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LEONARD THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE
SUBJECT : FEMINIST THEOLOGY
TOPIC : RECLAIMING WOMEN’S SPIRITUALITY
SUBMITTED TO : REV. SUMIT BAROI
SUBMITTED BY : KAMLESH R. PETER (B.D. IV)
SUBMISSION ON : 8TH^ MARCH, 2022
1. INTRODUCTION:
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. Women today are daring to tell their truth, to break open the silence in which their lives have for generations been shrouded. More and more of them are using the language of spirituality as they name their new sense of themselves, of the world, of God and their own Godlikeness. This paper is an attempt to reclaim the women’s spirituality.
2. WHY THE NEED OF RECLAIMING? There is a need of reclaiming the women’s spirituality because of women’s common experience of powerlessness which links them across historical, there the feminist spirituality which refuses to divorce private experience from cultural and religious boundaries. Keeping alive the ‘dangerous memory’ of their suffering, and making concrete their solidarity with other women across socio-economic lines are central items on the feminist agenda. They are central, too, to a feminist spirituality which refuses to divorce private experience from public life, or personal conversion from political transformation. Even from the account of book of Genesis, church fathers and many history writers blame women and challenge their spirituality. Reading the history of early Christianity, it can be seen that how gradually the names of women began to drop out and the history turned to streamlining and the building up of structures. The female figures and feminist anti-domination perspectives began to fade. Christianity became churches and theology became doctrine and dogma as a few men got together to determine what is to be believed. Women believers and women martyrs replaced by women labelled heretics together with all men who pointed to the activities of the Holy Spirit.^1 3. BORN OF WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE: (^1) Lalrinawmi Ralte, Women Re-Shaping Theology: Introducing women’s studies in theological education in India (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), 3
Since they find that much of traditional spiritual teaching ignores, rejects or distorts the truth of women’s lives, Christian feminists speak of a spirituality born out of ‘the womb of their own experience’.^2 3.1. Experience of Exclusion: Their experience is marked, first of all, by centuries of exclusion. Prohibited from seeking ordained ministry, banished by law and convention from the public forum, and ignored in their distinctive experience of the holy, women have learned to image themselves as ‘outsiders’. They have been treated as unworthy to enter sacred space, too delicate to meddle in secular affairs. Ever present behind the scenes, they are seldom seen, heard or taken seriously in the polis of Church and state.^3 3.2. Experience of Connection: The experience of connection is another component at the core of women’s spirituality. Relationships link women to ancestral past and children’s future, to lovers in the next village and friends across the globe, weaving a web of life which shapes women’s understanding of their identity and which enables them to perceive reality as whole, interconnected, organic. They pray and act out of the intuition that heart and head, spirit and body, form an inseparable unity. Feminist theologians bring this same holistic approach to their work. They respect the ways in which people’s beliefs follow as well as give rise to their behaviour, and in which their rituals embody both belief and action. Thus, feminist spirituality will integrate elements of ethics, liturgy and systematics in its reflections.^4 3.3. Experience of Power: Third, women speak of a new experience of power, and of the truth they have come to know in the process of discovering, claiming, receiving and sharing power. They find a genuine ‘paraclete’ in the Spirit, whom they experience as present within, energizing and giving life, active in human hearts and history. They find themselves standing before a God who as Mystery calls them beyond the present moment, who as Life- Giver shares creative power with them, who as Mother/Father names them beloved. Like the women of Israel, they know that it is (^2) Schfissler Fiorenza, Elisabeth: In memory of her (Crossroad, New York, 1983), 347. (^3) In Conn, (ed), Women's spirituality: resources for Christian development (Paulist, New York, 1986), 3. (^4) One Washington, D.C.-based organization, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER), embodies these connections in its name.
4.2. Imagination: Reclaiming Symbols Feminist scholars have documented women’s exclusion from the ranks of those who shaped the symbols and meanings which became the dominant myths of our civilization. The exclusion was not accidental, nor is it ended, as evidenced by the virtual absence of women from positions of influence in fields such as government, religion and communi- cations, fields recognized as keepers of our symbol systems. Feminist spirituality draws on the power of imagination to develop symbols which mirror alternative views of reality. For instance, Haughton suggests that, if the symbol of Eve was used by a male-dominated culture to connote ‘women’s innate sinfulness, her power to degrade and corrupt, or... divine punishment laid on all womankind’, then Jesus’s empowerment of women could be described as ‘the re- creation of Eve’.^8 Haughton creatively portrays the women of the New Testament in dialogue with a Jesus who relentlessly refused to let them stay hidden. They responded to him by emerging from the shadows of history to touch and be touched by him, to listen and learn, to find healing, to share water and bread and friendship, to follow him along country roads and city streets, even to the place where he was executed as a criminal. It takes imagination to question, as Jesus did, time-honoured understandings of sin and righteousness, to conceive alternatives, to choose to act in another way.^9 The image of the ekklesia gynaikon, ‘Women-Church’, captures much of the struggle and hope of women who claim to stand in the tradition of a community in exodus from oppression. For two of its strongest advocates, Elisabeth Sch/issler Fiorenza and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women- Church represents a necessary stage in the evolution of women’s spiritual experience. Though seeming to be a separatist tactic, gathering women together outside the present institutions of the Church, its ultimate goal is a ‘cohuman Church’, ‘a redemptive community of both men and women liberated from patriarchy’.^10 4.3. Resistance: Reclaiming the Struggle (^8) Hanghton, Rosemary: The re-creation of Eve (Templegate, Springfield, IL, 1985), 6-7. (^9) Hanghton, Rosemary: The re-creation of …, 7. (^10) Radford Ruether, Rosemary: Women-Church: theology and practice of feminist liturgical communities (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985), 62, 61.
If the success of the system is to make unthinkable the possibility of alternatives, then imagining alternatives is an act of subverting the system, an act of resistance. For many women, spirituality has taken on the character of a struggle for survival. At one level, it is expressed in their refusal to accept unquestioningly, as reflective of universal human experience, the definitions, doctrines, worldviews, prohibitions and patterns created by men. For example, developmental models, based on the observation that persons pass through predictable stages as they grow toward cognitive, emotional, moral and religious maturity, are commonly accepted. How- ever, studies of women’s lives reveal that their perspectives on maturation, identity formation, social roles and responsibilities, and decision-making often differ from the so-called ‘normative’ views and patterns.^11 As a crucial step in a woman’s journey to maturity, she must come to terms with the experience of having to choose and act as an independent agent. For men, the research says, the catalyst for transformation is intimacy. But for women, who have been socialized into patterns of intimacy and relationship since childhood, maturity demands confrontation with choice. It appears that the absoluteness of caring as principle of women’s identity formation has to be challenged by her growing awareness of herself as a separate being with legitimate needs. A spirituality of resistance deeply threatens those who are charged with protecting the system from change, whether in the name of God’s will, the common good or the future of civilization. Feminists know that the journey will take them, perhaps many times, to the point of impasse, where once-consoling symbols shatter, where formerly sustaining bonds must be broken. As they confront this new face of the classic ‘dark night’ experience, they gain a new understanding of the dynamic of feminist conversion, which for them seems to be ‘not so much giving up egocentric notions of power as passing through an experience of nothingness finally to gain power over their own lives’.^12 4.4. Solidarity: Reclaiming the Community of Life Christian feminists believe that the Good News summons and creates a community. Such a view does not seek to bury individual responsibility in the collective (^11) Carol Gilligan , In a different voice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982); (^12) Mary E. Giles, (ed), The feminist mystic (Crossroad, New York, 1982), 36-69.
Ralte, Lalrinawmi. Women Re-Shaping Theology: Introducing women’s studies in theological education in India. Delhi: ISPCK, 1998. Fiorenza, Schfissler. Elisabeth: In memory of her. Crossroad, New York, 1983. In Conn. Ed. Women's spirituality: resources for Christian development. Paulist, New York, 1986. Women in the Church conference. Washington, D.C., October 9-13, 1986. Sponsored by Time Consultants, Inc. Harrison. Making the connections: essays in feminist social ethics. Ed. Carol S. Robb Beacon: Boston, 1985. Hanghton. Rosemary: The re-creation of Eve. Templegate, Springfield, IL, 1985. Ruether, Radford. Rosemary: Women-Church: theology and practice of feminist liturgical communities. Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985. Gilligan , Carol. In a different voice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982. Giles, Marry E. Ed. The feminist mystic. Crossroad, New York, 1982. Weaver, Mary Jo. New Catholic women: a contemporary challenge to traditional religious authority. Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985. Galiardi, Margarer. “Bonding: the critical praxis of feminism.” The Way. vol. 26, no. 2.
