VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Violence against women can take many forms. It is not limited to physical violence but also includes sexual, emotional, psychological and economic abuse and discrimination. It is widespread in South Asian society, including in the church. The perpetrators are not only men; women may also abuse other women.

Violence at Every Turn

The violence against women begins before birth, for many female foetuses are aborted, in defiance of the law. If a girl child is born, there is far less celebration than there would be for the birth of a boy.

The newborn and her mother may be blamed and rejected. The result is that there are some sixty million fewer women in South Asia than would be expected if both sexes were treated equally.

Those girls who survive infancy often grow up in an atmosphere of rejection, deprivation and neglect. The home, which should be the safest and happiest place, is often stained by verbal, emotional, sexual and physical abuse. This brutality is physically and emotionally dehumanising and damages all the children in the home, thus perpetuating these crimes in the next generation.

As the girl child matures, her problems increase. She may be forced to undergo circumcision, in which her genitals are mutilated.

She may be bartered for other women, money or land. Many are robbed of the freedom to choose their career or husband. Should a girl attempt to choose for herself, she may be killed by her brother or some other male relative to “protect the honour” of the family.

Despite this societal stress on the honour of the family, many young girls are raped and sexually abused in their own homes, usually by their own relatives and friends of the family. Many are sold into commercial prostitution or the devadasi system of temple prostitution.

When the girl marries, she may simply be exchanging one abusive home for another. Despite legislation forbidding it, family harassment for dowry payments is not uncommon, and a young wife may be killed if the payments are deemed inadequate. Studies also show that in some regions fifty-one per cent of men and fifty-six per cent of women consider it appropriate for a husband to beat his wife if she is suspected of neglecting household chores or disrespecting her inlaws.

The divorce laws also strongly favour men.

The woman’s situation becomes even worse if her husband dies. Sati (the practice of the widow dying on the funeral pyre of her husband) was banned in 1829, but it is still practised in some villages.

Because widows (and sometimes older unmarried women) are considered to bring bad luck, they are often forbidden to participate in celebrations like marriages. They are often left destitute. In some languages like Bengali, the word meaning “young widow” is the same as the word meaning “prostitute”, indicating their only option for survival.

The reason women have no resources of their own is that their labour is devalued, so that they receive little or no pay for their work in the home or in the community. Additionally, some women do not have the right to their own income or to money and property given them by their parents. It all goes to the husband and his family.

Women continue to live in these abusive situations because they lack financial independence and education. If they try to return to their parental home, they will be reproached by the family and friends for not accepting a woman’s lot. Their unmarried siblings will find it difficult to find marriage partners.

Women are not even safe from harassment in public places or on the streets. The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, condemned what is called “eve-teasing” as “an act of terror that violates a woman’s body, space and self-respect … denies a woman’s fundamental right to move freely and carry herself with dignity.”

Turning to the police for protection from abuse or harassment is risky, for violence against women occurs even in police stations where women are teased, shamed, sexually molested and even raped by those supposed to guard their safety.

Most cultures train men and women for stereotyped gender roles.

Men learn domination and control and woman learn subordination and unhealthy dependence. Consequently women grow up with low self-esteem and a sense of weakness, and need physical, intellectual, economic and social protection. But what does God have to say about this situation? What do the Bible and the church teach?

A Biblical Perspective

Violence against women was never part of God’s plan for his creation.

He created both men and women in his image (Gen 1:27). Hence women are not to be treated as possessions. Everyone should be

treated with respect and dignity. In 1 Peter 3:7 husbands are told to treat their wives with respect lest their prayers not be heard.

Women’s oppression began after the “fall” (Gen 3:16) but redemption in Jesus Christ overtakes the fall, and rules out any acceptance of domination or manipulation of women by men. Jesus demonstrated this in the way he treated women in the Gospels. He commended Mary for her desire to learn (Luke 10:38-42) and engaged the Samaritan woman in a theological and intellectual conversation (John 4).

The Lord hates violence (Mal 2:15-16). His picture of the home is a place of refuge, safety and peace (Job 21:8-9). He commands those in authority to speak out on behalf of the weak (Prov 31:8) and to provide for their needs (Deut 24:19-21; 26:12-13) and makes it clear that he is on the side of widows and the oppressed (Deut 27:19; Ps 68:5).

Though the Bible clearly and repeatedly stresses the equal status of women with men, and the worth of women in God’s sight, the church’s voice is far too feebly heard above the cries of violence.

Abuse is even tolerated in Christian homes. It may even appear to be endorsed by pastors who misinterpret Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:24 as meaning that a woman must accept a husband’s abuse of herself and her daughters.

Thankfully, there are organisations in South Asia that have sought to protect the rights of women, provide them with education, and raise their position and status by legislation. They seek to raise awareness and to find new avenues for women to use their abilities and achieve their potential. The task is daunting, but the church must add its voice to theirs and work to create the types of home and society that God desires.

Ellen Alexander

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is one of the largest criminal industries in the world today, being exceeded only by trafficking in drugs and weapons. The UN estimates that nearly two million women and children are trafficked globally every year, and millions more are trafficked within their home countries.

Factors like poverty, discrimination, ignorance, illiteracy and migration increase a person’s vulnerability to trafficking. Trafficking may involve family members selling a vulnerable member of the family, often because this is demanded in order to settle a debt. Young people may be lured with promises of jobs or an education or may simply be abducted.

Those who fall into the hands of traffickers may be sold and resold in a network of exploitation. Some may be forced into bonded labour working on farms, in factories or in homes. Others may be forced to become child soldiers. Women and girls may be forced into the sex trade. The Indian government estimates that every day about two hundred girls and women are forced into prostitution against their will. This problem is severe in India, but it is not just an Indian problem. No country in South Asia is free from this affliction.

Traffickers use physical and emotional violence to control their victims. Women may be beaten, raped, and told that they are now social outcasts, making them dependent on their abusers. Others may be locked in factories that are also jails. All suffer health risks, whether from sexually transmitted diseases, dangerous working conditions or inadequate food. Deprivation and misery leave them vulnerable to disease. In an attempt to forget their misery and humiliation, they may turn to drugs and alcohol. They find it difficult to trust others and they live in fear.

Those who escape are left with shattered self-esteem and deep emotional scars. They still fear others and fear rejection. They find it very difficult to accept unconditional love, the fatherhood of God, and forgiveness.

The Bible includes instances of slavery and trafficking. Joseph was sold as a slave to Ishmaelites (Gen 37:28). Naaman’s servant girl was trafficked and worked as domestic help (2 Kgs 5:2). Daniel and his friends were also trafficked (Dan 1:3-6). In each case, the context and purpose for the trafficking were different. The prevalence of slavery and such trafficking in biblical times necessitated laws that God’s people should follow. The OT law commanded God’s people to protect the widow and the fatherless – that is, the people who are vulnerable (Exod 22:21-23). When Christ came, he said that he had been sent to free the captives (Luke 4:18). We are called to follow in his steps. We should be salt and light and should work to release the oppressed by delivering them from physical captivity, breaking their shackles of shame, and welcoming them with love. Our calling is to offer them physical, emotional and spiritual freedom. We must reach out to them with the news that God can bless them with a new identity, a future of hope and eternal life.

Mathew K. Daniel

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 “Church in the Round”: Feminist Ecclesiology

Feminist Ecclesiology means a transformation, a re-framing of ecclesiological discourse. It also means rethinking all aspects of the life of the church. Two important aspects are: the search for a feminist liberating spirituality and the church as a community of justice.

The Presbyterian minister Letty Russell in her book The Church in the Round, argues for a feminist spirituality of connection and choice. Choice for her means the active choice to be a woman and to understand being a woman, having a woman’s body as a celebration of being in the image of God rather than despises and rejected by patriarchy.

1. Feminist Critique of the Kyriachal Church

In 1982 at a conference of the centre for concern, a North American Civil Rights organization Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza coined a phrase, “Women are Church and have always been Church.” This is the beginning of Women-Church Movement. Fiorenza argued that throughout the history of the church, none of the church councils had actually represented the full Ekklesia, as women had always been denied access and representation by them. The Ekklesia is the assembly or congress of those who have full citizenship and the right to vote.

Natalie K. Watson argues that Women-Church is a movement of “self-identified women and women-identified men” which claimed that the patriarchal church can no longer claim to be the sole representation of being church and that church cannot be church in its fullness until women are fully incorporated into it and fully participate in its decision-making body.

Women-Church did not seek to found a new organization or institution, but understood itself as a loose network of different groups and organizations affirming such values as equal rights, social justice, and mutuality. Women’s claiming to be church not only refers to struggling for admission to the existing hierarchy (even the lowest ranks), but the transformations of the church as such. Women-Church movement is based on Latin American Liberation Theology and can be described as three steps: women move from “impacting the church through identifying as church” to “proclaiming women-church” through the praxis of feminist liturgical base communities and civil rights organizations.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza developed the original concept of women-church and Rosemary Radford Ruether reflected theologically. Ruether identifies three areas in which women have been marginalized in the church: sacramental celebration, theological education and ecclesial administration.

Letty Russell suggests that the church cannot be the church if it does not fight for justice for those who are oppressed and on the margin. Justice from a feminist perspective means power-in-relation. The church becomes the visible sign of god’s justice and proclaims the justice of God for all through its very being. Feminist theologians struggles not only for justice for women within the church, but also in all aspects of life as feminists refuse to be restricted to man-made institutional boundaries.

2. “Church in the Round”: Church as a community of disciples and equals

Letty Russell in her book The Church in the Round explored Church as a community of disciples and equals.

The life and ministry of Christ is one that open to all, and to those on the margins of society (including women); it is the focal point and the ultimate criterion of all ecclesial praxis. Ruerther understands women-church as the exodus community that leads the church in its exodus from patriarchy. Mary E Hunt understands the choice between conformity and separations as an expression of patriarchy itself, which no longer has meaning for being church. The existing clerical structures are to be replaced by models of ministry that empower and encourage the use of the gifts of all believers within the church as a community of disciples and equal.

Letty Russell proposes a “round-table ecclesiology” that embodies a feminist spirituality of connection as a theological paradigm that takes its starting point from the experience of ecclesial praxis and advocacy of those on the margins of society and the church. For Russell, Feminist Ecclesiology is a feminist re-evaluation of all aspects of the life of the church. The church for Russell is the “community of Christ where everyone is welcome.” The church is the bearer of the prophetic tradition that criticizes patriarchy and announces liberation for all humanity; it anticipates God’s New Creation. Russell suggests that “justice” should be understood as a fifth mark of the church (along with unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity).

3. Feminist perspectives on Ministry and Mission.

Regina Coll in her book, “Christianity and Feminism in Conversation” states that women in contemporary churches are suffering from linguistic deprivation and Eucharistic famine. They desperately need primary communities that nurture their journey into wholeness, rather than constantly negating and thwarting it.

Lynn Japinga proposed three areas of church life or ministry and mission have been particularly challenging women in church ministry: worship and liturgy, power and authority and the sacraments. God language in worship and liturgy is androcentric and the maleness makes it difficult to worship. The locus of power and authority in church ministry confines to men. The role of sacraments is limited to women and almost confine to men. Many Protestants arhue that the Bible prohibits women from holding leadership position in the church. They believe that the Bible clearly says that women are not permitted to speak in church or to have authority over men.

Samuel Johnson summarized the attitude towards women in ministry as “A women’s preaching is like a dog walking on his hinder legs.” Ordination for women is regarded as unnatural and inappropriate and sees women enter the ministry because of selfishness and egoism rather than because of genuine call. Most feminist theologians respond to these objections be affirming the equality of women and men, the giftedness of women for ministry, and God’s call to women.

Feminist theologians also recognize that the ordination of women carries with some problems, particular the idea that ordination of women carries with it some problems, particularly the idea that ordination admits clergy into a special caste, with privileges and duties that are denied to other Christians.

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 FEMINIST PNEUMATOLOGY-2

Continuation of sub-points

3. Feminine Images and Metaphors of Holy Spirit- Sophia

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in her book Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophets engages with Divine Wisdom (Sophia

). According to Fiorenza and also with Elisabeth Johnson, Divine wisdom is a motive found throughout both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures. Fiorenza seeks to show how sophialogy, the proclamation of Jesus as the prophet of divine wisdom and its personification, precedes any concept of Christology.

Attributing the Holy Spirit in metaphor of wisdom, Sophia, personified a woman. Indeed, there does seem to be some openness to associating what is traditionally thought of as feminine with God, since in the Bible God is sometimes depicted as a woman and significant words associated with God in Hebrew are feminine in form: shekinah (God’s presence), hokmah (wisdom), ruah (spirit). God as androgynous is yet another attempt to capture the idea that God has masculine and feminine traits.

4. Reclaiming Women’s Spirituality

Pneumatology helps us to have a unitive vision of Reality. Our understanding of the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome the sexist tendencies in our theology and praxis. The work of Holy Spirit in relation to the Creation, to the World of Redemption and to the existing Church is unity in difference and partnership-in-community. It can correct the erroros of the male-dominant theology which we have inherited from the past; and what could ultimately result from it is a theology of partnership.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that a radical feminist spirituality is often formulated over against the patriarchal theology and sexist praxis of Christian churches.

Joan Leonard opines that the feminist spirituality differ from other spirituality, it is a spirituality that incorporates the central elements of feminist consciousness. It is the spirituality embraced by those who have experienced feminist consciousness-raising. She continues stating that feminist spirituality is an invitation to explore three aspects of human experience in relation to that which a person names the scared, the divine or ultimate concern. These are 1) the richness of human experience, 2) the religious depth in human experience and encounter and 3) the human response to the latter as a revelatory reorientation of experience.

There is a neo-feminist spirituality movement which countered the believed that body is feminine and Spirit is masculine, so body is inferior to spirit likewise women are inferior to men. According to Felicity Souter Edwards in her “Neo-Feminist Spirituality, neo-feminist spirituality is trying to look upon the interconnection between both male and female consciousness. Ivone Gebara claims that the feminist spirituality is the spirituality of liberation.

The women’s spiritualities has its own right. It is based on the premise that women from
different socio-cultural backgrounds experience themselves, their God and their world
differently; no one culture can claim to speak normatively for all women. A feminist spiritually reclaims the holiness of our en-spirited bodies and the gift of passion as a force to move us onward. This reclaiming of women’s spirituality can help understanding that women’s consciousness is strong and influence and its higher consciousness can even question and be very helpful in attaining women’s liberation. It helps makes sense female power and all the society including women and men in understanding Holy Spirit in its true power as the transformation of an individual and also the society.

Sunita Noronha opines that women spirituality is the need of the hour because women are not given equal opportunity due to power of socialization and men have sought to  put down women’s spirituality and have tried to marginalize their contribution in religion, culture, literature and history, however, women have had great spiritual power, they have a prophetic message to proclaim, and also they have a deep mystical truths to share.

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Feminist Pneumatology

1. Understanding the Nature and Work of Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is co-equal with God the Father and God the Son and is of the same essence. Yet He is also distinct from them.  Scripture describes the Holy Spirit in personal terms, not as an impersonal force, when it says that He teaches, guides, comforts and intercedes. He possesses emotions, intellect and will. The Holy Spirit spoke to Philip and gave counsel to the church at Jerusalem. He was sinned against and lied to.

The Christian who is indwelt by the Spirit is indwelt by God. The Holy Spirit possesses the attributes of deity, such as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence and eternality. He does works only God can do, such as creating, regenerating and sanctifying. He is equally associated with the other members of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit today plays a major role in the application of salvation to the individual. It is the Spirit who brings conviction to the unbeliever and causes him to see the truth of the gospel in a clear light. The Holy Spirit unites the believer with Christ and places him in the body of Christ, the church. The Holy Spirit controls the believer who yields to God and submits himself to God's Word. When these conditions are met, the believer lives in the power of the Spirit and produces the fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells the believer permanently. The Holy Spirit seals the believer. The Holy Spirit sovereignly bestows spiritual gifts or abilities for service to every believer. Although His restraint of evil in the world today will cease with the rapture, He will continue to be present in the earth. In the tribulation period the Spirit will be involved in salvation and filling. In the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Spirit will be in God's people and the Spirit will be upon the King.

Elizabeth Johnson maintains that we have forgotten the Holy Spirit, the Spirit whose presence "is consistently linked with the power to denounce social wrongdoing, announce comfort for those who are suffering and bring about justice for the poor." The Spirit is compassionate; the Spirit is a giver of life, she said. The Spirit enables us to experience righteous anger, to resist evil, "to utter the prophetic word." She can be seen in acts of giving and receiving forgiveness, in caring for the helpless, "in hoping against hope in the face of overwhelming oppression, suffering or death or, in the absence of felt hope, in the sheer grit to go on."

Johnson critiques the use of male language to describe God. The way the faith community uses language reflects what it views as the highest good. No language is adequate to God.

Leelamma Athyal argues that the Church is a charismatic community. The Charismata are the gift of the Holy Spirit. And if they are gifts, then it gives no person any ground of boasting. Athyal reiterates that the Holy Spirit in relation to the Church’s life and ministry is that she imparts upon the Church various gifts for the common good of the community.

Athyal stressed the works of the Holy Spirit and women role as a Mother. Holy Spirit provided the right setting for the rest of the creation to take place. Her presence was an indispensable element in the whole creative process of god. In the creation story of the Book of Genesis, the universe was the result of the hovering of the spirit of God over the waters of chaos.

2. Personification of Holy Spirit

Personification is giving something human characteristics, or anthropomorphism.  In divinity, there may not be gender as we know it.  But the three Persons do have characteristic functions.  Within the God Family of Father, HS, and Son…are both masculine and feminine characteristics.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.123:2 mistress.  Ps.22:9 midwife.    

Yet the Godhead has feminine traits too!  Ro.8:20-23, 26 “The whole creation groans and suffers pains of childbirth. We having the Spirit groan, waiting for the redemption of our body.”  The Jewish apostle Paul portrayed the HS as a midwife, helping creation and humanity towards re-creation. Mahesh Chavda wrote in The Hidden Power of a Woman: “In Judaism, unlike Christianity, God has never been viewed as exclusively male or masculine.”  Many Jewish scholars think Adam was created with dual gender.

Personal imagery for the HS/Wisdom is seen too…in Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Sirach (WSir), Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  Pr.1:20 “Wisdom lifts her voice.”  “Her” is a feminine pronoun. Wisdom is a personified entity or hypostasis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) of God’s divine essence.

Jewish physicist Albert Einstein said that “Israel wouldn’t experience salvation until it returned to feminine divinity.” (quoted in Patricia Taylor’s The Holy Spirit: The Feminine Nature of God.)  In Jewish thought, the fem Shekinah is the Divine Presence which can be sensed within human souls.  Jewish wisdom theology/sophialogy in BC times (also in Philo) saw God’s Presence dwelling with Israel via the Shekinah.  ref Ex.40:34-35 the Shekinah glory cloud!

Wisdom/Sophía/Chokmáh was never a nature or agricultural goddess like Asherah, or Demeter in Greece.  Mariolatry is a later Roman Catholic Church counterfeit as a substitute for Wisdom or Shekinah…the RCC’s Mary is near to goddess status, such as Isis.

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