Vol. 22 No. 4, December 2003

In God's Image is an Asian Christian women's effort to provide a forum for expressing our reality, our struggles, our faith reflections and aspirations for change.

Editorial

Asian women with formal theological education are familiar with the “usual way” of thinking about Jesus the Christ. Call it systematic theology or specifically Christology, it is a system of theologizing that usually begins with the attributes of Jesus, as have been articulated by great theologians from the West. But as many Asian women have found out, this traditional system of theologizing was developed by male, white and middle-class theologians, thereby reflecting a predominantly Western context and a strongly androcentric and triumphalistic perspective.

When the Editorial Advisory Committee of In God’s Image decided on the theme, “Christ for Asian Women”, for December 2003, their desire was to invite Asian women to articulate their very own Christologies, drawn from their own contextual experiences and realities. After all, many Asian women, including those with formal theological education, have gone beyond the “usual way” of theologizing. They are theologizing right in their own context – as Asian women, of many different races, majority of whom are coming from below the middle class, including the lower castes, and also coming from very culturally and religiously plural societies. In other words, Asian women are aware that the Western, male, middle-class, church-centered and Christian-centered perspective in theologizing can no longer serve as the norm for our doing theology in Asia.

Being part of the global movement for women’s empowerment and liberation, Asian women cannot help but be in dialogue with Western feminists, African feminists, Latin America feminists, as well as African American womanists. After all, while there are differences among the various feminist groups, there are also some commonalities shared by all and there is much to learn from one another.

The contributions of essays and poems in this issue reflect some of the many experiences of Asian women – e.g. as migrant workers, indigenous or Tribal women, victims of violence and abuse (including being forced into prostitution), mother, wife, etc. Out of these experiences as the context of theologizing, Asian women have come up with many images of Christ.

More than the issue of Jesus’ maleness, Asian women are concerned about what it means to believe today in Christ as the suffering servant, when it is often used to justify the terrible suffering that women are simply expected to bear. The different attributes of Christ as savior, liberator, Son of Man, and giver or bringer of fullness of life are revisited and critiqued – in view of the experiences of abused, battered and violated bodies. Consequently, the traditional doctrines of atonement and salvation, the irony of the cross, and the role of the church in promoting such traditional teachings are also reviewed and challenged.

Christology of course sounds very Christian-centered. However, a number of Asian women are very conscious of the reality of plurality in Asia, and of the sisterhood they share with other Asian women regardless of their faith traditions and communities. Through solidarity in the struggle for empowerment and fullness of life for all Asian women, they affirm that in fact Christ was not Christ-centered. Rather, in being others-centered, Christ was truly God-centered.

It is noteworthy that our call for papers on Christology generated good response as can be seen by the bulk of this edition. I thank all contributors – Asian women from Asia, and Asian women and friends in Europe and North America – who have willingly shared their pieces with us in the form of essay or poetry. Once again we are happy to include a contribution from an Asian male theologian in the form of a poem. Thank you all for sharing your stories and yourselves with all of us.

For our dear contributors, valued readers, and all of AWRC’s friends and partners, this comes with best wishes this Christmas season and the New Year!

Publications Secretary

If articles listed in the table of contents interests you, and you would like to have a copy of this journal, please write to igi@awrc4ct.org.