Challenging injustice related to gender

Subsection 3.2

Interpreting Scripture
Rewriting Reformed history
Continual theological reformation
Living reconciliation
Speaking prophetically in our culture

Her shouting bothered the disciples, and they asked Jesus to send her away (Mt 15.21-28). But the Canaanite woman persisted in shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David." She was ready to do everything that it takes to have her daughter healed and refused to accept his first answer. She was not a Jew, but she challenged Jesus to include her in the circle of those who can receive mercy. Jesus was astonished with her faith and gave her what she wanted: the healing of her daughter. "Woman, great is your faith; let it be done for you as you wish."

The Canaanite woman came to Jesus with a cultural challenge, for she was not "a lost sheep from the house of Israel". She showed how "the children's food" can be food for all, even for those whom "the children" usually despised. Her persistence created a new understanding of mission where God is open to all, and God's mercy is a gift for all. She held Jesus accountable for his words of reconciliation. And Jesus accepted her challenge and wondered at her faith.

The story of the Canaanite woman echoes in our church today as women of faith shout out, in partnership with men, seeking new channels for mission that reflect God's will, channels that cut across old lines of division and hostility.

Partnership in God's mission challenges us in the following ways:

Interpreting Scripture:
Breaking chains of literal, oppressive interpretation of the Bible

The chains of oppressive interpretation of the Bible can be broken when Scripture is allowed to speak from its own contexts to our different contexts today: "...hermeneutics, a process of interpretation, suggests that understanding arises in the encounter between text and reader. In this meeting the reader's presuppositions, familiarity with other materials, experiences, competence, community, expectations, desires, etc., influence either consciously or subconsciously the construction of the meaning."¹

Elsa Tamez gives us an example of such contextually-sensitive interpretation. Gal 3.28 speaks of partnership between female and male, whereas 1 Cor 14.34-35 speaks of submission of women to men, and the writer is the same person - Paul. Understanding this incompatibility requires an exegesis which takes into account the letters as a whole, the context of the texts, and the social, economic and cultural contexts of both the writer and the readers.

In Gal 3.28 Paul uses an early baptismal formula to express our fundamental unity in Jesus Christ. But 1 Cor 14.34-35 springs from his pastoral concern for the community, particularly its new members. His goal is that in worship assemblies all things be done decently and according to the prevailing cultural patterns (1 Cor 14.40) so as to avoid a scandal. If we take the texts out of their contexts, as has been done so many times, the contradiction between them is absolute. If we understand each text in its context, we find that the contradiction is merely relative. In 1 Cor 14.34-35 Paul is not trying to make a doctrinal statement, valid at all times and in all places, nor to limit the rights that women have acquired according to the gospel (1 Cor 11.11). "To read 1 Cor 14.34-35 as a universal statement for all women in all times means going against Christ's gospel. It even goes against the very spirit of the apostle Paul's letter, as this writer, more than any other, makes reference to women's active participation in the first Christian communities."²

Scripture has to be examined in the centre of the community seeking to live in the oneness offered in Christ, and considered from a perspective that asks the question of its capacity to bring about transformation. This raises very concrete questions in relationship to the suffering of the people who are exposed to structures of oppression.³

Rewriting Reformed history:
Breaking chains of marginalization of women

Women have played important roles in all our churches, but their stories are seldom told. A great challenge that faces us today is to rescue the buried histories of these women, and to reconstruct the history of the church.

Some aspects of women's historical roles in the church will never be known, because for most of Christian history only a small percentage of women were educated sufficiently to write and leave a literary legacy for us to discover. Male church historians have seldom told us very much about women's life and thoughts, and what they tell us is often biased against women. Fortunately recent research has shown that there is a rich literature written by women of the church for us to explore, so many women's voices from the past are being heard again.⁴

Surely there are thousands of women in the history of the Reformed church in Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East whose stories are still waiting to be discovered. Even when there is no written material, oral interviews can help to collect the lost histories of women. WARC ought to encourage research to discover women's roles in our churches.

Continual theological reformation:
Breaking chains of stagnation

"We are living in a time of great search for theological articulation in each context... It is interesting that in all the new expressions of theology, the participation and place of women is an important ingredient, even though such participation does not yet provide full justice to women. This only shows how theologies, even while attempting to proceed in the path of liberation are captive to the dominant cultural and traditional values. The plea for "self-theologizing" by women and others needs to be respected and encouraged if we are to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ today. If theology is an expression of the experience of the ultimate reality, the experiences of one group cannot dominate without causing damage..."⁵

Latin American liberation theologians challenge us to do theology in a new way, using the method of dialogue between people at the congregational, pastoral (ministerial), and professional (theological) levels. From the Base Christian Communities in Latin America we learn that Jesus' life and teaching encouraged the formation of an open community, with a preferential option for the poor, that does not accept the traditional religious order and is critical of every political order.⁶

Feminist theologians understand themselves as reflecting critically on women's experience of God within their socio-ecclesial and intellectual practices, and seeking to create a new civilization based on justice, human integrity, transformation of life, the full participation of women, ecological equilibrium, and the well-being of the whole creation. They challenge us to recover forgotten female images, both human and divine, in Scripture and in Christian and Jewish tradition. They appeal to the scriptural affirmation that both female and male are created in God's image, and emphasize inclusive language in worship.⁷

In the Presbyterian Kenyan Pastors' Conference in Kanamai in 1994, a male pastor said a prayer in English at lunch addressing God as the "mother from whose kind hands we are going to receive our meal". As soon as he said Amen, there was a commotion. Some pastors protested that it was an insult to address God as "mother". Within five minutes, it was realized that God is addressed as female and mother in all the Kenyan languages represented in that conference. It was western Christianity, as handed on by the missionaries, that suffered the problem of using masculine images of God exclusively.

Living reconciliation:
Breaking chains of discrimination

God's mission makes possible reconciliation not merely with God but with each other. Then every sermon that reaches out to other people, every decision that touches other people, ought to reflect reconciliation. We must scrutinize our life together in the light of reconciliation and change our practices accordingly. Thus, the ordination of women as well as men is nothing less than a deeper understanding of, and commitment to, the life of reconciliation.

"Ordination, when restricted to men, does not reflect a message of reconciliation. Rather it creates a gap between the general ministry and the specific ministry in the church. This echoes a biased message within the church. Although women are called in the general ministry of the church to share their gifts for serving Christ, they are restricted and warned not to approach ordination, for this is holy ground upon which women cannot step... When women as well as men are ordained according to their call by God, then the sense of continuity between the general ministry and the ordained ministry of which we have spoken is lived and fulfilled. The church then lives what it teaches. Any discontinuity between the two creates a dichotomy in church thinking. This dichotomy prevails in the thinking of some church members who elevate the ordained ministry and consequently perceive women who desire to be ordained as seeking status, power or position in the church. Others understand the continuity between the general ministry and specific ministry, but confuse the two and thus claim that since women are already serving in the church, there is no need for them to serve in ordained ministries. Both views negate the teaching of the church encouraging the use of all the gifts one has received for the sake of following Christ's ministry of reconciliation."⁸

The ordination of women is not the end of the journey, rather it opens the door for other changes that bring reconciliation and shalom for the people of God. It is but one way of living reconciliation, one chain broken of the many chains of injustice involving separation and discrimination.

Speaking prophetically in our culture:
Breaking chains of conformity, insecurity, and lack of identity

Partnership in the church is too often hindered by cultural considerations. God's mission calls us to hold firm to our cultures and cherish them, but it challenges us to break the chains of mere conformity. We must play a prophetic role within our culture, even when we live as a minority. The message of reconciliation cannot be compromised. And our witness to others is accepted only when our integrity is clear. Reflecting on the Middle East, Najla Abou Sawan Kassab shares her story:

"While many agree that the difficulty of living full partnership in the church today is not rooted in any biblical or theological reason, still some raise the question of social pressure, when we are living in a multireligious context where Christians are a minority. Some see that the society, which is a patriarchal society, cannot accept women in full partnership. Besides, the Reformed community is a minority within the Christian family. When Islam has no role for women in leadership, and other churches are far from including women, then the obstacle to the ordination of women becomes social. In my preaching licence exam, I was asked, "What would happen to our ecumenical relationships if we were to ordain you?" I remember this question well. I remember answering that not all that we do in the Reformed churches is acceptable, whether to other religions or even to other churches, and still we are ecumenically accepted... For quite a time the ordination of male Protestant pastors was not accepted, since ordination is not seen as a sacrament. Did we change what we believed in? Also marriages that were held in our churches were not considered legal by other churches, since marriage is not seen as a sacrament. Still marriages were performed and accepted! We cannot but live according to what we believe. We will be threatened as a community only when we do not live what we teach."⁹

Confrontation with the surrounding culture frequently raises the question of violence and power in their many forms:

"Violence is most commonly understood as physical force that produces injury or harm, but violence is not always physical force. The term violence may be applied equally to overt physical force or to covert structures of repression. What is common to both understandings, overt and covert violence, is compulsion. Sexism, racism, and classism have come to be understood as violent because they exercise a kind of prior restraint that is coercive but which does not necessarily, in the moment of its exercise, employ overt physical force. This type of violence is called institutional violence. The more power is organized unequally, the more violent the system."¹⁰

The multinational economic system impairs many countries of the south in such a way that trafficking of women becomes a system of violence against women in their families. Economic power and greed reduce poor powerless women and their families to starvation and force the sale of women's bodies and lives.

Institutional violence is also found in the power structures in the church, which are frequently violent toward women who have less access to decision-making. In the United States, the Presbyterian Church (USA) was caught in a power struggle between liberal and conservative male church leaders. The conservative male leaders used slander against women who gathered for the reimagining conference in Minnesota in 1993, in connection with the ecumenical decade of churches in solidarity with women, 1988-98, and sought to destroy the power of women in leadership by calling for their resignation or firing them, while many liberal male leaders supported the women who attended the conference.

"Why does difference create unequal positions of power especially within a community of faith? Perhaps the first step in addressing this question is to define the nature of power. This expression of power is the root of political oppression, economic exploitation, militarism, violence against women and children, racial and religious conflict and sexism. Transforming power is the vision that can keep us on the journey to creating a partnership of equals within the community of faith. It is embedded in experiencing "power-with" as the basis for our being connected to each other. This is not power-sharing, as power-sharing may contain elements of arrogance and dominance. Who is it that decides how the cake of power is to be cut and how it is to be shared? Or when it is to be cut or not cut? Inequalities can be incorporated into power-sharing. However, when we are able to experience power with each other, the transformation of one leads to the transformation of all. Similarly, the oppression of one leads to the oppression of all. In experiencing power with each other we are interconnected. A partnership becomes sustainable when we are secure in our identity as women and men and when we are committed to accepting each other within a mutually acceptable relationship."¹¹

Faced with such challenges the church cannot be silenced by conformity. The church is called to stand against all cruel realities in church and society, such as clitoridectomy in Africa, the assassination of street children in Brazil, the spread of HIV/Aids, and sexual, racial, religious and other discrimination.¹²

Questions

1. Sit with a group to study the general council theme, "Break the chains of injustice" as it relates to the story of the Canaanite woman in Mt 15.21-28.
2. What characteristics of the prevailing leadership style in churches tend to exclude women?
3. How can we accept the challenges mentioned in this Sub-section and go beyond the present situation of the church?
4. How can we transform the chain of unjust power into the freedom of "power-with"?

Notes