What's New About Terror?

Bear with me until I get to the point of this blog post, because first I must quote some passages from the Holy Bible:

 

And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man and brought them to the camp at Shiloh…And they instructed the Benjaminites, saying, “Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and watch; when the young women of Shiloh come out to dance, then come out of the vineyards and each of you carry off a wife for himself…The Benjaminites did so; they took wives for each of them from the dancers whom they abducted. Judges 21:12, 20, 23

 

Then Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord had commanded Moses: The booty remaining from the spoil that the troops had taken totaled six hundred seventy-five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand donkeys, and thirty-two thousand persons in all; women who had not known a man by sleeping with him.  Numbers 31:31-35

 

When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword. You may however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoythe spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.

Deut. 20:10-14

 

When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God hands them over to you and you take them captive, suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry, and so you bring her home to your house; she shall shave her head, pare her nails, discard her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house a full month, mourning for her father and mother; after that you may go into her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. But if you are not satisfied with her, you shall let her go free and not sell her for money.

Deut. 21:10-14

 

In an essay entitled, “Violence against Women in the Historical Christian West and in North American Secular Culture: The Visual and Textual Evidence,” theologian Margaret R. Miles wrote,

 

                Women who are fortunate enough never to have been

                sexually assaulted, often do not realize how much we

                adjust our lifestyle to avoid victimization. These “precautions”

                constitute an implicit recognition of the danger; the threat of

                assault and rape is enough to make us rearrange our lives,

                reflecting our constant state of terror. 

 

Women who have been sexually assaulted realize only too well how much their entire lives have been altered. Their recognition of danger is not “implicit,” but rather, quite explicit.

 

Margaret Miles wrote this essay in 1987, fourteen years before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, fifteen years before the creation of the Homeland Security Act, which created the Department of Homeland Security, and years before the words terror and terrorism became a part of the daily lexicon of American language and rhetoric. When I read that word, I realized that in her description of the daily experiences of women throughout history, Margaret Miles chose exactly the right word; terror.

 

In the past few days, my students and I struggled with Miles’ analysis of the “visual and textual evidence” of Christianity’s contribution (yes, contribution), to “conditions that promote violence against women in our society.” We struggled not because Miles’ essay was intellectually difficult reading. We struggled because the evidence is so overwhelmingly clear. We struggled because her argument was so stunningly valid. And in the midst of the realization; in the midst of the clarity, the air in the classroom became tinged with sadness, silence and just a hint of despair.

 

In this first blog post on this theme, I will briefly present some of Dr. Miles’ argument, with a bit of commentary of my own. Her argument begins with an examination of American secular culture. She exposes the myths of the universality of rape and its biological, “hormonal” cause, beliefs which serve to leave us with a sense of helplessness in the face of sexual violence. 1.) Rape is not a universal phenomenon. Rape is a learned response influenced by the ways in which societies organize.  2.) The widely held notion that men “can’t help themselves” is without basis in fact. There are cultures in which rape occurs rarely or not at all. That rape is so prevalent in western culture leads to the misconception that men are victims of their own actions.

 

The  Biblical and theological foundations for the promotion and defense of violence against women include:

 

**A patriarchal history that groups women together with cattle and donkeys as male possessions engenders a sense of male entitlement. After all, one can do whatever one likes with one’s property, right? The American legal system reflects this view. That many states, including South Carolina do not recognize spousal rape as a crime is grounded in the belief that when “the two become one,"  the one they become is the husband.

 

**A pervasive androcentric world view that judges women to be “naturally” inferior, weak and carnal and therefore in dire need of control. What shall be done if the only way in which one can control one’s woman is to beat her, or kill her?

 

**That women are perceived in connection with body, biology and nature with a proclivity to lust has led to the prevailing view that women are responsible for male arousal. Tertullian wrote in the second century, “Such eyes will wish that a virgin be seen as has the virgin who shall wish to be seen. The same kinds of eyes reciprocally crave after each other. Seeing and being seen belong to the self-same lust.” In other words, if a man is aroused by the sight of a woman, she means to arouse him. I suspect that Church Father and theologian Tertullian might have been the first to ask, when told of a woman’s rape, “What was she wearing?” How ridiculous would it appear to someone if he were told that it was up to him to ensure that no one desire his car?   

 

**Miles argues that , “Although patriarchal religious ideas and visual images are still strong in their religious settings in large sectors of the American public, their translation in the secular media has insured both their continuing influence and their constant availability to Americans (emphasis mine).” That a Biblical misogynistic inheritance is a part of American culture is something I have always recognized and maintained. It is perpetuated in religious settings daily, but this inheritance continues also through a secularization of the religious ideology.

 

**The eroticization of violence against women has a long textual and visual Christian history. Pornography, video games, music videos and market advertising that conflate sex and women’s bodies with violence is not a modern perversion, but one that stretches far back into the Christian past. Christian art graphically depicts the virgin martyrs’ gruesome deaths; St. Agatha and St. Barbara shown naked, their breasts being sliced off or pulled off by giant pincers held by a threatening executioner as they are whipped by another. Eroticized violence exists too in the written descriptions of virgins’ martyrdoms, as in the account of the martyrdom of Saints Felicitas and Perpetua. A leopard is prepared for them in the Roman amphitheater and the chronicler interjects, “But for the women the devil had made ready a most savage cow, prepared for this purpose against all custom; for even in this beast he would mock their sex. They were stripped therefore and made to put on nets; and so they were brought forth. The people shuddered, seeing one a tender girl, the other her breasts yet dropping from her late childbearing. So they were called back and clothed in loose robes. Perpetua was first thrown, and fell upon her loins. And when she had sat upright, her robe being rent at the side, she drew it over to cover her thigh, mindful rather of modesty than of pain.” The first time I read the Martyrdom of Felicitas and Perpetua, I thought to myself about the author, “What a sick freak.” There are those who maintain that this particular account was written by Tertullian.

 

Doire tangent: The unholy, unhealthy suppression of sexuality (particularly female sexuality) in the Christian west is further exemplified by the neurotic veneration, elevation and cult-like status given to virginity. The Virgin stands as its most noted victim, but the point here is not that a woman has been elevated, but that virginity itself, as a state and condition of being is what is so prized. Historically men seek to penetrate and impregnate women, “but the woman they value is the untouched, untouchable” one. (Miles) Andrea Dworkin in her book Woman Hating wrote that one of the results of identifying women with body, nature and sin is the exaggerated esteem of female virginity, which she calls, “a real sexual perversion.”

 

** And finally, something that I have been arguing for years; that the traditional Christian interpretation of suffering renders it beneficial, and the path to transcendence and salvation, especially for women. Women could not imitate Christ on the altar, on the “battlefield” as Christian soldiers or in power, so for women, suffering provided the “surest route to participation in religious [and spiritual] power.”  The Biblical foundations for this noble view of suffering, coupled with female submission are lain in scripture, in the deutero-Pauline letters to the Ephesians and to Peter:

 

Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of his wife just as Christ is the head of the Church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be in everything, to their husbands.  Eph. 5:22-24

 

Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval.

Peter 2:18-20

 

The man has been made the master of the wife. He has been given rule over her. And the wife has been made subject and if she suffers at the hands of her husband, she glorifies God. For the abuser, it is a match made in heaven. For the abused, a match made in hell.

 

The evidence is indeed sobering and has been only partially reproduced here. Part II of this blog entry will be my own examination and analysis of the historical experience of women, who for centuries have known only too well what it is to live within a culture of terror.  To be continued...

What I Wouldn't Give...

When a Gospel woman exhibits assertiveness or aggressiveness, or when she appears to pose a challenge to Jesus, as long as Jesus remains at the center of the story as the “hero,” the events must be interpreted from his point of view. Add to this the tradition’s insistence that Jesus was “without sin,” and no matter the apparent problems the story might pose, Jesus’ perfection, sinlessness and unquestioned virtue must be defended. And all other characters are viewed through this lens. Take for example the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30 and again in Matthew 15:21-28 as the Canaanite woman). This is the story in which a Gentile woman shouts at Jesus in the street to heal her daughter, “Have mercy on me, Lord.” He responds by saying that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” She approaches again and falls at his feet pleading, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” What does one do with this story? My students know. When I ask them how this has been interpreted for them invariably one will answer, “He was testing her.” Indeed, I too have been given this explanation ad nauseum. How many times must she prove her faith in him? She has already begged twice. Does Jesus stand there in the midst of this suffering as she begs at his feet and intentionally insist that she beg again? If Jesus remains the hero of the story, if his actions must be defended at all costs, somehow this response seems to satisfy people because evidently it is Jesus’ right to manipulate people however he likes and it is justifiable. So in a traditional reading the woman must be humbled, tested and subdued. I suggest another reading of the story. Place the woman in the center of the story. View the events from her point of view and take seriously the tradition’s claim that Jesus was fully human and “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52). In the story, Jesus is quite clear about why he will not help her. She is not a Jew, not one of the “lost sheep of Israel.” He understands his mission to be exclusively to the Jews. But then, the woman challenges this prejudicial refusal to help her, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters’ table.” It is SHE who instructs Jesus; it is SHE who expands his view of his own ministry. It is SHE who is teacher in this encounter. The light bulb goes on. Jesus understands his ministry as an inclusive one. In the Markan account he tells the woman, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”

 

This view of the story is very difficult for many people to swallow. Personally, I find that the traditional interpretation gets stuck in my throat. Ethically, a Jesus who is willing to change his mind when prejudice and exclusivity have been pointed out to him is preferable to a Jesus who would intentionally allow a woman’s torment to continue so that he may teach her or someone else a lesson or, to test her faith.

 

It is the case that in the Gospel stories the male disciples are no prize. They are portrayed as dense and slow in their understanding of the Jesus movement. They are impetuous, brash, disloyal and cowardly. And yet, despite their weakness and numerous flaws it is upon their rocks that Jesus “builds” his Church. He calls them into discipleship at the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He transfigures before them.

 

It is also the case that there is not one story in the Gospels of a man who is healed of sexual sin. What I wouldn’t give if only one Gospel story presented such an account. There isn’t a one. Can you imagine the power of such a story? Is this because men in the first century were not guilty of sexual sin? Or because Jesus never encountered a man who had committed adultery or who was sleeping around? Ha!  I doubt it.  It is because sexual sin, in an ancient patriarchal culture belonged to women. There is the account of the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well  who has had five husbands and her present man is not her husband. The woman who anoints the feet of Jesus and who is simply identified as a sinner has been assumed in the tradition to have been guilty of sexual sin. Mary Magdalene, for whom there is no scriptural evidence of sexual sin, is accused of it anyway. Women, even in the first century are guilty of sexual sin whereas the boys were probably “just being boys.”

 

What I wouldn’t give for there to be a Gospel story that begins, “And Jesus came upon a man who was beating his wife and He said to him…”

 

What I wouldn’t give for a Gospel story that begins, “And they brought to Jesus a man who was accused of raping a woman…”

 

What I wouldn't give for a Gospel story that begins, "And in the Temple there was a priest who had violated a child and Jesus said to him..."

 

What I wouldn’t give for a Gospel story that ends with, “and the man was healed and went into the kitchen and served Him.”

 

What I wouldn’t give. I wonder how differently the 21st century would look if such stories had been included.

 

I want to make it clear that this critique of the Gospels is not leveled at Jesus of Nazareth himself. The earliest Gospel (Mark) was written around 70 CE. Jesus can hardly be held responsible for the way in which the stories about him were transmitted orally and then written. He is not responsible for the selection or omission of stories, nor how they would be chronicled. Indeed, in the Passion account of Matthew there is the story of the woman who anoints him. Just days before the crucifixion Jesus himself foretells his own death. In the Gospel of Matthew, just before the account of the betrayal of Judas and the Last Supper, he is at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany. A woman enters the house “with an alabaster jar of very costly perfume and she poured it on his head.” The disciples object. Jesus makes it very clear how he wants the event remembered, “Truly I tell you wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” And yet, we don’t even know her name.

 

 

Dismantling the Castle (Part III)

When I teach the Religion and Society course I tell my students that the title of the course would seem to imply that we can separate the two and determine what in society has been influenced by religion, and what about religion has been influenced by society. This is like trying to determine where one ocean wave begins and another ends. This is like understanding that jazz has its roots in Black spirituals, ragtime, and the Blues, and then listening to Louis Armstrong and trying to determine which of the three influenced a particular note or riff.

 

In the Biblical traditions, the domination of male over female is proposed as a fulfillment of the divine order of creation and further, that it exists “naturally.” Men dominate over women because God wants it to be so. The curse given to Eve includes the divine mandate, “Yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” What is often forgotten when this verse is cited as support for the subordination of women is that in the myth, this relationship of inequality comes about as a result of sin. The inequality of the sexes, the domination of one over the other exists as sin. In the myth, the original intent, apparent in Chapter 1, is mutuality and equality. (I must add here however, not according to Augustine. He maintained that woman was subject to man even before sin entered the world). The creation stories in Genesis are a perfect example of social and political custom affecting religious mythology. At the time of the construction of the creation stories the Israelites were already living in a patriarchal society and already confining the sexual and public lives of women. They had already attached taboos and restrictions with regard to women’s bodies, and so these were inscribed into the myth. In the myth, there is no mistaking the culturally gendered world view: when women are allowed freedom, when women are not controlled, all hell breaks loose, literally and figuratively. The myth confirms the cultural “common sense.” The hierarchical order that already existed relationally on earth was projected into the cosmos as reflective of divine intent and so, all could rest easy. Life was as it should be. God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.   

 

In addition, the tradition of exclusive male language for God affects the political, because male language for God is attached to male authority. Not only is God “Father,” but God is also King, Lord, Master. For women these images are relational, not identifications. Because God is male, maleness itself is associated with mastery and authority and as such, proscribes behavior in women in relation to men as in relation to God. In the words of Mary Daly, “God is man writ large, man is God writ small.” The intimate association of maleness with God and maleness with authority superimposes onto women a posturing towards men that imitates their status in relation to God.

 

Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza pushes the analysis further in her reading of the Gospel texts in which Jesus of Nazareth encounters women and the analysis engenders a shattering, crackling, popping, mind explosion. The first time I heard Elisabeth speak of this in class, I almost fell off my chair. And then I wanted to jump up and down and twirl all around and shout, “Yes! Yes! Oh my freaking Goddess. Yes!”

 

It is an adroit and profoundly insightful proposal. The analysis first acknowledges that the New Testament is an androcentric text. It was written and constructed within the cultural world view that men constitute ideal human being and occupy the center of human life and reality. When women are presented in the Gospels, they are not described  as they are but are inscribed with “feminine” traits and characteristics assumed by first century attitudes, biases and customs. Consequently, the Gospels themselves serve to perpetuate a Western sex-gender dualistic system of being and relationality. Further, Fiorenza maintains that throughout the Christian centuries, the Gospel stories of women have operated as teaching models for women’s behavior towards men. Yes, it is true, that Jesus of Nazareth (in the tradition) is uniquely Son of God, Redeemer and hero. But he was also male. The maleness of Jesus instills within the text subtle but powerful messages of how women must posture themselves not only before Jesus but before all men.

 

When I read many of the Gospel stories in which Jesus encountered women, this dynamic screams out at me. Women serve. Women cook. Case in point: In the story in which Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt. 8:14-15) the text reads, “…he touched her hand, and the fever left her and she got up and began to serve him.” In the story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11), Lazarus performs no such function after he is resuscitated. Indeed some days later Jesus returns to the home of Lazarus where the two men sit at table while Martha “served.” And of course, this is what the women would do. It’s first century Palestine for cripes sake. And that is the point. The Gospels are not "value-neutral," gender-neutral, culturally-neutral, politically-neutral or in any other way neutral.  ALL of the sexist, patriarchal assumptions and biases of the first century shaped  sacred scripture and were transmitted within the texts, so for two thousand years they have acted to reinforce, defend and justify  ancient restrictions and expectations for women’s lives.

 

Women sit at the feet of the master. Women fawn. Women anoint feet with oil. I know what some of you are thinking. “Ah! But in the scriptures Jesus too washed feet.” As recorded in the Gospel of John, he certainly did. I want to point out that John 13:5 reads, “Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet.” (NRSV) Just to prove my freaking point about our androcentric ways of thinking, how many of you while reading that sentence imagined Jesus washing the feet of a woman? My guess would be too few. And yet, Jesus’ disciples were both men and women. As such, every time we read a Gospel account in which the word “disciples” appears it must be read as inclusive of men and women. If I were to say the following sentence, “The teachers went to the conference,” it must be understood that the word “teachers” does not automatically exclude the presence of women. In fact, the opposite must be insisted upon. The word “teachers” must be read as inclusive of women unless it is made specifically clear that there were none present.  In the first century Gospel texts the word “disciples” must operate in the same way.  The word “disciples” must not be read as an indication of males only. And yet that is the collective, interpretive image that the tradition has transmitted for centuries; that Jesus only washed the feet of men. How does the dynamic of that moment change when one imagines Jesus washing the feet of Mary Magdalene?

Yes. Precisely.

 

to be continued...

Dismantling the Castle (and the Cathedral) Part II

For women, the spiritual consequences of exclusive male language and imagery for God should be obvious. Whereas men are able to identify with the divine being and enjoy the full experience of truly having been “created in the image and likeness of God,” women cannot. Women’s interior lives offer a spirituality that is always characterized in relation to, but not through identification with the divine being. No matter how hard one tries, the interior experience of God is always relational/separated/distant. For women, God is always the absolute “Other.” Now it may be argued (with a nod to Martin Buber) that God should always be experienced as “Other,” but men experience this “Otherness” only by degree. God is more powerful than men, but men still share in that power. God is more perfect than men, but men still reflect the divine image. There is no passage perhaps more disturbing to the Christian feminist theologian than St. Augustine’s thoughts on the ability or inability of man and woman, respectively, to reflect the divine:

 

How then did the apostle [Paul] tell us that the man is the image of God and therefore he is forbidden to cover his head; but that the woman is not so, and therefore is commanded to cover hers? Unless, forsooth, according to that which I have said already… that the woman together with her own husband is the image of God, so that the whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman is joined with him in one. -- On the Trinity

 

Augustine hit the proverbial covering on the head. A male God is reflective of males, a mirror in which there is no room for the female.

 

The veneration of Mary in Catholicism does little to help because the Biblical stories in which Mary appears are “read” and interpreted in such a way as to elevate carefully selected “feminine” characteristics. Mary, as human woman is portrayed in direct contrast to fallen Eve. Whereas Eve was disobedient, Mary is dutiful, obedient, passive vessel. Whereas Eve was tempting seductress, Mary is perpetually, untainted Virgin. Whereas Eve bears the mark of rebellious ingrate, Mary’s soul “magnifies the Lord.” Whereas Eve bears the son who commits fratricide, Mary bears the son of God. A feminist reading of the Gospel stories in which Mary appears would however render a different interpretation for modeling behavior. These would include audacity, assertiveness, authority and courage.

 

In the story of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive and bear a son, traditional Mariology has focused attention on Mary’s acceptance of the will of God as expressed in her Magnificat, at the end of the story. Ignored are the first words Mary speaks to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know man?” Mary stands before the freaking angel Gabriel and challenges him with audacity.

 

In the story of the wedding at Cana, Jesus is a reluctant miracle worker. In fact, he outright refuses to act after his mother has informed him that the hosts have run out of wine. Mary does not argue, nor does she prod or plead. She turns away from her son and speaks to the servants, “Do what he tells you to do.” And contained within that simple instruction to the servants, is a command for her son to get off his butt and act.

 

When Jesus is lost in the Temple and is finally found, Mary and not Joseph is the voice of discipline, “Did you not know we would be looking for you?” Jesus responds like an arrogant teenager, “Did you not know I would be about my Father’s business?” I can imagine Mary pulling him home by the ear and grounding him for a week.

 

And of course, at the Cross when all the male disciples have fled in fear and cowardice, there she is.

 

Mary, as a woman of flesh might have served as a female identifier if the Church had not made her so unique. Mary as Virgin and Mother possesses an ontology that is physically impossible for women to emulate and yet, I have never attended a Mother’s Day Mass and sermon in which Mary has not been lifted up as the model for women. I have been told by some that the Church “loves” women because it has such a history of adoration for Mary. I respond by paraphrasing Gloria Steinem, “A pedestal is as confining a space as a cage.”

 

Mary, as Mother of God is another thing. I suspect, in fact I know, that in popular piety faithful women simply ignored the Church, which cautioned not to worship Mary as divine. Despite the Church’s doctrinal statements, Mary functioned as goddess in power and in majesty in women’s prayer and ritual lives. That Mary in her humanity was unattainable did not dissuade women in their identification with Mary as female power. This piety however lacked an ecclesiastical tradition, authority and validation. I suspect that the elevation of female power in Mary was the  only thing that made a patriarchal, exclusively male god palatable and possible.

 

Movements in women’s spirituality including neo-pagan goddess worshipping traditions have revived female images for the divine being. These divine images take many forms. Some resurrect the ancient Paleolithic and Neolithic Mother Goddess, some are constructive of completely new associations and some simply replace the male language for the God of the Bible with female metaphors and images. There is scriptural foundation for the latter. A plethora of female images for God already exist in the Bible, though they have been suppressed. God is described as Mother Bear, Mother Eagle. The God who dwells among humankind, the Shekinah is female. The Wisdom of God, Sophia is female.

 

From everlasting I was firmly set,

From the beginning before the earth came into being.

The deep was not, when I was born,

There were no springs to gush with water.

Before the mountains were settled,

Before the hills, I cameto birth.

                      Proverbs 8: 23-25

 

She deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other,

Ordering all things for good…

If in this life wealth is a desirable possession,

What is more wealthy than Wisdom whose work is everywhere?

Or, if it be the intellect that is at work,

Where is there a greater intellect than Wisdom, designer of all?

Or, if it be virtue you love, why virtues are the fruits of Her labors

Since it is She who teaches temperance and prudence,

Justice and fortitude;

Nothing in life is more helpful to people than these…

She knows how to turn maxims and riddles,

She has knowledge of signs and wonders,

Of the unfolding of the ages and of times…

Immortality is found in being kin to Wisdom.

                       Wisdom 8

 

But the process of rendering female imagery and language for God must proceed with caution. I have strong reservations about some of the modern movements for the “divine feminine,” because despite good intentions it is all too often the case that female imagery for God is attached to “feminine” qualities. The female is cast in the role of nurturer, sensitive and compassionate sufferer, mother, kind healer, etc. This does not serve us (or Her) well. The result is the reinforcement and further propagation of the traditional (and patriarchal) Western sex-gender system which attributes to the female “feminine” characteristics and to the male, “masculine” ones. What must occur is NOT the attachment of “feminine” qualities to God, but rather the attachment of divine act and power to the female. The Biblical tradition of Divine Wisdom can serve as guide.

The female is Creatrix, Eternal, Just, Intelligent.

She Orders Chaos, Instructs in Virtue, Deploys Her Strength.

 

Wisdom calls aloud in the streets,

She raises her voice in the public squares,

She calls out at the street corners,

She delivers her message at the city gates…

 

On the hilltops, on the road, at the crossways,

She takes her stand;

Beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates

She cries aloud:

O people, I am calling to you:

My cry goes out to all humanity.

                   Proverbs 1:20-21, 8:2-4

 

Rock on.

 

Dismantling the Castle (and the Cathedral)

I haven’t written in a while, perhaps because I feared that if I started, I wouldn’t stop. My students and I have just completed the second week of a four week summer course and I am having the professorial time of my life. It is a course that has never before been offered at the college so as such it appears (now) as a Religious Studies “Special Topics Course.” Two offerings of the course and the department can petition the curriculum committee to make it a permanent addition to our regular course offerings. The course? Religion and Feminism. When my department chair and I began to talk about my offering such a course, he said to me, “You can do as much feminist theology as you like and it can be as Christocentric as you want.” I knew exactly, from the moment of that conversation, what I would do. I have distributed the four weeks into four themes. In the first week, we did a very basic treatment of the feminist critique of patriarchal religion; week two, feminist theology; week three, feminist Biblical interpretation and the fourth week will deal with religion and feminist ethics.

 

I am having a blast.

 

We have been reading many of the classic and seminal (I LOVE using that word in reference to feminist theologians) thinkers in the field, the mothers of feminist theology; Mary Daly, whose Beyond God the Father, published almost 35 years ago still seems radical and “edgy” to my students; the methodical and logical argumentation of Rosemary Radford-Ruether; the brilliantly articulated analyses of Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza; the passion of Carol Christ; the thealogy of Nelle Morton, the creative outrage of Judith Plaskow. We are also reading a few essays that describe personal accounts of the transformation of women, who have been re-awakened through feminist awareness to the betrayal and misogyny of the Biblical traditions, my own story included. As I lecture and as we discuss the issues of feminist theology I am captivated once again by the implications of this discipline, which propelled me to divinity school to begin with. I went to divinity school to study feminist theology because it was my own salvation, my truth and my hope. The other day in the classroom, as my students and I sat in a circle and discussed yet another profound implication of the analysis I blurted out to them with absolute delight, “Thanks for being here with me, Man!” Nothing impassions me more, nothing resonates more deeply and nothing brings me more intellectual excitement. 

 

This week’s theme of feminist theology had to begin with Mary Daly and the fundamental critique of a tradition which has elevated male imagery for God to the exclusion of all others, a practice which merits the charge of idolatry. The awareness that exclusive male imagery for God operates on spiritual, psychological and political levels was made imminently conscious in me once more and the affirmation was stunning. On the psychological level, exclusive male images for God communicate messages (to women) that make clear and superimpose a dualistic ideology that by virtue of being female one is an inferior creature, so inferior in fact, that the divine being cannot by any means be imaged in female form. Go ahead. Just try it. Simply suggest in familial or casual company a female referent for God and one will either be met with laughter (surely this is a joke), or with breathtaking hostility. I have already suggested elsewhere in this blog that this hostility conveys nothing of theology; it expresses nothing really of what people believe about God, but rather it demonstrates how people really feel about femaleness. How dare one suggest that the Almighty, the Wondrous, the Powerful be rendered through the image of so weak and inferior a creature as woman? It is unthinkable. Add to this the historical reality that with the exception of very early Christianity and very recent Christianity, women have been judged as unfit to mediate between the human and the divine, unfit even to enter sacred space, unfit by virtue of their bodies to enact the blessings and rituals of the community of faith and one has in place a religious construct that creates within women what Mary Daly calls a condition of “non-being.” 

 

In Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly quotes a passage from Gregory Baum’s Man Becoming:

 

To believe that God is Father is to become aware of oneself not as a stranger, not as an outsider or an alienated person, but as a son who belongs or a person appointed to a marvelous destiny, which he shares with the whole community. To believe that God is Father means to be able to say “we” in regard to all men. (emphasis mine).

 

Mary Daly comments: “A woman whose consciousness has been aroused can say that such language makes her aware of herself as a stranger, as an outsider, as an alienated person, not as a daughter who belongs or who is appointed to a marvelous destiny. She cannot belong to this without assenting to her own lobotomy.” (bold emphasis mine).

 

How to articulate this condition of non-being to young men and women who (hopefully) have been affirmed as persons with independence and agency and strong senses of self? I stumbled in the attempt. A young man in class was filled with disbelief at the idea that a human being could be so lacking of a sense of being. I share no such disbelief, for I have lived it.

 

As I tried to respond to that student, I looked at the floor and took myself back to when I was 22 years old and stood in that four room tenement apartment kitchen with nothing to look forward to tomorrow but more diapers and home made baby food. And I tried to describe the emptiness and the despair of having been taught all my life that THIS was supposed to make me happy. But it didn't. I described a young woman whose thoughts, truths, and LIFE had been defined for her; a young woman who had been taught that her acceptance of these “truths” for her life determined whether or not she was going to be loved or accepted, sinful or good. I looked into the being of my 22 year-old self and discovered fear and emptiness. Motherhood is taught as the culminating event in a woman’s life; the event that fulfills her destiny; her opportunity for self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice always implies a death of some kind but in order for sacrifice to truly be characterized as enacted by a self, one must make it a choice, one must first BE a self. To define a person’s worth and dignity only insofar as they are in relation to another person is to place the other at the center of one’s meaning. I loved my son more than life itself, but caring for him was not an act of self-development. It was an act of other-development. An empty self, no matter the love, cannot engage in other-development happily. I was starving for intellectual, creative and spiritual stimulation.  So empty was I that in an attempt to fill myself with anything that felt like comfort, or satisfaction or agency I ate my way to a whopping 215 pounds. This was no one’s fault, not even my own. I learned my societal and cultural lessons well. But I delight in my own history too, because I unlearned them. And I unlearned them well. And somehow, despite myself and even in the midst of those years of non-being and in the years of unlearning, I (and their father) managed to raise two incredible human beings

 

And those who don’t? Those who define themselves forever in terms of mother or wife? Those whose sense of self-worth is defined only in terms of their relation to others (or more exactly, in terms of other’s relation to them) and not in a sense of their own personhood? You know them. They are the women who become bitter and nasty and envious or play the martyr. I asked my students that day, when I so clumsily attempted to describe non-being, if they had read Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Have you read it? Then I told them that the end of that story is about non-being. The character has come to the realization that she is a non-being and the despair she feels is only matched by the inability to even begin to know how to create one.

 

I fear that I have just risked being enormously misunderstood. How DARE I debunk the myth and mystique of motherhood by suggesting that it alone is not enough for any woman? How dare I demythologize the fabled “happily ever after” that is promised with the kiss of the Prince? I do so only in the firmest conviction, grounded in experience, that no one; no child and/or no man can “make” another happy or fulfilled. These are only to be found within a free human being who seeks after them for herself.

 

(Is it any wonder then, that in the Age of Patriarchy the wise old woman of ancient times has been morphed into the witch or wicked stepmother? Ha! And WHY is the mother always dead? Is it any wonder that the wise woman's   knowledge has been rendered evil (as in a poison apple)? Is it any wonder that the wisdom of the crone has been rendered threatening to the maiden lest she destroy the maiden’s blind desire for the Castle?)

 

To be continued….

Volkswagen Saga

In addition to having had strep throat last week while trying to finish up my Maymester course, I have been experiencing car trouble. It actually started a month ago when I got into my car to attend a former student’s graduation for her Master’s degree. I got into my car and it wouldn’t start. The following morning however, it did so I rushed it down to my mechanic who put in a $140 thingamajig. (By the way, as I type this, SpellCheck underlined “Maymester” in red, but not thingamajig). There has been another problem with my car as well- it has been idling funny (that’s a technical term). When I started it “cold” in the morning, the idle would skip and make sounds like the engine was going to die, but then, like a sprinter who gets a second wind, something would be bypassed and the engine ran smoothly. My mechanic Chris, didn’t want to commit to what he suspected was the problem, so he told me to take the car until it gets worse and then we’d have a better idea of what the problem is. So, what does a woman do when she finds a man who won’t commit? She finds another one. I took the car to a Tire and Service Center near my home. The service manager there is my Starbuck’s manager’s boyfriend. Last Friday, he and another of his mechanics attempted to diagnose my car for six hours and couldn’t find the problem. On Saturday he said I should take the car home and bring it back on Tuesday when the Dr. House of automotive diagnostics would be back from vacation. He was confident that this guy would find the problem. As I pulled out of the service center driveway, the car started sputtering and skipping. Acceleration produced nothing. I immediately made a left turn to bring the car back at which point my car almost stalled in front of oncoming traffic. It would just have to stay there until Tuesday. In the meantime, I rented a car from the local Rent-A-Wreck.

 

On Tuesday I received a call from Dr. House who also did not want to commit to what he thought was the problem. He recommended  I bring the car to the local Volkswagen dealership. Now, how to get my beautiful, sleek, black Volkswagen Passat to the dealership? I called my car insurance  company and added “emergency roadside service” to my plan, for six dollars and fifty-six cents. It took effect at one minute past midnight on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday I called Geico who arranged a tow truck to pick up my car and haul it to the VW dealer, free of charge.

 

In the meantime, a good friend and colleague, leaving for a ten day vacation offered me the use of his car so I could return the rental. On Tuesday evening, HIS car broke down. Wednesday morning when I went to school to teach my class, another good friend and colleague who had heard about all this from Friend #1 offered me one of HIS cars since he was leaving for China for a month. Friend #1 and I picked up Friend #2’s car and returned the rental to Rent-A-Wreck. Then we decided to have lunch. As we drove to the restaurant I began to talk about a concert I had attended on Sunday evening as part of the Spoleto Festival, an annual performing arts festival held here in Charleston. Featured player was legendary jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. Seventy-seven year old Jamal took the stage with a bassist and a drummer and the trio performed incredible music. Jazz-pure and simple. As I spoke about the beauty of the music, I began to cry- not sobbing or wailing or anything-just tears, streaming down my face. I suspect that the tears had nothing to do with Ahmad Jamal but were simply the release of exhaustion and stress from having been so sick the week before and from the car issues of the weekend. Poor Friend #1.

 

On Thursday I received the call from Russ at the VW dealership. He recommended the 40K mile super-duper tune-up, new spark plugs and a new throttle- total cost $610. Later that day I received another call from Russ. Oh oh. I also need an “O2 Sensor.” Additional cost, $190. I vowed that if Russ called again, I would not pick up the phone. Last night, the phone rang and I picked it up. Russ wanted me to know that there were other things my car would need in the near future. Total cost of these repairs, which  could “wait a LITTLE while,” $500. Funny thing is, I actually believe him. I have not had a mechanic for quite some time who has looked at the WHOLE car and has anticipated problems. Usually, he has done what I have brought the car in for, and nothing further.

 

As an aside here, I want to say that for the past two summers I have had hopes that some of the extra money I earn through taking on summer courses could be used to purchase a new washer/dryer combo. Since moving to my new place almost two years ago I have had to haul my laundry to a local Laundromat. Now, hauling laundry to the Laundromat in itself isn’t so bad, IF only I could just pop in, do my laundry and then get the hell out. But I also have to dodge the advances of men who seem to think it is a good idea that while waiting for their rinse cycle to finish, they might as well hit upon women in the Laundromat. In the past two years I have been approached in various ways. These are just a few:

 

** One man wanted me to have a beer with him at the pizza joint next door to the Laundromat. It was 11 o’clock in the morning. Now, as a rule I am not opposed to pizza and beer at 11:00 in the morning but I don't share these with just anyone.

 

** One guy asked if he could “borrow” a fabric softener dryer sheet. What? Did he intend to GIVE IT BACK when he was finished with it? I gave one to him if only with the hope that the next time he went out drinking with his buddies, they’d detect the scent of vanilla-lavender on his t-shirt and jeans.

 

** In the space of the drying time one gets for a quarter, one man walked by me  and commented on my cowboy boots THREE times. “I like your cowboy boots.” “Those boots look good on you.” “May I  take your boots out for a beer?”

 

** One guy asked if I needed help bringing my laundry bags out to my car. Uhhh… I got them IN here OK, didn’t I? Besides, I feared I might have been the one ending up in my trunk.

 

** Then there are those times when I am asked what it is I am reading.

I admit that there have been times when I have chosen my Laundromat reading material in anticipation of this very inquiry. I look forward to seeing their reactions when I respond to this question by saying, for example,

 

“The Malleus Maleficarum. You know. It’s the Inquisition's medieval manual on witchcraft.” OR,

 

“Quintessence:A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto,” by Mary Daly, OR,

 

Any book really, with the word "feminist" in the title.

 

Any number of books in my possession with the word “evil” in the title:

 

“The Flowers of Evil,” by Charles Baudelaire, or “Encountering Evil.”

 

Anything by Aristotle or Plato or Nietzsche.

 

So it seems that the dream of a washer/dryer must be on hold a little while longer. In the meantime, I am considering making a t-shirt to be worn only on laundry days. The lettering on the t-shirt will convey the following: “THE MAN OF MY DREAMS HAS HIS OWN WASHER/DRYER.”