It is impossible to say this without sounding snarky or motivated by lesser intentions. If you continue reading this, you’re going to have to accept that I’m not coming from a place of distrust or anger: I’m just perplexed. Unlike most social media, I only share what I own. Nothing is more ‘me’ than the words I take the time to share.

Some people will read this and become angry or defensive. That reaction should serve as an indicator of how dissonant the issue can be. If you are convinced I’m wrong, you will do yourself a disservice by either lashing out in anger or attempting to craft an argument to convince me otherwise.

I’m just one man sharing my opinion. It’s mine, based on years of reading, observation, and insight.

Anyone with sufficiently confident ideas couldn’t possibly be rendered floorless by my wild ramblings. Truth should never avoid the footsteps of inquiry.

The longer I’m alive, the more perplexed and confused I become in observance of the obedience and participation women have toward doctrine or churches which continue to discriminate.

For all those giving up something for an observed religious holiday, I would ask you to instead consider giving up any religious organization which prohibits women from having an equal footing from top to bottom of the organization.

I’m not asking you to give up your understanding or relationship with your creator or your religion. I’m asking that you instead pledge allegiance to an organization which doesn’t openly take you task for having been born the opposite sex.

Don’t be fooled by mission statements honoring your “alternate role” or anything other than full participation.

Less is lesser, no matter how gilded or prophetic the language used to disguise it.

It’s not a slippery slope; it’s a sharp cliff.

It’s hard to imagine being 52% of the population, yet accepting membership in a church which refuses to stop discriminating.

For men reading this, it’s important that I’m clear: you are wrong if you persist in your insistence that religion demands that women accept lesser spiritual roles. Religious texts have been used to justify all manner of behavior and norms that we now find to be ridiculous. Clinging to tradition or the expository religious texts of your church does not compel intelligent agreement. It’s time. I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument from a man regarding why a woman can’t be a leader in his church. I’ve certainly heard some angry arguments – and often at high volume.

Condemning me to hell only serves to demonstrate how so many fail to see that we only truly preach by how we live. I never learn from an angry voice or a snarled lip and I suspect that no one else does, either.

Each of us must make our own choices for our own reasons. I know that it’s complicated.

But it doesn’t have to be.

I have great difficulty trying to come to terms with the idea of some of the strong women I know who tolerate organizations which do not honor their right to be equals at the table. Some say they’ve found great peace in their respective churches. I find it difficult to imagine that they’ve done so without great stirrings of distrust as they witness being excluded.

These same women, going about their regular lives, would be outraged at the institutionalized discrimination found in their own churches if it were to infect their daily lives.

If your church tells you that cannot be a pastor, priest, or equal to any man in the organization, it deserves to be replaced by another, one without such ideology.

There are a great number of churches which recognize women as equals in all matters spiritual. Are we to believe that their doctrine is wrong? And if they are wrong, you must accept that for some peculiar reason, women are not a man’s equal where religion is concerned. Most of us see it and recognize that it’s wrong. We just don’t know how to get from ‘here’ to ‘there.’

Logistics aside, if even half of all the women in gender-restricted religions and churches stop tolerating it, these churches would wither almost immediately. There are few such social systems in which the fix is both glaringly obvious and available.

Just stop.

Take your intelligence, your presence, your love, and your compassion and let it grace the door of a church which honors women as equals. Let your sons and daughters know that God is an insufficient excuse to continue to practice spiritual discrimination.

It might burn to hear it, but many of us are waiting for the other shoe to drop and for women to stand up and demand this change. It would happen immediately if every woman currently attending a church which does not recognize women as total equals stopped attending, stopped donating, stopped participating, stopped honoring, and stopped accepting being told “no.”

You might be surprised to know that many men already share your distaste with gender-spirituality. And for those that don’t, you can’t change their minds by waiting for them to come around to sensibility. It’s time for a slammed door or a proverbial skillet to the head.

It is true that you absolutely can find your own way inside such discriminatory organizations. I see that it’s a problem for a man to be pointing toward discrimination. It’s also true, though, that if you decide that it is unacceptable and shout your objections and immediately detach, church leaders will have no choice but to admit they’ve been derelict for a few thousand years.

No matter how old a church is, if 52% of the congregation shouts “NO more!” you can be sure that change will come immediately or that reluctance will clearly signal something fundamental is at work.

Whether your church intends to marginalize women by disallowing them full participation, the result is the same: your voice is among the lesser. You are not a full participant. You are condoning the perpetuation of the system which has identified you by gender as unequal.

Allegiance to such churches based on tradition dishonors our ability to determine our own course.

If you truly love your church, demand change.

If you truly love yourself, be open to the possibility.

Not at some imagined future point; rather, today. It will only sustain itself if it embraces this change. If it does not embrace it, it will eventually wither anyway.

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