Jesus as Feminist
As the SBC meets just an hour away from me, and the controversy is about Beth Moore, the following is an excerpt from my "Jesus as Feminist" paper for my Liberation Theology class for my M.Div.
Gender has defined our roles in society throughout the centuries, defining the expectations of men and women within society. These roles are predominantly social constructs that have favored men and kept women in an oppressed state.[1]Jesus worked to turn those gender roles around. In the story of Mary and Martha[2], Martha assumes the typical gender role of cooking and serving whereas Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, taking on the male role of listening to a teacher, learning and in all respects assuming the role of a disciple of a rabbi/teacher. Jesus’ statement that Mary had chosen what is better is a declaration liberating women from those societal gender roles. Swidler wrote of this liberating discourse, “When one recalls the Palestinian restriction on women studying the Scriptures or studying with rabbis, that is, engaging in the intellectual life or acquiring any ‘religious authority,’ it is difficult to imagine how Yeshua could possibly have been clearer in his insistence that women were called to the intellectual, the spiritual life just as were men”.[3]
Jesus further broke those gender roles when he commissioned Mary Magdalene and the other women at the tomb to go tell the disciples that he had arisen. Jesus gave permission to these women and thus all women to speak, to tell the good news, to break free from the man-made structures that oppressed, silenced and marginalized women.
Jesus also shattered the societal gender bias of sexual sins. As there are now, then there were certain sexually moral expectations of women and male church leaders but there was no “guidance and teaching which would enhance self-respect, mutuality and integrity between the sexes . . . Essentially, the church is legalistic, and double standards are the order of the day.”[4]In the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus treats the woman and the men as equals, taking away the men’s power, refusing to single her out for a “sexual” sin, and then turning the tables on them forcing them to recognize their own sins, which could include allowing the man in this same adulteress act freedom while they brought the woman alone to Jesus.
LIBERATION
African feminist theologian Dube rightly asked, “Who do you say I am?” She then writes that church traditions have for centuries named Christ for us, giving us (women) a Christology.[5]Simpler put, it was men telling women the Christology of women. However, it is now time for women to name Christ for ourselves.[6]How is that done for women? Liberation theologians state “the experience out of which Christian theology has emerged is not universal experience but the experience of the dominant culture . . . Recognizing inherent problems in the universalist approach to the doing of theology . . . theology must emerge out of particular experiences of the oppressed people.”[7]Grant goes on to write, “Since experience is the context in which Christological interpretation takes place, before women begin to reflect on Jesus Christ, they must claim the power to name themselves and their experience so that their Christological reflections would be authentically theirs.”[8]
The experiences of women cover a broad spectrum. Developing a feminist Christological perspective in all aspects of women’s lives is to look at Jesus. Jesus is the very heart of the Christian faith. All theology must start with him.
Furthermore, liberation cannot wait. Jesus declared, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[9]Jesus declared in this statement and by his words and actions during his ministry that the exploitation – both politically and economically - of the oppressed must stop, that today, freedom comes to those with no power and no voice and to those whom society has oppressed because of their gender, race, disability or ethnicity.[10]
To not respond to a “women’s cry for help is to deny their creation in God’s image and to ignore their struggle for liberation.”[11]Liberation for women, however, must come in different forms. Most women are too busy struggling against actual oppression to engage in academia about Jesus, God, Trinity, and whether God is a she or if the stories about Jesus helping women were merely stories to perpetuate the belief that men are the heroes and women are the only ones needing saving. Hannah Bacon writes that Asian feminists don’t talk about God in the abstract because such discussion doesn’t offer any tools or resources to assist Asian women in their struggle against oppression.[12]The same is true for a Brazilian and Latin American feminist theologian who wrote, “when faced with the realities of hunger, disease, war, unemployment, and meaninglessness, thinking about the Trinity ‘would appear to be superfluous, hardly worth spending time on.’”[13]The realities of every day life for most women beg for a relevant Christology that is liberating in their daily circumstances.
The liberation theology of women, to be real and practical must meet the needs of women everywhere and in every condition. There must be a personal approach, an approach like Jesus.
CONCLUSION
Feminist theology must be concerned with the whole woman, the: political, economic, reproductive, sexual educational, cultural and household. It must be concerned with the equality of men and women without being againstmen. It must meet the oppressed and marginalized where they are in society and provide them with a liberating discourse that is real and practical.
Jesus addressed each of these areas in different ways, but none as a result of a lengthy dialogue. It is now time for women to name Christ for ourselves.[14]Jesus in his human and divine forms liberated women from the cultural chains of silence. He commanded them to go tell about his resurrection and he entrusted them with the most critical message: his deity and resurrection. Jesus liberated women from the reproductive and household chains when refusing to limit his mother’s importance to her child-bearing abilities. Jesus liberated women from the sexual education and political chains when he refused to allow one woman to be shamed for a sexual sin while ignoring the sins of others.
Jesus demonstrated throughout his ministry that women were to be treated as equals, he shattered the gender roles of his society and advocated for women’s equality and justice. Jesus has met the definition of a feminist. Jesus as feminist would have us answer the oppressed woman’s cry for help without delay and in real and practical ways, the ways in which he did.
[1]Dube 353.
[2]Luke 10:38-42
[3]Swidler 31.
[4]Njoroge 433.
[5]Dube 346.
[6]Dube. 347.
[7]Grant 10.
[8]Grant 11.
[9]Luke 4:21; Dube 348
[10]Dube 348
[11]Njoroge 429
[12]Bacon, Hannah. “Thinkingthe Trinity as Resource For Feminist Theology Today?” Cross Currents. (2012): 444.
[13]Bacon 444.
[14]Dube. 347.