the world. The way the genders interact within the church is not any different than how they interact outside of it. 

Awhile back I read about a father who teaches his children to refer to God as "God the Mommy/Daddy." I've noticed a trend over the years of more and more people who want to refer to God in both genders. What's the problem with this?

The biggest problem is that God does not refer to himself that way. When we change the words, we change the meaning. Inclusive language sexualizes God, depersonalizes God, attacks God's character, denies the Trinitarian relationship, obscures the person and work of Christ, obscures humanity's relationship to God, and confuses personal identity. When we worship God as "mother" or "he/she" we are not worshipping the God of the Bible.

On February 26th of this year Jada Pinkett Smith made a comment that caused quite an uproar. She said, "Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career ... You can do whatever it is you want." In my mind, this is a Feminist statement, but she was in fact criticized for being "heteronormative;" meaning that she was trying to enforce traditional heterosexual gender roles on the audience. In light of your research on Feminism, why was she so angrily denounced?

The reason she was denounced was because she held up the ideal of a heterosexual marriage and children as the epitome of "having it all."  According to feminists, "having it all" means having whatever you want to have: a lesbian relationship, co-habitation, having children without a husband, having no children, having no man. All options are equally valid and good.  Feminism is all about giving a woman the power to name and define her own utopia - and to determine whether or not this utopia even includes a man.

It can be easy for someone to be discouraged by the impact Feminism's had and the grip it holds on our churches and the larger culture. Is there any hope? Or, will it continually get worse?

I believe the youth today are searching for answers. Today's young women are disillusioned with their mother's inability to sustain marriages. As I said in my book, "it is in the deepest darkness that the light shines the most brightly." I believe the time is ripe for a new movement - a seismic holy quake of countercultural men and women who dare to take God at his word, those who have the courage to stand against the popular tide, and believe and delight in God's plan for male and female.