Both/And: Self-Authoring a Feminist Christian Identity

This article is my attempt to make sense of the conflicting, confusing, tumultuous journey of making peace with my religion and my commitment to social justice, particularly feminism. I frame my journey using Baxter Magolda’s (2001) model of self-authorship, connecting the development of my religious and gender identities to the learning, questioning, and eventual personalization of external messages. I weave Baxter Magolda’s model, my narrative, and existing scholarship together to present a framework by which self-authorship can be applied to understand the needs of a young woman experiencing spiritual struggle within Christianity. I then consider the limitations of such a framework given the lens of privilege attached to both my own narrative and the model of self-authorship as a whole. I conclude with recommendations for myself and other student affairs practitioners interested in engaging more deeply with this topi