|
Spring
Books Feminist theology books offer new views
WOMEN ENCOUNTER GOD:
THEOLOGY ACROSS THE BOUNDARIES OF DIFFERENCE By Linda A.
Moody Orbis Books, 184 pages, $20 |
THE POWER OF
NAMING: A CONCILIUM READER IN FEMINIST LIBERATION THEOLOGY Edited by
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Orbis Books, 373 pages,
$20 |
By KAYE ASHE
In a well-known passage of Alice Walker's The Color Purple,
Shug Avery asks Celie what her God looks like, and Celie answers, "He big and
old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and go barefooted."
His eyes are big, bluish-gray and cool and he has white lashes. Shug doesn't
blame her. "Ain't no way to read the Bible and not think God white," she
admits. But Shug explains that she herself lost interest in God when she found
out she thought God was white and a man. She searches for God inside herself
and as part of everything "that was or is or ever will be."
Alice Walker here gives literary expression to women's
increasingly intense and broadened awareness that they must name God for
themselves and that they must do so out of their own cultural, historical and
social experience. Shug would find the God who emerges from these two books a
lot less boring than the one she encountered in churches and dismissed because
he failed to engage her.
In Women Encounter God, Linda A. Moody examines in turn
conceptions of God as articulated by white feminist, Latina feminist, Hispanic
(mujerista) and African-American (womanist) theologians, all of whom write
within the general framework of liberation theology. She appreciates the
distinctive accent of representatives of each of these groups; she doesn't
sidestep the tensions that have resulted in a much richer and diversified
theological vision; and she doesn't minimize the challenge of attempting "to
reconcile the pressures for diversity and difference with those for integration
and commonality." Moody, ultimately, doesn't really reconcile these pressures.
Rather, she brings into dialogue women's voices speaking clearly and
passionately from various cultural and class perspectives.
There was a risk involved in this effort. Moody situates herself
as a white theologian whose family are Kentucky tobacco farmers and
construction workers who never had money to spare. Much of her life has been
spent, however, in community with white feminists, African-American and Latin
American friends and colleagues. She chose to resist the "temptation to
silence" that she lists as one of the obstacles to multicultural theological
reflection, and to enter into an analysis of different types of theology that
nevertheless intersect at significant points. All, from their particular
perspective, find a God who is relational and "embodied," and who shares power
in the work of justice.
I appreciated Moody's critical and comparative analysis. She
respects the intrinsic differences among the theologies she explores while
recognizing the commonalities that allow for a dialogue across boundaries. She
makes no attempt to collapse differences so that we can rush to what can only
be described as a pseudo-unity, a premature sisterhood; neither does she
imagine that we are speaking in mutually unintelligible tongues.
The book will serve as an introduction to multicultural
reflections on God for those who are not familiar with the works Moody analyzes
and cites to good advantage. It will offer valuable insights in regard to
methodology and suggest next steps to those already engaged in the
dialogue.
Like Moody's book, The Power of Naming focuses on feminist
liberation theology. Its cultural lens, however, is broader, including as it
does views from Africa, India, Australia, Korea, China, Thailand and the
Philippines.
Editor Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza brings together in this
hefty volume essays that appeared in Concilium from the mid-eighties to
1996, making available to us between the covers of one book the thought of some
of the best feminist scholars around the globe.
Schüssler Fiorenza, in her introduction to the text, places
feminist theological discourse in the context of feminist theory (Moody, too,
makes this connection) and within a system that analyzes not only sexism but
the interlocking oppressions that affect women: "racism, poverty, colonialism
and religious exclusivism." She emphasizes the effects on theological
development of the silencing of women and their exclusion from the academy,
theological education, religious authority and symbol-making and sees this
exclusion as a foundational theological problem to be taken seriously not just
by women but by the church at large. She calls for a shift from "malestream"
scholarship to a kind of theologizing that takes into account the diversity of
human experience and the transformative potential of feminist insight and
feminist sensibilities.
The 32 essays that comprise the Concilium Reader are
grouped under four headings: "Claiming Our Own Theological Voices," "Naming the
Structures of Women's Oppression," "The Theological Construction of Women's
Silence," and "Changing Theological Discourses." As might be expected, the
voices represented speak in a number of different keys. Some emphasize theory;
others historical, political and social realities; still others spiritual and
liturgical perspectives. Coming as they do from five continents and from widely
and richly diverse religious-theological and cultural settings, the essays
demonstrate the vigorous growth of feminist thought that has taken place in the
last 20 years.
A common thread running through both books is the difficulty the
term "feminist" presents. The term is vilified in fundamentalist circles and
contested in academic ones. Some have identified it with a white, supremacist
mentality and so rejected it, while others understand the term as embracing a
worldwide movement being reshaped by women from every corner of the globe.
Schüssler Fiorenza clearly appreciates the urgent need and
the importance of diverse feminist communities speaking from their own
experience, but she warns against a "balkanization" of the movement that would
fragment and divide it into "special interest groups": Asian, Catholic, Muslim,
Jewish, lesbian, elder, differently abled and so on. She suggests that such a
fragmentation would, in the end, play into the hands of established powers and
calls instead for a process whereby the naming of feminist liberation theology
is constantly destabilized and its meaning refined and redefined.
Moody, too, operates in that tense arena where differences must be
articulated, sometimes in anger and bitterness, and understood before fruitful
exchange and mutual enrichment can take place. An early and successful
experiment in reciprocity among theologians of different races, cultures, and
sexual orientation resulted in the publication of God's Fierce Whimsy in
1985.
The books reviewed here give hope that both feminist liberation
theology and Christian identity itself will become increasingly multicultural
and multireligious. Schüssler Fiorenza reminds us that "to be
cosmopolitan, democratic, and catholic this identity must remain particular,
heterogeneous and provisional, subject to ... renegotiation ... and recreation
in the diverse liberation struggles."
Both of the books reviewed here have an index and useful
footnotes. Women Encounter God includes a valuable bibliography as
well.
What emerges most clearly for me from the pages of these books is
that the way women encounter God and the evolution of feminist liberation
theology is located squarely in the midst of a struggle for a fundamental
change in human consciousness and the structures of the societies in which we
live. In this sense, the questions posed are not "women's questions" anymore
than the U.N. Conference in Beijing was a Conference "on women." Women are
looking at God, worship, violence, the economy, nature and the earth from a
particular perspective. And that perspective is relevant in piercing and
poignant ways for the future of the human race.
Sinsinawa Dominican Sr. Kaye Ashe resides in Berkeley, Calif.,
where she does development work for her congregation.
National Catholic Reporter, February 7,
1997
|
|