Encountering the Sacred

Feminist Reflections on Women's Lives

Rebecca Todd Peters, Grace Yia-Hei Kao, Rebecca Todd Peters, Grace Yia-Hei Kao

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780567683007
• eBook ISBN:
  9780567683021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Many women of faith are interested in having deep conversations with their friends and families about issues they face in their personal lives. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of feminist and theologically progressive materials for these women to turn to for counsel or advice. Simultaneously, there are a growing number of theologically trained biblical scholars, theologians, and ministers who are experiencing similar life challenges, but who are generally discouraged from writing about these experiences in ways that would be accessible to the general public. This book bridges the chasm between Christian laywomen and feminist theologians.

For the last fifty years, feminist theologians have sought to reimagine Christian theology in ways that speak to the realities and complexities of women's lives. They have also sought to use women's experience as the starting point for theological reflection in the same way that men's lives have shaped the history of Christian theology for the past 2000 years. In this book, feminist Christian scholars of theology and religion use the tools of their trade to examine powerful personal life experiences and to search for new and empowering ways of understanding the power of the sacred as they have experienced it.

1

Why we need besties (friendship)¹

Kate Ott

On the bulletin board in my home, next to my kids’ practice schedules, the school lunch calendar, church council meeting dates, and long passed invitations, hangs a postcard with these words: “To have a friend is to invite someone closer and closer to the sacred chamber of the heart. To be a friend is to tread softly there.” Like many of the items on the bulletin board, this postcard had faded into a mosaic of to-do’s or not-done’s with no particular uniqueness to any one piece. But, one day, as I was trying to write new words about friendship and faith, I saw the postcard in a new light. I had been thinking about the sacred aspects of friendship and how important it is to create sacred spaces, or sacred chambers, where friendships can flourish. In our daily living, it’s easy to lose sight of the sacredness of friendship.

I believe that women’s friendships in particular can create a sacred space and become an example of God’s radical love in our world. As women, we are reminded daily that we are not good enough as we are. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we are made to understand that we need makeup, diets, and new clothes to be pretty; relationships with men and children to validate us; and ladylike manners to play our socially appropriate roles in society. Women’s friendships occupy a strange space because they are often defined in reference to men or a male norm. Nevertheless, they hold the potential of being the space where we women love each other into being who God created us to be and where we support one another as we push against these negative cultural messages about who and what we are supposed to be and do. Many of us may find it difficult to uncover the image of God within ourselves under the many layers of social expectations and patriarchal religious imagery. This is a unique challenge. As we love each other, support each other, listen to each other, and create spaces where we can open ourselves to one another without fear of shame or judgment, we show each other “who God is” in an image we rarely see—God as female. Thus, women’s friendships can become sacred spaces where we reveal God to each another.

Jephthah’s daughter: A story of women’s friendship

The scriptures do not provide very many examples of women’s friendship. Those that do—Rachel and Leah, Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Martha—have to be filled in by imaginative connections because the text itself does not always offer the full story. The book The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is a wonderful example of this kind of theological imagination that retells the tale of the sisters Rachel and Leah who became the wives of Jacob (Gen. 29–35). Given the paucity of detail about women’s lives in the Bible, the author imagines with us the story of women’s private lives that are lost to the biblical record.

Through Diamant’s narrative voice, the competition of Jacob’s wives is transformed into Dinah’s story (Leah’s daughter) where we learn how women’s relationships became opportunities for them to find sacred space, even as their lives were still largely defined in reference to men and male norms. Women joined together in the Red Tent when they were menstruating, a gathering based solely on their biology as women. While their space apart was tinged with concerns about religious impurity, there was also tremendous power in the space they created outside of men’s knowledge and control. The Red Tent empowered women as they nurtured one another through ancient practices of midwifery. The safety of this space not only allowed for the sharing of secrets,² but also the humanization of one another in ways not allowed in the world of men that existed beyond the tent’s shroud. Outside the tent, women were only seen for their social value to the males in the family: mother, food provider, sexual partner, and so on, thus causing competition among the women. Within the Red Tent, the women created a sacred space where they were full, multidimensional persons who shared their spirituality, social struggles, and familial commitment with all members, including the education of the girl children.

The book of Judges in the Bible hints at another tale of women’s friendship, albeit with less detail even than that of Rachel and Leah. In this story, Jephthah, desperate to win a military battle, vows to God that he will sacrifice whoever comes to greet him first upon returning home if God will help him be victorious. After defeating the Ammonites, Jephthah returns home and is greeted by his only daughter who dances out to meet him. Jephthah is distraught; the scripture tells us he rips his clothes—a sign of deepest grief. But he does not take responsibility for this horrible turn of events; he instead responds by blaming his daughter: “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow” (Judg. 11:35). As the religious ideal of a self-sacrificing, obedient female, she responds by accepting the consequences of her father’s vow. She says, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth” (Judg. 11:36). Yet, she does ask for two months to “wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I” (Judg. 11:37). This story raises questions about how her companions or friends (as I imagine them) played a role in her decision. That is, just as The Red Tent provided an alternative backstory to some of the key women of Genesis, so we might do the same in this case.

Such inquiry might even change our reading of the passage. Biblical scholars have debated whether the daughter would have known of her father’s (Jephthah’s) promise. Danna Nolan Fewell writes, “Jephthah’s vow was most likely made at Mizpah and not necessarily in secret. The daughter could very well have known the substance of her father’s bargain. Indeed, when she responds to her father she seems quite aware of what the vow entails.”³ In that case, her response might not be one of submission, but judgment. As Fewell contends, Jephthah probably wanted his daughter to know about the vow so that she would not come to greet him and he could sacrifice a servant. If that is true, then “the daughter intends her greeting. She is one of Jephthah’s troublers because, as she steps forth, she takes the place of someone whom he has considered expendable.”⁴ Whether knowingly or not, the daughter places herself in a position of self-sacrifice. In the reading offered by Fewell, however, she does so to save another, less valued member of the household by using her limited power in a pat riarchal context. She is also the one who requests the two months to be with her companions and mourn her womanhood (presumably away from men, or at least, her father). The Bible does not record who these companions were. But based on gender customs and her age, I would guess it was her girlfriends and other female servants.

With no social or religious power as a young woman in her time, I wonder if the love and support of her friendships sustain her in her decision to save other members of the household (assuming Fewell’s reading is correct) and reveal her father’s (and perhaps also the Bible’s) prioritization of military victory and of male lives over those of women. After all, when Abraham pleads for Isaac’s life, God does not require Abraham to fulfill the sacrifice of his only son. Jephthah seems only to call on God when needed for fighting. Fewell suggests, “Yahweh is merely another party to be bargained with, and once the victory is granted, to be dispensed with, like the daughter.”⁵

What might such a gruesome story of violence teach us about women’s friendship? The daughter’s world, much like our own to varying degrees, supports gender inequality and perpetuates violence against women. Given customary gendered divisions in the household, Jephthah’s daughter probably created relationships with other women and girls, including servants or other members of her extended family. In the case of “friendships” with servants, these women would have been bound together involuntarily because of their social roles and gender. While putting a bunch of women or girls together does not mean they will invariably become friends, I suspect that anyone willing to sacrifice her life for another (as the daughter was for the servants in Fewell’s reading) must have had a deep bond and love that may have been tantamount to friendship. In any event, in her period of mourning, her friends probably surrounded her with support and love as they joined her in her wandering the mountains and momentarily made her feel safe and empowered even with the foreknowledge that she would soon experience a violent death.

I imagine that this two-month reprieve gave these women time to bond, mourn, celebrate, and lament away from the confines of male control. (This is not to imply that the mountains provided physical safety. I can’t even imagine what kind of animals or natural feats these women dealt with while wandering for two months.) Here we can see how tenuous forming women’s friendships can be. Wandering together may have allowed these young women to experience much more than the narrowly defined roles society proscribed for them due to their sex, class, age, and so forth, for a short period of time. But the price they had to pay for this temporary freedom was the risk of either being shunned by the community upon their return, or at least held under suspicion for the time they spent with her in the mountains. These factors might explain why they all chose to return. Every time I read this story, I wonder why they didn’t just stay up in the mountains. I have concluded, however, that Jephthah would no doubt have found them eventually and then perhaps killed them all to fulfill his vow and demonstrate the consequences for disobedience.

Often women are pitted against each other. Hopefully, many of us do not face violence or the threat of violence as recorded in Judges concerning Jephthah’s daughter. Nonetheless, even the everyday experiences of women make it more difficult for them to form true friendships based on mutual interest, support, integrity, and loyalty. To be fair, there does not have to be a male around to set the stage for jealousy. Females can be their own worst enemies. When dissected, however, this behavior is often a product of internalizing negative stereotypes about women that favor men. As the companions of Jephthah’s daughter return with her for her to be sacrificed by her own father, we see that their actions do not change the status of women but ultimately reinforce male rule—and that may tell us more about the writer of the text and community norms at that time than it does about the daughter, her companions or any internalized misogyny on their part. It can be difficult for women to learn to love themselves and each other in a context that devalues them. As a counter-narrative to the devaluation of women, the daughter willingly meets her father to save other female companions. In return, they support her on her journey to take what time they had to create sacred space.

Women’s friendship: Entering the sacred chamber

Yes, women’s friendships can be difficult to form when male suspicion, lack of safety, and prescribed gender roles keep us from knowing and affirming that we are integral to each other’s flourishing as well as recognizing the divine in one another. It took me years to discover this truth. First, I had to come to a point where I could love myself for who I was and am. Second, I had to work hard at valuing other women for who they are. I was never quite comfortable with being a “girl” as it was traditionally defined in my Midwestern, white, Catholic context. I was (and still am) strong-willed and stubborn. I preferred to play sports and run with the boys. I was outspoken and smart. I loved myself, but not as a girl or woman. Relationships with other girls seemed competitive on an undefined playing field, catty and mean, and also second-class in relation to the power boys had on the playground, in the classroom, and in the home. Though I am cisgender, I found being a girl a strange state of affairs.

I attended Roman Catholic schools through high school. Religion and faith experiences were part of my education and my way of understanding the world. My Catholic context in multiple ways reinforced the message that women are somehow different, in a lesser sort of way. I often received inadequate answers to my questions about why women could not be priests. There was usually some reference to Jesus being male and God being our Father. Such a response makes it difficult to see the presence of God—imago dei—in the feminine. I was confused when the boys were allowed to behave in one way, while girls’ activities were restricted. For example, in second grade, one of the nuns called my mother to report that I was playing too often and too rough with the boys on the playground. So, my mother asked me to spend more time with the girls in my class. I obliged, and joined the girls’ circle, following prescribed gender stereotypes for play. The next week the same nun reprimanded me on the playground for standing around, talking with the girls. These new “friendships” were suddenly suspect and the teacher wanted once again to control them. The message “God loves everyone as they are” was in constant tension with religiously enforced standards of gender performance in my experience.

My struggle seeing other women “as friends, as myself” came into stark relief during my high school years as I entered an all-girls high school. In my freshman year I did everything “right.” I was part of clubs, made the athletic teams, took honor classes, hung out with the popular crowd, and so on. The girls I befriended were on the same sport teams, in honors classes, and had socioeconomic family structures that matched mine. There were times these cliques turned mean and I was hurt. There were also times that I acted in line with the group and hurt others. None of it seemed like the real me—the me I now know God was and is calling me to be.

The conundrum of an all-girls environment encouraged girls to be independent on the one hand, but it still perpetuated gendered standards on the other. As a teenager, I distinctly remember receiving both the message that girls alone could do anything and that I ought to find a boyfriend. I was proud of having received gender-specific education, yet I knew its merit was partly based on the notion that girls would not do as well with boys in the classroom. These mixed messages vexed me. Over time, I came to realize that my classmates and I were struggling against and meas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Feminist theology as conversation and invitation Rebecca Todd Peters and Grace Y. Kao
• 1 Why we need besties (friendship) Kate Ott
• 2 Bed rest stinks (pregnancy) Ellen Ott Marshall
• 3 The Chuck E. Cheese challenge (simple living) María Teresa Dávila
• 4 I want my babies back (miscarriage) Monica A. Coleman
• 5 “Where are you REALLY from?” (racism) Grace Ji-Sun Kim
• 6 Re-membering rape (sexual assault) Marcia Mount Shoop
• 7 Girl-talk (gossip) Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty
• 8 Cursing God (infertility) Gina Messina
• 9 Casting out fear (death and dying) Victoria Rue
• 10 Happily ever after (voluntary childlessness) Kendra G. Hotz
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Copyright