Can  a Heathen Woman Be a Christian?

Bull-Leaping Fresco from Knossos, Crete. Ca. 1450.

This question came up urgently yesterday morning when I accepted an invitation to read Taken by the Shawnee to a group of self-described Christian women; it also related to a reading I did later in the afternoon at my church. At my church, the audience was probably too polite to ask the above question; a group of women I don’t know at the next reading may be more willing to challenge my description of Margaret Erskine as answering this question in a very unorthodox way.

But before discussing this question, we need to strip the word “heathen” of its negative connotations: idol worshipping, belief in magic, etc. Much of this negativity comes from the heavy evangelism of the 19th century when the protestant churches sent ministers and missionaries all over the world to preach terrifying sermons of death and damnation. These sermons sometimes seemed to demonize women as creatures of instinct and seduction.

If we look at pre-history, we find in many cultures positive female images like those found in Crete: big-bodied naked women, sometimes reduced to pregnant belly and breast. These statues remind us of our essential function: providing the future of human kind. Another image seems to show a woman encountering a bull’s horns, and indeed other images show women involved in all kinds of athletic competitions. We saw recent glowing examples of this strength in the women competing in the Paris Olympics—and perhaps even more important, our skill in cooperating on teams.

Identifying our many other gifts has been more difficult for our culture because they raise the issue of power—who owns it, who exercises it, and what happens to those who do not have it. Our power as women is multidimensional and of course doesn’t depend on and is not limited to child bearing.

Margaret, as she grows physically and spiritually through the hard trials of her four years as an adopted daughter of the Shawnee finds, when she is ransomed and returns home to Virginia, that her strengths cause consternation; she no longer fits the stereotype of the obedient hard working frontier wife. Her neighbors and family suspect that her son John is the fruit of an illicit (in their minds) relationship with a Shawnee. Although she strenuously denies this, the protestant church recently founded near her village does not welcome her or her son, and this exclusion is echoed by her neighbors and family. She has become in their eyes a heathen in the old sense, especially since she doesn’t denounce her captors.

The cooperation she learned in the Shawnee village and their respect for women’s wisdom—they were often the peace-makers—contrasts to the routine exclusion of women from all Christian churches. Some progress has been made lately but it is still rare to see a woman at the altar, leading the service, in either protestant or roman catholic churches. Certainly Margaret never saw it in the church in Virginia from which she felt excluded.

So it’s an uneasy situation, to be both a Christian woman and a heathen—unless we look to certain interpretations of women in the New Testament and other religious texts. Yet it is crucial to support and strength that identity, as I hope to show in the scene in Taken by The Shawnee when Margaret witnesses the death of her father by adoption, Chief White Bark.

Attendance at all churches in the U.S. continues to fall, robbing us of one means of creating community and a shared sense of values. Margaret’s exclusion is felt by all women. Perhaps a healthy dose of heathenism would restore us to the churches (or other forms of organized spirituality) so vital to healthy communities.

In Women, Writing, Religion Taken by the Shawnee Religion