Disillusioned with Pentecostalism, Louise Omer decided to find a religion where women were not subordinate
At the start of her new memoir, Holy Woman, Louise Omer asks herself five questions:Why was Eve responsible for the Fall of Man?“No matter whether or not you can answer those questions, it’s essential that they’re asked,” she says now. “Because these questions led me to give up on Pentecostalism entirely, because it runs on male supremacy and indoctrinates women into a slave mentality, it makes us see ourselves as inferior. People might disagree with me on that, but that’s my experience.
Now 33, Omer speaks with the quiet certainty of someone who has worked hard to figure out exactly who they are. Is she happier now, without Pentecostalism? “Deeply,” she says. “I was not awake then, I had to push my actual emotions down. I have met my anger, which was repressed because Christian women are meant to be so nice all the fucking time. I’ve finally met my true self.”
“My pilgrimage was on hold, I didn’t belong, but still I searched: this time for understanding,” she writes. “Now, I wanted to arm myself with knowledge that would help me heal.”of the reading: the theologians, the feminist scholars, the trauma experts. “The fundamental question of why God is a man in Islam, in Christianity, in Judaism, and in many others, it is because they were born in a social context of patriarchy,” she says.
On her journey she saw hope on the margins: the gay preachers, the people of colour rejecting white, conservative visions of Abrahamic religions; the women and non-binary people reinterpreting scripture. “Maybe most mosques are not going to have a woman doing the khutbah on Fridays,” she says. “But there are strong Islamic women who speak out often about religious matters.
“A lot of people say that maybe you should go to therapy instead of writing a memoir, but I didn’t go to therapy. I just smoked a lot and learned that I have a great capacity to consume sugar.”
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