Newsletter of the Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology
Vol. 11, No. 2, October 2006
Workshop explores Christology in multireligious setting
EXPLORING Christology in a multicultural and multireligious setting from a feminist perspective was the theme of a five-day workshop held in the cool hills of Genting Highlands in Malaysia from Aug 19-25, 2006.
Thirty-one participants from Asia – Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, India, Korea, Cambodia and Malaysia – were engaged in this last of three feminist theology workshops which began in 2004.
Nine new participants to the workshop had earlier under-gone a three-day orientation course at the AWRC office in Kuala Lumpur.
Feminist theologian Lieve Troch of the Netherlands, once again the resource person, began the first session by raising the question of how Christology can be a possible solution, or a hindrance, in today’s multicultural and multireligious situation.
She emphasized the need to see the complexity of the problem from different angles so that there would be many entrances to solve it.
To begin, she said we need to look at the existing discourses on culture, religion and Christology; and the constructions that are being made all the time – then deconstruct the present situation and reconstruct a different way of looking at culture and religion.
At the moment, she said, religion is dividing people in the world, with the biggest discourse being that Muslims are causing the problem. But it could also be said that Christians are the problem, starting with colonization when Christianity aggressively expanded its influence.
She said religion, which is the talk everywhere now and is politicised, is part of the conflict in the world and also the solution.
“We will work in the framework of a critical feminist analysis and reconstruction for transformation and liberation to deal with the three topics of religion, culture and Christology,” Lieve stated at the outset.
However, she reminded that a feminist perspective is not a gender perspective.
“Gender is a sociological concept; it is preoccupied with relations between man and woman as they are constructed by society, and how they produce patterns of masculinity and femininity,” she said, and traced how “gender” came about via the social movement of women in the 1960s.
The problem with gender analysis is that it is not able to deal with the power differences between women and between men. Being dualistic and heterosexual, it is not able to analyse the multiplicative levels of oppression that comes with race, religion, sex, colonialism, age, economy – all of which are constructed categories.
Lieve then used Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s Dance of Liberation and Transformation to examine culture, religion and Christology.
The first two steps are deconstruction steps: Step 1 is Reflection on experience and Systemic analysis of oppression which helps us to analyse our experiences. Step 2 is Suspicion and Critical analysis which makes us suspicious of the construction, so we ask three questions, i.e. (a) who is saying what and why? (b) when and how is this being used? (c) how does it function?
Step 3 is Critical evaluation and proclamation which evaluates the deconstruction process of Steps 1 and 2. To do evaluation, we need some criteria. Evaluation must be related to our vision of non-hierarchical relations. The next two steps of reconstruction will be to find the alternative, and so Step 4 is Historical Symbolic Conceptual Re-construction and Step 5 is creative imagination, and finally Liberation and Transformation.
The participants then went into group discussion on three related exercises – the dance steps, a socio-religious location self-inventory and the full democracy of the ekklesia of wo/men.
On Day 2, the problem of culture was tackled. The participants in their groups talked about their knowledge and experiences with culture based on four questions: (1) When/How did you realize for the first time in your life what culture is? (2) When in your life did you have a culture shock? (3) Give two main characteristics of your own culture. (4) Find a type/formulation/definition of the word ‘culture’.
Lieve traced the development of discourses on ‘culture’ as a 19th century invention of Western anthropologists and philosophers.
“Culture is a word that shapes directly hierarchy because it is a way to distinguish yourself from another group, So the word needs to be looked at with suspicion, so ask who is using it, when, how is it used, how does it function.”
The talk on culture today is on identity formation and this creates conflicts. Group identity is related to nationality, ethnicity, attitudes, language, etc. But in the post-modern/post colonialist situation, there are mixed identities as a result of migration and colonialisation. The reality is mixed communities with mixed identities but the present discourses still fall back on identity formation by talking about multiculturalism.
The participants then discussed the following question: Why is the issue of multiculturalism or the discourse of multiculturality/pluralism (i) a discourse of dominance? (ii) bad for women?
It was realized that (i) multiculturalism enhances group rights which in turn produces fundamentalism; and when governments used it, it is in favour of the dominant group; and (ii) women do not define culture but they are the ones to preserve it and are the victims of that culture.
On Day 3, Lieve looked at how religion functioned, how religious institution functioned and how religious institution is embodied in a culture.
Religion is a product of the culture of the people, she said. Institutionalised religions have more possibilities to spread themselves than indigenous religions. The moment institutionalised religions meet each other in a geographical context, then problems arise, especially when these traditions have missionary zeal and feel they are the right ones and seek to convert others (e.g. Christianity and Is-lam).
How religious institutions are related to State institutions, e.g. schools and hospitals, and in what way they shape a whole society – these are part of today’s conflicts.
Some country case studies of Indonesia, Malaysia, Netherlands and India were then analysed by the participants on the interrelation between culture, religion and policy in the creation of problems; and how critical movements can intervene in the discourses.
The fourth and final day was a heavy day with the focus on religious identity, Christology and a biblical interpretation of Mark 14:1-11.
Identity is the issue all the time, between a given or imposed identity and a chosen identity, said Lieve. But identity is changing all the time in different situations. So groups that present strong identities, e.g. fundamentalist groups, are attractive as they give security to those who feel lost.
On the personal level, there are seven different levels of a religious identity. They are: (1) I believe my religion is the only right one – an exclusive position. (2) My religion is the right one and others can also exist – a position of religious tolerance. (3) I believe all religions have their own values, rites – that is, religious pluralism. (4) Inter-religious dialogue – a level of trying to look at religions and taking an outside position. (5) Critique of the formation of your own religion is possible and necessary. This position requires a qualitative leap from the 4th level. It is a critique on the level of construction of one’s own religion itself. (6) How to change religions together – an alter-native to inter-religious dialogue. (7) To construct common projects together of liberative syncretism.
To understand Christology, Lieve first highlighted the four paradigms of biblical interpretation: (i) Doctrinal-revelatory assumes that the Bible is divine revelation, as the Word of God; (ii) Scientific-positivist assumes there exists a chasm between text and world / past and present societies, and that it is difficult to make a bridge between the two; (iii) Hermeneutic-cultural assumes equivocal understanding of language, surplus of meaning; and (iv) Rhetorical-emancipatory assumes texts have persuasive and performative power in particular situations and function to legitimate or challenge the status quo. Next, some pictures of Jesus in some Asian countries were shown and participants discussed the inculturation and the thinking about Jesus in Asia, as projected in the images.
She said in theology, there is a dualistic approach to Jesus Christ – as a historical figure and as a theological construction.
Lieve got the participants to discuss some titles and constructions of Jesus, such as ‘suffering servant’, ‘only saviour of the world’, ‘only son of God’, ‘perfect man’, ‘obedience to his father’, ‘king’ – and to ask (i) do these words/discourses reinforce or challenge the situation of women? (ii) what are the central issues for a critical feminist theology of liberation for Christology?
Feminist theology critiques the two main characteristics of classical doctrine – (i) exceptional hero (ii) suffered for our salvation (the core issue on which Christianity is built) – as private, moral behaviour and spirituality. In particular, the theology of the cross as a symbol of accepting suffering as a salvific act was totally deconstructed and a different reconstruction was made, for example, by Delores Williams who reconstructed Christology from the perspective of black women.
“To say Jesus did not die, but was killed and to ask why, was important because then death on the Cross was not the last word. The Cross is not the centre point of the Jesus event but there is an ongoing struggle for life against death-dealing forces, and if this kills you, you do not believe that that kills the movement and that moment is when you believe in the Resurrection,” said Lieve.
So symbols and concepts to do with community are needed, in line with movements that continue with the struggle against oppression. This is different from worshipping Jesus as the exceptional hero which reduces the power of the Jesus Movement.
The last experiential process was a critical feminist biblical interpretation of Mark 14:1-11, which is the story of the woman with the alabaster jar who anointed Jesus on his head, and for her act, Jesus said: ‘…what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’
It was a dramatic end to the workshop as that evening, thunderstorm and lightning had cut off the electricity sup-ply. As it was dark within, the participants had to move outside to the corridors. Amidst flickering candles and the sound of pouring rain, the participants were engulfed in a powerful and empowering interpretation of that text,
analyzing the power and political situation wrapped in that story. Lieve concluded that the centrality of the woman’s act is the core issue of our Christianity.
The interpretation left a deep impression on participants. As Malaysian Yim Fen later remarked: “I wish I had been baptized with this spirit. Meeting Jesus through this way is more enlightening and empowering than the traditional teaching of the Cross.”
During evaluation, the participants spoke of how much they had learnt from the workshop and that they would continue the feminist struggles in their own countries.
Report by Woon Yoke Heng
Anna May elected moderator of Congress of Asian Theologians
Anna May Say Pa, a member of the Coordinating Team of AWRC, was elected co-moderator of the Sixth Congress of Asian Theologians (CATS VI) during the fifth congress held in Hong Kong on August 20-26. She will serve on the committee that will plan for and organize the next congress in 2008.
Anna May was also one of four theme speakers at the fifth congress, which had for a theme, “Sharing Hope for a New World.” Using her expertise in Old Testament and bringing it into dialogue with her context of hopelessness in Myanmar, she did a moving presentation with power-point illustrations at the congress.
Although the laments of the Karen people who continue to be marginalized and of the Burmese people longing for freedom reflect deep despair, frustration and hopelessness, for Anna May the Bible offers some rays of illumination. She finds some parallels in the story of Naomi and Ruth, where human caring and loyalty brings restored life and hope. God’s faithfulness may not be expressed directly but it is evident in the way people act towards each other. The role of the caring community therefore is a manifestation of the hope for the vulnerable, suffering, and marginalized.
Looking at people’s laments through the story of Jeremiah, Anna May affirms that “God is not isolated from the pain of the people. God weeps with the people and identifies with the suffering and anguish of the people.” But when people are too deep in their sorrow and anger against God because of hopelessness and frustration, they may not easily recognize God’s presence with them. Jeremiah gives a reminder that God’s last word is not doom and destruction. Beyond the exile is the promise of a return to their homeland, a hopeful message for Burmese people, especially the political refugees and displaced people. Finally, Anna May draws hope from Jesus of Nazareth – the suffering One who is in solidarity with the people without hope. “The resurrection hope informs the way I live and act” and empowers our people to continue their witness to their faith in their community, she said.
Although she just retired as principal of the Myanmar Institute of Theology in Yangon, Anna May continues to teach Old Testament and Feminist Theology courses at MIT.
The Congress of Asian Theologians is a movement of Asian theologians initiated by the Christian Conference of Asia and jointly founded by a number of theological associations and institutions in Asia.
First Women Priests in the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka
The first ordination of women in the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka took place on 14th September (Holy Cross Day) 2006, at the Cathedral of the Living Saviour, at Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 7.
Malini Devananda, Chandrika Mayurawathi and Glory Jeyaraj, belonging to the Diocese of Colombo were ordained by the Rt. Revd. Duleep de Chickera, Bishop of Colombo, amidst a large gathering of clergy and lay. Also present were four Buddhist monks and a Bhikkuni (female monk) with whom Malini works in a Peace Organisation. Malini is also a member of the Coordinating Team of AWRC.
The three women waded through the waters of the baptistry, signifying that the beginning of all ministries is through baptism. After the laying on of hands by the bishop and clergy, Revd. Malini, Revd. Chandrika and Revd. Glory were vested with stole and chasuble. The bishop then presented the new priests to the people who broke out into loud applause. After greeting the people assembled, the three women priests with the bishop concelebrated the eucharist.
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