Theological Reflections on The UN Commission on the Status of Women, March 2010

                                          If God is male, male is God. It is the creative potential itself in human beings                                          that is the image of God. ~~Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, 1973.

Three clarifying experiences inspired me to attend the 54^th meeting of UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW): Beijing+15.

First, the Diocese of Pennsylvania women’s Re-Imagining Ourselves fall 2009 conference. My hope for substantial liturgical and theological changes was re-ignited by the joyous and expansive music, theology and images of God used in worship services.

Second, Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s book Half the Sky: turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. A bestselling book of stories that have been central to feminist theology for decades: stories of unbearable violence against women and girls counterpointed with stories of women’s resilience and ability to create change. My hope soared that the world might listen to their stories.

Finally, conversation with Phoebe Griswold after she returned from the November Anglican Consultation on Human Trafficking in Hong Kong where our Church sharpened its focus on people mercilessly destroyed by the inhumanity of others. Phoebe and I compared and shared our stories of and passion for theology from women’s perspectives. My belief that an awakened Church can be a beacon of hope was strengthened. At the end of an invigorating conversation, she encouraged me to contact Marge Christie so that I could join the Anglican Women’s Empowerment delegation at the UN-CSW in March.

As I prepared for these meetings, I knew I would ask questions that have haunted, motivated and challenged me for over 30 years, questions that remain at the core of my call to ordination. What happens to the well being of women and girls when God is addressed almost exclusively as male: Father, He, Him? How do the Church’s images of God and the resulting theology contribute to women’s oppression? How can women be accepted as fully human when God is addressed as a man? What might change in the life of the Church if the voices of women across the breadth of the church were sought out and listened to?

Repeatedly, I asked these questions during the discussion periods at the CSW-NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) side events and in personal conversations. I wanted to spark thought and conversation. Just as women are asking the UN to have equal representation by women and men, I wanted to find companions who share my determination to change our theology and images of God so that the welfare of women and girls becomes central. The statistics and data, stories and reports of the worldwide resurgence of violence against women intensified the necessity for faithful theological dialogue about what happens—consciously and unconsciously– to women as well as to children and men when we address God as male.

The statistics and data offered chilling factual grounding to my passion for change.

Hillary Clinton in her closing address described with amazement, …the cover of the most recent issue of The Economist….said Gendercide. Because it was pointing out…that there are approximately 100 million fewer girls than there should be, if one looked at all the population data…. A word that I had never heard before, but which so tragically describes what has gone on, what we have let go on, in our world.

UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #3: Promote gender equality and empower women. No progress. Women’s political and economic power has remained static since the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women; violence against women has risen. More women die worldwide of violence than any other cause. 70% of women experience violence, mostly from intimate partners. One million children are forced into prostitution every year and the total number of prostituted children could be as high as 10 million, The Lancet, British journal. The vast majority of these are girls. One in five US college women experience sexual abuse. The Girl Scouts reported one in three girls are sexually abused before they are 18. In the US 350,000 girls and women are sex-trafficked; 100,000 are US citizens.

UN MDG #5: Improve maternal health. Some progress toward reducing the 500,000 women, including girls, who die each year of preventable pregnancy complications worldwide. Of the 193 UN nations, the US is one of 7 that have not ratified the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Only the US and Somalia have not ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The stories and reports personalized the statistics and data and generated a connection with the women who spoke.

In Cleveland, Ohio, over 25 years ago an older man forced Tina Frundt into prostitution when she was 14. This spring she opens Courtney’s House in Washington, DC, for sex trafficked children. A national advocate for raising awareness of US sex trafficking, she radiates hope and resilience.

Stories of violence against women included sexual slavery in brothels, acid attacks on girls and women, child brides, early pregnancies resulting in life destroying fistulas or other internal damage, wife burnings, female genital mutilations, gang rapes, honor killings, rape as a weapon of mass destruction of cultures and communities. A woman was held as a household slave in Wayne, PA, where I lived for 20 years. Human trafficking includes women and men, girls and boys; the sale of organs; slave labor; sex exploitation; torture and drugs.

Indigenous women spoke of being taken from their families and forced into Christian residential boarding schools, and of the present day decimation of their cultures by alcohol and drugs introduced by outsiders. After the earthquake in Haiti, agencies stopped giving the food to men when it was discovered if the distribution of food to women became orderly and the children were fed.

Serene Jones, President of Union Seminary, NYC, provoked my thought when she stated that women religious leaders will be the most significant political global actors over the next 100 years. She went on to challenge us to recognize that our bodies are the sights of politics and religion where primary power relations are formed, enacted and re-enacted. By shunning the body, religion distorts not only healthy desire and pleasure; it ignores the perils of living in a woman’s body. She called us to consciously live out our religious commitments every day as political acts which can change the way the world understands the sanctity of women’s lives. To accomplish this, she encouraged us to explore our beliefs and experiences deeply enough to touch the Sacred Feminine so that we might touch others with compassion.

North American Women of Faith formally joined worldwide regional groups in the Women, Faith, and Development Alliance under the auspices of Religions for Peace. The overarching goal is for secular women, women of faith and developmental organizations to cooperate to change the world.

Theology was implicitly embedded or explicitly interwoven into everything that was said.

Religions can be dis-empowering, demeaning and oppressive, as well as liberating. Any theology has to take women’s rights and issues into consideration. We are invited to expand what we mean by religion, women, leadership, and politics. One pathway is Contextual Bible Study led by women and often involving men: stories read through women’s eyes widen perspectives. I think of the impact of my Biblical Stories of Women course, focusing on the women’s characteristics. Both approaches empower people to live out their faith.

As women of faith we are called to respect every human being, each born free and equal in dignity and rights. The Breath of the Divine enlivens and embodies every person. We are called to challenge and dismantle the physical, spiritual, and cultural community barriers to dignity by caring deeply for one another. Whether proclaimed by secular women or women of faith, social justice is a faith statement which joins us together.

This knowledge carries risk. Galvanized by the cost to women and children–and consequently to men–of doing business as usual in church and society, we are called to enlarge our capacity to risk. With education and economic empowerment of women, children’s lives will change and eventually more women and men will respond.

Living the Gospel daily by expanding our understanding of religion, women, leadership, and politics energized the Anglican and Ecumenical women in worship each morning. I sensed this energy in every gathering as women spoke from differing perspectives and cultures. We shared our compassion for the suffering of women and girls and our passion for justice. Each story of violence and abuse, each story of change, resilience and hope en-Couraged me to continue to ask, What happens to women and girls when God is addressed as male?

Now I add: We know the statistics and stories about the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual cost of violence against women—the cost paid by humanity and all creation. As faithful people we are called to constantly evaluate and challenge the words, stories and images used in worship, preaching and teaching about the nature of God so that we proclaim a God who opens the Way for equality and justice for women and girls.

Selected Bibliography:

Griswold, Phoebe. Reflections on UN Consultation on Trafficking, Hong Kong, Nov. 3, 2009. On the Web  under this title. Look for other addresses by Phoebe on the web.

Kristof, Nicholas and WuDunn, Sheryl. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women  Worldwide. Knopf, New York, 2009.

Kwok, Pui-Lan. Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2005.

Schussler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Orbis Books,  Maryknoll Press, 2001.

copyright, Joy Anna Marie Mills, 2010