Feminist Theology: Demanding Justice From Our Faith - Day 2
Editor's Note: The following article is a reproduction of one of the keynote speeches delivered during the Summer Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
Throughout its development, theological reflection, reflection made from faith, has undergone a number of changes in perspective regarding what theology is and what theologians talk about. The Enlightenment in the 18th century placed the human being and their experience on the theological agenda. So, theology would no longer be understood as an abstract exercise or an objective science, but its subjective aspect would begin to be taken into account. Contemporary theology is not done from an ivory tower, nor solely from the convent or the temple, but takes into consideration the context and the role of community experience. In other words, the task of reflecting on our faith is not exclusive to a single community. Doing theology must take into account the place where people live. It must make a claim about the issues that arise from their lives and experiences.
From there arise questions about justice, about how justice is done from theology and through the life of the church which, in its simplest analysis, is a foretaste of the kingdom of God and its justice. The work for justice becomes the mission of the church, as for its founder, Jesus Christ, it was foremost; everything else is secondary. Discrimination and violence against women occur everywhere. They know no geographic, ethnic, ideological, cultural, economic, social, political, or religious boundaries. This violence has a history. Different civilizations and religions enthrone a view of women as inferior.
"Women are the most corrupt and most corruptible thing in the world," said Confucius in classical ancient China.
"Women are evil. Whenever the opportunity arises, every woman will sin," believed Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.
"You, women, are the door of the Devil: you are the transgressors of the forbidden tree: you are the first transgressors of divine law: you are the ones who persuaded man that the devil was not brave enough to attack him. You easily destroyed the image of God that man had. Even, because of your desertion, the Son of God had to die," says Saint Augustine, one of the Church fathers.
"The man who pleases God must flee from women, but the sinner among them will get entangled" (Ecclesiastes 7:26–28).
"Men are superior to women because of the qualities by means of which Allah has raised the former above the latter, and because men employ their means to endow women. Virtuous women are obedient and carefully keep what Allah has ordered to be kept secret in the husband's absence. You shall reprimand those whose disobedience you fear, you shall leave them alone in their sleeping places, and you shall beat them; but if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is All-High, All-Great," teaches the Quran in verse 38 of the chapter "Women."
A Jewish prayer also marks this difference: "Blessed are You, God, King of the Universe, because You did not make me a woman."
"The birth of a daughter is a loss," preaches the Christian Scriptures in Ecclesiastes 22:3.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: "I do not see the utility that a woman can have for a man, except for the function of giving birth to children."
"A woman must learn to be calm and in complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent," said Saint Paul.
"The worst ornament a woman can claim to have is wisdom," said Martin Luther.
In the face of this reality, women of faith claim that something, or rather someone, was missing from the theological agenda. That someone was women. What existed throughout all those centuries was a patriarchal theology, that is, a reflection from religion that considered women less capable than men to speak about divinity, the transcendent, to preside over worship ceremonies, to lead religious institutions. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, feminist theology emerged, not as a theology that deals with issues and matters related to women, that only interests women and must be elaborated by women, but as a theology that seeks to give an account of liberating faith, in the case of Christianity in the liberating Jesus, where women are conscious of being moral and theological subjects, as well as direct interlocutors of God and bearers of grace.
Historically, women have constituted the majority of believers. At the same time they have been excluded from the ministry as well as from the practice of interpreting faith and sacred texts. Like feminist theorists, feminist theologians begin to work supporting the struggle for equity and dignity for women. The goal is to rescue women from the unfavorable situation they suffered both in social and intellectual life, as well as in religious life. For this reason, they embarked on a reconstruction project with the purpose of decentralizing masculine discourses and reinterpreting myths of female representations that fostered discrimination and did not respond to the reality of flesh-and-blood women.
Although all this gained momentum in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the reality is that glimpses of feminist theology have been emerging for a long time. Closer to us in the 17th century, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz claimed that suppressing her intellectual work was like challenging God, who gave her her abilities and gifts for a purpose.
In this context, women feel called to transform religion through theology, to be part of a new church, or to promote other forms of spirituality. Their fundamental principle is the creation of a more just society for women and other excluded groups, as well as for the exploited nature in which we live. In this way, it offers important tools for analysis to identify different expressions of marginalization and provides anthropological, ethical, and political categories to develop a form of coexistence or an inclusive and non-exclusive paradigm.
Likewise, the conception of the Bible and its authority as a sacred text also change. A new field of interpretation of biblical texts opens up, analyzed from different perspectives. Different methods of text analysis are used anddifferent approaches developed, identifying the framework of patriarchal culture and interpretations made from androcentric presuppositions. The origins of Christianity are reconstructed in an egalitarian key as a movement of women and men following Jesus. The movement of Jesus was one where women held a central role, and it is in this movement that women regained the place they lacked in Jewish society and religion. It was a discipleship of equals, as the Roman Catholic biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza would say. At the same time, this new perspective revises and rewrites that history of early Christianity where women enjoyed the same charisms as men and developed them within the communities without discrimination. They were apostles, prophetesses, deacons, community leaders. They carried out liturgical functions. Therefore, feminist theology claims the possibility for women to have access to positions of authority and visibility within the ministry of the Church, a role that had been previously assumed to be denied them because of their gender. The theologian Elsa Tamez reminds us that the Bible and other sacred texts of religions cannot be rewritten, but they can be re-read in the light of a more inclusive reality and in line with the spirit of the text, in which God's love and grace are above patriarchal cultural values.
In Puerto Rico, in the 1980s and 90s, voices of women of faith emerged—pastors, laywomen, professors, homemakers—who organized support groups, reflection groups, and groups advocating for women. They organized under the name Commadres (Community of Women Grouped for Ecumenical Dialogue and Responses) for a practice of awareness, ecumenicalism, and liberation. Commadres included figures like Sandra Mangual, Eunice Santana, Yamina Apolinaris, Nina Torres Vidal, Mercedes Rodríguez, and Janet Hill.
It is in literature where the feminist discourse has been most strongly heard and what, according to some theologians, constitutes the strength of feminist theology in Puerto Rico. Teresa Delgado recounts how the literary production of writers like Esmeralda Santiago, Rosario Ferré, Nicholasa Mohr, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, born from their experiences as Puerto Rican women, is also a rich source of theological possibilities. These women engage in what she calls a "prophetic imagination." It is prophetic because through their stories they proclaim the arrival of a new era for the Puerto Rican people, reveal messages of denunciation that need to be heard, and announce the possibility of a Puerto Rico where everyone enjoys freedom, dignity, and justice. They use narrative, storytelling (which has been central to maintaining our identity), tradition, and culture to counteract the complacency from which we suffer as a nation.
Recently for the first time in Puerto Rico, women of faith have faced a discourse of denial of the reality of violence that women experience from groups, including women, who try to downplay it, claiming that other forms of violence we experience as a country are equally relevant. Gender-based violence disproportionately affects women and is considered a violation of human rights. This is why, statistically, the vast majority of people who suffer certain types of violence are women, such as domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, sexual harassment in employment. This does not mean that other people cannot suffer these types of violence; anyone can suffer them. However, the mere fact of being born a woman carries a greater risk and likelihood of experiencing some of these forms of violence during one's life. It has been a systemic and structural pattern that requires specific actions. Recognizing this is important to make this type of violence visible and to provide better prevention and intervention responses to this social problem.
From faith, groups like the Women's Pastoral and Gender Justice of the Latin American Council of Churches in Puerto Rico, the Interreligious Women's Collective, the Sofia Center of the University of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of El Buen Pastor Center, and women's groups within their own religious denominations are working on the issue with concrete actions of transformation.
For Puerto Rican Christian women, the praxis or ministry of Jesus is fundamental for this work of gender equity. For Jesus, women did not go unnoticed, contrary to the culture around him.
The global ecological crisis, with all its local manifestations, is a challenge for religions, for spiritualities, for ethics, for theology today and in the future. It presents itself as one of the challenges for faith communities that affirm the goodness with which God creates the world. From concern for the ecological crisis and the oppression of women arises what is known as ecofeminism, which questions the mental, social, cultural, and religious structures that discriminate against women and nature equally and takes them as objects of oppression. The same model that exercises all kinds of violence against women also exercises it against nature. Ecofeminist theologians believe that Christianity, with its androcentric interpretation of creation and its patriarchal reading of the Bible, has reinforced both the depredation of nature and the oppression of women. Ecofeminist theology constructs a liberating discourse that considers nature based on a unitary cosmology, an epistemology whose center is the interdependence of all beings in the universe.
There are many challenges that women of faith face in Puerto Rico when they insist that it is imperative for the church to model that community of equals that Jesus taught in his ministry and that the Holy Spirit constituted on Pentecost. Patriarchal systems find new forms of marginalization every day, which may not seem oppressive at first glance. This is why it’s important to contextualize the realities that women of faith live in all scenarios and become aware of how the intersectionality of other forms of oppression affects racial and sexual minorities, migrants, those with diverse abilities, the elderly, children, and undermines the abundant and abundant life that is God's project for all humanity.
To not conclude, because we do not conclude the journey of an ongoing history, the future looks promising. Today in Puerto Rico, four women lead four important Protestant churches. This was unthinkable about 20 years ago. However, this reality is the result of liberating theological education in institutions like the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico, where these women were educated and where they affirmed themselves as women endowed with all the gifts to serve our communities in positions where changes can be achieved.
In summary, feminist theology seeks transcendence, yes, but it defends that salvation begins here in this world, where it is necessary to rectify the injustices committed against women throughout history. Therefore, feminist theology is simply a matter of justice and the struggle for it is not over. Justice is a demand of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a justice that must shape the church as the body of that same Christ.
